From The American Conservative:
The Hell Where Youth and Laughter Go
by Taki
A recent Newsweek cover story on the war’s most fearless doctor brought back painful memories. As a very young boy I was on the receiving end of Anglo-American bombing while I lived in Tatoi, a northern suburb of Athens where the royal summer palace was situated and next to which my family had a house. Near the summer palace lay a tiny Greek military airport occupied by the German Luftwaffe. By 1942, aged six, I learned what collateral damage was all about.
Not that we called it that, back then. It was called bad luck. Just as the French farmers in Normandy cursed the offshore batteries that turned their houses into bombed-out hovels before the D-Day landing—forget what the movies show—so did the Greeks living near Tatoi fulminate against those dropping bombs on them in defense of liberty, democracy, and freedom. Hollywood types don’t understand what bombs can do to humans, so they show children cheering and adults lifting their glasses to their unseen benefactors, but the truth is somewhat different. The earth trembles, men and women lose their bowels, the noise scares the living daylights out of one, the screams of the wounded remain in the psyche. Even worse is the weeping of the survivors over lost loved ones after the sirens have screeched the all-clear. One thing is for sure: no one looks up to the sky and thanks Ike or Winnie. To the contrary.
These are the facts. The rest is Hollywood and neocon propaganda. Those doing the fighting, of course, have it much worse. As General Sherman said, war is hell, but successive generations with abundant evidence before them still persist in fighting.
Why men fight is a moral issue of great importance, especially today, when non-fighters instigate wars that others fight for them. “I adore war. It’s like a big picnic without the objectlessness of a picnic. I have never been so well or so happy,” said the poet Julian Grenfell before dying at the western front. Grenfell was killed early on, before disillusionment had the chance to set in. That other wonderful poet, Harvard-educated Alan Seeger, serving with the French Foreign Legion, told his mother that “every minute here is worth weeks of ordinary experience.” He perished two years later at the Somme. I guess some poets have a death wish.
Not the gallant Siegfried Sassoon, who survived a nervous breakdown to fight again and live to a ripe old age. Here’s what he had to say about war: “I knew a simple soldier boy / Who grinned at life in empty joy, / Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, / And whistled early with the lark. / In winter trenches, cowed and glum, / With crumps and lice and lack of rum, / He put a bullet through his brain. / No one spoke of him again. / You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye / Who cheer when soldier lads march by, / Sneak home and pray you’ll never know / The hell where youth and laughter go.”
Hear, hear. Incidentally, when the campaign against French fries was on, I couldn’t help thinking how wrong the sofa-samurais had it. Did you know that from Aug. 4, 1914 to Aug. 29, 1914, 260,000 French soldiers were killed without advancing the front by a single foot? “The more men died, the more urgently a cause had to be found for them to die for.” Does it sound familiar? Like staying the course?
So why do men fight? The question of motivation of the Wehrmacht, the unity of the German army sustained to the bitter end, had little to do with political indoctrination. (That applied to elite Waffen SS units only.) It had to do with the social organization of army units. A captured sergeant laughed when his interrogators inquired about the politics of his men. “When you ask this question, I realize well that you have no idea what makes a soldier fight. If we think at all it is about Heimat [home]. We fight for each other …”
Needless to say, modern-day weapons make for unheroic deaths. Men are blown to tatters. Paul Fussell writes in Doing Battle how red-hot metal tore into his body, while the man next to him turned a whitish green while letting out a subdued groan before dying.
High-explosive projectiles scatter dreadful evidence of mortality. Here’s William Manchester landing on Iwo Jima: “You tripped over strange viscera fifteen feet long, over bodies cut in half at the waist. Legs and arms, and heads bearing only necks, lay fifty feet from the closest torsos. The stench of burning flesh was everywhere…” Flying fragments of the human body themselves cause wounds. Manchester’s father had a piece of one of his men’s tibia buried in his back. Others were hit by flying arms and were temporarily stunned.
But the boys back home tell us to stick with it. Bush says that despite more tough fighting, progress is being made. After all, the mission has been accomplished.
Papa Hemingway comes to mind. In A Farewell to Arms, Frederick Henry has had enough. “I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory … abstract words such as honor and courage were obscene beside the names of villages, the names of rivers …”
Read that you neocons and hang your heads in shame. But I won’t hold my breath until you do.
April 24, 2006 Issue
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Friday, April 21, 2006
From the LOS ANGELES TIMES
Bruce, just plain folk
* Veering ever further from his rock roots, Springsteen and company offer a
heartfelt homage to Pete Seeger
By Richard Cromelin
Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen. These two monumental, quintessentially
American artists have much in common, but with their vastly different
musical roles and styles they aren't the most obvious bedfellows.
Now they're permanently entwined thanks to Springsteen's new album, "We
Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions." Due in stores Tuesday, this joyful,
moving and somewhat frustrating collection is made up of 13 songs associated
with Seeger, the folk-music patriarch.
It's joyful and moving because they're unassailable cornerstones of American
music, songs that sprouted from the soil of the nation's experience and tell
us how people worked, danced, loved, dealt with disaster, found a voice,
inspired themselves and ultimately survived.
And it's frustrating because in choosing these 13 songs from the vast Seeger
canon, Springsteen neglects what is perhaps the strongest bond between the
two: a vision of music as an engine of social and political change.
Seeger, now 86 and relatively inactive, paid the price for that stance,
finding himself blacklisted and marginalized in the 1950s and '60s for his
leftist politics. That didn't stop him from becoming an immeasurably
influential musical and cultural force.
Starting in the 1940s, Seeger began to gather and promulgate a treasure
trove of traditional and topical songs that had no home in the mass media.
He recorded and performed them with modest musical gifts and an abundance of
earnestness and enthusiasm, lighting the fuse for the folk music boom of the
1960s.
While Seeger wrote few songs and relied on a simple banjo strum and the
joined voices of his audience, Springsteen came along in the 1970s as the
rock 'n' roll poet, addressing the promise and the pitfalls of American life
in his torrents of words, carried at first on the liberating rock power of
his E Street Band, later in more tempered and varied frameworks.
But they find common ground in this album, which illuminates the Seeger
legacy for a wider audience while further distancing Springsteen from his
rock-icon identity of the 1970s and '80s.
Clearly, he's not feeling compelled to keep straight-ahead rock with the E
Street Band in the regular rotation. His last album, 2005's "Devils & Dust,"
was a muted, literary work, a variation on the tradition of his stark solo
projects "Nebraska" and "The Ghost of Tom Joad." His last album with the E
Street Band was the reflective post-9/11 work, "The Rising," in 2002. He's
pretty much consigned the rock 'n' roll to periodic live albums.
"The Seeger Sessions" is Springsteen's first album without his own songs,
and for the occasion he's concocted an irresistible hybrid of American music
forms. Guitars, banjo, fiddles, horns, organ, accordion, piano, drums,
washboard and more pack these arrangements, but the music always breathes
easily, with wood, wind and skin gathering into rich, organic shapes.
A Southern feel asserts itself in the Dixieland brass, and intentional or
not, a subliminal New Orleans presence pervades the album in the textures
and syncopations (Springsteen will give the music its live debut at the New
Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on April 30, with a Greek Theatre date in
Los Angeles on June 5).
The playing is casually virtuosic, a sort of acoustic counterpart to the
loose-limbed precision the E Street Band brings to his rock. You could call
it back-porch music, though you'd need a big porch to hold all these
players. (The DVD portion of this Dual Disc release offers documentation of
the sessions, with the musicians jostling for space in the living room of
Springsteen's farmhouse.)
The spontaneity is infectious. This is one-take recording, and you can hear
Springsteen cueing the horn section here, calling out a key change there,
fumbling the lyric in "John Henry" and plowing right ahead.
These might be folk songs, but there's no holding back on the upbeat tunes,
and he matches the raucous playing with vocals full of all-out raspy
intensity. And the musicians easily switch to a tone of evocative elegance
on the slower songs.
If the music has the feel of something that came together completely
naturally, the selection of material is more problematic.
There's a universe of Seeger-linked songs, and an infinity of statements to
be made from them, and Springsteen has played it pretty basic with his
repertoire here, choosing some bedrock material, from grade-school songbook
staples such as "Shenandoah" and "Erie Canal" to the civil rights anthems
"We Shall Overcome" and "Eyes on the Prize." There are minstrel songs ("Old
Dan Tucker"), spirituals ("Jacob's Ladder") and mythic tales ("Jesse James,"
"John Henry").
There's no way that such a collection can be regarded as slight, but
Springsteen doesn't put out albums with no thought to what they say about
the times, and by creating a broadly inspirational panorama he's declined
the opportunity to add his voice to the rising chorus of pop music that's
commenting directly on current events. There are plenty of confrontational
songs in the Seeger songbook that would do the job, from the
union-organizing challenge "Which Side Are You On?" to the Vietnam allegory
"Waist Deep in the Big Muddy."
Maybe he's biding his time after the demanding commentary of his last two
albums, taking a breather to enjoy the bandstand. Here's hoping the
bandwagon doesn't leave without him.
Bruce, just plain folk
* Veering ever further from his rock roots, Springsteen and company offer a
heartfelt homage to Pete Seeger
By Richard Cromelin
Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen. These two monumental, quintessentially
American artists have much in common, but with their vastly different
musical roles and styles they aren't the most obvious bedfellows.
Now they're permanently entwined thanks to Springsteen's new album, "We
Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions." Due in stores Tuesday, this joyful,
moving and somewhat frustrating collection is made up of 13 songs associated
with Seeger, the folk-music patriarch.
It's joyful and moving because they're unassailable cornerstones of American
music, songs that sprouted from the soil of the nation's experience and tell
us how people worked, danced, loved, dealt with disaster, found a voice,
inspired themselves and ultimately survived.
And it's frustrating because in choosing these 13 songs from the vast Seeger
canon, Springsteen neglects what is perhaps the strongest bond between the
two: a vision of music as an engine of social and political change.
Seeger, now 86 and relatively inactive, paid the price for that stance,
finding himself blacklisted and marginalized in the 1950s and '60s for his
leftist politics. That didn't stop him from becoming an immeasurably
influential musical and cultural force.
Starting in the 1940s, Seeger began to gather and promulgate a treasure
trove of traditional and topical songs that had no home in the mass media.
He recorded and performed them with modest musical gifts and an abundance of
earnestness and enthusiasm, lighting the fuse for the folk music boom of the
1960s.
While Seeger wrote few songs and relied on a simple banjo strum and the
joined voices of his audience, Springsteen came along in the 1970s as the
rock 'n' roll poet, addressing the promise and the pitfalls of American life
in his torrents of words, carried at first on the liberating rock power of
his E Street Band, later in more tempered and varied frameworks.
But they find common ground in this album, which illuminates the Seeger
legacy for a wider audience while further distancing Springsteen from his
rock-icon identity of the 1970s and '80s.
Clearly, he's not feeling compelled to keep straight-ahead rock with the E
Street Band in the regular rotation. His last album, 2005's "Devils & Dust,"
was a muted, literary work, a variation on the tradition of his stark solo
projects "Nebraska" and "The Ghost of Tom Joad." His last album with the E
Street Band was the reflective post-9/11 work, "The Rising," in 2002. He's
pretty much consigned the rock 'n' roll to periodic live albums.
"The Seeger Sessions" is Springsteen's first album without his own songs,
and for the occasion he's concocted an irresistible hybrid of American music
forms. Guitars, banjo, fiddles, horns, organ, accordion, piano, drums,
washboard and more pack these arrangements, but the music always breathes
easily, with wood, wind and skin gathering into rich, organic shapes.
A Southern feel asserts itself in the Dixieland brass, and intentional or
not, a subliminal New Orleans presence pervades the album in the textures
and syncopations (Springsteen will give the music its live debut at the New
Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on April 30, with a Greek Theatre date in
Los Angeles on June 5).
The playing is casually virtuosic, a sort of acoustic counterpart to the
loose-limbed precision the E Street Band brings to his rock. You could call
it back-porch music, though you'd need a big porch to hold all these
players. (The DVD portion of this Dual Disc release offers documentation of
the sessions, with the musicians jostling for space in the living room of
Springsteen's farmhouse.)
The spontaneity is infectious. This is one-take recording, and you can hear
Springsteen cueing the horn section here, calling out a key change there,
fumbling the lyric in "John Henry" and plowing right ahead.
These might be folk songs, but there's no holding back on the upbeat tunes,
and he matches the raucous playing with vocals full of all-out raspy
intensity. And the musicians easily switch to a tone of evocative elegance
on the slower songs.
If the music has the feel of something that came together completely
naturally, the selection of material is more problematic.
There's a universe of Seeger-linked songs, and an infinity of statements to
be made from them, and Springsteen has played it pretty basic with his
repertoire here, choosing some bedrock material, from grade-school songbook
staples such as "Shenandoah" and "Erie Canal" to the civil rights anthems
"We Shall Overcome" and "Eyes on the Prize." There are minstrel songs ("Old
Dan Tucker"), spirituals ("Jacob's Ladder") and mythic tales ("Jesse James,"
"John Henry").
There's no way that such a collection can be regarded as slight, but
Springsteen doesn't put out albums with no thought to what they say about
the times, and by creating a broadly inspirational panorama he's declined
the opportunity to add his voice to the rising chorus of pop music that's
commenting directly on current events. There are plenty of confrontational
songs in the Seeger songbook that would do the job, from the
union-organizing challenge "Which Side Are You On?" to the Vietnam allegory
"Waist Deep in the Big Muddy."
Maybe he's biding his time after the demanding commentary of his last two
albums, taking a breather to enjoy the bandstand. Here's hoping the
bandwagon doesn't leave without him.
From Entertainment Weekly:
Bruce Springsteen covers Seeger, and the energetic results are nothing to
protest.
BY DAVID BROWNE
Bruce Springsteen We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (Columbia)
Folk/Rock
You won't find any of folk icon Pete Seeger's greatest hits on Bruce
Springsteen's We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. You won't come across
"Turn! Turn! Turn!," "If I Had a Hammer," or "Where Have All the Flowers
Gone." What you will find, though, is something unexpected and liberating:
Springsteen injecting rock & roll energy into Seeger's vast repertoire,
which consists of both his originals and centuries-old traditional tunes.
And you'll likely breathe a sigh of relief. We've long known that
Springsteen loves acoustic music. But aside from Nebraska, Springsteen's
forays into this turf-- The Ghost of Tom Joad and last year's Devils &
Dust --have been desultory, tune-challenged mumbles, as if he kept
forgetting that in folkie story-songs, the story should never be more
important than the song.
We Shall Overcome could have been more of the same. But, enlivened by
flailing banjos, tub-thumping horns, and hopped-up accordions, the album is,
thank God, neither dull nor fusty. His voice a husky field holler,
Springsteen throws himself into the rollicking folk dance "Old Dan Tucker"
and swaggers through the spiritual "O Mary Don't You Weep" as if he were
still auditioning for record companies in a Jersey bar. "Erie Canal" brings
an edge-of-town darkness to the tale of (no joke) a barge worker and his
mule. He doesn't forget that folk can be pretty funny, however: In
black-humored "My Oklahoma Home," the twister takes the narrator's home--and
his woman, too.
Given all the protest songs in Seeger's songbook--and given Springsteen's
blunt criticisms of the current administration-- We Shall Overcome is
surprisingly light on politics; none of Seeger's songs about civil rights
incidents or labor unions are here. Only "Mrs. McGrath," about a soldier who
returns from combat with two peg legs, makes the most overt reference to
modern times. (To ensure we get the connection, Springsteen changes the
original's "King of France" to "King of America.") Springsteen is more
interested in plumbing Americana folklore legends, and the plan works. With
its strapping versions of "John Henry" and "Jesse James," the album taps
back into what Springsteen does best: making music that's as grand and
mythopoetic as the country itself.
Sometimes he and his musicians--a big, unwieldy combo with no E Streeters
save for wife Patti Scialfa--seem a little too excited and end up riding
roughshod over songs that Seeger performed with charming simplicity. But we
all know what happens when Springsteen pares things down dramatically (can
you hum even one song from Joad or Devils & Dust?), so let's not complain
too much. We Shall Overcome lets us revel in the sound of a man who no
longer confuses unplugged with uninspiring--and who isn't afraid to mix in
some merriment with the message. A-
Bruce Springsteen covers Seeger, and the energetic results are nothing to
protest.
BY DAVID BROWNE
Bruce Springsteen We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (Columbia)
Folk/Rock
You won't find any of folk icon Pete Seeger's greatest hits on Bruce
Springsteen's We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. You won't come across
"Turn! Turn! Turn!," "If I Had a Hammer," or "Where Have All the Flowers
Gone." What you will find, though, is something unexpected and liberating:
Springsteen injecting rock & roll energy into Seeger's vast repertoire,
which consists of both his originals and centuries-old traditional tunes.
And you'll likely breathe a sigh of relief. We've long known that
Springsteen loves acoustic music. But aside from Nebraska, Springsteen's
forays into this turf-- The Ghost of Tom Joad and last year's Devils &
Dust --have been desultory, tune-challenged mumbles, as if he kept
forgetting that in folkie story-songs, the story should never be more
important than the song.
We Shall Overcome could have been more of the same. But, enlivened by
flailing banjos, tub-thumping horns, and hopped-up accordions, the album is,
thank God, neither dull nor fusty. His voice a husky field holler,
Springsteen throws himself into the rollicking folk dance "Old Dan Tucker"
and swaggers through the spiritual "O Mary Don't You Weep" as if he were
still auditioning for record companies in a Jersey bar. "Erie Canal" brings
an edge-of-town darkness to the tale of (no joke) a barge worker and his
mule. He doesn't forget that folk can be pretty funny, however: In
black-humored "My Oklahoma Home," the twister takes the narrator's home--and
his woman, too.
Given all the protest songs in Seeger's songbook--and given Springsteen's
blunt criticisms of the current administration-- We Shall Overcome is
surprisingly light on politics; none of Seeger's songs about civil rights
incidents or labor unions are here. Only "Mrs. McGrath," about a soldier who
returns from combat with two peg legs, makes the most overt reference to
modern times. (To ensure we get the connection, Springsteen changes the
original's "King of France" to "King of America.") Springsteen is more
interested in plumbing Americana folklore legends, and the plan works. With
its strapping versions of "John Henry" and "Jesse James," the album taps
back into what Springsteen does best: making music that's as grand and
mythopoetic as the country itself.
Sometimes he and his musicians--a big, unwieldy combo with no E Streeters
save for wife Patti Scialfa--seem a little too excited and end up riding
roughshod over songs that Seeger performed with charming simplicity. But we
all know what happens when Springsteen pares things down dramatically (can
you hum even one song from Joad or Devils & Dust?), so let's not complain
too much. We Shall Overcome lets us revel in the sound of a man who no
longer confuses unplugged with uninspiring--and who isn't afraid to mix in
some merriment with the message. A-
From The Times (London):
Bruce Springsteen
By Pete Paphides
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN. We Shall Overcome -The Seeger Sessions. Columbia
5 Stars *****
In Martin Scorsese's Dylan-documentary No Direction Home, it's Pete Seeger
who emerges as the villain of the piece -his objections to Dylan's new
electric dawn culminating in a failed attempt to cut his power supply in
mid-concert.
It was also Seeger who helped to bring civil rights and folk music together,
popularising the Baptist hymn We Shall Overcome just in time for Joan Baez
to unleash her repellent vibrato moo upon it at the 1963 Newport Folk
Festival. With all of this in mind, it's hard not to feel suddenly very,
very sleepy when alighting on the title of Bruce Springsteen's 14th album.
And yet it's a measure of Springsteen's achievement here that he takes on
that song and, well, makes it live again. How so?
Virtually all of The Seeger Sessions is the result of two days spent with
players introduced to him through the E-Street Band's violinist Soozie
Tyrell. No rehearsals, apparently, and arrangements devised on the hoof. At
times you can hear as much. When the fiddler Sam Bardfield opens on O Mary
Don't You Weep, you get an audibly tentative evocation of small hours in an
imagined Jewish speakeasy -which gains confidence when a benign, boozy wave
of musicians surges in and picks up the initiative.
At the core of every performance here is a simple principle that all white
musicians playing black spirituals should be legally bound to observe. Music
born of misery doesn't need to be dispensed like an act of masochism between
consenting partners.
The hymn Eyes on the Prize swells magnificently from a hushed accordion
meditation to a tender ragtime climax. Jacob's Ladder makes light work of
the transition from Genesis xxviii, 11-19 to sozzled, serried singalong.
Only on the Dublin broadside Mrs McGrath -on which he borrows Tom Cruise's
Oirish accent from Far and Away -do the singer's instincts desert him.
For all the folk old guard's insistence that this music manages very well by
itself, it sometimes takes a rock musician to come along once in a while and
blow the cobwebs away from these songs.
Similarly, it's impossible to underestimate what Springsteen's grizzled,
guttural roar brings to these tunes. This is the sound of dusty spectres
being shaken out of old forgotten books. "The sound," as Springsteen himself
puts it, "of surprise and the pure joy of playing."
Bruce Springsteen
By Pete Paphides
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN. We Shall Overcome -The Seeger Sessions. Columbia
5 Stars *****
In Martin Scorsese's Dylan-documentary No Direction Home, it's Pete Seeger
who emerges as the villain of the piece -his objections to Dylan's new
electric dawn culminating in a failed attempt to cut his power supply in
mid-concert.
It was also Seeger who helped to bring civil rights and folk music together,
popularising the Baptist hymn We Shall Overcome just in time for Joan Baez
to unleash her repellent vibrato moo upon it at the 1963 Newport Folk
Festival. With all of this in mind, it's hard not to feel suddenly very,
very sleepy when alighting on the title of Bruce Springsteen's 14th album.
And yet it's a measure of Springsteen's achievement here that he takes on
that song and, well, makes it live again. How so?
Virtually all of The Seeger Sessions is the result of two days spent with
players introduced to him through the E-Street Band's violinist Soozie
Tyrell. No rehearsals, apparently, and arrangements devised on the hoof. At
times you can hear as much. When the fiddler Sam Bardfield opens on O Mary
Don't You Weep, you get an audibly tentative evocation of small hours in an
imagined Jewish speakeasy -which gains confidence when a benign, boozy wave
of musicians surges in and picks up the initiative.
At the core of every performance here is a simple principle that all white
musicians playing black spirituals should be legally bound to observe. Music
born of misery doesn't need to be dispensed like an act of masochism between
consenting partners.
The hymn Eyes on the Prize swells magnificently from a hushed accordion
meditation to a tender ragtime climax. Jacob's Ladder makes light work of
the transition from Genesis xxviii, 11-19 to sozzled, serried singalong.
Only on the Dublin broadside Mrs McGrath -on which he borrows Tom Cruise's
Oirish accent from Far and Away -do the singer's instincts desert him.
For all the folk old guard's insistence that this music manages very well by
itself, it sometimes takes a rock musician to come along once in a while and
blow the cobwebs away from these songs.
Similarly, it's impossible to underestimate what Springsteen's grizzled,
guttural roar brings to these tunes. This is the sound of dusty spectres
being shaken out of old forgotten books. "The sound," as Springsteen himself
puts it, "of surprise and the pure joy of playing."
From The Sun (England)
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
4 Stars ****
By Simon Cosyns
BACK in 1963, the year JF Kennedy died, a group of singers linked arms on
stage for an emotional finale of We Shall Overcome.
Among those at Newport Folk Festival were a fresh-faced Bob Dylan, Joan Baez
and the daddy of all protest singers, Pete Seeger. With impassioned voice,
Seeger carried America's social conscience on his shoulders as he crusaded
for civil rights and an end to racism.
His songs, some traditional and some his own, told of downtrodden characters
and hopeless dreams of a better life.
As he approaches the grand old age of 87, Seeger shows he has another rather
special soulmate in 2006 - the blue-collar Boss of American music himself.
Backed by 13 rabble-rousing musicians on 13 gritty traditionals, Bruce
Springsteen has added a new and wholly satisfying dimension to his
considerable body of work - the masterful tribute album.
In his liner notes, Springsteen explains how the "richness and power" of
Seeger's music changed what he thought he knew about folk music.
And from the gospel-flavoured Jacob's Ladder to the singalong racket of Pay
Me My Money Down, Springsteen manages to bottle the spirit of Seeger.
As the dying notes of this set's most famous song ebb away, you begin to
believe we really shall overcome someday. CS
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
4 Stars ****
By Simon Cosyns
BACK in 1963, the year JF Kennedy died, a group of singers linked arms on
stage for an emotional finale of We Shall Overcome.
Among those at Newport Folk Festival were a fresh-faced Bob Dylan, Joan Baez
and the daddy of all protest singers, Pete Seeger. With impassioned voice,
Seeger carried America's social conscience on his shoulders as he crusaded
for civil rights and an end to racism.
His songs, some traditional and some his own, told of downtrodden characters
and hopeless dreams of a better life.
As he approaches the grand old age of 87, Seeger shows he has another rather
special soulmate in 2006 - the blue-collar Boss of American music himself.
Backed by 13 rabble-rousing musicians on 13 gritty traditionals, Bruce
Springsteen has added a new and wholly satisfying dimension to his
considerable body of work - the masterful tribute album.
In his liner notes, Springsteen explains how the "richness and power" of
Seeger's music changed what he thought he knew about folk music.
And from the gospel-flavoured Jacob's Ladder to the singalong racket of Pay
Me My Money Down, Springsteen manages to bottle the spirit of Seeger.
As the dying notes of this set's most famous song ebb away, you begin to
believe we really shall overcome someday. CS
How Great Powers Become Great
by Patrick J. Buchanan
The economic growth of 10 percent recorded by China in 2005 would seem to contradict a tenet of faith of all good democratic capitalists.
China's performance tells us that, contrary to the teachings of free-trade liberals, dictatorship and protectionism do not necessarily ensure stagnation. For China is a one-party state and the most protectionist great nation on earth. Yet, her growth has been unequaled by any free-market rival nation for 15 years.
How does China achieve her success? By keeping her currency cheap -- refusing to let it float against the dollar -- China is able to offer Chinese goods at fire-sale prices to U.S. consumers, while the cheapness of her currency keeps U.S. goods priced out of China's market.
Despite blustery U.S. protests, the arrangement continues, because both nations see their interests served.
America's consumers want quality goods at the cheapest price. American businesses want to maximize profit by producing at the lowest cost. China accommodates both, by providing efficient and reliable workers at a tenth of the wages an American needs to support his family.
The plaque inside our Statue of Liberty reads, "Send us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free." Beijing says: "Send us your jobs, factories and technology, and we will produce your goods at a far lower price than your own people."
What the U.S. transnational corporation seeks is to retain its privileged access to American consumers, while getting rid of its American workers. China is delighted to accommodate.
Thus, it was our capitalists who were the first and most enthusiastic hosts of Chinese President Hu Jintao on his visit to America. But what does Beijing want?
In China the consumer does not come first. Nor do the voters decide policy, for there are no voters. The regime, state and nation come first. China's leaders want to make her first in manufacturing and high-technology, to become the primary producers for the world, and to displace the United States as the dominant power in Asia and the world.
The story of China and America is the story of the ants and the grasshopper. We spend every dime we earn. The Chinese are forced by the regime to sacrifice the present for a future their leaders envision.
In 2005, China ran up a $203 million trade surplus with us, selling us seven times as much as she bought from us. That trade surplus with America is responsible for 100 percent of her economic growth. China literally produces for the American market. As a result, her dollar reserves are the largest on earth, approaching $1 trillion.
What does Beijing use the money for?
First, she uses the dollars to create ties of dependency in Free Asia by buying more from these nations than she sells to them. Australia, whose natural resources are pouring into China, is becoming dependent for her prosperity on China.
Second, she invests her dollars strategically in energy projects outside of China and in nations America has declared off-limits: Sudan, Iran, Burma.
Third, she buys weapons and weapons technology from Russia, Israel and Europe to modernize her armed forces. And while her GDP growth was 10 percent last year, her defense budget has been steadily rising by more than 10 percent a year.
"Since no nation threatens China, one wonders: Why this growing investment (in her military)?" asks Donald Rumsfeld.
Good question. The configuration of China's forces gives us the answer. China has implanted 600 missiles opposite Taiwan, which can have only two plausible purposes: to intimidate Taiwan, or to attack Taiwan.
China is also investing in warships, submarines, modern fighter-bombers and space technology. As there is only one great air and sea power out there, there is no doubt at whom this buildup is directed.
Diplomatically, Beijing is drawing to her side all the nations that are on the outs with George Bush's America -- from Russia to Burma to Iran to Sudan to Venezuela to the new nations of Central Asia.
China today calls to mind the Kaiser's Germany. As the Kaiser's Germany built a High Seas Fleet to rival the Royal Navy, so China builds up a military to rival ours in Asia. As the Kaiser saw British-backed plots to isolate and surround her, so China sees the United States organizing Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the old Russian provinces of Central Asia against her. Encirclement -- in her eyes.
There is no greater work for today's statesmen than ensuring that what happened to Germany and Britain in the first half of the 20th century is not replicated by America and China in the first half of the 21st.
by Patrick J. Buchanan
The economic growth of 10 percent recorded by China in 2005 would seem to contradict a tenet of faith of all good democratic capitalists.
China's performance tells us that, contrary to the teachings of free-trade liberals, dictatorship and protectionism do not necessarily ensure stagnation. For China is a one-party state and the most protectionist great nation on earth. Yet, her growth has been unequaled by any free-market rival nation for 15 years.
How does China achieve her success? By keeping her currency cheap -- refusing to let it float against the dollar -- China is able to offer Chinese goods at fire-sale prices to U.S. consumers, while the cheapness of her currency keeps U.S. goods priced out of China's market.
Despite blustery U.S. protests, the arrangement continues, because both nations see their interests served.
America's consumers want quality goods at the cheapest price. American businesses want to maximize profit by producing at the lowest cost. China accommodates both, by providing efficient and reliable workers at a tenth of the wages an American needs to support his family.
The plaque inside our Statue of Liberty reads, "Send us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free." Beijing says: "Send us your jobs, factories and technology, and we will produce your goods at a far lower price than your own people."
What the U.S. transnational corporation seeks is to retain its privileged access to American consumers, while getting rid of its American workers. China is delighted to accommodate.
Thus, it was our capitalists who were the first and most enthusiastic hosts of Chinese President Hu Jintao on his visit to America. But what does Beijing want?
In China the consumer does not come first. Nor do the voters decide policy, for there are no voters. The regime, state and nation come first. China's leaders want to make her first in manufacturing and high-technology, to become the primary producers for the world, and to displace the United States as the dominant power in Asia and the world.
The story of China and America is the story of the ants and the grasshopper. We spend every dime we earn. The Chinese are forced by the regime to sacrifice the present for a future their leaders envision.
In 2005, China ran up a $203 million trade surplus with us, selling us seven times as much as she bought from us. That trade surplus with America is responsible for 100 percent of her economic growth. China literally produces for the American market. As a result, her dollar reserves are the largest on earth, approaching $1 trillion.
What does Beijing use the money for?
First, she uses the dollars to create ties of dependency in Free Asia by buying more from these nations than she sells to them. Australia, whose natural resources are pouring into China, is becoming dependent for her prosperity on China.
Second, she invests her dollars strategically in energy projects outside of China and in nations America has declared off-limits: Sudan, Iran, Burma.
Third, she buys weapons and weapons technology from Russia, Israel and Europe to modernize her armed forces. And while her GDP growth was 10 percent last year, her defense budget has been steadily rising by more than 10 percent a year.
"Since no nation threatens China, one wonders: Why this growing investment (in her military)?" asks Donald Rumsfeld.
Good question. The configuration of China's forces gives us the answer. China has implanted 600 missiles opposite Taiwan, which can have only two plausible purposes: to intimidate Taiwan, or to attack Taiwan.
China is also investing in warships, submarines, modern fighter-bombers and space technology. As there is only one great air and sea power out there, there is no doubt at whom this buildup is directed.
Diplomatically, Beijing is drawing to her side all the nations that are on the outs with George Bush's America -- from Russia to Burma to Iran to Sudan to Venezuela to the new nations of Central Asia.
China today calls to mind the Kaiser's Germany. As the Kaiser's Germany built a High Seas Fleet to rival the Royal Navy, so China builds up a military to rival ours in Asia. As the Kaiser saw British-backed plots to isolate and surround her, so China sees the United States organizing Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the old Russian provinces of Central Asia against her. Encirclement -- in her eyes.
There is no greater work for today's statesmen than ensuring that what happened to Germany and Britain in the first half of the 20th century is not replicated by America and China in the first half of the 21st.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Springsteen gets folky for ‘Seeger Sessions’
New album, tour features covers of songs made popular by legendary singer
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:55 p.m. ET April 19, 2006
ASBURY PARK, N.J. - Bruce Springsteen, rock 'n' roll icon, stands on a cramped Jersey shore stage surrounded by 16 musicians. There's a fiddle, a banjo, a tuba, an accordion — and not a single electric guitar.
The music swells, a glorious noise, as Springsteen leans into the microphone and sings a familiar song: "He floats through the air with the greatest of ease, the daring young man on the flying trapeze."
The vintage tale of a high-flying, womanizing circus star is followed by "Poor Man," a reworking of a Blind Alfred Reed song from the 1920s. This is the music of the moment for Springsteen: folk songs from decades past as he releases an album of songs culled from the Pete Seeger catalogue.
Bob Dylan once went electric. This is Springsteen going eclectic.
"The songs have lasted 100 years, or hundreds of years, for a reason," Springsteen explains in a spartan dressing room after rehearsing with his new big band. "They were really, really well-written pieces of music.
"They have worlds in them. You just kind of go in — it's a playground. You go in, and you get to play around."
"We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" arrives Tuesday, with a tour to follow (including a trip to New Orleans for the Jazz and Heritage Festival). Springsteen, still damp with perspiration from his rehearsal, sat backstage for a 40-minute interview with The Associated Press that covered his musical past, present and future.
The new album is Springsteen's most sonically surprising since the spare "Nebraska" in 1982. Springsteen compares its variety with his second album, "The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle," where the music veered from straight rock ("Rosalita") to jazz ("New York City Serenade") to oompah ("Wild Billy's Circus Story").
Leaning back on a couch, Springsteen said he was intent on getting out more music, including a group of songs already written for the E Street Band and a follow-up to "Tracks," his collection of unreleased studio cuts. He was working on the latter before deciding to do the new record.
"After a long time, you get a lot more secure about what you're doing," Springsteen said between sips from a bottle of water. "I spend much less time making decisions. Incredibly less.
"It used to be, like, there's a line in a song that I sang a certain way. I might mull it over for three days. Maybe longer, right? Now, you know, it's very different. I realize it's not necessary. You know your craft better."
"The Seeger Sessions" featured Springsteen making an album in record time. The rock hall of famer, who in the past went years between releases, did the new album in three days. The 13 songs, plus two bonus tracks, were recorded inside the living room of a farm house at Springsteen's New Jersey home — with the horn section playing in the hall.
There were no rehearsals, no arrangements, no overdubs. Springsteen wasn't even sure if the results would become an album.
"It was just playing music," Springsteen said of the sessions. "I didn't have any intention for it. I knew that I enjoyed making this kind of music. ... It was really just purely for the joy of doing it. It was a lot of fun."
Springsteen, 56, is coming off a busy year when he toured extensively behind his Grammy-winning solo album "Devils & Dust." Last year also marked the 30th anniversary of "Born To Run," the classic album that turned him into a star.
Springsteen first connected with the Seeger songbook in 1997, when he recorded "We Shall Overcome" for a tribute album. His interest grew as he delved into the material — sturdy songs like "John Henry," "Erie Canal" and "Oh Mary, Don't You Weep."
"I wasn't aware of the vast library of music that Pete helped create and also collected," said Springsteen, who was more familiar with the work of Woody Guthrie. "Just this whole wonderful world of songwriting with all these lost voices. Great stories. Great characters."
Like Seeger, Springsteen is well-known for his role as a social activist. In 2004, Springsteen campaigned for John Kerry and criticized the Bush administration for bringing the country to war in Iraq. He's been a longtime advocate for local food banks, and played benefits for union workers, flood victims and other causes.
Seeger paid a heavy price for his beliefs. During the McCarthy era, he was summoned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities as it investigated supposed subversive influences in entertainment. He refused to cooperate and was blacklisted for the next decade.
So was releasing an album of Seeger's songs during President Bush's second term a political statement?
"I'll let somebody else sort that part of it, I guess," Springsteen said. "But a lot of 'em seem pretty applicable, you know? `Mrs. McGrath' is basically an Irish anti-war song, but it's ripped right out of the headlines everyday today."
The songs once sung by Seeger "shine a continuing light on a whole set of not just wonderful stories, but obviously a lot of social issues, the direction the country is going down," he continued. "There's still a place for a lot of that music."
Once Springsteen decided to forge ahead with the project, he called Seeger with the news. Seeger asked which songs would be on the record.
"He'd start giving me the history of each song," Springsteen said. "He actually knows about all those things. So it was an enjoyable conversation, and I hope he likes the record."
Springsteen had no concerns about audience reaction to his foray into a new musical landscape. He expects "the adventurous part of my fans" will enjoy the album. And he considers change a requirement for any successful musician.
"Your job as an artist is to build a box, and then let people watch you escape from it," Springsteen explained. "And then they follow you to the next box, and they watch you escape from that one. ... Escape artistry is part of the survival mechanism of the job.
"If you want to do the job well, you have got to be able to escape from what you've previously built."
There's one other major difference between "Seeger Sessions" and all of Springsteen's previous work: He didn't write a single song for this project.
"A real pleasure," he said of the break from writing. "Once we put it together, it was like, `Wow. I can make records and I don't have to write anything.' There are thousands of great songs sitting out there waiting to be heard, and I know a way to act as an interpreter on these things."
New album, tour features covers of songs made popular by legendary singer
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:55 p.m. ET April 19, 2006
ASBURY PARK, N.J. - Bruce Springsteen, rock 'n' roll icon, stands on a cramped Jersey shore stage surrounded by 16 musicians. There's a fiddle, a banjo, a tuba, an accordion — and not a single electric guitar.
The music swells, a glorious noise, as Springsteen leans into the microphone and sings a familiar song: "He floats through the air with the greatest of ease, the daring young man on the flying trapeze."
The vintage tale of a high-flying, womanizing circus star is followed by "Poor Man," a reworking of a Blind Alfred Reed song from the 1920s. This is the music of the moment for Springsteen: folk songs from decades past as he releases an album of songs culled from the Pete Seeger catalogue.
Bob Dylan once went electric. This is Springsteen going eclectic.
"The songs have lasted 100 years, or hundreds of years, for a reason," Springsteen explains in a spartan dressing room after rehearsing with his new big band. "They were really, really well-written pieces of music.
"They have worlds in them. You just kind of go in — it's a playground. You go in, and you get to play around."
"We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" arrives Tuesday, with a tour to follow (including a trip to New Orleans for the Jazz and Heritage Festival). Springsteen, still damp with perspiration from his rehearsal, sat backstage for a 40-minute interview with The Associated Press that covered his musical past, present and future.
The new album is Springsteen's most sonically surprising since the spare "Nebraska" in 1982. Springsteen compares its variety with his second album, "The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle," where the music veered from straight rock ("Rosalita") to jazz ("New York City Serenade") to oompah ("Wild Billy's Circus Story").
Leaning back on a couch, Springsteen said he was intent on getting out more music, including a group of songs already written for the E Street Band and a follow-up to "Tracks," his collection of unreleased studio cuts. He was working on the latter before deciding to do the new record.
"After a long time, you get a lot more secure about what you're doing," Springsteen said between sips from a bottle of water. "I spend much less time making decisions. Incredibly less.
"It used to be, like, there's a line in a song that I sang a certain way. I might mull it over for three days. Maybe longer, right? Now, you know, it's very different. I realize it's not necessary. You know your craft better."
"The Seeger Sessions" featured Springsteen making an album in record time. The rock hall of famer, who in the past went years between releases, did the new album in three days. The 13 songs, plus two bonus tracks, were recorded inside the living room of a farm house at Springsteen's New Jersey home — with the horn section playing in the hall.
There were no rehearsals, no arrangements, no overdubs. Springsteen wasn't even sure if the results would become an album.
"It was just playing music," Springsteen said of the sessions. "I didn't have any intention for it. I knew that I enjoyed making this kind of music. ... It was really just purely for the joy of doing it. It was a lot of fun."
Springsteen, 56, is coming off a busy year when he toured extensively behind his Grammy-winning solo album "Devils & Dust." Last year also marked the 30th anniversary of "Born To Run," the classic album that turned him into a star.
Springsteen first connected with the Seeger songbook in 1997, when he recorded "We Shall Overcome" for a tribute album. His interest grew as he delved into the material — sturdy songs like "John Henry," "Erie Canal" and "Oh Mary, Don't You Weep."
"I wasn't aware of the vast library of music that Pete helped create and also collected," said Springsteen, who was more familiar with the work of Woody Guthrie. "Just this whole wonderful world of songwriting with all these lost voices. Great stories. Great characters."
Like Seeger, Springsteen is well-known for his role as a social activist. In 2004, Springsteen campaigned for John Kerry and criticized the Bush administration for bringing the country to war in Iraq. He's been a longtime advocate for local food banks, and played benefits for union workers, flood victims and other causes.
Seeger paid a heavy price for his beliefs. During the McCarthy era, he was summoned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities as it investigated supposed subversive influences in entertainment. He refused to cooperate and was blacklisted for the next decade.
So was releasing an album of Seeger's songs during President Bush's second term a political statement?
"I'll let somebody else sort that part of it, I guess," Springsteen said. "But a lot of 'em seem pretty applicable, you know? `Mrs. McGrath' is basically an Irish anti-war song, but it's ripped right out of the headlines everyday today."
The songs once sung by Seeger "shine a continuing light on a whole set of not just wonderful stories, but obviously a lot of social issues, the direction the country is going down," he continued. "There's still a place for a lot of that music."
Once Springsteen decided to forge ahead with the project, he called Seeger with the news. Seeger asked which songs would be on the record.
"He'd start giving me the history of each song," Springsteen said. "He actually knows about all those things. So it was an enjoyable conversation, and I hope he likes the record."
Springsteen had no concerns about audience reaction to his foray into a new musical landscape. He expects "the adventurous part of my fans" will enjoy the album. And he considers change a requirement for any successful musician.
"Your job as an artist is to build a box, and then let people watch you escape from it," Springsteen explained. "And then they follow you to the next box, and they watch you escape from that one. ... Escape artistry is part of the survival mechanism of the job.
"If you want to do the job well, you have got to be able to escape from what you've previously built."
There's one other major difference between "Seeger Sessions" and all of Springsteen's previous work: He didn't write a single song for this project.
"A real pleasure," he said of the break from writing. "Once we put it together, it was like, `Wow. I can make records and I don't have to write anything.' There are thousands of great songs sitting out there waiting to be heard, and I know a way to act as an interpreter on these things."
Lie Down With Strippers, Wake Up With Pleas
by Ann Coulter
However the Duke lacrosse rape case turns out, one lesson that absolutely will not be learned is this: You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you don't hire strange women to come to your house and take their clothes off for money.
Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men's houses and take your clothes off for money. (Does anyone else detect a common thread here?)
And if you are a girl in Aruba or New York City, among the best ways to avoid being the victim of a horrible crime is to not get drunk in public or go off in a car with men you just met. While we're on the subject of things every 5-year-old should know, I also recommend against dousing yourself in gasoline and striking a match.
Everyone makes mistakes, especially young people, but the outpouring of support for the victims and their families is obscuring what ought to be a flashing neon warning for potential future victims.
Whenever a gun is used in a crime, there are never-ending news stories about how dangerous guns are. But these girls go out alone, late at night, drunk off their butts, and there's nary a peep about the dangers of drunk women on their own in public. It's their "right."
Yes, of course no one "deserves" to die for a mistake. Or to be raped or falsely accused of rape for a mistake. I have always been unabashedly anti-murder, anti-rape and anti-false accusation -- and I don't care who knows about it!
But these statements would roll off the tongue more easily in a world that so much as tacitly acknowledged that all these messy turns of fate followed behavior that your mother could have told you was tacky.
Not very long ago, all the precursor behavior in these cases would have been recognized as vulgar -- whether or not anyone ended up dead, raped or falsely accused of rape. But in a nation of people in constant terror of being perceived as "judgmental," I'm not sure most people do recognize that anymore.
It shouldn't be necessary to point out that girls shouldn't be bar-hopping alone or taking their clothes off in front of strangers, and that young men shouldn't be hiring strippers. But we live in a world of Bill Clinton, Paris Hilton, Howard Stern, Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," Democratic fund-raisers at the Playboy Mansion and tax deductions for entertaining clients at strip clubs.
This is an age in which the expression "girls gone wild" is becoming a redundancy. So even as the bodies pile up, I don't think the message about integrity is getting through.
The liberal charge of "hypocrisy" has so permeated the public consciousness that no one is willing to condemn any behavior anymore, no matter how seedy. The unstated rule is: If you've done it, you can't ever criticize it -- a standard that would seem to repudiate the good works of the Rev. Franklin Graham, Malcolm X, Whittaker Chambers and St. Paul, among others.
Every woman who has had an abortion feels compelled to defend abortion for all women; every man who's ever been at a party with strippers thinks he has to defend all men who watch strippers; and every Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton feels the need to defend duplicity, adultery, lying about adultery, sexual harassment, rape, perjury, obstruction of justice, kicking the can of global Islamo-fascism down the road for eight years and so on.
This is crazy. (I can say that because I've never been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. Although I did test positive for "Olympic fever" once.)
In no area except morality would a sane person believe he can't criticize something stupid because he's done it. How about: If you've ever forgotten to fill up your car and run out of gas, you must forevermore defend a person's right to ignore the gas gauge. Or if you've ever forgotten to wear a coat in cold weather and caught a cold, henceforth you are obliged to encourage others not to dress appropriately in the winter.
This deep-seated societal fear of being accused of "hypocrisy" applies only to behavior touching on morals.
But we're all rotten sinners, incapable of redemption on our own. The liberal answer to sin is to say: I can never pay this back, so my argument will be I didn't do anything wrong.
The religion of peace's answer is: I've just beheaded an innocent man -- I'm off to meet Allah!
I don't know what the Jewish answer is, but I'm sure it's something other than, "therefore, what I did is no longer bad behavior" -- or the Talmud could be a lot shorter.
The Christian answer is: I can never pay this back, but luckily that Christ fellow has already paid my debt.
by Ann Coulter
However the Duke lacrosse rape case turns out, one lesson that absolutely will not be learned is this: You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you don't hire strange women to come to your house and take their clothes off for money.
Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men's houses and take your clothes off for money. (Does anyone else detect a common thread here?)
And if you are a girl in Aruba or New York City, among the best ways to avoid being the victim of a horrible crime is to not get drunk in public or go off in a car with men you just met. While we're on the subject of things every 5-year-old should know, I also recommend against dousing yourself in gasoline and striking a match.
Everyone makes mistakes, especially young people, but the outpouring of support for the victims and their families is obscuring what ought to be a flashing neon warning for potential future victims.
Whenever a gun is used in a crime, there are never-ending news stories about how dangerous guns are. But these girls go out alone, late at night, drunk off their butts, and there's nary a peep about the dangers of drunk women on their own in public. It's their "right."
Yes, of course no one "deserves" to die for a mistake. Or to be raped or falsely accused of rape for a mistake. I have always been unabashedly anti-murder, anti-rape and anti-false accusation -- and I don't care who knows about it!
But these statements would roll off the tongue more easily in a world that so much as tacitly acknowledged that all these messy turns of fate followed behavior that your mother could have told you was tacky.
Not very long ago, all the precursor behavior in these cases would have been recognized as vulgar -- whether or not anyone ended up dead, raped or falsely accused of rape. But in a nation of people in constant terror of being perceived as "judgmental," I'm not sure most people do recognize that anymore.
It shouldn't be necessary to point out that girls shouldn't be bar-hopping alone or taking their clothes off in front of strangers, and that young men shouldn't be hiring strippers. But we live in a world of Bill Clinton, Paris Hilton, Howard Stern, Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," Democratic fund-raisers at the Playboy Mansion and tax deductions for entertaining clients at strip clubs.
This is an age in which the expression "girls gone wild" is becoming a redundancy. So even as the bodies pile up, I don't think the message about integrity is getting through.
The liberal charge of "hypocrisy" has so permeated the public consciousness that no one is willing to condemn any behavior anymore, no matter how seedy. The unstated rule is: If you've done it, you can't ever criticize it -- a standard that would seem to repudiate the good works of the Rev. Franklin Graham, Malcolm X, Whittaker Chambers and St. Paul, among others.
Every woman who has had an abortion feels compelled to defend abortion for all women; every man who's ever been at a party with strippers thinks he has to defend all men who watch strippers; and every Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton feels the need to defend duplicity, adultery, lying about adultery, sexual harassment, rape, perjury, obstruction of justice, kicking the can of global Islamo-fascism down the road for eight years and so on.
This is crazy. (I can say that because I've never been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. Although I did test positive for "Olympic fever" once.)
In no area except morality would a sane person believe he can't criticize something stupid because he's done it. How about: If you've ever forgotten to fill up your car and run out of gas, you must forevermore defend a person's right to ignore the gas gauge. Or if you've ever forgotten to wear a coat in cold weather and caught a cold, henceforth you are obliged to encourage others not to dress appropriately in the winter.
This deep-seated societal fear of being accused of "hypocrisy" applies only to behavior touching on morals.
But we're all rotten sinners, incapable of redemption on our own. The liberal answer to sin is to say: I can never pay this back, so my argument will be I didn't do anything wrong.
The religion of peace's answer is: I've just beheaded an innocent man -- I'm off to meet Allah!
I don't know what the Jewish answer is, but I'm sure it's something other than, "therefore, what I did is no longer bad behavior" -- or the Talmud could be a lot shorter.
The Christian answer is: I can never pay this back, but luckily that Christ fellow has already paid my debt.
Monday, April 17, 2006
From The Washington Post; Proof, if needed, that Springsteen's song "Roulette" is hysterical and anachronistic.
Going Nuclear
A Green Makes the Case
By Patrick Moore
Sunday, April 16, 2006
In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.
Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.
I say that guardedly, of course, just days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had enriched uranium. "The nuclear technology is only for the purpose of peace and nothing else," he said. But there is widespread speculation that, even though the process is ostensibly dedicated to producing electricity, it is in fact a cover for building nuclear weapons.
And although I don't want to underestimate the very real dangers of nuclear technology in the hands of rogue states, we cannot simply ban every technology that is dangerous. That was the all-or-nothing mentality at the height of the Cold War, when anything nuclear seemed to spell doom for humanity and the environment. In 1979, Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon produced a frisson of fear with their starring roles in "The China Syndrome," a fictional evocation of nuclear disaster in which a reactor meltdown threatens a city's survival. Less than two weeks after the blockbuster film opened, a reactor core meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant sent shivers of very real anguish throughout the country.
What nobody noticed at the time, though, was that Three Mile Island was in fact a success story: The concrete containment structure did just what it was designed to do -- prevent radiation from escaping into the environment. And although the reactor itself was crippled, there was no injury or death among nuclear workers or nearby residents. Three Mile Island was the only serious accident in the history of nuclear energy generation in the United States, but it was enough to scare us away from further developing the technology: There hasn't been a nuclear plant ordered up since then.
Today, there are 103 nuclear reactors quietly delivering just 20 percent of America's electricity. Eighty percent of the people living within 10 miles of these plants approve of them (that's not including the nuclear workers). Although I don't live near a nuclear plant, I am now squarely in their camp.
And I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the "Whole Earth Catalog," says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group's board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.
There are signs of a new willingness to listen, though, even among the staunchest anti-nuclear campaigners. When I attended the Kyoto climate meeting in Montreal last December, I spoke to a packed house on the question of a sustainable energy future. I argued that the only way to reduce fossil fuel emissions from electrical production is through an aggressive program of renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, geothermal heat pumps, wind, etc.) plus nuclear. The Greenpeace spokesperson was first at the mike for the question period, and I expected a tongue-lashing. Instead, he began by saying he agreed with much of what I said -- not the nuclear bit, of course, but there was a clear feeling that all options must be explored.
Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric. Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable substitute for coal. It's that simple.
That's not to say that there aren't real problems -- as well as various myths -- associated with nuclear energy. Each concern deserves careful consideration:
· Nuclear energy is expensive. It is in fact one of the least expensive energy sources. In 2004, the average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric. Advances in technology will bring the cost down further in the future.
· Nuclear plants are not safe. Although Three Mile Island was a success story, the accident at Chernobyl, 20 years ago this month, was not. But Chernobyl was an accident waiting to happen. This early model of Soviet reactor had no containment vessel, was an inherently bad design and its operators literally blew it up. The multi-agency U.N. Chernobyl Forum reported last year that 56 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident, most of those from radiation or burns suffered while fighting the fire. Tragic as those deaths were, they pale in comparison to the more than 5,000 coal-mining deaths that occur worldwide every year. No one has died of a radiation-related accident in the history of the U.S. civilian nuclear reactor program. (And although hundreds of uranium mine workers did die from radiation exposure underground in the early years of that industry, that problem was long ago corrected.)
· Nuclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years. Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind.
· Nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attack. The six-feet-thick reinforced concrete containment vessel protects the contents from the outside as well as the inside. And even if a jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode. There are many types of facilities that are far more vulnerable, including liquid natural gas plants, chemical plants and numerous political targets.
· Nuclear fuel can be diverted to make nuclear weapons. This is the most serious issue associated with nuclear energy and the most difficult to address, as the example of Iran shows. But just because nuclear technology can be put to evil purposes is not an argument to ban its use.
Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools -- the machete -- has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire.
The only practical approach to the issue of nuclear weapons proliferation is to put it higher on the international agenda and to use diplomacy and, where necessary, force to prevent countries or terrorists from using nuclear materials for destructive ends. And new technologies such as the reprocessing system recently introduced in Japan (in which the plutonium is never separated from the uranium) can make it much more difficult for terrorists or rogue states to use civilian materials to manufacture weapons.
The 600-plus coal-fired plants emit nearly 2 billion tons of CO2annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from about 300 million automobiles. In addition, the Clean Air Council reports that coal plants are responsible for 64 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 26 percent of nitrous oxides and 33 percent of mercury emissions. These pollutants are eroding the health of our environment, producing acid rain, smog, respiratory illness and mercury contamination.
Meanwhile, the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction.
pmoore@greenspirit.com
Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, is chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. He and Christine Todd Whitman are co-chairs of a new industry-funded initiative, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which supports increased use of nuclear energy.
Going Nuclear
A Green Makes the Case
By Patrick Moore
Sunday, April 16, 2006
In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.
Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.
I say that guardedly, of course, just days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had enriched uranium. "The nuclear technology is only for the purpose of peace and nothing else," he said. But there is widespread speculation that, even though the process is ostensibly dedicated to producing electricity, it is in fact a cover for building nuclear weapons.
And although I don't want to underestimate the very real dangers of nuclear technology in the hands of rogue states, we cannot simply ban every technology that is dangerous. That was the all-or-nothing mentality at the height of the Cold War, when anything nuclear seemed to spell doom for humanity and the environment. In 1979, Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon produced a frisson of fear with their starring roles in "The China Syndrome," a fictional evocation of nuclear disaster in which a reactor meltdown threatens a city's survival. Less than two weeks after the blockbuster film opened, a reactor core meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant sent shivers of very real anguish throughout the country.
What nobody noticed at the time, though, was that Three Mile Island was in fact a success story: The concrete containment structure did just what it was designed to do -- prevent radiation from escaping into the environment. And although the reactor itself was crippled, there was no injury or death among nuclear workers or nearby residents. Three Mile Island was the only serious accident in the history of nuclear energy generation in the United States, but it was enough to scare us away from further developing the technology: There hasn't been a nuclear plant ordered up since then.
Today, there are 103 nuclear reactors quietly delivering just 20 percent of America's electricity. Eighty percent of the people living within 10 miles of these plants approve of them (that's not including the nuclear workers). Although I don't live near a nuclear plant, I am now squarely in their camp.
And I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the "Whole Earth Catalog," says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group's board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.
There are signs of a new willingness to listen, though, even among the staunchest anti-nuclear campaigners. When I attended the Kyoto climate meeting in Montreal last December, I spoke to a packed house on the question of a sustainable energy future. I argued that the only way to reduce fossil fuel emissions from electrical production is through an aggressive program of renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, geothermal heat pumps, wind, etc.) plus nuclear. The Greenpeace spokesperson was first at the mike for the question period, and I expected a tongue-lashing. Instead, he began by saying he agreed with much of what I said -- not the nuclear bit, of course, but there was a clear feeling that all options must be explored.
Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric. Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable substitute for coal. It's that simple.
That's not to say that there aren't real problems -- as well as various myths -- associated with nuclear energy. Each concern deserves careful consideration:
· Nuclear energy is expensive. It is in fact one of the least expensive energy sources. In 2004, the average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric. Advances in technology will bring the cost down further in the future.
· Nuclear plants are not safe. Although Three Mile Island was a success story, the accident at Chernobyl, 20 years ago this month, was not. But Chernobyl was an accident waiting to happen. This early model of Soviet reactor had no containment vessel, was an inherently bad design and its operators literally blew it up. The multi-agency U.N. Chernobyl Forum reported last year that 56 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident, most of those from radiation or burns suffered while fighting the fire. Tragic as those deaths were, they pale in comparison to the more than 5,000 coal-mining deaths that occur worldwide every year. No one has died of a radiation-related accident in the history of the U.S. civilian nuclear reactor program. (And although hundreds of uranium mine workers did die from radiation exposure underground in the early years of that industry, that problem was long ago corrected.)
· Nuclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years. Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind.
· Nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attack. The six-feet-thick reinforced concrete containment vessel protects the contents from the outside as well as the inside. And even if a jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode. There are many types of facilities that are far more vulnerable, including liquid natural gas plants, chemical plants and numerous political targets.
· Nuclear fuel can be diverted to make nuclear weapons. This is the most serious issue associated with nuclear energy and the most difficult to address, as the example of Iran shows. But just because nuclear technology can be put to evil purposes is not an argument to ban its use.
Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools -- the machete -- has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire.
The only practical approach to the issue of nuclear weapons proliferation is to put it higher on the international agenda and to use diplomacy and, where necessary, force to prevent countries or terrorists from using nuclear materials for destructive ends. And new technologies such as the reprocessing system recently introduced in Japan (in which the plutonium is never separated from the uranium) can make it much more difficult for terrorists or rogue states to use civilian materials to manufacture weapons.
The 600-plus coal-fired plants emit nearly 2 billion tons of CO2annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from about 300 million automobiles. In addition, the Clean Air Council reports that coal plants are responsible for 64 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 26 percent of nitrous oxides and 33 percent of mercury emissions. These pollutants are eroding the health of our environment, producing acid rain, smog, respiratory illness and mercury contamination.
Meanwhile, the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction.
pmoore@greenspirit.com
Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, is chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. He and Christine Todd Whitman are co-chairs of a new industry-funded initiative, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which supports increased use of nuclear energy.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
The GOP's Betrayal On Speech
By George Will
WASHINGTON -- If in November Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives, April 5 should be remembered as the day they demonstrated that they earned defeat. Traducing the Constitution and disgracing conservatism, they used their power for their only remaining purpose -- to cling to power. Their vote to restrict freedom of speech came just as the GOP's conservative base is coming to the conclusion that House Republicans are not worth working for in October or venturing out to vote for in November.
The ``problem'' Republicans addressed is that in 2004 Democrats were more successful than Republicans in using 527 organizations -- advocacy groups named after the tax code provision governing them. In 2002, McCain-Feingold banned large ``soft money'' contributions for parties -- money for issue-advocacy and organizational activities, not for candidates. In 2004, to the surprise of no sensible person and most McCain-Feingold supporters, much of the money -- especially huge contributions from rich liberals -- was diverted to 527s. So on April 5, House Republicans, easily shedding what little remains of their ballast of belief in freedom and limited government, voted to severely limit the amounts that can be given to 527s.
David Dreier, R-Calif., explained, sort of. He said he voted against McCain-Feingold because ``dictating who could give how much to whom'' violated the First Amendment, but now he favors dictating to 527 contributors because McCain-Feingold is not violating the First Amendment enough: It is not ``working as it was intended.'' That is, it is not sufficiently restricting the money financing political advocacy.
Candice Miller, R-Mich., said that restricting 527s would combat ``nauseating ugliness, negativity and hyperpartisanship.'' Oh, so that is what the First Amendment means: Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech unless speech annoys politicians.
Improving the tone of politics, leveling the playing field, fulfilling the intent of McCain-Feingold -- the reasons for expanding the restrictions on political advocacy multiply.
McCain-Feingold restrictions on the amount, timing and content of political speech were ratified by the Supreme Court, which embraces this perverse idea: Because elected officials are experts about politics, they deserve vast deference when they write rules governing speech about, and campaigns against, elected officials. When the court gave its imprimatur to McCain-Feingold's premise -- that big government should have big power to regulate speech about itself -- it guaranteed that what happened April 5 will happen incessantly: The First Amendment is now permanently in play, its protections to be truncated whenever congressional majorities envision short-term partisan advantages.
The Washington Post, exemplifying the media's hostility to speech rights other than their own, eagerly anticipates the next fiddling. As it crouches behind its media exemption from the restrictions it favors for rival sources of political speech, the Post eggs on the speech regulators and hopes for ``future legislation'' if money diverted from 527s flows, as surely it will, into other political uses. And so the regulatory regime metastasizes, nibbling away at what McCain-Feingold enthusiasts evidently consider the ultimate ``loophole'' -- the First Amendment.
Fortunately, the measure the House passed on April 5 will not become law this year. Not because Republican senators are too principled to pass it, or because Democrats have a truly principled opposition to it, but because Senate Democrats will have 41 votes, enough to block action on it.
The Democrats, who favored McCain-Feingold and now are as cynical as Republicans about defending free speech only when it serves their competitive interests, will someday win control of Congress. Then they can wrap their anti-constitutionalism in the Republicans' April 5 rhetoric. They can say:
``In 2006, you Republicans said that because Democrats have done better than Republicans with 527s, the 527s should be restricted in order to 'level the playing field.' Now we will level the playing field by restoring the 'fairness doctrine' to broadcasting, thereby eliminating conservatives' unfair domination of talk radio.''
The 211 Republicans who voted for big government regulation of speech will have no principled objection. How many principled Republicans remain? Only 18. The following, who voted against restricting 527s:
Roscoe Bartlett (Maryland), Chris Chocola (Indiana), Jeff Flake (Arizona), Vito Fossella (New York), Trent Franks (Arizona), Scott Garrett (New Jersey), Louie Gohmert (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Ernest Istook (Oklahoma), Walter Jones (North Carolina), Steve King (Iowa), Connie Mack (Florida), Cathy McMorris (Washington), Randy Neugebauer (Texas), Ron Paul (Texas), Mike Pence (Indiana), John Shadegg (Arizona) and Lynn Westmoreland (Georgia).
On this remnant of libertarian, limited-government conservatism a future House majority can be built. The current majority forfeited its raison d'etre on April 5.
By George Will
WASHINGTON -- If in November Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives, April 5 should be remembered as the day they demonstrated that they earned defeat. Traducing the Constitution and disgracing conservatism, they used their power for their only remaining purpose -- to cling to power. Their vote to restrict freedom of speech came just as the GOP's conservative base is coming to the conclusion that House Republicans are not worth working for in October or venturing out to vote for in November.
The ``problem'' Republicans addressed is that in 2004 Democrats were more successful than Republicans in using 527 organizations -- advocacy groups named after the tax code provision governing them. In 2002, McCain-Feingold banned large ``soft money'' contributions for parties -- money for issue-advocacy and organizational activities, not for candidates. In 2004, to the surprise of no sensible person and most McCain-Feingold supporters, much of the money -- especially huge contributions from rich liberals -- was diverted to 527s. So on April 5, House Republicans, easily shedding what little remains of their ballast of belief in freedom and limited government, voted to severely limit the amounts that can be given to 527s.
David Dreier, R-Calif., explained, sort of. He said he voted against McCain-Feingold because ``dictating who could give how much to whom'' violated the First Amendment, but now he favors dictating to 527 contributors because McCain-Feingold is not violating the First Amendment enough: It is not ``working as it was intended.'' That is, it is not sufficiently restricting the money financing political advocacy.
Candice Miller, R-Mich., said that restricting 527s would combat ``nauseating ugliness, negativity and hyperpartisanship.'' Oh, so that is what the First Amendment means: Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech unless speech annoys politicians.
Improving the tone of politics, leveling the playing field, fulfilling the intent of McCain-Feingold -- the reasons for expanding the restrictions on political advocacy multiply.
McCain-Feingold restrictions on the amount, timing and content of political speech were ratified by the Supreme Court, which embraces this perverse idea: Because elected officials are experts about politics, they deserve vast deference when they write rules governing speech about, and campaigns against, elected officials. When the court gave its imprimatur to McCain-Feingold's premise -- that big government should have big power to regulate speech about itself -- it guaranteed that what happened April 5 will happen incessantly: The First Amendment is now permanently in play, its protections to be truncated whenever congressional majorities envision short-term partisan advantages.
The Washington Post, exemplifying the media's hostility to speech rights other than their own, eagerly anticipates the next fiddling. As it crouches behind its media exemption from the restrictions it favors for rival sources of political speech, the Post eggs on the speech regulators and hopes for ``future legislation'' if money diverted from 527s flows, as surely it will, into other political uses. And so the regulatory regime metastasizes, nibbling away at what McCain-Feingold enthusiasts evidently consider the ultimate ``loophole'' -- the First Amendment.
Fortunately, the measure the House passed on April 5 will not become law this year. Not because Republican senators are too principled to pass it, or because Democrats have a truly principled opposition to it, but because Senate Democrats will have 41 votes, enough to block action on it.
The Democrats, who favored McCain-Feingold and now are as cynical as Republicans about defending free speech only when it serves their competitive interests, will someday win control of Congress. Then they can wrap their anti-constitutionalism in the Republicans' April 5 rhetoric. They can say:
``In 2006, you Republicans said that because Democrats have done better than Republicans with 527s, the 527s should be restricted in order to 'level the playing field.' Now we will level the playing field by restoring the 'fairness doctrine' to broadcasting, thereby eliminating conservatives' unfair domination of talk radio.''
The 211 Republicans who voted for big government regulation of speech will have no principled objection. How many principled Republicans remain? Only 18. The following, who voted against restricting 527s:
Roscoe Bartlett (Maryland), Chris Chocola (Indiana), Jeff Flake (Arizona), Vito Fossella (New York), Trent Franks (Arizona), Scott Garrett (New Jersey), Louie Gohmert (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Ernest Istook (Oklahoma), Walter Jones (North Carolina), Steve King (Iowa), Connie Mack (Florida), Cathy McMorris (Washington), Randy Neugebauer (Texas), Ron Paul (Texas), Mike Pence (Indiana), John Shadegg (Arizona) and Lynn Westmoreland (Georgia).
On this remnant of libertarian, limited-government conservatism a future House majority can be built. The current majority forfeited its raison d'etre on April 5.
From The New York Times:
Born to Strum
By WILL HERMES
Asbury Park, N.J.
ON a bright, brisk April afternoon in one of America's most famous faded seaside resorts, the sycamores are budding and the dogwoods are in bloom. New construction near the shore points to the town's long-rumored revitalization. Yet rows of boarded-up homes, along with the crumbling remains of the old Metropolitan Hotel and the Baronet Theater, suggest that any turnaround is still a ways off.
Over on Ocean Avenue, a patron sits with a lunchtime shot and beer in the Wonder Bar, which advertises a dance party tonight with DJ Jersey Joe. Down the block is the Stone Pony, the nightclub where Bruce Springsteen, the Jersey Shore's world-famous son, made his name. Among other acts, its marquee advertises a show by Nils Lofgren, guitarist for Mr. Springsteen's longtime collaborators, the E Street Band.
Across the street, straddling the boardwalk, is the Convention Hall-Paramount Theater complex, a majestic structure designed in the 1920's by Warren & Wetmore, the architects of Grand Central Terminal. Inside the Paramount — which opened in 1930 with a show featuring the Marx Brothers, and which shows its age — Mr. Springsteen, 56, is rehearsing new songs with a new band.
"Do we have an intro on this? No?" Mr. Springsteen yells to the 17 players surrounding him onstage. "Okay ... one-two-three-four!" The band lurches — no other word will do — into "John Henry," the folk standard about a heroic hammer-wielding railroad worker that dates to the 19th century and has remained a potent American myth.
Mr. Springsteen lifts one leg, scrunches up his face and hollers into his microphone. Behind him the fiddles of Sam Bardfeld and Soozie Tyrell conjure Texas swing, while Charles Giordano's accordion adds a Cajun-zydeco feel and the brass section (with members of the Miami Horns, longtime E Street associates) kick in some Dixieland braying. Other band members clap and shout; their boss hammers away on a battered acoustic guitar.
The rehearsal includes versions of other folk standards — the old labor song "Pay Me My Money Down," the spirituals "O Mary Don't You Weep" and "Eyes on the Prize," the Irish war ballad "Mrs. McGrath" — whose political weight is upstaged by their rousing joie de vivre. It also features radically revamped versions of Mr. Springsteen's "Johnny 99" and "Open All Night" from his 1981 album "Nebraska." The band, which includes Mr. Springsteen's wife, Patti Scialfa, and Marc Anthony Thompson (who records as Chocolate Genius), makes a huge, glorious noise, full of tugging cross-rhythms and wayward notes. Coffeehouse folk music it ain't — sports arena folk is more like it.
The traditional numbers will appear on Mr. Springsteen's new record, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions," a collection of songs popularized by the venerable folk singer Pete Seeger, to be released April 25. Mr. Springsteen and this band begin a European tour in early May, to be followed by American dates in May and June. He plans to introduce the material at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on April 30.
If you hear a groan off in the distance, it may be a portion of Mr. Springsteen's fan base greeting the news of his second consecutive project forsaking his well-known brand of rock, along with the E Street Band. Since his last album with the band, "The Rising," in 2002, he has released a mostly acoustic solo album, last year's "Devils & Dust," and an expanded reissue of his 1975 classic "Born to Run."
Since much of the material on "Devils & Dust" was written and recorded years ago, and since "The Seeger Sessions" is his first all-covers collection, some fans wonder not simply about the future of the E Street Band, but also if the songwriter may be running low on fuel.
"Nah, I write all the time," Mr. Springsteen said reassuringly, leaning back on a cream-colored couch in one of the Paramount's small, slightly grimy dressing rooms after the day's rehearsals were done. "The stuff on 'Devils & Dust' — I just liked those songs and didn't want to see them get lost. I have an E Street Band record that I have a lot of stuff written for. I'm just waiting for the right time to do it."
Sporting a beatnik-style soul patch under his lower lip and with a remarkable lack of gray in his hair, Mr. Springsteen looked vigorous and pumped from his afternoon's work. He wore his usual uniform of rumpled shirt — top buttons undone, sleeves rolled up — jeans, boots, small hoops in both ears and macramé bracelets circling his left wrist. Holding a large bottle of Fiji water in his lap, he occasionally stared off toward some distant point during an animated hourlong conversation, searching for a word, recalling old times in the neighborhood or offering his ideas about folk music.
"The Seeger Sessions" came about, he explained, from a clutch of songs he recorded in 1997 for a Pete Seeger tribute album titled "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," released on the Appleseed label. After his "Devils & Dust" tour last year, he intended to take a break and to release a follow-up to "Tracks," a 1998 four-disc set of rare odds and ends. He sent a bunch of recordings to his longtime manager, Jon Landau, and they both agreed there was something special in the first Seeger session.
"Whenever I'd get tired of what I was working on, I'd go back to it," the singer said of the session tape, which included "Jesse James," "My Oklahoma Home," "Pretty Boy Floyd" and the only song ultimately used for the "Flowers" tribute, "We Shall Overcome." "Listening to it was a relief, you know? It was just people playing. It sounded like fun."
The idea for "Tracks Volume 2" was shelved, and seven years after the first Seeger session, Mr. Springsteen reconvened the same musicians to record again in the same setting: the living room of his farmhouse in Rumson, N.J. Microphones were set up, candles were lighted, alcoholic beverages were poured. It was quite a crowd. The horn section had to be relegated to the hall. (A DVD feature included with "The Seeger Sessions" shows the band at work and play; Mr. Springsteen in particular seems to have imbibed a bit.)
"It allowed me to go back to some of the musical eclecticness I enjoyed in my early days and just be musical," he said enthusiastically. "There's jazz in there. Swing. Sam brings this Eastern European thing; Soozie's a totally down-home country sound. 'Jacob's Ladder' has this Kansas City-Dixieland horn thing on top of the gospel. There's no straight two-and-four, no rock tempos. This band rolls."
Mr. Springsteen also spoke about the difficulty of tackling songs that have accrued tremendous cultural weight, like the CD's title track, a civil rights anthem in the 60's.
"When the idea came up to do 'We Shall Overcome,' I was like, 'I can't do that,' " he said. "Everyone knows that song as an icon. But what was it before it became that? So I went back and looked and realized: 'Oh, this is a prayer. I can do that. I know how to pray.'
"The approach to the song is, I start with this very alienated person, because that's me," he said, laughing. "That never changes. And the guy can barely sing it — he can barely believe it. But as he moves into it, and people start singing with him, he finds his place in the song, in history, and that alienation eases."
One thing Mr. Springsteen seemed reluctant to address, except in the abstract, was the political side to the material on "The Seeger Sessions." Mr. Seeger, who turns 87 next month, is of course a hero of the left, a musician, songwriter and song collector-historian who helped spur the politically tinged folk music revival of the 50's and 60's. He spoke out against the Vietnam War and has remained an activist, notably on environmental issues.
"That's there," Mr. Springsteen said of the political element. "But I approached the entire thing musically. I didn't come to it with any ideological perspective, or idea of showing this or that. I just took the songs that I liked from Pete's records."
Mr. Seeger, who declined to be interviewed, is currently busy completing an expanded edition of his autobiographical songbook "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," first published in 1993. But while he was not involved in Mr. Springsteen's project, he said he was happy to hear about it.
Mr. Springsteen's own political involvement has occurred in fits and starts. He was thrust into the political spotlight in 1984 when Ronald Reagan, in his re-election campaign, tried hitching a ride on the popularity of Mr. Springsteen's huge hit "Born in the U.S.A." — a complex song about America's treatment of Vietnam veterans whose simple chorus lent itself to easy jingoism. More recently, he wrote the song "American Skin (41 Shots)" about the controversial shooting of Amadou Diallo by New York City police officers, and lent his support to John Kerry's presidential bid, moves that displeased some fans.
While Mr. Springsteen claims to have approached the material on "The Seeger Sessions" without a political agenda, he acknowledges that context can color things, and suggests that ideology is in the ear of the beholder. "What makes these songs vital, and catch fire now," he said, "is all the connections you're making, in your head, to this moment."
Indeed. "Mrs. McGrath," a mother's lament for her son who lost his legs on the battlefield, carries powerful resonance in the era of Cindy Sheehan. And one can only imagine how the boisterous Mardi Gras version of "Pay Me My Money Down" will go over at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in front of thousands of locals still awaiting government relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
There were many more questions worth asking Mr. Springsteen. But his associates were pounding on the dressing room door. There was plenty of work to do before their day was done.
So, to cut to the chase: Has he been following this season of HBO's New Jersey gangster drama, "The Sopranos," in which the guitarist Steve Van Zandt — Mr. Springsteen's right-hand man in the E Street Band — plays Silvio Dante, right-hand man to the mob boss Tony Soprano?
"You know, I missed the last two episodes, what with working on all this, but someone told me Stevie's been having aspirations to boss-dom," said the artist still known to fans as the Boss, with a grin. "I got to see this!"
Born to Strum
By WILL HERMES
Asbury Park, N.J.
ON a bright, brisk April afternoon in one of America's most famous faded seaside resorts, the sycamores are budding and the dogwoods are in bloom. New construction near the shore points to the town's long-rumored revitalization. Yet rows of boarded-up homes, along with the crumbling remains of the old Metropolitan Hotel and the Baronet Theater, suggest that any turnaround is still a ways off.
Over on Ocean Avenue, a patron sits with a lunchtime shot and beer in the Wonder Bar, which advertises a dance party tonight with DJ Jersey Joe. Down the block is the Stone Pony, the nightclub where Bruce Springsteen, the Jersey Shore's world-famous son, made his name. Among other acts, its marquee advertises a show by Nils Lofgren, guitarist for Mr. Springsteen's longtime collaborators, the E Street Band.
Across the street, straddling the boardwalk, is the Convention Hall-Paramount Theater complex, a majestic structure designed in the 1920's by Warren & Wetmore, the architects of Grand Central Terminal. Inside the Paramount — which opened in 1930 with a show featuring the Marx Brothers, and which shows its age — Mr. Springsteen, 56, is rehearsing new songs with a new band.
"Do we have an intro on this? No?" Mr. Springsteen yells to the 17 players surrounding him onstage. "Okay ... one-two-three-four!" The band lurches — no other word will do — into "John Henry," the folk standard about a heroic hammer-wielding railroad worker that dates to the 19th century and has remained a potent American myth.
Mr. Springsteen lifts one leg, scrunches up his face and hollers into his microphone. Behind him the fiddles of Sam Bardfeld and Soozie Tyrell conjure Texas swing, while Charles Giordano's accordion adds a Cajun-zydeco feel and the brass section (with members of the Miami Horns, longtime E Street associates) kick in some Dixieland braying. Other band members clap and shout; their boss hammers away on a battered acoustic guitar.
The rehearsal includes versions of other folk standards — the old labor song "Pay Me My Money Down," the spirituals "O Mary Don't You Weep" and "Eyes on the Prize," the Irish war ballad "Mrs. McGrath" — whose political weight is upstaged by their rousing joie de vivre. It also features radically revamped versions of Mr. Springsteen's "Johnny 99" and "Open All Night" from his 1981 album "Nebraska." The band, which includes Mr. Springsteen's wife, Patti Scialfa, and Marc Anthony Thompson (who records as Chocolate Genius), makes a huge, glorious noise, full of tugging cross-rhythms and wayward notes. Coffeehouse folk music it ain't — sports arena folk is more like it.
The traditional numbers will appear on Mr. Springsteen's new record, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions," a collection of songs popularized by the venerable folk singer Pete Seeger, to be released April 25. Mr. Springsteen and this band begin a European tour in early May, to be followed by American dates in May and June. He plans to introduce the material at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on April 30.
If you hear a groan off in the distance, it may be a portion of Mr. Springsteen's fan base greeting the news of his second consecutive project forsaking his well-known brand of rock, along with the E Street Band. Since his last album with the band, "The Rising," in 2002, he has released a mostly acoustic solo album, last year's "Devils & Dust," and an expanded reissue of his 1975 classic "Born to Run."
Since much of the material on "Devils & Dust" was written and recorded years ago, and since "The Seeger Sessions" is his first all-covers collection, some fans wonder not simply about the future of the E Street Band, but also if the songwriter may be running low on fuel.
"Nah, I write all the time," Mr. Springsteen said reassuringly, leaning back on a cream-colored couch in one of the Paramount's small, slightly grimy dressing rooms after the day's rehearsals were done. "The stuff on 'Devils & Dust' — I just liked those songs and didn't want to see them get lost. I have an E Street Band record that I have a lot of stuff written for. I'm just waiting for the right time to do it."
Sporting a beatnik-style soul patch under his lower lip and with a remarkable lack of gray in his hair, Mr. Springsteen looked vigorous and pumped from his afternoon's work. He wore his usual uniform of rumpled shirt — top buttons undone, sleeves rolled up — jeans, boots, small hoops in both ears and macramé bracelets circling his left wrist. Holding a large bottle of Fiji water in his lap, he occasionally stared off toward some distant point during an animated hourlong conversation, searching for a word, recalling old times in the neighborhood or offering his ideas about folk music.
"The Seeger Sessions" came about, he explained, from a clutch of songs he recorded in 1997 for a Pete Seeger tribute album titled "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," released on the Appleseed label. After his "Devils & Dust" tour last year, he intended to take a break and to release a follow-up to "Tracks," a 1998 four-disc set of rare odds and ends. He sent a bunch of recordings to his longtime manager, Jon Landau, and they both agreed there was something special in the first Seeger session.
"Whenever I'd get tired of what I was working on, I'd go back to it," the singer said of the session tape, which included "Jesse James," "My Oklahoma Home," "Pretty Boy Floyd" and the only song ultimately used for the "Flowers" tribute, "We Shall Overcome." "Listening to it was a relief, you know? It was just people playing. It sounded like fun."
The idea for "Tracks Volume 2" was shelved, and seven years after the first Seeger session, Mr. Springsteen reconvened the same musicians to record again in the same setting: the living room of his farmhouse in Rumson, N.J. Microphones were set up, candles were lighted, alcoholic beverages were poured. It was quite a crowd. The horn section had to be relegated to the hall. (A DVD feature included with "The Seeger Sessions" shows the band at work and play; Mr. Springsteen in particular seems to have imbibed a bit.)
"It allowed me to go back to some of the musical eclecticness I enjoyed in my early days and just be musical," he said enthusiastically. "There's jazz in there. Swing. Sam brings this Eastern European thing; Soozie's a totally down-home country sound. 'Jacob's Ladder' has this Kansas City-Dixieland horn thing on top of the gospel. There's no straight two-and-four, no rock tempos. This band rolls."
Mr. Springsteen also spoke about the difficulty of tackling songs that have accrued tremendous cultural weight, like the CD's title track, a civil rights anthem in the 60's.
"When the idea came up to do 'We Shall Overcome,' I was like, 'I can't do that,' " he said. "Everyone knows that song as an icon. But what was it before it became that? So I went back and looked and realized: 'Oh, this is a prayer. I can do that. I know how to pray.'
"The approach to the song is, I start with this very alienated person, because that's me," he said, laughing. "That never changes. And the guy can barely sing it — he can barely believe it. But as he moves into it, and people start singing with him, he finds his place in the song, in history, and that alienation eases."
One thing Mr. Springsteen seemed reluctant to address, except in the abstract, was the political side to the material on "The Seeger Sessions." Mr. Seeger, who turns 87 next month, is of course a hero of the left, a musician, songwriter and song collector-historian who helped spur the politically tinged folk music revival of the 50's and 60's. He spoke out against the Vietnam War and has remained an activist, notably on environmental issues.
"That's there," Mr. Springsteen said of the political element. "But I approached the entire thing musically. I didn't come to it with any ideological perspective, or idea of showing this or that. I just took the songs that I liked from Pete's records."
Mr. Seeger, who declined to be interviewed, is currently busy completing an expanded edition of his autobiographical songbook "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," first published in 1993. But while he was not involved in Mr. Springsteen's project, he said he was happy to hear about it.
Mr. Springsteen's own political involvement has occurred in fits and starts. He was thrust into the political spotlight in 1984 when Ronald Reagan, in his re-election campaign, tried hitching a ride on the popularity of Mr. Springsteen's huge hit "Born in the U.S.A." — a complex song about America's treatment of Vietnam veterans whose simple chorus lent itself to easy jingoism. More recently, he wrote the song "American Skin (41 Shots)" about the controversial shooting of Amadou Diallo by New York City police officers, and lent his support to John Kerry's presidential bid, moves that displeased some fans.
While Mr. Springsteen claims to have approached the material on "The Seeger Sessions" without a political agenda, he acknowledges that context can color things, and suggests that ideology is in the ear of the beholder. "What makes these songs vital, and catch fire now," he said, "is all the connections you're making, in your head, to this moment."
Indeed. "Mrs. McGrath," a mother's lament for her son who lost his legs on the battlefield, carries powerful resonance in the era of Cindy Sheehan. And one can only imagine how the boisterous Mardi Gras version of "Pay Me My Money Down" will go over at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in front of thousands of locals still awaiting government relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
There were many more questions worth asking Mr. Springsteen. But his associates were pounding on the dressing room door. There was plenty of work to do before their day was done.
So, to cut to the chase: Has he been following this season of HBO's New Jersey gangster drama, "The Sopranos," in which the guitarist Steve Van Zandt — Mr. Springsteen's right-hand man in the E Street Band — plays Silvio Dante, right-hand man to the mob boss Tony Soprano?
"You know, I missed the last two episodes, what with working on all this, but someone told me Stevie's been having aspirations to boss-dom," said the artist still known to fans as the Boss, with a grin. "I got to see this!"
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