From Chronicles Magazine:
“If This Be Treason . . .”
By Clyde Wilson
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Alas! it is delusion all;
The future cheats us from afar,
Nor can we be what we recall,
Nor dare we think on what we are.
—Lord Byron
The polls show that 33 percent of the public still gives Dubya Bush a favourable approval rating. Who could these people be? Some of them, no doubt, are well-meaning dupes in the early stages of Alzheimers. But there is a hard core of latent fascism out there. Though they deviously misuse the idea to slander opposition, leftists are not entirely wrong to point out the dangers of authoritarian super-patriotism. Every country has them: people who believe that “My country right or wrong” is equivalent to “The Leader right or wrong”; who regard questioning the government as treason worthy of the direst punishment. Sometimes the type reaches a critical mass in society, as in Germany in the 1930’s.
I have learned this from email hate letters, usually anonymous. Like anyone idiotic enough to broadcast his fulminations on the web and elsewhere, I am accustomed to such. Interestingly, I have received very little hate mail from leftists, a great deal from super-patriots. It seems to be the same people who object to my criticising Dubya Bush and to my saying anything favourable about Southern traditions.
I recently had the misfortune to get on a wire service report of an occasion in which I dared to speak ill of the ongoing campaign to suppress the Confederate flag. Of many who were deeply offended, none had the initiative shown some time back by the anonymous Union Leaguer from Maine who mailed me a chamber pot which he had labelled “Robert E. Lee’s Soup Tureen.” (And they say Southerners can’t forget the war.) In the more temperate comments, usually anonymous, I was referred to as “creepy” and as an anti-American suffering from a “defiant, stubborn, and ignorant attitude.” But here is the best:
You are a perfect moral argument for abortion. If you were black, you’d be the perfect moral argument for lynching, and if you were Jewish, you’d be the perfect moral argument for Auschwitz.
These are not liberals worrying that I do not have the right attitude toward black folks. They are super-patriots. They invariably point out that the war happened long ago and that we lost and should have been hanged for our treason. They don’t seem to have enough historical understanding to envision that the Confederates who had fought four time their numbers to a standstill and often made the invader run, would hardly have sat still waiting to be hanged. Or to consider what kind of country the United States would have been after all that hanging. If it all happened so long ago and they won, why are they so hot and bothered that they have to denounce as treason every effort to discuss the merits of the historical question? People who at this late date are not willing to see that the issues of the war were a little more complicated than “treason,” seem to be the same government worshippers that I have described above who regard distrust of Dubya as a repudiation of patriotism.
Lincoln gave them the original excuse, of course, when, after being elected by 39 percent of the people, he justified massive military invasion by describing the actions of fourteen democratic and constitutional state governments as “combinations of lawbreakers” too numerous to be suppressed by his marshals. The war for the Union passed into mainstream American consciousness as a noble crusade, in Lincoln’s pretty phrase, to prevent government of, by, and for the people from perishing—in addition to the selflessly benevolent mission (which never really had that character) of freeing the slaves. Actually, the rhetoric that pervasively represented the Union cause at the time was not like that at all. It was about enforcing obedience to government, punishing resistance to the order and authority of those who ruled. That is, it contained a good deal of latent fascism like that of my correspondents. This rhetoric combined the power impulses of New England Puritans and the authoritarian Germans who had immigrated to the U.S. after 1848.
One would think that fellow citizens, even we misguided Southerners, would be cut a little slack, but in fact we are always the first people that the power worshippers want to kill. I will have to think about why that is so. A few of us still remember the neckless U.S. Marshals from Cleveland and Detroit beating up Ole Miss students in 1963 (whether they had done anything or not). Do you think the unindicted government murderers would have carried out their massacre if the Branch Davidians had been in Ohio or New Jersey rather than Texas?
****
A few final random thoughts on the way we are now (and I promise to shut up):
Always, if you possibly can, avoid singing the praises of people who
—launch aggressive wars unrelated to national defense and in callous disregard of the suffering of innocents: Attila the Hun, the first French emperor, the chancellor of the German Third Reich, U.S. Presidents Lincoln, McKinley, Wilson, Clinton, Bush II, etc.
—spend profligately and burden future generations with immense debts: the U.S. Congress.
—deliberately misuse amd undermine the vital foundational principles and texts of a society: the Supreme Soviet, the U.S. Supreme Court, televangelists, the Hague Tribunal, etc.
—systematically distort and misrepresent public events and persons with malice aforethought: Joseph Goebels, Pravda, U.S. television news, multicultural historians, etc.
—glorify selfish, immoral, vulgar, and decadent behaviour: U.S. entertainment media and professional sports industry
The rulers of America are real optimists. They think they can continue to enjoy a First World economy and military with a Third World population.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
From maclean's.ca:
Celebrate tolerance, or you're dead
Oriana Fallaci appeals to Europe to save itself. Good luck
By MARK STEYN
Over in Sweden, they've been investigating the Grand Mosque of Stockholm. Apparently, it's the one-stop shop for all your jihad needs: you can buy audio cassettes at the mosque encouraging you to become a martyr and sally forth to kill "the brothers of pigs and apes" -- i.e. Jews. So somebody filed a racial-incitement complaint and the coppers started looking into it, and then Sweden's chancellor of justice, Goran Lambertz, stepped in. And Mr. Lambertz decided to close down the investigation on the grounds that, even though the porcine-sibling stuff is "highly degrading," this kind of chit-chat "should be judged differently -- and therefore be regarded as permissible -- because they were used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict."
In other words, if you threaten to kill people often enough, it will be seen as part of your vibrant cultural tradition -- and, by definition, we're all cool with that. Celebrate diversity, etc. Our tolerant multicultural society is so tolerant and multicultural we'll tolerate your intolerant uniculturalism. Your antipathy to diversity is just another form of diversity for us to celebrate.
Diversity-wise, Europe is a very curious place -- and I mean that even by Canadian standards. In her latest book, The Force of Reason, the fearless Oriana Fallaci, Italy's most-read and most-sued journalist, recounts some of her recent legal difficulties with the Continental diversity coercers. The Federal Office of Justice in Berne asked the Italian government to extradite her over her last book, The Rage and The Pride, so she could be charged under Article 261b of the Swiss Criminal Code. As she points out, Article 261b was promulgated in order to permit Muslims "to win any ideological or private lawsuit by invoking religious racism and racial discrimination. 'He-didn't-chase-me-because-I'm-a-thief-but-because-I'm-a-Muslim.' " She's also been sued in France, where suits against writers are routine now. She has had cases brought against her in her native Italy and, because of the European Arrest Warrant, which includes charges of "xenophobia" as grounds for extradition from one EU nation to another, most of the Continent is now unsafe for her to set foot in. What's impressive is the range of organized opposition: the Islamic Centre of Berne, the Somali Association of Geneva, the SOS Racism of Lausanne, and a group of Muslim immigrants in Neuchâtel, just to name a random sampling of her Swiss plaintiffs. After the London bombings and the French riots, the commentariat lined up to regret that European Muslims are insufficiently "assimilated." But, in fact, at least in their mastery of legalisms and victimology, they're superbly assimilated. One might say the same of the imam who took my chums at The Western Standard to the Alberta Human Rights Commission over their publication of the Danish cartoons.
Racked by cancer, Oriana Fallaci spends most of her time in one of the few jurisdictions in the Western world where she is not in legal jeopardy -- New York City, whence she pens magnificent screeds in the hope of rousing Europe to save itself. Good luck with that. She writes in Italian, of course, but she translates them herself into what she calls "the oddities of Fallaci's English," and the result is a bravura improvised aria, impassioned and somewhat unpredictable. It's full of facts, starting with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when Mehmet II celebrated with beheading and sodomizing, and some lucky lads found themselves on the receiving end of both. This section is a lively read in an age when most westerners, consciously or otherwise, adopt the blithe incuriosity of Jimmy Kennedy's marvelous couplet in his 1950s pop hit Istanbul (Not Constantinople):
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks.
Signora Fallaci then moves on to the livelier examples of contemporary Islam -- for example, Ayatollah Khomeini's "Blue Book" and its helpful advice on romantic matters: "If a man marries a minor who has reached the age of nine and if during the defloration he immediately breaks the hymen, he cannot enjoy her any longer." I'll say. I know it always ruins my evening. Also: "A man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep, may not eat its meat. He would commit sin." Indeed. A quiet cigarette afterwards as you listen to your favourite Johnny Mathis LP and then a promise to call her next week and swing by the pasture is by far the best way. It may also be a sin to roast your nine-year-old wife, but the Ayatollah's not clear on that.
Kinky as this is, it has nothing on Fallaci's next circle of cultural diversity -- the weirdly masochistic pleasure European leaders get out of talking themselves down and talking Islam up. Beginning with the German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher at the 1983 Hamburg Symposium for the Euro-Arab Dialogue, Signora Fallaci rounds up a quarter-century's worth of westerners who've insisted that everything you know was invented by Islam: paper, medicine, sherbet, artichokes, on and on and on . . .
"Always clever, the Muslims. Always at the top. Always ingenious. In philosophy, in mathematics, in gastronomy, in literature, in architecture, in medicine, in music, in law, in hydraulics, in cooking. And always stupid, we westerners. Always inadequate, always inferior. Therefore obliged to thank some son of Allah who preceded us. Who enlightened us. Who acted as a schoolteacher guiding dim-witted pupils."
This, it seems to me, is the most valuable contribution of Oriana Fallaci's work. I enjoy the don't-eat-your-sexual-partner stuff as much as the next infidel, but the challenge presented by Islam is not that the cities of the Western world will be filling up with sheep-shaggers. If I had to choose, I'd rather Mohammed Atta was downriver in Egypt hitting on the livestock than flying through the windows of Manhattan skyscrapers. But he's not. And one reason why westernized Muslims seem so confident is that Europeans like Herr Genscher, in positing a choice between a generalized "Islam" and "the West," have inadvertently promoted a globalized pan-Islamism that's become a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, Germany has Turks, France has Algerians, Britain has Pakistanis, the Netherlands has Indonesians. Even though they're all Muslims, the differences between them have been very significant: Sunni vs. Shia, Arab Islam vs. the more moderate form prevailing in Southeast Asia.
Once upon a time we used to understand this. I've noticed in the last few years that, if you pull any old minor 19th-century memoir off the shelf, the en passant observations about Islam seem more informed than most of the allegedly expert commentary that appeared in the year after 9/11. For example, in Our Crisis: Or Three Months at Patna During the Insurrection of 1857, William Tayler wrote, "With the Soonnees the Wahabees are on terms of tolerable agreement, though differing on certain points, but from the Sheahs, they differ radically, and their hatred, like all religious hatred, is bitter and intolerant. But the most striking characteristic of the Wahabee sect, and that which principally concerns this narrative, is the entire subservience which they yield to the Peer, or spiritual guide."
Mr. Tayler, a minor civil servant in Bengal, was a genuine "multiculturalist." That's to say, although he regarded his own culture as superior, he was engaged enough by the ways of others to study the differences between them. By contrast, contemporary multiculturalism absolves one from knowing anything about other cultures as long as one feels warm and fluffy toward them. After all, if it's grossly judgmental to say one culture's better than another, why bother learning about the differences? "Celebrate diversity" with a uniformity of ignorance. Had William Tayler been around when the Islamification of the West got under way and you'd said to him there was a mosque opening down the street, he'd have wanted to know: what kind of mosque? Who's the imam? What branch of Islam? Old-school imperialists could never get away with the feel-good condescension of PC progressives.
Here's Tayler again: "The tenets originally professed by the Wahabees have been described as a Mahomedan Puritanism joined to a Bedouin Phylarchy, in which the great chief is both the political and religious leader of the nation."
Just so. In 1946, Col. William Eddy, the first U.S. minister to Saudi Arabia, was told by the country's founder, Ibn Saud: "We will use your iron, but you will leave our faith alone."
William Tayler might have questioned whether that was such a great deal. The House of Saud used the Americans' "iron" to enrich themselves and export the hardest, most unyielding form of Islam to the Balkans and Indonesia and Britain and North America.
This resurgent Islam -- promoted by a malign alliance between Europe and the Saudis -- is a much better example of globalization than McDonald's. In Bangladesh and Bosnia, it's put indigenous localized Islams out of business and imposed a one-size-fits-all Wahhab-Mart version cooked up by some guy at head office in Riyadh. One way to reverse its gains would be with a kind of antitrust approach designed to restore all the less threatening mom 'n' pop Islams run out of town by the Saudis' Burqa King version of globalization. If a 21st-century William Tayler is unlikely, perhaps Naomi Klein could step into the breach.
Celebrate tolerance, or you're dead
Oriana Fallaci appeals to Europe to save itself. Good luck
By MARK STEYN
Over in Sweden, they've been investigating the Grand Mosque of Stockholm. Apparently, it's the one-stop shop for all your jihad needs: you can buy audio cassettes at the mosque encouraging you to become a martyr and sally forth to kill "the brothers of pigs and apes" -- i.e. Jews. So somebody filed a racial-incitement complaint and the coppers started looking into it, and then Sweden's chancellor of justice, Goran Lambertz, stepped in. And Mr. Lambertz decided to close down the investigation on the grounds that, even though the porcine-sibling stuff is "highly degrading," this kind of chit-chat "should be judged differently -- and therefore be regarded as permissible -- because they were used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict."
In other words, if you threaten to kill people often enough, it will be seen as part of your vibrant cultural tradition -- and, by definition, we're all cool with that. Celebrate diversity, etc. Our tolerant multicultural society is so tolerant and multicultural we'll tolerate your intolerant uniculturalism. Your antipathy to diversity is just another form of diversity for us to celebrate.
Diversity-wise, Europe is a very curious place -- and I mean that even by Canadian standards. In her latest book, The Force of Reason, the fearless Oriana Fallaci, Italy's most-read and most-sued journalist, recounts some of her recent legal difficulties with the Continental diversity coercers. The Federal Office of Justice in Berne asked the Italian government to extradite her over her last book, The Rage and The Pride, so she could be charged under Article 261b of the Swiss Criminal Code. As she points out, Article 261b was promulgated in order to permit Muslims "to win any ideological or private lawsuit by invoking religious racism and racial discrimination. 'He-didn't-chase-me-because-I'm-a-thief-but-because-I'm-a-Muslim.' " She's also been sued in France, where suits against writers are routine now. She has had cases brought against her in her native Italy and, because of the European Arrest Warrant, which includes charges of "xenophobia" as grounds for extradition from one EU nation to another, most of the Continent is now unsafe for her to set foot in. What's impressive is the range of organized opposition: the Islamic Centre of Berne, the Somali Association of Geneva, the SOS Racism of Lausanne, and a group of Muslim immigrants in Neuchâtel, just to name a random sampling of her Swiss plaintiffs. After the London bombings and the French riots, the commentariat lined up to regret that European Muslims are insufficiently "assimilated." But, in fact, at least in their mastery of legalisms and victimology, they're superbly assimilated. One might say the same of the imam who took my chums at The Western Standard to the Alberta Human Rights Commission over their publication of the Danish cartoons.
Racked by cancer, Oriana Fallaci spends most of her time in one of the few jurisdictions in the Western world where she is not in legal jeopardy -- New York City, whence she pens magnificent screeds in the hope of rousing Europe to save itself. Good luck with that. She writes in Italian, of course, but she translates them herself into what she calls "the oddities of Fallaci's English," and the result is a bravura improvised aria, impassioned and somewhat unpredictable. It's full of facts, starting with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when Mehmet II celebrated with beheading and sodomizing, and some lucky lads found themselves on the receiving end of both. This section is a lively read in an age when most westerners, consciously or otherwise, adopt the blithe incuriosity of Jimmy Kennedy's marvelous couplet in his 1950s pop hit Istanbul (Not Constantinople):
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks.
Signora Fallaci then moves on to the livelier examples of contemporary Islam -- for example, Ayatollah Khomeini's "Blue Book" and its helpful advice on romantic matters: "If a man marries a minor who has reached the age of nine and if during the defloration he immediately breaks the hymen, he cannot enjoy her any longer." I'll say. I know it always ruins my evening. Also: "A man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep, may not eat its meat. He would commit sin." Indeed. A quiet cigarette afterwards as you listen to your favourite Johnny Mathis LP and then a promise to call her next week and swing by the pasture is by far the best way. It may also be a sin to roast your nine-year-old wife, but the Ayatollah's not clear on that.
Kinky as this is, it has nothing on Fallaci's next circle of cultural diversity -- the weirdly masochistic pleasure European leaders get out of talking themselves down and talking Islam up. Beginning with the German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher at the 1983 Hamburg Symposium for the Euro-Arab Dialogue, Signora Fallaci rounds up a quarter-century's worth of westerners who've insisted that everything you know was invented by Islam: paper, medicine, sherbet, artichokes, on and on and on . . .
"Always clever, the Muslims. Always at the top. Always ingenious. In philosophy, in mathematics, in gastronomy, in literature, in architecture, in medicine, in music, in law, in hydraulics, in cooking. And always stupid, we westerners. Always inadequate, always inferior. Therefore obliged to thank some son of Allah who preceded us. Who enlightened us. Who acted as a schoolteacher guiding dim-witted pupils."
This, it seems to me, is the most valuable contribution of Oriana Fallaci's work. I enjoy the don't-eat-your-sexual-partner stuff as much as the next infidel, but the challenge presented by Islam is not that the cities of the Western world will be filling up with sheep-shaggers. If I had to choose, I'd rather Mohammed Atta was downriver in Egypt hitting on the livestock than flying through the windows of Manhattan skyscrapers. But he's not. And one reason why westernized Muslims seem so confident is that Europeans like Herr Genscher, in positing a choice between a generalized "Islam" and "the West," have inadvertently promoted a globalized pan-Islamism that's become a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, Germany has Turks, France has Algerians, Britain has Pakistanis, the Netherlands has Indonesians. Even though they're all Muslims, the differences between them have been very significant: Sunni vs. Shia, Arab Islam vs. the more moderate form prevailing in Southeast Asia.
Once upon a time we used to understand this. I've noticed in the last few years that, if you pull any old minor 19th-century memoir off the shelf, the en passant observations about Islam seem more informed than most of the allegedly expert commentary that appeared in the year after 9/11. For example, in Our Crisis: Or Three Months at Patna During the Insurrection of 1857, William Tayler wrote, "With the Soonnees the Wahabees are on terms of tolerable agreement, though differing on certain points, but from the Sheahs, they differ radically, and their hatred, like all religious hatred, is bitter and intolerant. But the most striking characteristic of the Wahabee sect, and that which principally concerns this narrative, is the entire subservience which they yield to the Peer, or spiritual guide."
Mr. Tayler, a minor civil servant in Bengal, was a genuine "multiculturalist." That's to say, although he regarded his own culture as superior, he was engaged enough by the ways of others to study the differences between them. By contrast, contemporary multiculturalism absolves one from knowing anything about other cultures as long as one feels warm and fluffy toward them. After all, if it's grossly judgmental to say one culture's better than another, why bother learning about the differences? "Celebrate diversity" with a uniformity of ignorance. Had William Tayler been around when the Islamification of the West got under way and you'd said to him there was a mosque opening down the street, he'd have wanted to know: what kind of mosque? Who's the imam? What branch of Islam? Old-school imperialists could never get away with the feel-good condescension of PC progressives.
Here's Tayler again: "The tenets originally professed by the Wahabees have been described as a Mahomedan Puritanism joined to a Bedouin Phylarchy, in which the great chief is both the political and religious leader of the nation."
Just so. In 1946, Col. William Eddy, the first U.S. minister to Saudi Arabia, was told by the country's founder, Ibn Saud: "We will use your iron, but you will leave our faith alone."
William Tayler might have questioned whether that was such a great deal. The House of Saud used the Americans' "iron" to enrich themselves and export the hardest, most unyielding form of Islam to the Balkans and Indonesia and Britain and North America.
This resurgent Islam -- promoted by a malign alliance between Europe and the Saudis -- is a much better example of globalization than McDonald's. In Bangladesh and Bosnia, it's put indigenous localized Islams out of business and imposed a one-size-fits-all Wahhab-Mart version cooked up by some guy at head office in Riyadh. One way to reverse its gains would be with a kind of antitrust approach designed to restore all the less threatening mom 'n' pop Islams run out of town by the Saudis' Burqa King version of globalization. If a 21st-century William Tayler is unlikely, perhaps Naomi Klein could step into the breach.
Of Imperial Presidents and Congressional Cowards
By Patrick Buchanan
Now that Congress is back from spring break and looking ahead to Memorial Day, July 4th, the August recess and adjournment early in October for elections, perhaps it can take up this question.
Does President Bush have, or not have, the authority to take us to war with Iran? Because Bush and the War Party are surely behaving as though this were an executive decision alone.
No sooner had President Ahmadinejad declared that his country had enriched a speck of uranium than the war drums began again.
Bush has said of Iran that even "a process which would enable Iran to develop a nuclear weapon is unacceptable." John McCain has said too many times to count, "The military option is on the table." The 2006 National Security Strategy re-endorses preventive war and elevates Iran to the No. 1 threat to the United States.
This is not enough for The Weekly Standard, which equates our situation with that of France in 1936, when Paris sat immobile while Hitler marched three lightly armed battalions back into the German Rhineland, which had been demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty.
"To Bomb or Not to Bomb, That Is the Iran Question," is the title of an extended piece in the Standard, whose editorial calls for "urgent operational planning for bombing strikes." As that would likely ignite Shia and Revolutionary Guard terror attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, the Standard wants Bush to send more troops.
In an editorial "Iran Now," National Review is already into target acquisition. It calls for plans for a massive bombing campaign "coupled with an aggressive and persistent efforts to topple the regime from within." Ideally, U.S. bombs "should hit not just the nuclear facilities, but also the symbols of state oppression: the intelligence ministry, the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard, the guard towers of the notorious Evin Prison."
In The Washington Post, Mark Helprin, who is identified as having "served in the Israeli army and air force," says "the obvious option is an aerial campaign to divest Iran of its nuclear potential: i.e., clear the Persian Gulf of Iranian naval forces, scrub anti-ship missiles from the shore and lay open antiaircraft-free corridors to each target. ... Were the targets effectively hidden or buried, Iran could be shut down, coerced and perhaps revolutionized by the simple and rapid destruction of its oil production and transport."
Since Muslims may not like what we are up to, Helprin cautions, we should prepare "for a land route from the Mediterranean across Israel and Jordan to the Tigris and Euphrates," and, presumably, from there the final push on to Tehran.
In all this hawk talk, something is missing. We are not told how many innocent Iranians we will have to kill as we go about smashing their nuclear program and defenses. Nor are we told how many more soldiers we will need for the neocons' new war, nor how long they will have to fight, nor how many more wings we should plan for at Walter Reed, nor when it will be over -- if ever.
Moreover, where does Bush get the authority to launch a war on a nation that has not attacked us? As few believe Iran is close to a nuclear weapon, while four neighbors -- Russia, India, Pakistan and Israel, not to mention the United States -- already have the bomb, what is America's justification for war?
If we sat by while Stalin got the bomb, and Mao got the bomb, and Kim Jong-Il got the bomb, why is an Iranian bomb a threat to the United States, which possesses thousands?
There is a reason the Founding Fathers separated the power to conduct war from the power to declare it. The reason is just such a ruler as George W. Bush, a man possessed of an ideology and sense of mission that are not necessarily coterminous with what is best for his country. Under our Constitution, it is Congress, not the president, who decides on war.
Many Democrats now concede they failed the nation when they took Bush at his word that Iraq was an intolerable threat that could be dealt with only by an invasion. Now, Bush and the War Party are telling us the same thing about Iran. And the Congress is conducting itself in the same contemptible and cowardly way.
It is time for Congress to tell President Bush directly that he has no authority to go to war on Iran and to launch such a war would be an impeachable offense. Or, if they so conclude, Congress should share full responsibility by granting him that authority after it has held hearings and told the people why we have no other choice than another Mideast war, with a nation four times as large as Iraq.
If Congress lacks the courage to do its constitutional duty, it should stop whining about imperial presidents. Because, like the Roman Senate of Caesar's time, it will have invited them and it will deserve them.
Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate
By Patrick Buchanan
Now that Congress is back from spring break and looking ahead to Memorial Day, July 4th, the August recess and adjournment early in October for elections, perhaps it can take up this question.
Does President Bush have, or not have, the authority to take us to war with Iran? Because Bush and the War Party are surely behaving as though this were an executive decision alone.
No sooner had President Ahmadinejad declared that his country had enriched a speck of uranium than the war drums began again.
Bush has said of Iran that even "a process which would enable Iran to develop a nuclear weapon is unacceptable." John McCain has said too many times to count, "The military option is on the table." The 2006 National Security Strategy re-endorses preventive war and elevates Iran to the No. 1 threat to the United States.
This is not enough for The Weekly Standard, which equates our situation with that of France in 1936, when Paris sat immobile while Hitler marched three lightly armed battalions back into the German Rhineland, which had been demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty.
"To Bomb or Not to Bomb, That Is the Iran Question," is the title of an extended piece in the Standard, whose editorial calls for "urgent operational planning for bombing strikes." As that would likely ignite Shia and Revolutionary Guard terror attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, the Standard wants Bush to send more troops.
In an editorial "Iran Now," National Review is already into target acquisition. It calls for plans for a massive bombing campaign "coupled with an aggressive and persistent efforts to topple the regime from within." Ideally, U.S. bombs "should hit not just the nuclear facilities, but also the symbols of state oppression: the intelligence ministry, the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard, the guard towers of the notorious Evin Prison."
In The Washington Post, Mark Helprin, who is identified as having "served in the Israeli army and air force," says "the obvious option is an aerial campaign to divest Iran of its nuclear potential: i.e., clear the Persian Gulf of Iranian naval forces, scrub anti-ship missiles from the shore and lay open antiaircraft-free corridors to each target. ... Were the targets effectively hidden or buried, Iran could be shut down, coerced and perhaps revolutionized by the simple and rapid destruction of its oil production and transport."
Since Muslims may not like what we are up to, Helprin cautions, we should prepare "for a land route from the Mediterranean across Israel and Jordan to the Tigris and Euphrates," and, presumably, from there the final push on to Tehran.
In all this hawk talk, something is missing. We are not told how many innocent Iranians we will have to kill as we go about smashing their nuclear program and defenses. Nor are we told how many more soldiers we will need for the neocons' new war, nor how long they will have to fight, nor how many more wings we should plan for at Walter Reed, nor when it will be over -- if ever.
Moreover, where does Bush get the authority to launch a war on a nation that has not attacked us? As few believe Iran is close to a nuclear weapon, while four neighbors -- Russia, India, Pakistan and Israel, not to mention the United States -- already have the bomb, what is America's justification for war?
If we sat by while Stalin got the bomb, and Mao got the bomb, and Kim Jong-Il got the bomb, why is an Iranian bomb a threat to the United States, which possesses thousands?
There is a reason the Founding Fathers separated the power to conduct war from the power to declare it. The reason is just such a ruler as George W. Bush, a man possessed of an ideology and sense of mission that are not necessarily coterminous with what is best for his country. Under our Constitution, it is Congress, not the president, who decides on war.
Many Democrats now concede they failed the nation when they took Bush at his word that Iraq was an intolerable threat that could be dealt with only by an invasion. Now, Bush and the War Party are telling us the same thing about Iran. And the Congress is conducting itself in the same contemptible and cowardly way.
It is time for Congress to tell President Bush directly that he has no authority to go to war on Iran and to launch such a war would be an impeachable offense. Or, if they so conclude, Congress should share full responsibility by granting him that authority after it has held hearings and told the people why we have no other choice than another Mideast war, with a nation four times as large as Iraq.
If Congress lacks the courage to do its constitutional duty, it should stop whining about imperial presidents. Because, like the Roman Senate of Caesar's time, it will have invited them and it will deserve them.
Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate
Friday, April 28, 2006
From National Review Online:
Not for the Feint of Heart
Robert Spencer asks the hard questions about Islam...and answers them.
By Andrew McCarthy
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), by Robert Spencer (Regnery, 233 pp., $19.95)
It is often said that in order to keep polite company polite, we must refrain from speaking of religion and politics. Yet, the two are not equals in the hierarchy of politesse. Political debate may be unwelcome in many settings, but no one clears the room by observing that the great totalitarian evils of the 20th century, Communism and fascism, were directly responsible for incalculable carnage.
Not so when it comes to religion — or, at least, one particular religion. The past three decades have borne witness to a rising, global tide of terrorist atrocities, wrought by Muslims who proclaim without apology — indeed, with animating pride — that their actions are compelled by Islam. Nonetheless, the quickest ticket to oblivion on PC's pariah express is to suggest that the root cause of Islamic terrorism might be, well, Islam.
That the possibility is utterable at all today owes exclusively to the sheer audacity of Muslim legions, who have rioted globally, on cue, based on what even their exhausted defenders must now concede are trifles (newspaper cartoons and a tall tale of Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay leap to mind). But the largest obstacle to any examination of creed — larger even than a growing alphabet soup of Muslim interest groups — has been the same Western elites who are the prime targets of jihadist ire. In the most notable instance, President Bush absolved Islam of any culpability even as fires raged at the remains of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. And, although attacks before and after that date have been numerous and widespread, it has become nearly as much an oratorical staple as "My fellow Americans" for U.S. politicians to begin any discussion of our signal national security challenge with the observation that Islam is a "religion of peace" — a religion that has surely been perverted, "hijacked," and otherwise misconstrued by terrorists.
No more, insists Robert Spencer, the intrepid author and analyst behind the Jihad Watch website. Spencer's theory is as logical as it is controversial: when the single common thread that runs through virtually all of the international terrorism of the modern era is that its perpetrators are Muslims, and when the jihadists themselves tell us that their religion is the force that drives them, we should seriously consider the probability that Islam is a causative agent, even the principal causative agent, of their terrorist actions. This he undertakes to do in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)..
One might once have assumed it inarguable that an ideological battle cannot be fought with complete inattention to ideology. But that has been the case with the war on terror, and Spencer's mission is to rectify that with a simple, user-friendly volume that walks the reader through elementary facts about Islam — its tenets, its scriptures, and its history, including most prominently the Koran and the life and deeds of the Prophet Mohammed. It is a tutorial shorn of wishful thinking.
While Spencer does not declare that anyone adhering to Islam is a terrorist waiting to happen, he clearly believes it is a perilous belief system. Make no mistake: This is a disturbing account. And most disturbing is that the truly arresting passages are not the author's contentions and deductions. They are the actual words of Islamic scripture and the accounts of several revered events in Islamic tradition.
The story by which Islam achieves hegemony over much the world and the loyalty of millions of worshippers, very nearly extending its dominion throughout Europe, is a story of military conquest. Mohammed, deemed the final Messenger of Allah — superseding the prophets of the Judeo-Christian tradition, a group in which Muslims include Jesus — was a warrior, in addition to wearing the hats of poet, philosopher, and economist, among others.
The Koran, Spencer argues, does not teach tolerance and peace. At best, he explains, there are isolated sections which urge Muslims to leave unbelievers alone in their errant ways, and which counsel that forced conversion is forbidden. But these must be considered in context with other verses, such as those directing that Mohammed "make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them," and that the faithful "slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them," and so on.
What are we to make of the seeming contradiction? Obviously, self-professed moderate Muslims point often to the benign passages, while terrorists echo the belligerent ones. Who is right? Spencer vigorously contends that the militants have the better of the argument. The Koran, which is not arranged chronologically but according to the length of its chapters (or "suras"), is theologically divided between Mohammed's Meccan and Medinan periods. The former, from the early part of the Prophet's ministry when he was calling inhabitants of Mecca to Islam, are the soothing, poetic verses. The latter, written in Medina after Mohammed was ousted from Mecca, are the more bellicose. The Medinan scriptures come later in time and, sensibly, overrule their predecessors.
This is bracing in at least two ways. First, even if there were a logical counterargument to this (and let us pray that someone comes up with a compelling one soon), it underscores the seeming impossibility of proving wrong those who commit atrocities in the name of Islam. When they claim justification in their religion for merciless attacks and other brutalities (such as beheadings), they are not imagining it out of thin air — it's right there in black-and-white. The reformers may try gamely to minimize or reinterpret, but they cannot make the words go away.
Second, those words are taken to be the words of God Himself. The Koran is not like the books of the Old and New Testaments. It is not thought to be "inspired," to be related through intermediaries whose assumed human gloss opens up possibilities of reinterpretation or correction. Muslims believe the Koran contains the unvarnished teachings of Allah, dictated directly to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel. This renders all the more challenging (to put it mildly) the burden of discrediting terrorist operatives who claim to be doing precisely what they have been divinely instructed to do — and doing it in the service of jihad, the "striving" which, Spencer explains, is a bedrock obligation of all Muslims.
Islam, Spencer elaborates, aims at nothing less than total domination — first, unrivalled supremacy in any territory that is (or was at any time) under its sway, and, ultimately, spreading throughout the world — whether by persuasion or by sheer force. The bleak choices presented to non-believers in the Muslim lands are to accept Islam (and its attendant social system, which is particularly oppressive of women); to live the grim life of dhimmitude by submitting to the authority of the Islamic state (permitted to practice other religions under tight regulations and only if the jizya, or poll-tax on non-Muslims, is paid); or to die. The bleak future for non-believers in the rest of the world is a state of war until they are subdued, as — beginning in the seventh century — were the Byzantine Empire, Persia and the Christian strongholds of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
Consistent with the "Politically Incorrect" model, Spencer spends much of his time deconstructing "PC Myths." These involve not only the sugar-coated conventional wisdom about Muslim doctrine but also what he sees as the cognate project to revise Islamic history.
The "Golden Age" of Islam, for example, is, according to the author, a gross exaggeration. He does not deny that there were grand achievements under caliphates that ruled various places from the tenth through the fourteenth centuries, and Muslims themselves, he acknowledges, were responsible for important advances in mathematics and, to a lesser extent, medicine. Nonetheless, Spencer counters that many of the epoch's achievements either occurred despite Islam (particularly in the areas of literature, art, and music) or are better understood as the accomplishments (especially in science and architecture) of better educated peoples whom Muslims conquered.
Islamic culture, for Spencer, thwarted great possibilities. Muslim philosophers were singularly responsible for preserving and explicating the work of Aristotle — but over time, these philosophers were read primarily in the West, because waves of anti-intellectualism and a conceit that rote study of the Koran was sufficient education overtook the Islamic world. Medical advance was stymied because of traditions that forbade or discouraged dissections and artistic representations of the human body. Spencer does credit Islam with causing the Renaissance and the discovery of the New World — but only indirectly. The conquest of Constantinople caused Europeans (like Columbus) to seek new trade routes to the East and hastened the flight of Greek intellectuals to Western Europe.
A final "Myth" Spencer endeavors to explode is the legacy of the Crusades. While not gainsaying Christian excesses and brutality, the story, he asserts, is far from one-sided. It is just that, consistent with today's victimology leitmotif, only one side gets told anymore.
The comprehensive narrative, Spencer insists, stretches back for 450 years before the supposed eleventh century start of the Crusades — back to the conquest of Jerusalem in 638. "The sword spread Islam" and ultimately repressed the formerly predominant non-Muslim populations that are tiny minorities in what are now Islamic countries. The Crusades, Spencer relates, were largely defensive struggles to protect threatened Christians. He does not dispute that the political agenda of recapturing what had been eastern Christendom loomed large, but he does contend that the legends of forced conversions, insatiable looting, and mindless atrocities are largely overblown.
This is not a book for the feint of heart. Nonetheless, it is well done and extremely important. Much of current American policy hinges on the notions that there is a vibrant moderate Islam and that it must simply be possessed of the intellectual firepower necessary to put the lie to the militants. These are the premises behind the ambitious projects to democratize the Middle East, to establish a Palestinian state that will peacefully coexist with its Israeli neighbor, and to win the vast majority of the world's billion-plus Muslims over to our side in the War on Terror.
They are, however, premises that are more the product of assumption than critical thought. In this highly accessible, well-researched, quick-paced read, Robert Spencer dares to bring that critical thought to the equation. The result is not a promising landscape, but it's a landscape we must understand. You really can't fight an ideological battle without grappling with the ideology.
— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Not for the Feint of Heart
Robert Spencer asks the hard questions about Islam...and answers them.
By Andrew McCarthy
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), by Robert Spencer (Regnery, 233 pp., $19.95)
It is often said that in order to keep polite company polite, we must refrain from speaking of religion and politics. Yet, the two are not equals in the hierarchy of politesse. Political debate may be unwelcome in many settings, but no one clears the room by observing that the great totalitarian evils of the 20th century, Communism and fascism, were directly responsible for incalculable carnage.
Not so when it comes to religion — or, at least, one particular religion. The past three decades have borne witness to a rising, global tide of terrorist atrocities, wrought by Muslims who proclaim without apology — indeed, with animating pride — that their actions are compelled by Islam. Nonetheless, the quickest ticket to oblivion on PC's pariah express is to suggest that the root cause of Islamic terrorism might be, well, Islam.
That the possibility is utterable at all today owes exclusively to the sheer audacity of Muslim legions, who have rioted globally, on cue, based on what even their exhausted defenders must now concede are trifles (newspaper cartoons and a tall tale of Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay leap to mind). But the largest obstacle to any examination of creed — larger even than a growing alphabet soup of Muslim interest groups — has been the same Western elites who are the prime targets of jihadist ire. In the most notable instance, President Bush absolved Islam of any culpability even as fires raged at the remains of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. And, although attacks before and after that date have been numerous and widespread, it has become nearly as much an oratorical staple as "My fellow Americans" for U.S. politicians to begin any discussion of our signal national security challenge with the observation that Islam is a "religion of peace" — a religion that has surely been perverted, "hijacked," and otherwise misconstrued by terrorists.
No more, insists Robert Spencer, the intrepid author and analyst behind the Jihad Watch website. Spencer's theory is as logical as it is controversial: when the single common thread that runs through virtually all of the international terrorism of the modern era is that its perpetrators are Muslims, and when the jihadists themselves tell us that their religion is the force that drives them, we should seriously consider the probability that Islam is a causative agent, even the principal causative agent, of their terrorist actions. This he undertakes to do in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)..
One might once have assumed it inarguable that an ideological battle cannot be fought with complete inattention to ideology. But that has been the case with the war on terror, and Spencer's mission is to rectify that with a simple, user-friendly volume that walks the reader through elementary facts about Islam — its tenets, its scriptures, and its history, including most prominently the Koran and the life and deeds of the Prophet Mohammed. It is a tutorial shorn of wishful thinking.
While Spencer does not declare that anyone adhering to Islam is a terrorist waiting to happen, he clearly believes it is a perilous belief system. Make no mistake: This is a disturbing account. And most disturbing is that the truly arresting passages are not the author's contentions and deductions. They are the actual words of Islamic scripture and the accounts of several revered events in Islamic tradition.
The story by which Islam achieves hegemony over much the world and the loyalty of millions of worshippers, very nearly extending its dominion throughout Europe, is a story of military conquest. Mohammed, deemed the final Messenger of Allah — superseding the prophets of the Judeo-Christian tradition, a group in which Muslims include Jesus — was a warrior, in addition to wearing the hats of poet, philosopher, and economist, among others.
The Koran, Spencer argues, does not teach tolerance and peace. At best, he explains, there are isolated sections which urge Muslims to leave unbelievers alone in their errant ways, and which counsel that forced conversion is forbidden. But these must be considered in context with other verses, such as those directing that Mohammed "make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them," and that the faithful "slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them," and so on.
What are we to make of the seeming contradiction? Obviously, self-professed moderate Muslims point often to the benign passages, while terrorists echo the belligerent ones. Who is right? Spencer vigorously contends that the militants have the better of the argument. The Koran, which is not arranged chronologically but according to the length of its chapters (or "suras"), is theologically divided between Mohammed's Meccan and Medinan periods. The former, from the early part of the Prophet's ministry when he was calling inhabitants of Mecca to Islam, are the soothing, poetic verses. The latter, written in Medina after Mohammed was ousted from Mecca, are the more bellicose. The Medinan scriptures come later in time and, sensibly, overrule their predecessors.
This is bracing in at least two ways. First, even if there were a logical counterargument to this (and let us pray that someone comes up with a compelling one soon), it underscores the seeming impossibility of proving wrong those who commit atrocities in the name of Islam. When they claim justification in their religion for merciless attacks and other brutalities (such as beheadings), they are not imagining it out of thin air — it's right there in black-and-white. The reformers may try gamely to minimize or reinterpret, but they cannot make the words go away.
Second, those words are taken to be the words of God Himself. The Koran is not like the books of the Old and New Testaments. It is not thought to be "inspired," to be related through intermediaries whose assumed human gloss opens up possibilities of reinterpretation or correction. Muslims believe the Koran contains the unvarnished teachings of Allah, dictated directly to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel. This renders all the more challenging (to put it mildly) the burden of discrediting terrorist operatives who claim to be doing precisely what they have been divinely instructed to do — and doing it in the service of jihad, the "striving" which, Spencer explains, is a bedrock obligation of all Muslims.
Islam, Spencer elaborates, aims at nothing less than total domination — first, unrivalled supremacy in any territory that is (or was at any time) under its sway, and, ultimately, spreading throughout the world — whether by persuasion or by sheer force. The bleak choices presented to non-believers in the Muslim lands are to accept Islam (and its attendant social system, which is particularly oppressive of women); to live the grim life of dhimmitude by submitting to the authority of the Islamic state (permitted to practice other religions under tight regulations and only if the jizya, or poll-tax on non-Muslims, is paid); or to die. The bleak future for non-believers in the rest of the world is a state of war until they are subdued, as — beginning in the seventh century — were the Byzantine Empire, Persia and the Christian strongholds of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
Consistent with the "Politically Incorrect" model, Spencer spends much of his time deconstructing "PC Myths." These involve not only the sugar-coated conventional wisdom about Muslim doctrine but also what he sees as the cognate project to revise Islamic history.
The "Golden Age" of Islam, for example, is, according to the author, a gross exaggeration. He does not deny that there were grand achievements under caliphates that ruled various places from the tenth through the fourteenth centuries, and Muslims themselves, he acknowledges, were responsible for important advances in mathematics and, to a lesser extent, medicine. Nonetheless, Spencer counters that many of the epoch's achievements either occurred despite Islam (particularly in the areas of literature, art, and music) or are better understood as the accomplishments (especially in science and architecture) of better educated peoples whom Muslims conquered.
Islamic culture, for Spencer, thwarted great possibilities. Muslim philosophers were singularly responsible for preserving and explicating the work of Aristotle — but over time, these philosophers were read primarily in the West, because waves of anti-intellectualism and a conceit that rote study of the Koran was sufficient education overtook the Islamic world. Medical advance was stymied because of traditions that forbade or discouraged dissections and artistic representations of the human body. Spencer does credit Islam with causing the Renaissance and the discovery of the New World — but only indirectly. The conquest of Constantinople caused Europeans (like Columbus) to seek new trade routes to the East and hastened the flight of Greek intellectuals to Western Europe.
A final "Myth" Spencer endeavors to explode is the legacy of the Crusades. While not gainsaying Christian excesses and brutality, the story, he asserts, is far from one-sided. It is just that, consistent with today's victimology leitmotif, only one side gets told anymore.
The comprehensive narrative, Spencer insists, stretches back for 450 years before the supposed eleventh century start of the Crusades — back to the conquest of Jerusalem in 638. "The sword spread Islam" and ultimately repressed the formerly predominant non-Muslim populations that are tiny minorities in what are now Islamic countries. The Crusades, Spencer relates, were largely defensive struggles to protect threatened Christians. He does not dispute that the political agenda of recapturing what had been eastern Christendom loomed large, but he does contend that the legends of forced conversions, insatiable looting, and mindless atrocities are largely overblown.
This is not a book for the feint of heart. Nonetheless, it is well done and extremely important. Much of current American policy hinges on the notions that there is a vibrant moderate Islam and that it must simply be possessed of the intellectual firepower necessary to put the lie to the militants. These are the premises behind the ambitious projects to democratize the Middle East, to establish a Palestinian state that will peacefully coexist with its Israeli neighbor, and to win the vast majority of the world's billion-plus Muslims over to our side in the War on Terror.
They are, however, premises that are more the product of assumption than critical thought. In this highly accessible, well-researched, quick-paced read, Robert Spencer dares to bring that critical thought to the equation. The result is not a promising landscape, but it's a landscape we must understand. You really can't fight an ideological battle without grappling with the ideology.
— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
From The Weekly Standard:
9/11 on Film
The horror, and heroism, of one day in history.
by John Podhoretz
05/08/2006, Volume 011, Issue 32
ON SEPTEMBER 18, 2001, ABC News president David Westin decided that his network would no longer air footage of the attacks on the World Trade Center only a week before. The constant repetition of the images of the planes crashing into the buildings had become "gratuitous," a spokesman said.
Almost immediately, all other networks and news channels adopted the same policy, and ever since, it is only on rare occasions that Americans have been exposed to those indelible images. This extraordinary act of journalistic collusion followed another mysteriously unanimous decision to censor the photographs and moving images of those victims who had chosen to jump to their deaths rather than be burned alive.
At the time, these choices seemed tasteful and appropriate. The perpetual repetition of the pictures and footage over the course of that first week threatened to make them as familiar as bland wallpaper, or serve as the permanent backdrop for cable-news channel self-promotion. And yet the policy has remained in place to this day, long after there was any risk of the footage's misuse.
Indeed, the purpose behind censoring the 9/11 images seems to be somewhat different from the one in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. One gets the impression that the video footage is kept largely under wraps because of the emotions it might provoke. Someone is trying to protect us from the neurochemical cocktail of grief and rage, sorrow and anger, trauma and vengefulness that even a few minutes' conversation about 9/11 can cause.
Or, perhaps, some in the media might feel as though the imagery is almost too politicized. Perhaps because George W. Bush invokes the attacks and their meaning so frequently, leading figures in the media believe the imagery will tend to buttress Bush's arguments, and serve as unpaid advertising for the president's policies.
Thus, while the events of 9/11 remain the most important and devastating in recent American history, they have achieved a peculiar invisibility. In New York, where I live, there are ferocious arguments about the way the rebuilding at Ground Zero has been mishandled--about the designs of the buildings and the street grid and the look, placement, and size of the memorials. Somehow, these discussions have become weirdly divorced from the reason that Ground Zero even exists.
And what of the country? In an April CBS News poll, only 6 percent of respondents said terrorism was the most important problem facing the United States. Even if that shockingly small number is misleading--because in the same poll, 27 percent of respondents said Iraq was the most important problem, and many of them surely believe the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror--it still indicates that the events of 9/11 have receded. Yes, everyone knows about and remembers the hijacking of four planes and the murders of nearly 3,000 civilians in an unprovoked and unprecedented attack. But those deaths may have lost some of their sting.
The masterful new film United 93, the first major Hollywood release about September 11, is reticent as well when it comes to the depictions of the attacks in New York. American Airlines Flight 11 is shown only as a computerized glyph on an air-traffic controller's screen. The controller knows the plane has been hijacked and is tracking it as it enters the airspace over New York. Suddenly, the glyph just vanishes from his screen.
"It's gone," the controller says. "It was there and then it's just gone." Flight 11 has just crashed into the North Tower.
Sixteen minutes elapse on screen between that moment and the one in which writer-director Paul Greengrass shows us the fate of United Airlines Flight 175, following precisely the span of time on the real September 11. Greengrass brings us into the control tower at Newark Airport, which has a direct view of South Manhattan ten miles to the East. The people working there are asked if they can see Flight 175 just as, in the distance, the jet sails without hesitation into the South Tower. The men in the control room react without reacting, expressionless, unable to process what they've just witnessed.
Greengrass's handling of these historic horrors is pitch-perfect, in part because we are so unused to seeing them close-up. By starting first with the little glyph and then moving on to the plane in the distance, he brings us back to that morning as most of us experienced it: a shocked phone call, a report on a car radio, worried whispers of a terrorist strike, a hurried move to a television, then the unimaginable news of a second plane hitting the second building, followed a few minutes later by a clear-as-day image of that seminal event.
Greengrass is presenting the events of that morning in documentary fashion, a cinematic version of what journalists call a "tick-tock"--a minute-by-minute re-creation in narrative form. Everything we see is staged, written by Greengrass and performed by actors. But among the actors are Ben Sliney, who was running the Federal Aviation Administration's operations room in Herndon, Va., on the morning of September 11, and Major James Fox, who was in charge of the Northeast Air Defense Sector at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod.
As the movie jumps from Boston Air Traffic Control to the FAA to Newark Airport to Herndon to Otis, Greengrass achieves a staggering level of verisimilitude. The atmosphere is thick with confusion. Nobody has the same information at the same time, planes are routinely confused and misidentified, and key personnel are on vacation.
For the central story Greengrass is trying to tell, the reticence and confusion are both essential. For United 93 is about the plane that was brought down in a Pennsylvania field because the 33 passengers on board figured out that they were being taken on a suicide mission and chose to take matters into their own hands. The scenes on board United 93 are, of course, mostly speculative. All we know about the flight comes from the phone calls made by passengers and some bits of discussion in the cockpit that were either transmitted to an air-traffic control center in Cleveland or were recorded by the plane's black box.
We see the passengers, pilots, and flight crew board the plane, eat breakfast, make chit-chat. The plane is delayed on the ground for 47 minutes before takeoff, and we watch as lead hijacker Ziad Jarrah sits alone in seat 1A in first class while his compatriots sit behind him, waiting for him to act. It is Greengrass's speculation that a panicky Jarrah froze, which delayed the hijacking long enough for the passengers to discover from cellphone and AirFone calls that the Twin Towers had been hit and that there were other hijacked planes in the sky.
Because the flight was delayed, and the hijacking itself did not take place for another half-hour, Greengrass manages the near-impossible. He makes us hope. He makes us think that, perhaps, the hijacking we know happened will not, that the panicky Jarrah and his evil crew will fail, that the attempt to take over the plane and land it safely might succeed.
And because Greengrass chose circumspection in his portrayal of the Twin Tower attacks, the sudden and shocking violence of the hijacking of United 93 hits us hard. Four people were killed in the takeover of the plane, which would have seemed like small potatoes next to the devastation in New York. But because of Greengrass's brilliance, the horror of those murders is given its full weight.
In the film's final 32 minutes, the passengers and crew become, as Greengrass has said, "the first people to live in the post-9/11 world." They gather information quickly, including word that a third plane has struck the Pentagon. The men who choose to storm the cockpit don't give speeches about their intentions. They simply decide they must do something, and they know there is a pilot among the passengers who might be able to land the plane. They don't intend to die. They intend to win.
And in world-historical terms, they do win. When Jarrah sits down in the pilot's seat, he tapes a photo of the Capitol to his controls. We don't know where, exactly, United 93 was headed, but it was surely either the Capitol or the White House. By doing what they did, Greengrass reminds us, the passengers saved America from political decapitation.
Because the movie reminds us of this, and because it does not seek to wring tears but wants us to have some sense of what might have happened on that plane as it was happening in real time, Greengrass has succeeded in making a movie about September 11 that is both appropriately heartbreaking and quietly triumphant. United 93 is a masterpiece of a kind; but it's hard to say what kind of masterpiece it is, because there's never been a movie like it before, and there may never be one to compare to it again.
There's a lot of talk about whether Americans are "ready" to see a movie about 9/11. Some of that talk is doubtless due to the same attitude that says Americans can't possibly stomach seeing footage of the crashes, or the buildings falling. Such infantilization is an insult both to Americans, who are perfectly capable of handling such things, and to the memories of those who perished in the attacks, whose public murders are being treated as though they had been quiet and private deaths.
There's no reason to fear United 93. It is a riveting examination of an unbearable moment. Not only can we take it, we can also rise to the challenge it presents--both to us, and to those who would treat Americans as though they were hothouse flowers incapable of feeling the "right way" about September 11.
9/11 on Film
The horror, and heroism, of one day in history.
by John Podhoretz
05/08/2006, Volume 011, Issue 32
ON SEPTEMBER 18, 2001, ABC News president David Westin decided that his network would no longer air footage of the attacks on the World Trade Center only a week before. The constant repetition of the images of the planes crashing into the buildings had become "gratuitous," a spokesman said.
Almost immediately, all other networks and news channels adopted the same policy, and ever since, it is only on rare occasions that Americans have been exposed to those indelible images. This extraordinary act of journalistic collusion followed another mysteriously unanimous decision to censor the photographs and moving images of those victims who had chosen to jump to their deaths rather than be burned alive.
At the time, these choices seemed tasteful and appropriate. The perpetual repetition of the pictures and footage over the course of that first week threatened to make them as familiar as bland wallpaper, or serve as the permanent backdrop for cable-news channel self-promotion. And yet the policy has remained in place to this day, long after there was any risk of the footage's misuse.
Indeed, the purpose behind censoring the 9/11 images seems to be somewhat different from the one in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. One gets the impression that the video footage is kept largely under wraps because of the emotions it might provoke. Someone is trying to protect us from the neurochemical cocktail of grief and rage, sorrow and anger, trauma and vengefulness that even a few minutes' conversation about 9/11 can cause.
Or, perhaps, some in the media might feel as though the imagery is almost too politicized. Perhaps because George W. Bush invokes the attacks and their meaning so frequently, leading figures in the media believe the imagery will tend to buttress Bush's arguments, and serve as unpaid advertising for the president's policies.
Thus, while the events of 9/11 remain the most important and devastating in recent American history, they have achieved a peculiar invisibility. In New York, where I live, there are ferocious arguments about the way the rebuilding at Ground Zero has been mishandled--about the designs of the buildings and the street grid and the look, placement, and size of the memorials. Somehow, these discussions have become weirdly divorced from the reason that Ground Zero even exists.
And what of the country? In an April CBS News poll, only 6 percent of respondents said terrorism was the most important problem facing the United States. Even if that shockingly small number is misleading--because in the same poll, 27 percent of respondents said Iraq was the most important problem, and many of them surely believe the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror--it still indicates that the events of 9/11 have receded. Yes, everyone knows about and remembers the hijacking of four planes and the murders of nearly 3,000 civilians in an unprovoked and unprecedented attack. But those deaths may have lost some of their sting.
The masterful new film United 93, the first major Hollywood release about September 11, is reticent as well when it comes to the depictions of the attacks in New York. American Airlines Flight 11 is shown only as a computerized glyph on an air-traffic controller's screen. The controller knows the plane has been hijacked and is tracking it as it enters the airspace over New York. Suddenly, the glyph just vanishes from his screen.
"It's gone," the controller says. "It was there and then it's just gone." Flight 11 has just crashed into the North Tower.
Sixteen minutes elapse on screen between that moment and the one in which writer-director Paul Greengrass shows us the fate of United Airlines Flight 175, following precisely the span of time on the real September 11. Greengrass brings us into the control tower at Newark Airport, which has a direct view of South Manhattan ten miles to the East. The people working there are asked if they can see Flight 175 just as, in the distance, the jet sails without hesitation into the South Tower. The men in the control room react without reacting, expressionless, unable to process what they've just witnessed.
Greengrass's handling of these historic horrors is pitch-perfect, in part because we are so unused to seeing them close-up. By starting first with the little glyph and then moving on to the plane in the distance, he brings us back to that morning as most of us experienced it: a shocked phone call, a report on a car radio, worried whispers of a terrorist strike, a hurried move to a television, then the unimaginable news of a second plane hitting the second building, followed a few minutes later by a clear-as-day image of that seminal event.
Greengrass is presenting the events of that morning in documentary fashion, a cinematic version of what journalists call a "tick-tock"--a minute-by-minute re-creation in narrative form. Everything we see is staged, written by Greengrass and performed by actors. But among the actors are Ben Sliney, who was running the Federal Aviation Administration's operations room in Herndon, Va., on the morning of September 11, and Major James Fox, who was in charge of the Northeast Air Defense Sector at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod.
As the movie jumps from Boston Air Traffic Control to the FAA to Newark Airport to Herndon to Otis, Greengrass achieves a staggering level of verisimilitude. The atmosphere is thick with confusion. Nobody has the same information at the same time, planes are routinely confused and misidentified, and key personnel are on vacation.
For the central story Greengrass is trying to tell, the reticence and confusion are both essential. For United 93 is about the plane that was brought down in a Pennsylvania field because the 33 passengers on board figured out that they were being taken on a suicide mission and chose to take matters into their own hands. The scenes on board United 93 are, of course, mostly speculative. All we know about the flight comes from the phone calls made by passengers and some bits of discussion in the cockpit that were either transmitted to an air-traffic control center in Cleveland or were recorded by the plane's black box.
We see the passengers, pilots, and flight crew board the plane, eat breakfast, make chit-chat. The plane is delayed on the ground for 47 minutes before takeoff, and we watch as lead hijacker Ziad Jarrah sits alone in seat 1A in first class while his compatriots sit behind him, waiting for him to act. It is Greengrass's speculation that a panicky Jarrah froze, which delayed the hijacking long enough for the passengers to discover from cellphone and AirFone calls that the Twin Towers had been hit and that there were other hijacked planes in the sky.
Because the flight was delayed, and the hijacking itself did not take place for another half-hour, Greengrass manages the near-impossible. He makes us hope. He makes us think that, perhaps, the hijacking we know happened will not, that the panicky Jarrah and his evil crew will fail, that the attempt to take over the plane and land it safely might succeed.
And because Greengrass chose circumspection in his portrayal of the Twin Tower attacks, the sudden and shocking violence of the hijacking of United 93 hits us hard. Four people were killed in the takeover of the plane, which would have seemed like small potatoes next to the devastation in New York. But because of Greengrass's brilliance, the horror of those murders is given its full weight.
In the film's final 32 minutes, the passengers and crew become, as Greengrass has said, "the first people to live in the post-9/11 world." They gather information quickly, including word that a third plane has struck the Pentagon. The men who choose to storm the cockpit don't give speeches about their intentions. They simply decide they must do something, and they know there is a pilot among the passengers who might be able to land the plane. They don't intend to die. They intend to win.
And in world-historical terms, they do win. When Jarrah sits down in the pilot's seat, he tapes a photo of the Capitol to his controls. We don't know where, exactly, United 93 was headed, but it was surely either the Capitol or the White House. By doing what they did, Greengrass reminds us, the passengers saved America from political decapitation.
Because the movie reminds us of this, and because it does not seek to wring tears but wants us to have some sense of what might have happened on that plane as it was happening in real time, Greengrass has succeeded in making a movie about September 11 that is both appropriately heartbreaking and quietly triumphant. United 93 is a masterpiece of a kind; but it's hard to say what kind of masterpiece it is, because there's never been a movie like it before, and there may never be one to compare to it again.
There's a lot of talk about whether Americans are "ready" to see a movie about 9/11. Some of that talk is doubtless due to the same attitude that says Americans can't possibly stomach seeing footage of the crashes, or the buildings falling. Such infantilization is an insult both to Americans, who are perfectly capable of handling such things, and to the memories of those who perished in the attacks, whose public murders are being treated as though they had been quiet and private deaths.
There's no reason to fear United 93. It is a riveting examination of an unbearable moment. Not only can we take it, we can also rise to the challenge it presents--both to us, and to those who would treat Americans as though they were hothouse flowers incapable of feeling the "right way" about September 11.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Salman Rushdie defends both religion and storytelling
By TERRY MATTINGLY
Scripps Howard News Service
26-APR-06
It remains Salman Rushdie's fervent conviction that it's wrong for clergy, jurists or politicos to threaten writers' lives simply because they think their books are terrible.
Not even the shocking success of "The Da Vinci Code" has weakened his pro-novelist stance, he said, drawing laughter at Calvin College's recent Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids, Mich.
This faith in free speech isn't surprising since the apostate Muslim has lived in hiding ever since his 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses" prompted Iran's top ayatollah to issue a fatwa calling for his death. No one knows better than Rushdie _ who calls himself a "dreadful old atheist" _ that faith, ink and blood can be stirred into a deadly brew.
Nevertheless, he also believes that writers who refuse to wrestle with the power of faith and the supernatural are refusing to deal with real people in the real world. Consider, he said, the daily lives of the gods and believers in his homeland _ India.
"The people in India do not think of the gods as abstractions," said Rushdie. "They think of them as real beings who move amongst them and work upon their lives every day. If you have something that you need, if somebody is sick, if a child needs to get into college or whatever it may be, you would go and find the relevant deity to make the offering to and you would believe that that would increase your chances of getting what you needed in life."
Rushdie, 58, understands India _ with its tense mix of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity _ from the inside out. As a child, he enjoyed asking his Muslim grandfather why he practiced a faith in which the prayer regime required him to spend so much time with his rear end higher than his head. Meanwhile, Rushdie's father was both an unbeliever and a Muslim historian.
After years of airing his doubts, the pre-teen iconoclast celebrated his own loss of faith with a symbolic culinary sin _ a ham sandwich. The fact that God did not strike him dead with a thunderbolt confirmed his newborn atheism.
As a writer, Rushdie said that he has always insisted on treating religion as a "normal part of life." Thus, his goal was "not to give it special treatment, not to hedge it around with the language of taboo and respect because that has always seemed, to me, to be anti-intellectual."
However, skeptics have their own way of avoiding the truth when dealing with intensely religious cultures, he said. Even writers who are unbelievers must realize that almost everyone in a land like India believes in one god or another and views life through the lens of that faith. Skeptical writers who refuse to accept this reality are practicing another form of intellectually dishonesty.
Rushdie does not, of course, believe writers should surrender their right to deal with religion in an irreverent or critical manner. However, he stressed that skeptics must be willing to doubt their own doubts and remain open to the possibility that the believers may, in some mysterious way, be right.
After all, he said, the real world is not completely realistic. Ordinary people believe in miracles and their beliefs are considered normal. Even in modern America, real life contains moments that are utterly surreal.
"So the sense that the miraculous and the mundane, that the supernatural and the everyday, coexist in a completely natural way, is everywhere," he said. "The idea that, somehow, these are separate categories of thing is quite alien. So if you are going to write about that world, you have to take cognizance of that fact. You have to recognize that this is how people think."
Ultimately, religious faith is one of the most powerful forces shaping the myths and stories that bind together families, nations and cultures, said Rushdie. In a free society, people are free to tell and interpret their own stories. Tyranny is when other people have the right to censure or kill the storytellers who they feel get out of line.
"We are, as human beings, storytelling animals," he insisted. "We are the only creature on the earth that tells itself stories in order to understand what it is and what its life means. Therefore the story is of unusual importance to us, whether we are writers or not. It is something unusually important to human nature."
By TERRY MATTINGLY
Scripps Howard News Service
26-APR-06
It remains Salman Rushdie's fervent conviction that it's wrong for clergy, jurists or politicos to threaten writers' lives simply because they think their books are terrible.
Not even the shocking success of "The Da Vinci Code" has weakened his pro-novelist stance, he said, drawing laughter at Calvin College's recent Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids, Mich.
This faith in free speech isn't surprising since the apostate Muslim has lived in hiding ever since his 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses" prompted Iran's top ayatollah to issue a fatwa calling for his death. No one knows better than Rushdie _ who calls himself a "dreadful old atheist" _ that faith, ink and blood can be stirred into a deadly brew.
Nevertheless, he also believes that writers who refuse to wrestle with the power of faith and the supernatural are refusing to deal with real people in the real world. Consider, he said, the daily lives of the gods and believers in his homeland _ India.
"The people in India do not think of the gods as abstractions," said Rushdie. "They think of them as real beings who move amongst them and work upon their lives every day. If you have something that you need, if somebody is sick, if a child needs to get into college or whatever it may be, you would go and find the relevant deity to make the offering to and you would believe that that would increase your chances of getting what you needed in life."
Rushdie, 58, understands India _ with its tense mix of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity _ from the inside out. As a child, he enjoyed asking his Muslim grandfather why he practiced a faith in which the prayer regime required him to spend so much time with his rear end higher than his head. Meanwhile, Rushdie's father was both an unbeliever and a Muslim historian.
After years of airing his doubts, the pre-teen iconoclast celebrated his own loss of faith with a symbolic culinary sin _ a ham sandwich. The fact that God did not strike him dead with a thunderbolt confirmed his newborn atheism.
As a writer, Rushdie said that he has always insisted on treating religion as a "normal part of life." Thus, his goal was "not to give it special treatment, not to hedge it around with the language of taboo and respect because that has always seemed, to me, to be anti-intellectual."
However, skeptics have their own way of avoiding the truth when dealing with intensely religious cultures, he said. Even writers who are unbelievers must realize that almost everyone in a land like India believes in one god or another and views life through the lens of that faith. Skeptical writers who refuse to accept this reality are practicing another form of intellectually dishonesty.
Rushdie does not, of course, believe writers should surrender their right to deal with religion in an irreverent or critical manner. However, he stressed that skeptics must be willing to doubt their own doubts and remain open to the possibility that the believers may, in some mysterious way, be right.
After all, he said, the real world is not completely realistic. Ordinary people believe in miracles and their beliefs are considered normal. Even in modern America, real life contains moments that are utterly surreal.
"So the sense that the miraculous and the mundane, that the supernatural and the everyday, coexist in a completely natural way, is everywhere," he said. "The idea that, somehow, these are separate categories of thing is quite alien. So if you are going to write about that world, you have to take cognizance of that fact. You have to recognize that this is how people think."
Ultimately, religious faith is one of the most powerful forces shaping the myths and stories that bind together families, nations and cultures, said Rushdie. In a free society, people are free to tell and interpret their own stories. Tyranny is when other people have the right to censure or kill the storytellers who they feel get out of line.
"We are, as human beings, storytelling animals," he insisted. "We are the only creature on the earth that tells itself stories in order to understand what it is and what its life means. Therefore the story is of unusual importance to us, whether we are writers or not. It is something unusually important to human nature."
From The Boston Globe:
When parents' values conflict with public schools
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist
OF THE FIVE candidates running to succeed Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts, all but one have chosen to send their children to private schools. Nothing wrong with that -- millions of parents would move their kids out of public schools tomorrow if they thought they could afford something better. For millions more, government schooling isn't an option in the first place: They would no sooner let the state decide what their children should learn than they would let it to decide whom they should marry.
In an interview this month, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, the only Republican in the race, explained why she and her husband picked a private school for their son and daughter. "I want my kids to be in an environment where they can talk about values," she said -- talk about values, that is, "in a way that you can't always do in a public school setting."
It's hard to see anything objectionable in Healey's words, but they triggered a broadside from Attorney General Thomas Reilly, a Democrat and the only gubernatorial candidate whose children all attended public schools.
Healey is "completely out of touch with the lives of regular people," he snapped. "Somehow the perception is that the kids in public schools are not learning the values that they should be learning. ..... Public schools reinforced the values of our home. ..... It was a wonderful experience." Those quotes appeared in The Boston Globe on April 17. Now consider a story that appeared three days later.
On April 20, in a story headlined "Parents rip school over gay storybook," the Globe reported on the latest controversy in Lexington, where school officials committed to normalizing same-sex marriage have clashed with residents who don't want homosexual themes introduced in class without advance parental notice. Last year, a Lexington father named David Parker complained to officials at the Joseph Estabrook Elementary School
about the "diversity" curriculum in his son's kindergarten class, which included pictures of families headed by gay and lesbian couples. Parker was arrested on trespassing charges when he refused to leave the school grounds without a promise that he would be alerted before similar lessons were taught in the future.
The latest incident, also at the Estabrook School, was triggered when a second-grade teacher presented to her class a storybook celebration of homosexual romance and marriage.
There is nothing subtle about "King & King," the book that Heather Kramer read to her students. It tells the story of Prince Bertie, whose mother the queen nags him to get married ("When I was your age, I'd been married twice already," she says), and parades before him a bevy of princesses to choose from. But Bertie, who says he's "never cared much for princesses," rejects them all. Then "Princess Madeleine and her brother, Prince Lee," show up, and Bertie falls in love at first sight -- with the brother. Soon, the princes are married. "The wedding was very special," reads the text. "The queen even shed a tear or two." Bertie and Lee are elevated from princes to "King and King," and the last page shows them exchanging a passionate kiss.
Dismayed by such blatant propagandizing, the parents of one student made an appointment to discuss their concerns with school officials. "This is a highly charged social issue," Robin and Robert Wirthlin told them. "Why are you introducing it in second grade?" Kramer said she had selected the book in order to teach a unit on weddings. When the Wirthlins checked the Lexington Public Library, they found 59 children's titles dealing with weddings, but "King & King" wasn't among them. The library's search engine listed it instead under "Homosexuality -- Juvenile fiction."
Massachusetts law requires schools to notify parents before "human sexuality issues" are taught in class and gives parents the right to exempt a child from that portion of the curriculum. But the Wirthlins' request to be given a heads-up before something as contentious and sensitive as same-sex marriage comes up in their child's class again was rejected out of hand.
"We couldn't run a public school system if every parent who feels some topic is objectionable to them for moral or religious reasons decides their child should be removed," Lexington's superintendent of schools, Paul Ash, told the Globe. "Lexington is committed to teaching children about the world they live in, and in Massachusetts same-sex marriage is legal." Reviewing "King & King" for the website Lesbian Life, Kathy Belge -- who describes herself as a longtime lesbian activist and the director of a queer youth program -- writes that it is "sure to capture a child's imagination" and praises it in particular for its nonjudgmental embrace of homosexuality: "The same-sex attraction is normalized. There's no proselytizing, no big lesson. It just is."
But homosexuality and gay marriage are not like subtraction or geography; they cannot be separated from questions of morality, justice, and decency. No matter how a school chooses to deal with sexual issues, it promotes certain values -- values that some parents will fervently welcome and that others will just as fervently reject. And what is true of human sexuality is true of other issues that touch on deeply felt religious, political, or ideological values.
When it comes to the education of children, there is always an agenda -- and those who don't share that agenda too often find themselves belittled, marginalized, or ignored. Perhaps it was true, as Thomas Reilly says, that the public schools his children attended "reinforced the values of our home." But as the Parkers and Wirthlins in Lexington can testify, other families have a very different experience. When Kerry Healey says she wants her children "to be in an environment where they can talk about values ..... in a way that you can't always do in a public school setting," many public-school parents will know exactly what she means.
When parents' values conflict with public schools
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist
OF THE FIVE candidates running to succeed Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts, all but one have chosen to send their children to private schools. Nothing wrong with that -- millions of parents would move their kids out of public schools tomorrow if they thought they could afford something better. For millions more, government schooling isn't an option in the first place: They would no sooner let the state decide what their children should learn than they would let it to decide whom they should marry.
In an interview this month, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, the only Republican in the race, explained why she and her husband picked a private school for their son and daughter. "I want my kids to be in an environment where they can talk about values," she said -- talk about values, that is, "in a way that you can't always do in a public school setting."
It's hard to see anything objectionable in Healey's words, but they triggered a broadside from Attorney General Thomas Reilly, a Democrat and the only gubernatorial candidate whose children all attended public schools.
Healey is "completely out of touch with the lives of regular people," he snapped. "Somehow the perception is that the kids in public schools are not learning the values that they should be learning. ..... Public schools reinforced the values of our home. ..... It was a wonderful experience." Those quotes appeared in The Boston Globe on April 17. Now consider a story that appeared three days later.
On April 20, in a story headlined "Parents rip school over gay storybook," the Globe reported on the latest controversy in Lexington, where school officials committed to normalizing same-sex marriage have clashed with residents who don't want homosexual themes introduced in class without advance parental notice. Last year, a Lexington father named David Parker complained to officials at the Joseph Estabrook Elementary School
about the "diversity" curriculum in his son's kindergarten class, which included pictures of families headed by gay and lesbian couples. Parker was arrested on trespassing charges when he refused to leave the school grounds without a promise that he would be alerted before similar lessons were taught in the future.
The latest incident, also at the Estabrook School, was triggered when a second-grade teacher presented to her class a storybook celebration of homosexual romance and marriage.
There is nothing subtle about "King & King," the book that Heather Kramer read to her students. It tells the story of Prince Bertie, whose mother the queen nags him to get married ("When I was your age, I'd been married twice already," she says), and parades before him a bevy of princesses to choose from. But Bertie, who says he's "never cared much for princesses," rejects them all. Then "Princess Madeleine and her brother, Prince Lee," show up, and Bertie falls in love at first sight -- with the brother. Soon, the princes are married. "The wedding was very special," reads the text. "The queen even shed a tear or two." Bertie and Lee are elevated from princes to "King and King," and the last page shows them exchanging a passionate kiss.
Dismayed by such blatant propagandizing, the parents of one student made an appointment to discuss their concerns with school officials. "This is a highly charged social issue," Robin and Robert Wirthlin told them. "Why are you introducing it in second grade?" Kramer said she had selected the book in order to teach a unit on weddings. When the Wirthlins checked the Lexington Public Library, they found 59 children's titles dealing with weddings, but "King & King" wasn't among them. The library's search engine listed it instead under "Homosexuality -- Juvenile fiction."
Massachusetts law requires schools to notify parents before "human sexuality issues" are taught in class and gives parents the right to exempt a child from that portion of the curriculum. But the Wirthlins' request to be given a heads-up before something as contentious and sensitive as same-sex marriage comes up in their child's class again was rejected out of hand.
"We couldn't run a public school system if every parent who feels some topic is objectionable to them for moral or religious reasons decides their child should be removed," Lexington's superintendent of schools, Paul Ash, told the Globe. "Lexington is committed to teaching children about the world they live in, and in Massachusetts same-sex marriage is legal." Reviewing "King & King" for the website Lesbian Life, Kathy Belge -- who describes herself as a longtime lesbian activist and the director of a queer youth program -- writes that it is "sure to capture a child's imagination" and praises it in particular for its nonjudgmental embrace of homosexuality: "The same-sex attraction is normalized. There's no proselytizing, no big lesson. It just is."
But homosexuality and gay marriage are not like subtraction or geography; they cannot be separated from questions of morality, justice, and decency. No matter how a school chooses to deal with sexual issues, it promotes certain values -- values that some parents will fervently welcome and that others will just as fervently reject. And what is true of human sexuality is true of other issues that touch on deeply felt religious, political, or ideological values.
When it comes to the education of children, there is always an agenda -- and those who don't share that agenda too often find themselves belittled, marginalized, or ignored. Perhaps it was true, as Thomas Reilly says, that the public schools his children attended "reinforced the values of our home." But as the Parkers and Wirthlins in Lexington can testify, other families have a very different experience. When Kerry Healey says she wants her children "to be in an environment where they can talk about values ..... in a way that you can't always do in a public school setting," many public-school parents will know exactly what she means.
From Philly.com:
'UNITED 93': THE CURE FOR PUSSYFOOTING
By Michael Smerconish
'UNITED 93" is a must.
And nothing you hear or read about it, including this, will fully prepare you for the experience. Go see this movie.
It's two hours that will strengthen our constitution as a nation for anything that we may confront in the war on terror. And exactly what we all need to watch on a regular basis to stay focused on eradicating those who threaten our freedom.
Going in, I was concerned about Hollywood's ability to tell the story without making a statement and was convinced that we'd already received a pretty good account of these events from both A&E ("Flight 93") and the Discovery Channel ("The Flight that Fought Back").
But writer/director Paul Greengrass deserves great credit. The man who directed "The Bourne Supremacy" filled an awfully tall order. Many were poised to blow the whistle if he got it wrong or distorted either memory or facts, but there appears to be universal acceptance of his final product.
In arguably the most politically charged environment in our history, he made a movie about a historical event in a manner devoid of politics. This is not a movie for only red or blue America, nor for either Fox News or CNN viewers, but for all Americans.
That is not to say that issues of ineptitude are swept under the rug. While the movie doesn't point fingers, it documents plenty of ill-equipped government actors and an abundance of chaos.
"United 93" is incredibly well- filmed and -scored. The jerky nature of the footage befits the events, and the sound that accompanies the imagery is just right. The reality that comes from the replica aircraft and actual locations used in filming is simply awesome.
Significantly, there are no stars. This isn't a movie about actors - it's an epic about American history and real Americans.
Heroic Americans. Random Americans. Men and women of various ages and walks of life. Thirty-three passengers and seven crew who defied four terrorists.
There are no standouts among the passengers, which is a good thing, too. While they bear identifying qualities that will ring true to their loved ones, their identities are not front and center, and a deliberate effort was made not to assert the personas of any of them. They are treated as equals.
And this movie will not become a motivational piece for radical Islam, another of my concerns before seeing it. While there was no effort to embellish what the passengers did, there was also no false treatment of the terrorists, nor exaggeration of their failure.
I also like that the movie is in real time. Flight 93 departed at 8:42 from Newark, N.J., bound for San Francisco on Sept. 11, 2001, four minutes before Flight 11 hit the North Tower. It ended up in a former strip mine in Shanksville, Pa., at 10:03 a.m. (20 minutes shy of Washington, D.C.). Accounting for pre-flight activities, that is about as long as you'll spend watching the events.
During that time, attention is paid not only to what was occurring in the fuselage, but also with the interplay between the FAA command center in Herndon, Va., and various control towers in Boston, New York, Cleveland, and SAG command in Rome, N.Y. While the gruesome nature of what occurred onboard is fully evident, there is no effort made to accentuate the violence of that day either on this airplane or any of the others.
One more thing, perhaps the most amazing.
This is a movie in which we all know the ending. And yet, the climax is still a suspenseful moment. Nothing can prepare you for actually seeing the events.
There were reportedly cries of "too soon" when a trailer was shown at the famed Grauman's theater in Hollywood, and similar concerns expressed on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Variety reported this week that while many men are anxious to see it, it's also registering a high percentage of "definitely not interested." Too bad. They need to know what they are missing.
Go watch it this weekend, when a portion of your admission will go to the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville. And be prepared for an unusual movie experience. In my case, it was a sur-real moment when I realized that I was seeing it with a local woman who bears the emotional scars of what happened that day.
Ellen Saracini, the widow of UA Flight 175 pilot Victor Saracini, whose flight was referenced time and again by the traffic controllers in "United 93," was there the same night as I was.
Suddenly, my popcorn seemed totally inappropriate.
'UNITED 93': THE CURE FOR PUSSYFOOTING
By Michael Smerconish
'UNITED 93" is a must.
And nothing you hear or read about it, including this, will fully prepare you for the experience. Go see this movie.
It's two hours that will strengthen our constitution as a nation for anything that we may confront in the war on terror. And exactly what we all need to watch on a regular basis to stay focused on eradicating those who threaten our freedom.
Going in, I was concerned about Hollywood's ability to tell the story without making a statement and was convinced that we'd already received a pretty good account of these events from both A&E ("Flight 93") and the Discovery Channel ("The Flight that Fought Back").
But writer/director Paul Greengrass deserves great credit. The man who directed "The Bourne Supremacy" filled an awfully tall order. Many were poised to blow the whistle if he got it wrong or distorted either memory or facts, but there appears to be universal acceptance of his final product.
In arguably the most politically charged environment in our history, he made a movie about a historical event in a manner devoid of politics. This is not a movie for only red or blue America, nor for either Fox News or CNN viewers, but for all Americans.
That is not to say that issues of ineptitude are swept under the rug. While the movie doesn't point fingers, it documents plenty of ill-equipped government actors and an abundance of chaos.
"United 93" is incredibly well- filmed and -scored. The jerky nature of the footage befits the events, and the sound that accompanies the imagery is just right. The reality that comes from the replica aircraft and actual locations used in filming is simply awesome.
Significantly, there are no stars. This isn't a movie about actors - it's an epic about American history and real Americans.
Heroic Americans. Random Americans. Men and women of various ages and walks of life. Thirty-three passengers and seven crew who defied four terrorists.
There are no standouts among the passengers, which is a good thing, too. While they bear identifying qualities that will ring true to their loved ones, their identities are not front and center, and a deliberate effort was made not to assert the personas of any of them. They are treated as equals.
And this movie will not become a motivational piece for radical Islam, another of my concerns before seeing it. While there was no effort to embellish what the passengers did, there was also no false treatment of the terrorists, nor exaggeration of their failure.
I also like that the movie is in real time. Flight 93 departed at 8:42 from Newark, N.J., bound for San Francisco on Sept. 11, 2001, four minutes before Flight 11 hit the North Tower. It ended up in a former strip mine in Shanksville, Pa., at 10:03 a.m. (20 minutes shy of Washington, D.C.). Accounting for pre-flight activities, that is about as long as you'll spend watching the events.
During that time, attention is paid not only to what was occurring in the fuselage, but also with the interplay between the FAA command center in Herndon, Va., and various control towers in Boston, New York, Cleveland, and SAG command in Rome, N.Y. While the gruesome nature of what occurred onboard is fully evident, there is no effort made to accentuate the violence of that day either on this airplane or any of the others.
One more thing, perhaps the most amazing.
This is a movie in which we all know the ending. And yet, the climax is still a suspenseful moment. Nothing can prepare you for actually seeing the events.
There were reportedly cries of "too soon" when a trailer was shown at the famed Grauman's theater in Hollywood, and similar concerns expressed on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Variety reported this week that while many men are anxious to see it, it's also registering a high percentage of "definitely not interested." Too bad. They need to know what they are missing.
Go watch it this weekend, when a portion of your admission will go to the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville. And be prepared for an unusual movie experience. In my case, it was a sur-real moment when I realized that I was seeing it with a local woman who bears the emotional scars of what happened that day.
Ellen Saracini, the widow of UA Flight 175 pilot Victor Saracini, whose flight was referenced time and again by the traffic controllers in "United 93," was there the same night as I was.
Suddenly, my popcorn seemed totally inappropriate.
From Opinion Journal:
United 93
The filmmakers got it right.
BY DAVID BEAMER
Thursday, April 27, 2006
The calendar says it's April 25, 2006. At noon, my wife, Peggy, and I are walking around Battery Park--near the Tribeca area--in New York. It is our first time. The flowers are blooming; kids are fishing; people boarding the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Kids are laughing and noisy. The sun is shining. The vendors are hawking T-shirts, pretzels and some "designer" wares. And just up the street there is a hole in the skyline and in the ground.
In the park, there is a memorial with walls standing tall. Walls filled with so many names of those who gave their all in the Atlantic in World War II. How fitting that the names are here to honor those who gave their lives to enable this fun, this laughter--on this sunny day. The sights and sounds of freedom continue.
Fast forward--it is 10:30 p.m., April 25. We have just seen a movie premiere at the fifth annual Tribeca Film Festival. A film festival that has done so much to energize and revitalize the city, its people and especially the area that has that hole in the skyline and in the ground. This year the movie that had its worldwide premiere at the festival is titled "United 93." It is about the day when the hole in the skyline of New York was made--the day when a hole was made in the side of the Pentagon near Washington, D.C.--the day when a hole was made in a quiet mountain meadow in Pennsylvania. The day that our nation was attacked; the day when the war came home--Sept. 11, 2001. The day our son Todd boarded United 93.
Paul Greengrass and Universal set out to tell the story of United Flight 93 on that terrible day in our nation's history. They set about the task of telling this story with a genuine intent to get it right--the actions of those on board and honor their memory. Their extensive research included reaching out to all the families who had lost loved ones on United Flight 93 as the first casualties of this war. And Paul and his team got it right.
There are those who question the timing of this project and the painful memories it evokes. Clearly, the film portrays the reality of the attack on our homeland and its terrible consequences. Often we attend movies to escape reality and fantasize a bit. In this case and at this time, it is appropriate to get a dose of reality about this war and the real enemy we face. It is not too soon for this story to be told, seen and heard. But it is too soon for us to become complacent. It is too soon for us to think of this war in only national terms. We need to be mindful that this enemy, who made those holes in our landscape and caused the deaths of some 3,000 of our fellow free people, has a vision to personally kill or convert each and every one of us. This film reminds us that this war is personal. This enemy is on a fanatical mission to take away our lives and liberty--the liberty that has been secured for us by those whose names are on those walls in Battery Park and so many other walls and stones throughout this nation. This enemy seeks to take away the free will that our Creator has endowed in us. Patrick Henry got it right some 231 years ago. Living without liberty is not living at all.
The passengers and crew of United 93 had the blessed opportunity to understand the nature of the attack and to launch a counterattack against the enemy. This was our first successful counterattack in our homeland in this new global war--World War III.
This film further reminds us of the nature of the enemy we face. An enemy who will stop at nothing to achieve world domination and force a life devoid of freedom upon all. Their methods are inhumane and their targets are the innocent and unsuspecting. We call this conflict the "War on Terror." This film is a wake-up call. And although we abhor terrorism as a tactic, we are at war with a real enemy and it is personal.
There are those who would hope to escape the pain of war. Can't we just live and let live and pretend every thing is OK? Let's discuss, negotiate, reason together. The film accurately shows an enemy who will stop at nothing in a quest for control. This enemy does not seek our resources, our land or our materials, but rather to alter our very way of life.
I encourage my fellow Americans and free people everywhere to see "United 93."
Be reminded of our very real enemy. Be inspired by a true story of heroic actions taken by ordinary people with victorious consequences. Be thankful for each precious day of life with a loved one and make the most of it. Resolve to take the right action in the situations of life, whatever they may be. Resolve to give thanks and support to those men, women, leaders and commanders who to this day (1,687 days since Sept. 11, 2001) continue the counterattacks on our enemy and in so doing keep us safe and our freedoms intact.
May the taste of freedom for people of the Middle East hasten victory. The enemy we face does not have the word "surrender" in their dictionary. We must not have the word "retreat" in ours. We surely want our troops home as soon as possible. That said, they cannot come home in retreat. They must come home victoriously. Pray for them.
Mr. Beamer is the father of Todd Beamer, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93.
United 93
The filmmakers got it right.
BY DAVID BEAMER
Thursday, April 27, 2006
The calendar says it's April 25, 2006. At noon, my wife, Peggy, and I are walking around Battery Park--near the Tribeca area--in New York. It is our first time. The flowers are blooming; kids are fishing; people boarding the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Kids are laughing and noisy. The sun is shining. The vendors are hawking T-shirts, pretzels and some "designer" wares. And just up the street there is a hole in the skyline and in the ground.
In the park, there is a memorial with walls standing tall. Walls filled with so many names of those who gave their all in the Atlantic in World War II. How fitting that the names are here to honor those who gave their lives to enable this fun, this laughter--on this sunny day. The sights and sounds of freedom continue.
Fast forward--it is 10:30 p.m., April 25. We have just seen a movie premiere at the fifth annual Tribeca Film Festival. A film festival that has done so much to energize and revitalize the city, its people and especially the area that has that hole in the skyline and in the ground. This year the movie that had its worldwide premiere at the festival is titled "United 93." It is about the day when the hole in the skyline of New York was made--the day when a hole was made in the side of the Pentagon near Washington, D.C.--the day when a hole was made in a quiet mountain meadow in Pennsylvania. The day that our nation was attacked; the day when the war came home--Sept. 11, 2001. The day our son Todd boarded United 93.
Paul Greengrass and Universal set out to tell the story of United Flight 93 on that terrible day in our nation's history. They set about the task of telling this story with a genuine intent to get it right--the actions of those on board and honor their memory. Their extensive research included reaching out to all the families who had lost loved ones on United Flight 93 as the first casualties of this war. And Paul and his team got it right.
There are those who question the timing of this project and the painful memories it evokes. Clearly, the film portrays the reality of the attack on our homeland and its terrible consequences. Often we attend movies to escape reality and fantasize a bit. In this case and at this time, it is appropriate to get a dose of reality about this war and the real enemy we face. It is not too soon for this story to be told, seen and heard. But it is too soon for us to become complacent. It is too soon for us to think of this war in only national terms. We need to be mindful that this enemy, who made those holes in our landscape and caused the deaths of some 3,000 of our fellow free people, has a vision to personally kill or convert each and every one of us. This film reminds us that this war is personal. This enemy is on a fanatical mission to take away our lives and liberty--the liberty that has been secured for us by those whose names are on those walls in Battery Park and so many other walls and stones throughout this nation. This enemy seeks to take away the free will that our Creator has endowed in us. Patrick Henry got it right some 231 years ago. Living without liberty is not living at all.
The passengers and crew of United 93 had the blessed opportunity to understand the nature of the attack and to launch a counterattack against the enemy. This was our first successful counterattack in our homeland in this new global war--World War III.
This film further reminds us of the nature of the enemy we face. An enemy who will stop at nothing to achieve world domination and force a life devoid of freedom upon all. Their methods are inhumane and their targets are the innocent and unsuspecting. We call this conflict the "War on Terror." This film is a wake-up call. And although we abhor terrorism as a tactic, we are at war with a real enemy and it is personal.
There are those who would hope to escape the pain of war. Can't we just live and let live and pretend every thing is OK? Let's discuss, negotiate, reason together. The film accurately shows an enemy who will stop at nothing in a quest for control. This enemy does not seek our resources, our land or our materials, but rather to alter our very way of life.
I encourage my fellow Americans and free people everywhere to see "United 93."
Be reminded of our very real enemy. Be inspired by a true story of heroic actions taken by ordinary people with victorious consequences. Be thankful for each precious day of life with a loved one and make the most of it. Resolve to take the right action in the situations of life, whatever they may be. Resolve to give thanks and support to those men, women, leaders and commanders who to this day (1,687 days since Sept. 11, 2001) continue the counterattacks on our enemy and in so doing keep us safe and our freedoms intact.
May the taste of freedom for people of the Middle East hasten victory. The enemy we face does not have the word "surrender" in their dictionary. We must not have the word "retreat" in ours. We surely want our troops home as soon as possible. That said, they cannot come home in retreat. They must come home victoriously. Pray for them.
Mr. Beamer is the father of Todd Beamer, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Interesting post here containing the premise that Bush's evangelicalism contributes to his lack of respect for conservative principles.
The Conservative Movement Dragged Down
By Bruce Bartlett
With George W. Bush's popularity down to just 33 percent in the latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, liberals like Paul Krugman are starting to salivate at the possibility of bringing down not only the Republican Party, but conservative ideas, as well. Conservatives, too, are becoming concerned about the prospect, and some now are looking to distance themselves from the looming Republican crack-up.
Those most concerned about this are conservatives old enough to remember when the conservative movement's attachment to the Republican Party was much more circumspect than it is today. They remember too well the viciousness of the Republican establishment's attacks on conservatives like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Although these men eventually became viewed as pillars of the party, it greeted them initially as wreckers.
Older conservatives also remember Richard Nixon, with whom they made a fateful alliance in 1968, even though they knew he was never really one of them. But the imperative of getting Democrats out of the White House and his electability caused them to unite behind him. In the end, Nixon proved a disaster for conservatives and the Republican Party, as well.
Now, some of the veterans of that era are starting to speak out, saying that Bush's mistakes may lead to a political defeat for Republicans and conservatives of Nixonian proportions. One of these is Jeffrey Hart, a longtime editor of National Review magazine and professor of English at Dartmouth College.
In a neglected article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Nov. 20, Hart blasted Bush. He is no conservative, Hart said, "but a right-wing ideologue who steers by abstractions in both foreign and domestic policy. ... As a conservative, I am seething with outrage at his performance."
On conservative grounds, Hart faults Bush for his positions on Iraq, Social Security, stem-cell research and tax policy. Their failure, Hart argues, lies in Bush's view of such issues in abstract terms that are not anchored in the traditional conservative concern for prudence, informed by the study of history and human nature. Hart concludes that Bush "doesn't have a conservative bone in his body."
In his new book, "The Making of the Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times" (ISI Books), Hart blames Bush's disconnect from historical conservatism on his evangelical Christianity. He cites an important analysis of this view by Wilfred McClay of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. Said McClay in a Feb. 23, 2005, speech, "Evangelism, by its very nature, has an uneasy relationship with conservatism."
That is because evangelism emphasizes the personal relationship between man and God, disconnected from doctrine and tradition. In short, it is diametrically opposed to the Catholic vision of Christianity, which many conservatives view as being much more compatible with the nature of philosophical conservatism because it is anchored in doctrine and tradition.
Consequently, Bush is too easily able to invoke God in support of whatever he has decided to do. To evangelicals, his understanding of God's word is as good as anyone else's, and so he is perfectly entitled to do so. They view the depth of his belief as the principal determinant of the genuineness of his vision, not whether it is well grounded in a proper understanding of biblical principles, logic and history.
Hart likens Bush to William Jennings Bryan, who had a similarly individualistic view of God that also appealed powerfully to those in America's heartland -- the so-called red states. But Bryan ultimately was a disaster for the Democratic Party, enabling the more secular Republicans to win in 1896, 1900 and 1908.
Another important critic of Bush is Georgetown University government professor George W. Carey, long one of the leading conservative intellectuals in America. Writing in the fall 2005 issue of Modern Age, the nation's most important conservative academic journal, Carey finds nothing conservative about Bush's policies. "To apply the word 'conservative' to Bush and his administration, as the media routinely does, not only is misleading, but also debases conservatism," he says.
Carey lambastes Bush for moving the Republican Party further away from conservative principles than it already was. He is appalled that Democrats are now able to argue, "not without substantial justification," to being the party of fiscal responsibility. Carey calls Bush's foreign policy "Wilsonianism on steroids" and argues that it would be strenuously opposed by conservative icons Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet and Richard M. Weaver.
Both Hart and Carey are disappointed by the younger generation of conservatives who run National Review and other conservative journals for subordinating conservatism to transitory politics. They believe that conservatives should maintain a healthy distance from the Republican Party, because the nature of politics necessarily involves compromise and reliance on leaders of dubious quality and motives. The conservative movement also gets dragged down when bad Republican leaders engineer political defeats for the party, as seems likely this fall.
Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate
The Conservative Movement Dragged Down
By Bruce Bartlett
With George W. Bush's popularity down to just 33 percent in the latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, liberals like Paul Krugman are starting to salivate at the possibility of bringing down not only the Republican Party, but conservative ideas, as well. Conservatives, too, are becoming concerned about the prospect, and some now are looking to distance themselves from the looming Republican crack-up.
Those most concerned about this are conservatives old enough to remember when the conservative movement's attachment to the Republican Party was much more circumspect than it is today. They remember too well the viciousness of the Republican establishment's attacks on conservatives like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Although these men eventually became viewed as pillars of the party, it greeted them initially as wreckers.
Older conservatives also remember Richard Nixon, with whom they made a fateful alliance in 1968, even though they knew he was never really one of them. But the imperative of getting Democrats out of the White House and his electability caused them to unite behind him. In the end, Nixon proved a disaster for conservatives and the Republican Party, as well.
Now, some of the veterans of that era are starting to speak out, saying that Bush's mistakes may lead to a political defeat for Republicans and conservatives of Nixonian proportions. One of these is Jeffrey Hart, a longtime editor of National Review magazine and professor of English at Dartmouth College.
In a neglected article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Nov. 20, Hart blasted Bush. He is no conservative, Hart said, "but a right-wing ideologue who steers by abstractions in both foreign and domestic policy. ... As a conservative, I am seething with outrage at his performance."
On conservative grounds, Hart faults Bush for his positions on Iraq, Social Security, stem-cell research and tax policy. Their failure, Hart argues, lies in Bush's view of such issues in abstract terms that are not anchored in the traditional conservative concern for prudence, informed by the study of history and human nature. Hart concludes that Bush "doesn't have a conservative bone in his body."
In his new book, "The Making of the Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times" (ISI Books), Hart blames Bush's disconnect from historical conservatism on his evangelical Christianity. He cites an important analysis of this view by Wilfred McClay of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. Said McClay in a Feb. 23, 2005, speech, "Evangelism, by its very nature, has an uneasy relationship with conservatism."
That is because evangelism emphasizes the personal relationship between man and God, disconnected from doctrine and tradition. In short, it is diametrically opposed to the Catholic vision of Christianity, which many conservatives view as being much more compatible with the nature of philosophical conservatism because it is anchored in doctrine and tradition.
Consequently, Bush is too easily able to invoke God in support of whatever he has decided to do. To evangelicals, his understanding of God's word is as good as anyone else's, and so he is perfectly entitled to do so. They view the depth of his belief as the principal determinant of the genuineness of his vision, not whether it is well grounded in a proper understanding of biblical principles, logic and history.
Hart likens Bush to William Jennings Bryan, who had a similarly individualistic view of God that also appealed powerfully to those in America's heartland -- the so-called red states. But Bryan ultimately was a disaster for the Democratic Party, enabling the more secular Republicans to win in 1896, 1900 and 1908.
Another important critic of Bush is Georgetown University government professor George W. Carey, long one of the leading conservative intellectuals in America. Writing in the fall 2005 issue of Modern Age, the nation's most important conservative academic journal, Carey finds nothing conservative about Bush's policies. "To apply the word 'conservative' to Bush and his administration, as the media routinely does, not only is misleading, but also debases conservatism," he says.
Carey lambastes Bush for moving the Republican Party further away from conservative principles than it already was. He is appalled that Democrats are now able to argue, "not without substantial justification," to being the party of fiscal responsibility. Carey calls Bush's foreign policy "Wilsonianism on steroids" and argues that it would be strenuously opposed by conservative icons Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet and Richard M. Weaver.
Both Hart and Carey are disappointed by the younger generation of conservatives who run National Review and other conservative journals for subordinating conservatism to transitory politics. They believe that conservatives should maintain a healthy distance from the Republican Party, because the nature of politics necessarily involves compromise and reliance on leaders of dubious quality and motives. The conservative movement also gets dragged down when bad Republican leaders engineer political defeats for the party, as seems likely this fall.
Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
From The Boston Globe:
The Boss jubilantly plays Seeger
By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff |
April 25, 2006
The older we get, the saying goes, the more like ourselves we become.
Even as a young rabble-rouser, Bruce Springsteen wrote songs that were,
at heart, quintessential evocations of America. With the passing years
the great American rocker has burrowed ever deeper into his country's
essential sounds and defining experiences: the fast-car fairy tales of
''Born to Run" turned to the working-class ruminations of ''The River"
and ''Nebraska," which grew pointed and political on ''Born in the
U.S.A."
Springsteen went on to sketch the death of the American dream on ''The
Ghost of Tom Joad," find a fierce, redemptive grace on the post-9/11
cycle ''The Rising," and fuse rustic arrangements with topical
narratives on last year's ''Devils & Dust."
So it comes as no surprise that Springsteen, at 56, would find himself
drawn to songs popularized by this century's foremost activist folk
singer: Pete Seeger. What is surprising is the positively jubilant
sound of Springsteen's first-ever collection of cover tunes. If we're
talking about freedom from oppression -- this is folk music, so we are
-- it seems that stepping outside of his oeuvre and into the public
domain has released Bruce Springsteen from the shackles of self-imposed
gravitas. While there's no denying the passion that fuels the artist's
increasingly (and understandably) sober commentary, there's nothing
like a hopeful tune to rally the masses.
Which is why ''We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" is neither a
lark nor a happy accident. Setting up an unrehearsed 14-piece orchestra
of washboard and banjo players, accordionists, fiddlers, and singers in
your living room goes a long way toward lassoing the sprawling, joyful
noise that fills the album, in stores today. (The ensemble will swell
to 17 for the tour, which rolls through the Garden May 27.) Inspired to
immerse himself in the folk hero's back catalog after recording this
album's title track for a 1997 Seeger tribute, Springsteen cut this
collection of protest songs, spirituals, outlaw ballads, minstrel
tunes, and sea shanties during three one-day sessions at his farmhouse
in New Jersey. The songs were recorded live -- horns in the hallway,
the Boss calling out chord changes as the tape rolls -- and each track
brims with the rambunctious, freewheeling spirit of an afternoon jam.
Given the 86-year-old Seeger's outspoken left-wing politics, one
imagines that Springsteen's album would be driven by commentary. And
there is some subtle sermonizing: in the rousing antiwar ballad ''Mrs.
McGrath" (where Springsteen can't resist changing the words ''King of
France" to ''King of America") the civil rights anthem ''Eyes on the
Prize," and ''We Shall Overcome," perhaps the most familiar protest
song in the world, fully Springsteenized here as a dense, measured
prayer. But mainly the album feels like summer camp. And lo and behold,
it turns out that hopped-up jamborees -- these tunes couldn't be more
different from Springsteen's recent repertoire of austere originals --
are the very sound of liberation.
''Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man/Washed his face with a fryin'
pan/combed his hair with a wagon wheel/And died with a toothache in his
heel," Springsteen hollers in the opening track, banjo plinking,
upright bass thumping, wife and friends harmonizing. That loping,
ramshackle energy sets the tone for the rest of this irrepressible
collection, which includes thigh-slapping renditions of ''Jesse James"
and ''John Henry," the grade-school staple ''Erie Canal," a blowsy New
Orleans-style take on beloved spiritual ''Jacob's Ladder," and the
deceptively perky Dust Bowl tale ''My Oklahoma Home." While
Springsteen's super-hootenanny-size arrangements are a far cry from
Seeger's simple settings, they're similarly defined by a deep, humble
affection for tradition.
Maybe that's why on his 21st album (which is being released as a
DualDisc with the usual behind-the-scenes footage and bonus tracks on
the DVD side), Springsteen sounds looser and freer than he has since he
was a young man, just beginning to discover his roots.
The Boss jubilantly plays Seeger
By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff |
April 25, 2006
The older we get, the saying goes, the more like ourselves we become.
Even as a young rabble-rouser, Bruce Springsteen wrote songs that were,
at heart, quintessential evocations of America. With the passing years
the great American rocker has burrowed ever deeper into his country's
essential sounds and defining experiences: the fast-car fairy tales of
''Born to Run" turned to the working-class ruminations of ''The River"
and ''Nebraska," which grew pointed and political on ''Born in the
U.S.A."
Springsteen went on to sketch the death of the American dream on ''The
Ghost of Tom Joad," find a fierce, redemptive grace on the post-9/11
cycle ''The Rising," and fuse rustic arrangements with topical
narratives on last year's ''Devils & Dust."
So it comes as no surprise that Springsteen, at 56, would find himself
drawn to songs popularized by this century's foremost activist folk
singer: Pete Seeger. What is surprising is the positively jubilant
sound of Springsteen's first-ever collection of cover tunes. If we're
talking about freedom from oppression -- this is folk music, so we are
-- it seems that stepping outside of his oeuvre and into the public
domain has released Bruce Springsteen from the shackles of self-imposed
gravitas. While there's no denying the passion that fuels the artist's
increasingly (and understandably) sober commentary, there's nothing
like a hopeful tune to rally the masses.
Which is why ''We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" is neither a
lark nor a happy accident. Setting up an unrehearsed 14-piece orchestra
of washboard and banjo players, accordionists, fiddlers, and singers in
your living room goes a long way toward lassoing the sprawling, joyful
noise that fills the album, in stores today. (The ensemble will swell
to 17 for the tour, which rolls through the Garden May 27.) Inspired to
immerse himself in the folk hero's back catalog after recording this
album's title track for a 1997 Seeger tribute, Springsteen cut this
collection of protest songs, spirituals, outlaw ballads, minstrel
tunes, and sea shanties during three one-day sessions at his farmhouse
in New Jersey. The songs were recorded live -- horns in the hallway,
the Boss calling out chord changes as the tape rolls -- and each track
brims with the rambunctious, freewheeling spirit of an afternoon jam.
Given the 86-year-old Seeger's outspoken left-wing politics, one
imagines that Springsteen's album would be driven by commentary. And
there is some subtle sermonizing: in the rousing antiwar ballad ''Mrs.
McGrath" (where Springsteen can't resist changing the words ''King of
France" to ''King of America") the civil rights anthem ''Eyes on the
Prize," and ''We Shall Overcome," perhaps the most familiar protest
song in the world, fully Springsteenized here as a dense, measured
prayer. But mainly the album feels like summer camp. And lo and behold,
it turns out that hopped-up jamborees -- these tunes couldn't be more
different from Springsteen's recent repertoire of austere originals --
are the very sound of liberation.
''Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man/Washed his face with a fryin'
pan/combed his hair with a wagon wheel/And died with a toothache in his
heel," Springsteen hollers in the opening track, banjo plinking,
upright bass thumping, wife and friends harmonizing. That loping,
ramshackle energy sets the tone for the rest of this irrepressible
collection, which includes thigh-slapping renditions of ''Jesse James"
and ''John Henry," the grade-school staple ''Erie Canal," a blowsy New
Orleans-style take on beloved spiritual ''Jacob's Ladder," and the
deceptively perky Dust Bowl tale ''My Oklahoma Home." While
Springsteen's super-hootenanny-size arrangements are a far cry from
Seeger's simple settings, they're similarly defined by a deep, humble
affection for tradition.
Maybe that's why on his 21st album (which is being released as a
DualDisc with the usual behind-the-scenes footage and bonus tracks on
the DVD side), Springsteen sounds looser and freer than he has since he
was a young man, just beginning to discover his roots.
Monday, April 24, 2006
Horatio Hornblower: The Duel
Watched the first episode of A&E's Hornblower series from the late 90s, and it was outstanding. I expected something along the lines of "Master and Commander," which it was, but the Hornblower film was at least as engaging as far as the writing and character development. The battle scenes were as harrowing, if not quite as graphic, as that of the motion picture as well.
Money quote:
(After the Revolution has begun and France has declared war on Great Britain.)
Capt. Pellew: Whatever mask he may hide behind, a Frenchman is still a Frenchman and we will beat him as we have always beaten him!
Watched the first episode of A&E's Hornblower series from the late 90s, and it was outstanding. I expected something along the lines of "Master and Commander," which it was, but the Hornblower film was at least as engaging as far as the writing and character development. The battle scenes were as harrowing, if not quite as graphic, as that of the motion picture as well.
Money quote:
(After the Revolution has begun and France has declared war on Great Britain.)
Capt. Pellew: Whatever mask he may hide behind, a Frenchman is still a Frenchman and we will beat him as we have always beaten him!
From pitchforkmedia.com
Bruce Springsteen
We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
[Sony; 2006]
Rating: 8.5
On paper, The Seeger Sessions seems like a terrible idea: traditional
American folksongs paid hyper-reverent homage by one of rock n'roll's
most earnest performers, an attempt to transform campfire songs into
sermons and anoint sweet, old, cord-cutting Pete Seeger high priest of
Americana. Instead, this collection-- consisting of songs Seeger has
sung, but none he's written-- is a boisterous, spirit-raising
throwdown, conjured by a 12-man band (guitar, harmonica, tuba, violin,
B3 organ, upright bass, banjo, piano, drums, accordion, trombone,
saxophone, trumpet, and more) and a pack of grinning backup singers.
Perhaps ironically, Bruce Springsteen-- one of America's most-adored
songsmiths-- is soaring high on a record full of tracks other people
wrote.
On The Seeger Sessions, Springsteen growls, warbles, groans, and gags,
sounding often like Tom Waits (check the scratchy, ominous vocals on
"Erie Canal") or later Bob Dylan. It's a stark contrast to Seeger's
crisp, clear pipes, and it reinvigorates a handful of ancient American
tracks. Like any good folk record, The Seeger Sessions tackles the
tangle of war, strife, poverty, and unrest, but does so without
sacrificing joy or release (really, the very reasons people began
singing in the first place). The resulting collection happily drowns
out echoes of Springsteen's underwhelming recent efforts, and just
might be the very best-- and loudest, and most inspiring-- album Bruce
has produced in more than a decade.
Embracing early E Street shuffle and ditching the solemnity of 2005's
Devils and Dust, The Seeger Sessions culls from a century of rich,
gritty Americana tradition, from bluegrass to country to rhythm and
blues to gospel, rock n'roll, Zydeco, Dixieland, and more. Springsteen
is an obvious descendent of folk tradition, but, as he writes in the
record's liner notes, this is "street corner music, parlor music,
tavern music, wilderness music, circus music, church music, gutter
music." Or: The Seeger Sessions is a party record.
Clawing through Seeger's considerable catalogue, Springsteen ultimately
selected a smart, varied, and cohesive smattering of songs, proving he
retains a deep and nuanced understanding of folk tradition. In a recent
New Yorker profile of Seeger, Springsteen talks about folk songs as
tools with potential to become "righteous implements when connected to
historical consciousness," and claims to have chosen this particular
repertoire because, "Everything I wanted, I found there."
Appropriately, Spingsteen's voice seems custom-made for tracks like "We
Shall Overcome", where his signature gravity spreads shivers, destined
to silence even the most jaded listeners with its convincing optimism.
Written in 1905, "Erie Canal" (sealed comfortably in the consciousness
of any kid born or raised in western New York), is ominous and
hypnotizing, with banjo picks punctuated by organs, strings, and an
unexpected Dixieland breakdown midway through-- it's not hard to
imagine whole arenas shouting, "Low bridge, everybody down!"
The gorgeously explosive "O Mary Don't You Weep" cracks open with
teasing fiddles, before horns and drums kick up and Springsteen's
throaty shouts are rounded out by a bevy of backing singers, organs
sliding in and out, a gloriously sloppy mélange of sound, as indebted
to New Orleans as it is to Newport. Springteen's voice is gravelly and
real, happily divorced from the overproduction and studio tweaking that
plagues his recent work, and perfectly in sync with his band's raucous,
gleeful pounding. Everyone here is loose and intoxicated, and nowhere
else is the record's quasi-live conceit (the record was made in three
day-long sessions, preceded by no rehearsals) as gloriously palpable.
Springsteen has a habit of folding current events into his songs
without ever being specific enough to limit a verse to a single time
and place. Unsurprisingly, that timelessness syncs up perfectly with
the centuries-old songs on The Seeger Sessions, and, if nothing else,
confirms that Bruce Springsteen was the right (and maybe only) person
for this particular gig. Less an exhumation than a celebration, The
Seeger Sessions is the best proof we've got that America's folksongs
are also our finest artifacts. It's all here: recipes, prayers,
promises, fears, hopes, and hollers.
-Amanda Petrusich, April 24, 2006
Bruce Springsteen
We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
[Sony; 2006]
Rating: 8.5
On paper, The Seeger Sessions seems like a terrible idea: traditional
American folksongs paid hyper-reverent homage by one of rock n'roll's
most earnest performers, an attempt to transform campfire songs into
sermons and anoint sweet, old, cord-cutting Pete Seeger high priest of
Americana. Instead, this collection-- consisting of songs Seeger has
sung, but none he's written-- is a boisterous, spirit-raising
throwdown, conjured by a 12-man band (guitar, harmonica, tuba, violin,
B3 organ, upright bass, banjo, piano, drums, accordion, trombone,
saxophone, trumpet, and more) and a pack of grinning backup singers.
Perhaps ironically, Bruce Springsteen-- one of America's most-adored
songsmiths-- is soaring high on a record full of tracks other people
wrote.
On The Seeger Sessions, Springsteen growls, warbles, groans, and gags,
sounding often like Tom Waits (check the scratchy, ominous vocals on
"Erie Canal") or later Bob Dylan. It's a stark contrast to Seeger's
crisp, clear pipes, and it reinvigorates a handful of ancient American
tracks. Like any good folk record, The Seeger Sessions tackles the
tangle of war, strife, poverty, and unrest, but does so without
sacrificing joy or release (really, the very reasons people began
singing in the first place). The resulting collection happily drowns
out echoes of Springsteen's underwhelming recent efforts, and just
might be the very best-- and loudest, and most inspiring-- album Bruce
has produced in more than a decade.
Embracing early E Street shuffle and ditching the solemnity of 2005's
Devils and Dust, The Seeger Sessions culls from a century of rich,
gritty Americana tradition, from bluegrass to country to rhythm and
blues to gospel, rock n'roll, Zydeco, Dixieland, and more. Springsteen
is an obvious descendent of folk tradition, but, as he writes in the
record's liner notes, this is "street corner music, parlor music,
tavern music, wilderness music, circus music, church music, gutter
music." Or: The Seeger Sessions is a party record.
Clawing through Seeger's considerable catalogue, Springsteen ultimately
selected a smart, varied, and cohesive smattering of songs, proving he
retains a deep and nuanced understanding of folk tradition. In a recent
New Yorker profile of Seeger, Springsteen talks about folk songs as
tools with potential to become "righteous implements when connected to
historical consciousness," and claims to have chosen this particular
repertoire because, "Everything I wanted, I found there."
Appropriately, Spingsteen's voice seems custom-made for tracks like "We
Shall Overcome", where his signature gravity spreads shivers, destined
to silence even the most jaded listeners with its convincing optimism.
Written in 1905, "Erie Canal" (sealed comfortably in the consciousness
of any kid born or raised in western New York), is ominous and
hypnotizing, with banjo picks punctuated by organs, strings, and an
unexpected Dixieland breakdown midway through-- it's not hard to
imagine whole arenas shouting, "Low bridge, everybody down!"
The gorgeously explosive "O Mary Don't You Weep" cracks open with
teasing fiddles, before horns and drums kick up and Springsteen's
throaty shouts are rounded out by a bevy of backing singers, organs
sliding in and out, a gloriously sloppy mélange of sound, as indebted
to New Orleans as it is to Newport. Springteen's voice is gravelly and
real, happily divorced from the overproduction and studio tweaking that
plagues his recent work, and perfectly in sync with his band's raucous,
gleeful pounding. Everyone here is loose and intoxicated, and nowhere
else is the record's quasi-live conceit (the record was made in three
day-long sessions, preceded by no rehearsals) as gloriously palpable.
Springsteen has a habit of folding current events into his songs
without ever being specific enough to limit a verse to a single time
and place. Unsurprisingly, that timelessness syncs up perfectly with
the centuries-old songs on The Seeger Sessions, and, if nothing else,
confirms that Bruce Springsteen was the right (and maybe only) person
for this particular gig. Less an exhumation than a celebration, The
Seeger Sessions is the best proof we've got that America's folksongs
are also our finest artifacts. It's all here: recipes, prayers,
promises, fears, hopes, and hollers.
-Amanda Petrusich, April 24, 2006
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas)
Bruce is loose in 'Seeger Sessions'
By ROBERT PHILPOT, STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
Bruce Springsteen may have earned his reputation through sprawling albums
and rip-roaring concerts, but as freewheeling as he might seem, it's been a
long time since he felt loose. In the studio, he's meticulous; onstage, he's
exciting, but his shows can feel produced and choreographed. His ad-libbed
lines, to paraphrase another veteran rocker, are well-rehearsed.
With We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, however, the Boss sounds more
uninhibited than he has since he crowded verses to their breaking point in
Rosalitamore than 30 years ago. Recorded in three one-off sessions in 2006,
2005 and 1997 (when Springsteen's participation in a Pete Seeger tribute
album initially aroused his interest in the influential folk
singer/activist), The Seeger Sessions revels in spontaneity. Springsteen
roars many of his vocals like he hasn't since Born in the U.S.A., only
occasionally dipping into the nasal affectations he uses when he wants to
get folky. He seems liberated, as if not writing his own words for this
album released him from the responsibility of Big Statements like The Rising
and Devils & Dust.
These words, for the most part, aren't Seeger's, either. Instead,
Springsteen follows the Seeger model of popularizing old folk songs, many of
them from the 19th century, and one traced to 1549 Scotland. In the late
'50s and early '60s, Seeger released a series of albums titled America's
Favorite Balladsto introduce old songs to new listeners. And it sounds less
like a studio album than it does a bunch of people getting together, having
a few beers, picking up their instruments and jamming and singing along.
Which is, basically, what it is.
The album was recorded with no overdubs at Springsteen and wife Patti
Scialfa's New Jersey farm, in a living room so crowded with musicians that
the horn section had to stand in the hallway.
In the liner notes, Springsteen writes that there were no rehearsals, and on
the DVD side of this DualDisc you can watch Springsteen and the musicians --
who, with the exception of E Street violinist Soozie Tyrell, the
Jersey-based Miami Horns and a few others, Springsteen had never met
before -- work out arrangements just before they start playing. The album
works best on the upbeat numbers, when the gang vocals on such songs as Oh
Mary Don't You Weep, Pay Me My Money Down and Jacob's Ladder give everything
a beer-hall atmosphere. But even softer stuff, such as My Oklahoma Home and
We Shall Overcome(the song that set Springsteen on the road to this
project), has that swinging feel.
Springsteen and the E Street Band work so well together that some fans
grimace at his less rock-oriented records, and as good as the more spare
Nebraska and Devils & Dust are, they're still the kind of albums people
admire more than they listen to. The Seeger Sessions band -- filled with
such atypical-for-Springsteen instruments as tuba, banjo, accordion and
multiple fiddles -- brings a sense of fun back to Springsteen's music. It's
all too easy to embalm traditional ballads like these, but The Seeger
Sessions infuses them and the man who sings them with new life.
Bruce Springsteen
We ShallOvercome:
The Seeger Sessions
Columbia
GRADE: A
Bruce is loose in 'Seeger Sessions'
By ROBERT PHILPOT, STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
Bruce Springsteen may have earned his reputation through sprawling albums
and rip-roaring concerts, but as freewheeling as he might seem, it's been a
long time since he felt loose. In the studio, he's meticulous; onstage, he's
exciting, but his shows can feel produced and choreographed. His ad-libbed
lines, to paraphrase another veteran rocker, are well-rehearsed.
With We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, however, the Boss sounds more
uninhibited than he has since he crowded verses to their breaking point in
Rosalitamore than 30 years ago. Recorded in three one-off sessions in 2006,
2005 and 1997 (when Springsteen's participation in a Pete Seeger tribute
album initially aroused his interest in the influential folk
singer/activist), The Seeger Sessions revels in spontaneity. Springsteen
roars many of his vocals like he hasn't since Born in the U.S.A., only
occasionally dipping into the nasal affectations he uses when he wants to
get folky. He seems liberated, as if not writing his own words for this
album released him from the responsibility of Big Statements like The Rising
and Devils & Dust.
These words, for the most part, aren't Seeger's, either. Instead,
Springsteen follows the Seeger model of popularizing old folk songs, many of
them from the 19th century, and one traced to 1549 Scotland. In the late
'50s and early '60s, Seeger released a series of albums titled America's
Favorite Balladsto introduce old songs to new listeners. And it sounds less
like a studio album than it does a bunch of people getting together, having
a few beers, picking up their instruments and jamming and singing along.
Which is, basically, what it is.
The album was recorded with no overdubs at Springsteen and wife Patti
Scialfa's New Jersey farm, in a living room so crowded with musicians that
the horn section had to stand in the hallway.
In the liner notes, Springsteen writes that there were no rehearsals, and on
the DVD side of this DualDisc you can watch Springsteen and the musicians --
who, with the exception of E Street violinist Soozie Tyrell, the
Jersey-based Miami Horns and a few others, Springsteen had never met
before -- work out arrangements just before they start playing. The album
works best on the upbeat numbers, when the gang vocals on such songs as Oh
Mary Don't You Weep, Pay Me My Money Down and Jacob's Ladder give everything
a beer-hall atmosphere. But even softer stuff, such as My Oklahoma Home and
We Shall Overcome(the song that set Springsteen on the road to this
project), has that swinging feel.
Springsteen and the E Street Band work so well together that some fans
grimace at his less rock-oriented records, and as good as the more spare
Nebraska and Devils & Dust are, they're still the kind of albums people
admire more than they listen to. The Seeger Sessions band -- filled with
such atypical-for-Springsteen instruments as tuba, banjo, accordion and
multiple fiddles -- brings a sense of fun back to Springsteen's music. It's
all too easy to embalm traditional ballads like these, but The Seeger
Sessions infuses them and the man who sings them with new life.
Bruce Springsteen
We ShallOvercome:
The Seeger Sessions
Columbia
GRADE: A
From The Philadelphia Inquirer:
The Boss, with a folkie political agenda
By Dan DeLuca, Inquirer Music Critic
There's good news, and there's bad news.
For years, Bruce Springsteen has promised to shed his deliberate,
perfectionist ways in the studio and start loosing more of his prodigious
output on his public. So the good news is that there's a new Springsteen
album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (Columbia ***), coming out
Tuesday, a mere 364 days after last year's Devils & Dust.
Therein, however, lies the rub. For while Joe and Jill Brucefan want more
music out of the Boss, what they really want is another E Street Band album,
a full-on follow-up to The Rising, Springsteen's much-praised 2002 song
cycle conceived in reaction to the 9/11 attacks.
The Seeger Sessions is most definitely not that. And that's what would seem
to be the bad news. Not only is Springsteen's 14th studio album not a
rocked-out and rowdy yang to Devils & Dust's sober and introspective yin,
it's not even an album of Springsteen songs.
In his 33-year career, Springsteen has often covered other artists on stage,
from Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love" to Jimmy Cliff's
"Trapped." But on a studio album, he's never before included a song he
didn't write.
The Seeger Sessions goes to the opposite extreme. It's a collection of 13
songs associated with - though strangely enough, not actually written by -
the 86-year-old banjo-picking folk-song popularizer Pete Seeger, a legend
who's revered more for the political content of his music than the music
itself.
The album grew out of Springsteen's performance of "We Shall Overcome," the
Baptist hymn adapted by Seeger that played a pivital role in the Civil
Rights movement, for a 1998 Seeger tribute album that was released on West
Chester's Appleseed Recordings.
So: no new Bruce songs, and no frolicking with Little Steven and the Big Man
onstage. Instead, a folkie album with a political agenda, full up with songs
you were forced to sing along with in elementary school or church, like
"Erie Canal" and "O Mary Don't You Weep."
And for good measure, "Froggie Went a-Courtin' " the anthropomorphic
Scottish folk tune from 1549 that was, unfortunately, not heard for the last
time when Bob Dylan croaked it on Good as I Been to You, his 1992 covers
album. It all sounds very good for you, but tough to swallow. Like castor
oil.
But that's where Seeger Sessions upends expectations. Because if the idea
sounds austere, the execution is anything but.
The political content is there, in songs such as the Irish antiwar ballad
"Mrs. McGrath," and the quietly reimagined "We Shall Overcome" - one of two
songs, along with "Jesse James," that date from Springsteen's original 1997
Seeger sessions. And when Springsteen sings the protest anthem "Eyes on the
Prize" in a determined, hopeful voice, it's hard not to read the lines "the
only thing I did was wrong / was stayin' in the wilderness too long" as a
reaffirmation of the partisan path he took spearheading the 2004 Vote for
Change tour.
Seeger Sessions, though, doesn't come off as pedantic or preachy, other than
in its occasionally forced efforts to spread a "folk music is fun" gospel.
The 13 songs were recorded in three one-day sessions at Springsteen's
central New Jersey home studio with a 14-piece band, including drums,
fiddles, Hammond B3 organ, trumpet, trombone, accordion, and washboard.
(Springsteen takes that band on the road, beginning with a show at the New
Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on April 30, and coming to the Tweeter
Center in Camden on June 20.)
With no rehearsal or overdubs, the music bangs and reels and shouts, a
hootenanny with a world-class showman at the helm. "I want a beer-drunk,
whiskey-drinking sound," Springsteen tells the troops, who include his wife,
Patti Scialfa, and violinist Soozie Tyrell, as well as Springsteen newbies
drummer Larry Eagle and tuba player Art Baron.
"When you're fumbling around, when opportunity and disaster are close at
hand," that's when there's a chance to create "something special,"
Springsteen says, in the 30-minute film on the DualDisc's worth-watching DVD
side.
Seeger Sessions applies that loosey-goosey leave-the-mistakes-in aesthetic
to songs that paint a vivid portrait of the complex, miscegenational mix
that makes up the deep roots of American popular music.
Some of these songs were carried by immigrants across the Atlantic. Some -
like the terrifically raucous, jazzy, all-hands-on-deck version of "O Mary
Don't You Weep" that's one clear highlight - have their roots in black
Pentecostal churches. And others, like the galloping "Old Dan Tucker" that
kicks off the album in high spirits, were done by blackface minstrel singers
in the 19th century.
Springsteen's intention with Seeger Sessions is to bring those ancient-story
songs back to full-blooded life. "You forget how great they were, you forget
all the life that's in them," he says on the DVD. "It gets lost because it
hasn't been recontextualized."
Despite all of that spirited recontextualization, I'm not sure how many
times in my life I'm going to want to hear "John Henry," and I know I don't
need to hear "Froggie Went a- Courtin' " ever again.
But for the most part, Springsteen gets the job done. And he does so
precisely because he didn't write any of the songs this time, and he's not
paired with the E Street Band. Charged merely with having a good time
playing music he cares passionately about, he isn't pressured to deliver a
major Springsteen-esque statement.
And unlike the last time Springsteen traveled off E Street to record
full-band albums - 1992's Human Touch and Lucky Town - the album succeeds
because he makes no effort to recreate the magisterial bar-band sound of his
erstwhile compatriots. Instead, the Seeger sessioneers expand his reach by
taking a left turn off E Street for a bumpy ride down a dirt road. It works
because, rather than give his fans what they want, he makes sure they get
what they need.
The Boss, with a folkie political agenda
By Dan DeLuca, Inquirer Music Critic
There's good news, and there's bad news.
For years, Bruce Springsteen has promised to shed his deliberate,
perfectionist ways in the studio and start loosing more of his prodigious
output on his public. So the good news is that there's a new Springsteen
album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (Columbia ***), coming out
Tuesday, a mere 364 days after last year's Devils & Dust.
Therein, however, lies the rub. For while Joe and Jill Brucefan want more
music out of the Boss, what they really want is another E Street Band album,
a full-on follow-up to The Rising, Springsteen's much-praised 2002 song
cycle conceived in reaction to the 9/11 attacks.
The Seeger Sessions is most definitely not that. And that's what would seem
to be the bad news. Not only is Springsteen's 14th studio album not a
rocked-out and rowdy yang to Devils & Dust's sober and introspective yin,
it's not even an album of Springsteen songs.
In his 33-year career, Springsteen has often covered other artists on stage,
from Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love" to Jimmy Cliff's
"Trapped." But on a studio album, he's never before included a song he
didn't write.
The Seeger Sessions goes to the opposite extreme. It's a collection of 13
songs associated with - though strangely enough, not actually written by -
the 86-year-old banjo-picking folk-song popularizer Pete Seeger, a legend
who's revered more for the political content of his music than the music
itself.
The album grew out of Springsteen's performance of "We Shall Overcome," the
Baptist hymn adapted by Seeger that played a pivital role in the Civil
Rights movement, for a 1998 Seeger tribute album that was released on West
Chester's Appleseed Recordings.
So: no new Bruce songs, and no frolicking with Little Steven and the Big Man
onstage. Instead, a folkie album with a political agenda, full up with songs
you were forced to sing along with in elementary school or church, like
"Erie Canal" and "O Mary Don't You Weep."
And for good measure, "Froggie Went a-Courtin' " the anthropomorphic
Scottish folk tune from 1549 that was, unfortunately, not heard for the last
time when Bob Dylan croaked it on Good as I Been to You, his 1992 covers
album. It all sounds very good for you, but tough to swallow. Like castor
oil.
But that's where Seeger Sessions upends expectations. Because if the idea
sounds austere, the execution is anything but.
The political content is there, in songs such as the Irish antiwar ballad
"Mrs. McGrath," and the quietly reimagined "We Shall Overcome" - one of two
songs, along with "Jesse James," that date from Springsteen's original 1997
Seeger sessions. And when Springsteen sings the protest anthem "Eyes on the
Prize" in a determined, hopeful voice, it's hard not to read the lines "the
only thing I did was wrong / was stayin' in the wilderness too long" as a
reaffirmation of the partisan path he took spearheading the 2004 Vote for
Change tour.
Seeger Sessions, though, doesn't come off as pedantic or preachy, other than
in its occasionally forced efforts to spread a "folk music is fun" gospel.
The 13 songs were recorded in three one-day sessions at Springsteen's
central New Jersey home studio with a 14-piece band, including drums,
fiddles, Hammond B3 organ, trumpet, trombone, accordion, and washboard.
(Springsteen takes that band on the road, beginning with a show at the New
Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on April 30, and coming to the Tweeter
Center in Camden on June 20.)
With no rehearsal or overdubs, the music bangs and reels and shouts, a
hootenanny with a world-class showman at the helm. "I want a beer-drunk,
whiskey-drinking sound," Springsteen tells the troops, who include his wife,
Patti Scialfa, and violinist Soozie Tyrell, as well as Springsteen newbies
drummer Larry Eagle and tuba player Art Baron.
"When you're fumbling around, when opportunity and disaster are close at
hand," that's when there's a chance to create "something special,"
Springsteen says, in the 30-minute film on the DualDisc's worth-watching DVD
side.
Seeger Sessions applies that loosey-goosey leave-the-mistakes-in aesthetic
to songs that paint a vivid portrait of the complex, miscegenational mix
that makes up the deep roots of American popular music.
Some of these songs were carried by immigrants across the Atlantic. Some -
like the terrifically raucous, jazzy, all-hands-on-deck version of "O Mary
Don't You Weep" that's one clear highlight - have their roots in black
Pentecostal churches. And others, like the galloping "Old Dan Tucker" that
kicks off the album in high spirits, were done by blackface minstrel singers
in the 19th century.
Springsteen's intention with Seeger Sessions is to bring those ancient-story
songs back to full-blooded life. "You forget how great they were, you forget
all the life that's in them," he says on the DVD. "It gets lost because it
hasn't been recontextualized."
Despite all of that spirited recontextualization, I'm not sure how many
times in my life I'm going to want to hear "John Henry," and I know I don't
need to hear "Froggie Went a- Courtin' " ever again.
But for the most part, Springsteen gets the job done. And he does so
precisely because he didn't write any of the songs this time, and he's not
paired with the E Street Band. Charged merely with having a good time
playing music he cares passionately about, he isn't pressured to deliver a
major Springsteen-esque statement.
And unlike the last time Springsteen traveled off E Street to record
full-band albums - 1992's Human Touch and Lucky Town - the album succeeds
because he makes no effort to recreate the magisterial bar-band sound of his
erstwhile compatriots. Instead, the Seeger sessioneers expand his reach by
taking a left turn off E Street for a bumpy ride down a dirt road. It works
because, rather than give his fans what they want, he makes sure they get
what they need.
From The Counterterrorism Blog:
Islamists’ message to Israel at New York City rally: "The mushroom cloud is on its way!"
By Steven Emerson
Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) Newswire - April 21, 2006 : The Queens-based Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS) held a rally yesterday outside of the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan. Members of the Islamic Thinkers Society are easily identified by their Khilafah flags and provocative signs as well as rhetoric against homosexuals, Jews, Christians, Danes and others, depending on the hot button issue at the moment. Yesterday's rally was held in response to Monday’s Tel Aviv bombing that killed 9 and injured scores. While carrying signs including “Islam will Dominate” with a picture of an Islamic flag over the White House, the small but loud group of men chanted threatening slogans (video of the rally will be posted on the Counterterrorism Blog soon):
Excerpts:
Leader (in Arabic): With our blood and our lives we will liberate al Aqsa!
[The rest also respond in Arabic:] With our blood and our lives we will liberate al Aqsa!
Israeli Zionists What do you say? The real Holocaust is on its way
Takbeer!
Response: Allahu Akbar!
Takbeer!
Response: Allahu Akbar!
Israeli Zionists, What do you say?
How many women have you raped today?
Israeli Zionists, What do you say?
How many children have you killed today?
Zionists, Zionists You will pay! The Wrath of Allah is on its way!
Israeli Zionists You shall pay! The Wrath of Allah is on its way!
The mushroom cloud is on its way! The real Holocaust is on its way!
We are not your average Muslims, We are the Muslims of Was al Sunnah
We will not accept the United Nations, they are the criminals themselves
They get paid by the Israeli and the US government to do their job.
We don’t recognize United Nations as a body
We only recognize Allah
Israel won’t last long… Indeed, Allah will repeat the Holocaust right on the soil of Israel
Takbeer!
Response: Allahu Akbar!
* * *
No wonder they call you sons of apes and pigs because that’s what you are.
We know many government services are watching us
Such as the FBI…CIA…Mossad, Homeland Security…
We know we are getting on their nerves
And so are you….
So we say the hell with you!
May the FBI burn in Hell
CIA burn in Hell
Mossad burn in Hell
Homeland Security burn in hell!!
Islam will dominate the world
Islam is the only solution
Islam will dominate the world
Islam is the only solution
Takbeer!
La ilaha il Allah, Muhammad-ur Rasool Allah
* * *
Another mushroom cloud, right in the midst of Israel!
Takbeer!! Allahu Akbar!
Islamists’ message to Israel at New York City rally: "The mushroom cloud is on its way!"
By Steven Emerson
Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) Newswire - April 21, 2006 : The Queens-based Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS) held a rally yesterday outside of the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan. Members of the Islamic Thinkers Society are easily identified by their Khilafah flags and provocative signs as well as rhetoric against homosexuals, Jews, Christians, Danes and others, depending on the hot button issue at the moment. Yesterday's rally was held in response to Monday’s Tel Aviv bombing that killed 9 and injured scores. While carrying signs including “Islam will Dominate” with a picture of an Islamic flag over the White House, the small but loud group of men chanted threatening slogans (video of the rally will be posted on the Counterterrorism Blog soon):
Excerpts:
Leader (in Arabic): With our blood and our lives we will liberate al Aqsa!
[The rest also respond in Arabic:] With our blood and our lives we will liberate al Aqsa!
Israeli Zionists What do you say? The real Holocaust is on its way
Takbeer!
Response: Allahu Akbar!
Takbeer!
Response: Allahu Akbar!
Israeli Zionists, What do you say?
How many women have you raped today?
Israeli Zionists, What do you say?
How many children have you killed today?
Zionists, Zionists You will pay! The Wrath of Allah is on its way!
Israeli Zionists You shall pay! The Wrath of Allah is on its way!
The mushroom cloud is on its way! The real Holocaust is on its way!
We are not your average Muslims, We are the Muslims of Was al Sunnah
We will not accept the United Nations, they are the criminals themselves
They get paid by the Israeli and the US government to do their job.
We don’t recognize United Nations as a body
We only recognize Allah
Israel won’t last long… Indeed, Allah will repeat the Holocaust right on the soil of Israel
Takbeer!
Response: Allahu Akbar!
* * *
No wonder they call you sons of apes and pigs because that’s what you are.
We know many government services are watching us
Such as the FBI…CIA…Mossad, Homeland Security…
We know we are getting on their nerves
And so are you….
So we say the hell with you!
May the FBI burn in Hell
CIA burn in Hell
Mossad burn in Hell
Homeland Security burn in hell!!
Islam will dominate the world
Islam is the only solution
Islam will dominate the world
Islam is the only solution
Takbeer!
La ilaha il Allah, Muhammad-ur Rasool Allah
* * *
Another mushroom cloud, right in the midst of Israel!
Takbeer!! Allahu Akbar!
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