From Libertas: a great review and a prime example why it is one of the finest sites on film.

Rocky Balboa

My hopes were very high. I’d been counting the days. Then the hours. Early this morning I woke when it was still dark, looked at the clock, thought “Five hours to Rocky Balboa…” and fell back asleep hoping I wouldn’t wake until it was time. As the lights dimmed and the trailers played I worried my expectations were too high. Then came the familiar music and the letters across the screen: ROCKY BALBOA. Then came Stallone himself looking every day his age. I looked in his eyes wondering what I’d find. But there he was. There was Rocky.

Gone was the superstar. Gone was the 80’s poser. In those eyes was the window of Rocky’s soul; the aging widower lumbering through life, living in the past and alone, except for a son he embarrasses and the eternally unpleasant Paulie. It is Stallone’s towering performance that makes it all work. It is by far his best work and worthy of an Oscar nomination. No false moments and none of that cutesy stuff that infected some of the later Rocky films. He is extraordinary and so is the film.

**Mild Spoilers nothing not in other reviews**

Is it a perfect picture? No, but it’s a perfect Rocky picture and the best of the sequels. With his Adrian long dead and managing a restaurant named after her, Rocky quietly suffers through life touring his past and telling his war stories to his customers. Then through a set of circumstance all-too believable post George Foreman, Rocky gets another shot at the title. And he grabs it. Why? Because he can’t believe the rest of his life is already set. Because he can’t believe this is it and all it’s ever gonna be.

Surrounded by lost souls, Rocky picks them up and brings them along with him. With his guileless sincerity, Rocky breaks through their cynicism and self-doubt to convince them if he can do it, so can they. It’s sincere in that old movie kind of way you sadly don’t see any more. The kind Jimmy Stewart and Spencer Tracy used to make. And it’s all pulled off thanks to Stallone’s quiet unabashed pitch-perfect performance.

It’s also Stallone’s story choices that work: What he chose to bring back and what he didn’t. Sure, Rocky wears the hat, but he doesn’t bounce the ball. And what is brought back is done subtiley: He works out in the familiar grey sweats, but no big deal’s made of it. He has a dog but Butkus is never mentioned. This makes all those things memories, even ghosts, and you feel the loss more. Even the famous music’s used sparingly. When Rocky most needs to get up and you’re expecting the music to lift him, it doesn’t. It’s Rocky who lifts Rocky — and that’s great filmmaking.

As Hollywood goes gaga over it’s latest unprofitable cynical look at everyday people and it’s latest morality tale warning us not to believe in anything, this $24 million movie will make millions in profit the old-fashioned way: by reminding us the world can be a lousy place but it’s still what we make of it, if we believe, not just in ourselves, but in something bigger than ourselves.

Rocky Balboa is unapologetically sentimental. It lacks the laziness of irony and the crutch of cynicism. It tells it’s story the hard way: through character and moments. Words and speeches few of today’s so-called stars could handle without sounding corny, Stallone pulls off masterfully. This is a film created to entertain and lift the human spirit. You leave the theatre believing you can do anything.

And you leave the theatre feeling the way only the movies can make you feel; the way only a great movie can make you feel: Exquisitely heartbroken. We’re gonna miss Rocky. But thanks to Stallone’s terrific script and performance Rocky didn’t fade stupidly as we thought he would after Rocky V. Instead, he blazes off seared forever in our memories the way we found him: Humble, not terribly bright, but infinitely wise. And never ever quitting on his stool.

I can’t wait to see this movie again, and can’t remember the last time I said that.

Note: Make sure to stay for the closing credits. Much has been made of the regular people copying Rocky at the top of those famous steps, but wait till after, or you’ll miss the last shot of Rocky Balboa you’re ever going to see. And it’s perfect.

Islam gets concessions; infidels get conquered

What they capture, they keep.

When they lose, they complain to the U.N.

By Raymond Ibrahim

RAYMOND IBRAHIM is a research librarian at the Library of Congress.

His book, "The Al Qaeda Reader," translations of religious texts and propaganda,

will be published in April.

December 5, 2006

IN THE DAYS before Pope Benedict XVI's visit last Thursday to the Hagia Sophia complex in Istanbul, Muslims and Turks expressed fear, apprehension and rage. "The risk," according to Turkey's independent newspaper Vatan, "is that Benedict will send Turkey's Muslims and much of the Islamic world into paroxysms of fury if there is any perception that the pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to Muslims." Apparently making the sign of the cross or any other gesture of Christian worship in Hagia Sophia constitutes such a sacrilege.

Built in the 6th century, Hagia Sophia — Greek for "Holy Wisdom" — was Christendom's greatest and most celebrated church. After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts from Arabs, Constantinople — now Istanbul — was finally sacked by Turks in 1453, and Hagia Sophia's crosses were desecrated, its icons defaced. Along with thousands of other churches in the Byzantine Empire, it was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets of Islam surrounding it in triumph. Nearly 500 years later, in 1935, as part of reformer Kemal Ataturk's drive to modernize Turkey, Hagia Sophia was secularized and transformed into a museum.

Protests aimed at keeping the pope out of Hagia Sophia rocked Istanbul right up to the morning of his visit to the site. Contrast that intolerance with the tolerance granted Muslims in regard to the Al Aqsa mosque — this time, an Islamic site in Jerusalem annexed by Judaism. Unlike the permanent Muslim desecration of Hagia Sophia, after Israel's victory in the 1967 war, the Jews did not deface or convert the mosque into a Jewish synagogue or temple, even though the Al Aqsa mosque is deliberately built atop the remains of the Temple Mount, the holiest site of Judaism and, by extension, an important site for Christians. Moreover, since reclaiming the Temple Mount, Israel has granted Muslims control over the Al Aqsa mosque (except during times of crises).

All this illustrates the privileged status that many Muslims expect in the international arena. When Muslims conquer non-Muslim territories — such as Constantinople, not to mention all of North Africa, Spain and southwest Asia — those whom they have conquered as well as their descendants are not to expect any apologies, let alone political or territorial concessions.

Herein lies the conundrum. When Islamists wage jihad — past, present and future — conquering and consolidating non-Muslim territories and centers in the name of Islam, never once considering to cede them back to their previous owners, they ultimately demonstrate that they live by the age-old adage "might makes right." That's fine; many people agree with this Hobbesian view.

But if we live in a world where the strong rule and the weak submit, why is it that whenever Muslim regions are conquered, such as in the case of Palestine, the same Islamists who would never concede one inch of Islam's conquests resort to the United Nations and the court of public opinion, demanding justice, restitutions, rights and so forth?

Put another way, when Muslims beat infidels, it's just too bad for the latter; they must submit to their new overlords' rules with all the attendant discrimination and humiliation mandated for non-Muslims. Yet when Islam is beaten, demands for apologies and concessions are expected from the infidel world at large.

Double standards do not make for international justice. Either territorial conquests are always unjust and should therefore be ameliorated through concessions, or else they are merely a manifestation of the natural order of things — that is, survival of the fittest.

If some Muslims wish to wage eternal jihad until Islam dominates the globe, they are only being true to Islam and its doctrines as they understand it. However, in that case, where the world is divided into two warring camps, Islam and Infidelity — or, in Islamic terms, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War — how can these Muslims expect any concessions from the international community? The natural conclusion of the view that "might makes right" is "to the victor go the spoils."

The fact that Turkey conquered Constantinople more than 500 years ago does not prevent the Turkish government from returning Hagia Sophia to Christendom today, which would undoubtedly be a great gesture. But of course that can never be. The Muslim world would undergo a "paroxysm of fury" if a Christian pope dares pray in the conquered church; what would the Muslim world do if Hagia Sophia were actually converted back to a church?

But perhaps Muslims cannot be blamed for expecting special treatment, as well as believing that jihad is righteous and decreed by the Almighty. The West constantly goes out of its way to confirm such convictions. By criticizing itself, apologizing and offering concessions — all things the Islamic world has yet to do — the West reaffirms that Islam has a privileged status in the world.

And what did the pope do in his controversial visit to Hagia Sophia? He refrained from any gesture that could be misconstrued as Christian worship and merely took in the sights of the museum. Moreover, when he was invited into the Blue Mosque nearby, he respectfully took off his shoes and prayed, eyes downcast, standing next to the the grand mufti of Istanbul like a true dhimmi — a subdued non-Muslim living under Islamic law and acknowledging Islamic superiority.

And therein is the final lesson. Muslims' zeal for their holy places and lands is not intrinsically blameworthy. Indeed, there's something to be said about being passionate and protective of one's own. Here the secular West — Christendom's prodigal son and true usurper — can learn something from Islam. For whenever and wherever the West concedes ideologically, politically and especially spiritually, Islam will be sure to conquer. If might does not make right, zeal apparently does.

Illegal Immigration: A Rich American's Game
By Froma Harrop

There's a popular game in America that goes, I'll cut your wages, but you don't cut mine. And the outsourcing of your factory job to China is a good thing, because it makes my paycheck go further at Wal-Mart. We hear this theme a lot in the debate over illegal immigration.

Consider the recent raids on Swift meat-processing plants. Federal agents arrested 1,187 illegal immigrants at facilities in six states. Mere hours later, economists warned that depriving the industry of illegal labor could raise hamburger prices.

Illegal immigration is usually presented as a win-win situation: Undocumented foreigners earn far more than they could back home. Consumers get a bargain.

Nowhere to be seen are America's working poor who get stomped on 13 different ways. They have to compete with illegal immigrants for jobs and housing. Low-skilled natives and legal immigrants also end up subsidizing the undocumented because they tend to live in the same communities, which must provide hospitals, police, schools and garbage pickup.

Who doesn't suffer from illegal immigration? For starters, the people who write about it. I speak of the journalism profession, which has the habit of covering the issue by anecdotes. Reporters thrive on sympathetic stories about illegal immigrants who work hard and go to church.

But, were a busload of illegals from Australia to turn up at their newspaper and offer reportage at 10 percent below the going rate, the writers would call the authorities so fast that your head would spin. And the publisher's argument that thanks to the cheap Australians, he's able to trim a few cents off the newsstand price would make no impression.

As it turns out, the meat-processing companies that employ so many illegal immigrants have been enjoying a nearly 50-percent discount on what was the going rate. In 1980, the average meat-processing job paid $19 an hour. The companies then moved their plants to rural areas, far from the Midwest cities and their unions. The industry's wages now average about $9 an hour.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce likes to wail about the "labor shortage." It says there aren't enough chambermaids, dishwashers, etc. to work for its members at lousy wages. Odd, but when there's a shortage of labor -- or anything else -- doesn't the price of it go up? The price of unskilled labor in the United States hasn't gone up. It's gone down. Because of immigration, American-born high-school dropouts experienced a 5-percent loss in wages during the '80s and '90s, according to a study by Harvard economist George Borjas.

For some reason, the job of keeping prices low has fallen entirely on the shoulders of the most vulnerable Americans. If we banged down CEO compensation and sliced lawyers' pay by a third, the same thing would happen. Everyone's prices would drop. The corporation could sell its products for less, and the cost of legal services would fall.

No vocation keeps a tighter lid on immigration than the medical profession. "If we let in 100,000 immigrant doctors," Richard Freeman, another Harvard economist, recently told a group of journalists, "everyone in this room would benefit." Except the American doctors.

Suggest a U.S. labor policy that depresses professional pay as a means of keeping prices in check, and you get laughed out of the room. But say that sitting on the wages of unskilled factory workers stems inflationary pressure -- a frequently made argument -- and the PhDs quietly nod in agreement.

And that's how the game is played. High pay for me. Low pay for you. The folks at the economic bottom are obviously not making the rules.

fharrop@projo.com

From National Review Online:

The Sixth Coming of Rocky
Stallone returns to his religious roots.

By John J. Miller

Watching all six rounds of the Rocky epic from start to finish — the first five are available in a new DVD anthology and the sixth reaches movie theaters today — takes more than ten hours. Those who go the distance may want to leap up and declare, as Rocky does at the end of Rocky II, “Yo, Adrian! I did it!”

The images of Sylvester Stallone’s character as he trains for his sport and battles the likes of Apollo Creed (played by Carl Weathers), Clubber Lang (Mr. T), and Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) are instantly memorable. The scene of Rocky running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to the magnificent music of Bill Conti, must rank as one of the most stirring ever recorded on film.

Despite this familiarity, probably only a few die-hard movie buffs will remember that the very first person that viewers see in the very first Rocky movie isn’t anyone who wears golden gloves — but rather someone who explains the golden rule. That initial scene begins with a picture of Jesus on a wall in an old church that’s been converted into a gym. Then the camera pans down to Rocky and Spider Rico punching each other in a ring. In the background hangs a sign: “Resurrection A.C.,” as in “Resurrection Athletic Club.”

That’s called symbolism, folks, and in a series of interviews to promote Rocky Balboa, the new movie, Stallone has reminded listeners of this beginning and told them about his newfound Catholic faith. “I wanted to signal that this man will make a journey,” he said at a recent event in Washington, D.C. (Stallone not only has starred in each of the six Rocky movies, but he has written them as well — and that first screenplay has been ranked among the best ever.)

And now Rocky Balboa is being pitched specifically to religious audiences. Check out this website, for instance — or Stallone’s interview with Catholic Digest, or his dialogue with Focus on the Family and the Christian culture blog Thought Quotient.

“I really wanted to end the series on this note,” said Stallone in Washington. “I ended it badly in Rocky V. I was in a different place. I wasn’t feeling spiritual at the time. I wasn’t going to church. I was doing it all on my own. See how I do it on my own? Not very good!”

Rocky V, which was released in 1990, is widely considered the worst in the series. At the box office, it earned a pittance compared to earlier ones. “I felt so guilty that I had let everyone down and let my lifestyle ruin Rocky,” said Stallone. “I started to pray more.”

Stallone credits his faith with helping him get the Rocky series — and his life — back on track. “This thing is a spiritual journey,” he said, referring to the seven years it took for him to convince a studio to get behind Rocky Balboa. “I believed it was destined to have a final sendoff that would leave people with hope.”

He also wanted to film it before he grew much older: Stallone recently turned 60. In this sixth and presumably final installment, Rocky comes out of retirement for a final exhibition match. His determination recalls that of George Foreman, who got back in the ring and captured his second heavyweight title at the age of 45.

Stallone, the man of reborn faith, has a new slogan: “The church is the gym of the soul.” In this audio interview, Stallone explains that he knows a lot about exercise, and then expands: “You need help, you need a trainer, you need to go to a gym and you need guidance. You cannot train yourself. And I feel the same way about Christianity and I feel the same way about what the church is — the church is the gym of the soul. And the priests, the reverends, the ministers, and the pastors are the trainers. They are the ones that guide you.”

He continues: “People say ‘I can do it on my own. I can have a one-on-one relationship with god.’ Well, it isn’t quite the same, it isn’t the same. I found that out the hard way. ... The more I go to church and the more I turn myself over to the process of believing in Jesus and listening to His word and having him guide my hand, I feel as though the pressure’s off me now. ... You put in the time, you will reap the benefits.”

Want to put in the time for one more Rocky flick? Rocky Balboa is a solid piece of big-screen entertainment — not nearly as good as that first film and derivative in key ways, but a story that nevertheless holds its own.

The Rocky films are not religious movies. The new one, however, is clearly a movie made by a man of faith. You don’t have to be a churchgoer to appreciate it, though moviegoers who also attend church will find that parts of it resonate with them in agreeable ways. Crosses hang from necks and stand in cemeteries. Spider Rico returns, this time as a Bible-quoting hanger-on. (Before Balboa’s final match, Spider reads from Zechariah 4:6.) Then there’s Rocky, who crosses himself in the ring and, in one of his rough-hewn soliloquies, asks a question that Jesus might pose, if He were from the streets of working-class Philly and wanted to make a point about God’s love: “Why you gotta owe somethin’ to get somethin’?”

From The Los Angeles Times:
Hitler's Mideast helpers
Arabs were cheerleaders and enablers of the Final Solution.

December 20, 2006

MAHMOUD Ahmadinejad has an impeccable sense of timing. Just a week after the Iraq Study Group recommended a heart-to-heart with him, the president of Iran convened a conference in Tehran to examine whether the Holocaust really occurred. The answer from such "scholars" as David Duke, the notorious former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, was a resounding no.

On one level, Ahmadinejad's embrace of Holocaust denial might seem surprising. A man who has repeatedly called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" surely has no problem with the murder of Jews. You might expect him to adopt the position espoused by the Egyptian newspaper Al Akhbar, which a few years ago ran an editorial praising Adolf Hitler ("of blessed memory") and complaining only that "his revenge on [the Jews] was not enough."

Or you might expect Ahmadinejad to take the far more common line in the Muslim world, which is to admit that, sure, some Jews died, but it was a lot fewer than 6 million and, anyway, what's the big deal? A lot of Gentiles died too. What makes these Yids so special? This is the position taken by Arab "moderates" such as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose doctoral dissertation pooh-poohed the figure of 6 million dead Jews ("no one can verify this number") while expressing great concern that "the German people sacrificed 10 million" — implying that the killers suffered more than their victims.

Ahmadinejad does not hide behind such equivocations. He flatly calls the Holocaust a myth. But he is hardly a model of consistency. At the same time that he denies the Holocaust, Iran's president claims that Israel was established by the Europeans as penance for … the Holocaust. But why atone for something that didn't occur? Never mind. Ahmadinejad says that "if the Europeans are honest" in their claims about the Holocaust, "they should give some of their provinces in Europe … to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe."

This is the crux of the matter. In Ahmadinejad's view, shared by countless others across the Middle East, whatever the Nazis did is no business of theirs, so why inflict the "Zionist entity" on their region? It is only a small step from this position to claiming that Israel's destruction is justified.

POINTLESS though it may be to argue with a madman, it is worth noting that Muslims were not as blameless in the genocide of the Jews as Ahmadinejad and his ilk would have it. Arabs were, on a small scale, cheerleaders and enablers of the Final Solution. The most famous example was Haj Amin Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem (and uncle of Yasser Arafat), who took refuge in Berlin in World War II. A rabid Nazi, he personally lobbied Hitler to kill as many Jews as possible and even helped out by recruiting Bosnian Muslims to serve in the Waffen SS.

Robert Satloff, one of the world's smartest Arabists, reveals other links between the Arabs and the Holocaust in his groundbreaking new book, "Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach Into Arab Lands." He shows how the Nazis set up the machinery of death in North Africa. Although "only" 4,000 to 5,000 Jews died before the Allies liberated the area in 1943, many more were consigned to forced labor camps in hellish conditions.

"Arabs played a role at every level," Satloff wrote. "Some went door to door with the Germans, pointing out Jews for arrest. Others led Jewish workers on forced marches or served as overseers at labor camps."

The picture is not entirely one-sided because, although most Arabs were either apathetic or sympathetic to the Nazis, a small number helped their Jewish neighbors. Satloff uncovered lost tales of "righteous Gentiles," such as the wartime rulers of Morocco and Tunisia. And on the whole, he found that Arabs behaved no worse under German occupation than did Europeans.

But that isn't saying much because almost every country on the Continent was heavily complicit in the extermination of their Jewish populations. Satloff's research makes a mockery of Ahmadinejad's protestations that the Holocaust — if it occurred! — was someone else's responsibility. Individual Muslims were complicit in the horrors of the 1940s, even if, under foreign rule, they were not the primary culprits.

Even worse, while Europe has disowned its terrible history, the Nazis continue to be glorified in the Middle East. ("Mein Kampf" is a perennial bestseller in the region.) Nowhere else in the world is Holocaust denial so prevalent. Ahmadinejad deserves thanks for calling the world's attention to this pervasive sickness.

From The Chicago Sun-Times:

Reagan ranch corrals heroic memories
By John O'Sullivan

December 19, 2006

Last Friday I was standing on a mountain behind Santa Barbara on the California coastline looking out on some of the most beautiful landscape in America. High in the Santa Ynez hills is Ronald Reagan's Rancho del Cielo that from 1981 to 1989 doubled as the Western White House. I was there as the guest of the Young America's Foundation, which purchased the ranch and, with the help of generous donations from loyal Reaganites, has lovingly restored the ranch house and the property.

One of the benefits of writing a book is that you get to travel on a book tour. If you love America, as I have since I first came here as an English schoolboy in 1949, you relish the chance to see more of this vast land and to meet more of its open-hearted people. I had been asked by the YAF to speak over lunch at their Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara on the topic of my new book: The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister. This is an account of how Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher together brought about the peaceful collapse of the Soviet empire and changed the world.

Half the audience had not been born when the Soviets were invading Afghanistan, when OPEC was quadrupling world oil prices, when American hostages were languishing in Tehran, and when the West was in headlong retreat. The other half had voted for Reagan because he promised to reverse these defeats and, still more important, to dispell the "malaise" of despair that characterized not America but the Carter administration and that largely explained its helplessness. He kept his promises too. Hence the fascination of the younger generation with the Gipper and his two great allies. If they had vanquished these greater evils 20 years ago, what lessons could we learn from them in defeating the evils that today threaten America and the West?

There are many answers to this question. But one answer is that Reagan and Thatcher would not have allowed the genocidal ravings of Iran's President Ahmadinejad to go unanswered. They would have addressed the Iranian people directly as decent people not represented by their political leaders but instead oppressed by them. Our present political leaders need to be as frank and as principled.

They also need to be hopeful. All of my three heroes -- Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II -- vanquished evil with a smile and on generous terms. They believed in the moral superiority and popular appeal of freedom as well as in its practical benefits. They offered Poland and the other "captive nations" the prospect of eventual liberation through peaceful strategies of cultural and political resistance. They gave Solidarity the weapons of politics -- money, radios, cell phones, faxes -- to achieve their liberation. And they won. We need to offer the Iranians the same hope and the same weapons.

When my talk was over, I was introduced to John Barletta who had been Reagan's Secret Service detail and who remained with the president in retirement. His moving account of the public and private Ronald Reagan has been published under the title Riding with Reagan. He gave me a copy, a preview of my visit to the Reagan Ranch -- and the assurance I would understand Reagan better when I saw how he had lived and wanted to live.

"Architecture is frozen music," said Goethe. It's also frozen politics. When you see Hitler's retreat, gazing down from the heights on the villages below, you glimpse his megalomania.

The architecture of the Reagan ranch, by contrast, is hardly architecture at all. The ranch is a simple farm structure -- a low-roofed ranch house with a veranda and a paved courtyard. Reagan carved out the wooden fences from trees he had felled himself and paved the courtyard with stones he had broken with his own hands for exercise. Inside the ranch-house is larger than you expect, but very practical, domestic and comfortable at all points, with only the occasional presidential symbol or photograph of Queen Elizabeth or Mikhail Gorbachev to remind you that it is not really a regular working farm.

Reagan did not choose a house on a high bluff, looking down on either the mountains or sea. This is no "Eagle's Nest" or "Wolf's Lair." Instead, the house is situated in a hollow and looks out on a small lake with a hill rising behind it. One can imagine a small rancher sitting out on his veranda after a hard day of riding, watching the twilight arrive and setting aside his book. Indeed, that was Reagan's day whenever he could snatch time from Washington or later in retirement. He rode around his 600 acres, cleared brush, cut down trees, fell asleep over a book and occasionally entertained distinguished celebrities.

He was distressed when it rained so hard for a visit by Queen Elizabeth that they could not ride around his estate as they had ridden around Windsor Park. She said never mind, the weather made her feel "at home." Also, the president was too polite to tell Gorbachev that he was wearing his Stetson back to front.

Eventually, the day arrived when, after a near accident, Reagan could no longer ride safely. Mrs. Reagan hadn't the heart to tell him that he would have to give up his hobby of 55 years. Barletta was asked to do so: "Knowing him like I did and understanding what horseback riding meant to him, I felt like I was telling someone I don't think he should breathe anymore. I was now practically in tears. He got up and put his hands on my shoulders and said, 'It's OK, John. I know.' That was it. We never rode again. We never talked about it. He could see how upset I was, and he was trying to make me feel OK. That was the kind of guy he was. ..."

And because Reagan was that kind of guy, he could reach the hearts of people in prison camps and palaces around the world and win them over to his side. That's statecraft because it's soulcraft.

From the blog Betsy's Page:

The "specious vacuity" of Jimmy Carter

The Examiner takes on what it calls the "specious vacuity" of Jimmy Carter and his new book equating Israeli efforts to defend itself against terrorists with apartheid.

The ridiculosity underlying Carter’s book is his assertion that Israel is imposing apartheid on the Palestinians by such measures as constructing the West Bank fence intended to keep suicide bombers and other terrorists from crossing into Israel to kill and maim.

Carter clearly doesn’t care that Israel remains the sole true democracy in the Middle East and affords Arabs living within its borders voting rights and economic privileges unknown anywhere else in the region.

To classify anti-terrorist measures as forms of apartheid is to indicate a complete lack of understanding of the reality facing Israel every day.

In pursuit of this thesis, Carter has been willing to twist facts, although his onetime aide has blown the whistle on Carter's shoddy research.

Since Carter’s book appeared, it has sparked heavy and unrelenting criticism from thoughtful people across the political spectrum, as well as the resignation of Dr. Ken Stein, one of the nation’s most respected Middle East scholars, from a Carter-led academic institute at Emory University.

At the root of Carter’s Middle Eastern perspective, of course, is his unalloyed blindness toward the Palestinians in particular and the political Muslim world’s long-running antipathy towards Jews. It is that blindness that prevents him, as The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Goldberg noted in a recent review in The Washington Post, from recognizing and accounting for “the fact that the Arabs who surround Israel have launched numerous wars against it, all meant to snuff it out of existence.”

But policy blindness is at least understandable. What is not is Carter’s intellectual dishonesty, as described by Stein in his recent letter of resignation: Carter’s latest tome is “replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions and simply invented segments.” Stein further claims that “aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book.”

Carter seems to think that he is above such criticism so he doesn't have to respond. He avoids meetings when he'd have to debate and defend his book.

Meanwhile, he maintains that any critics of his book are either blinded by the Israeli lobby or are misguided Jews. Jacob Laksin takes up this charge in an article looking at Carter.

In interviews about his book, Carter has seldom missed an opportunity to invoke what he calls the “powerful influence of AIPAC,” with the subtext that it is the lobbying group, and not his slanderous charges about Israel, that is mainly responsible for mobilizing popular outrage over Palestine. In a related line of defense, Carter has singled out “representatives of Jewish organizations” in the media as the prime culprits behind his poor reviews and “university campuses with high Jewish enrollment” as the main obstacle to forthright debate about his book on American universities.

Unless, of course, if that university is Brandeis and wants him to debate his book with Alan Dershowitz. In that case, Carter isn't interested in speaking before a university audience with a large Jewish enrollment.

However, in contrast to his bashing of AIPAC, Laksin points out how much money that Carter and his organizations have received from Arab contributors.

Especially lucrative have been Carter’s ties to Saudi Arabia. Before his death in 2005, King Fahd was a longtime contributor to the Carter Center and on more than one occasion contributed million-dollar donations. In 1993 alone, the king presented Carter with a gift of $7.6 million. And the king was not the only Saudi royal to commit funds to Carter’s cause. As of 2005, the king’s high-living nephew, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, has donated at least $5 million to the Carter Center.

Meanwhile the Saudi Fund for Development, the kingdom’s leading loan organization, turns up repeatedly on the center’s list of supporters. Carter has also found moneyed allies in the Bin Laden family, and in 2000 he secured a promise from ten of Osama bin Laden's brothers for a $1 million contribution to his center. To be sure, there is no evidence that the Bin Ladens maintain any contact with their terrorist relation. But applying Carter’s own standard, his extensive contacts with the Saudi elite must make his views on the Middle East suspect.

High praise for Carter’s work -- and not inconsiderable financial support -- also comes from the United Arab Emirates. In 2001, Carter even traveled to the country to accept the Zayed International Prize for the Environment, named for Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the late UAE potentate and former president-for-life. Having claimed his $500,000 purse, Carter enthused that the “award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan al-Nahyan.” Carter also hailed the UAE as an “almost completely open and free society” -- a surreal depiction of a rigidly authoritarian country where the government handpicks a select group of citizens to vote and strictly controls the editorial content of the newspapers and where Islamic Shari’a courts judge “sodomy” punishable by death. (To appreciate the depth of Carter’s cynicism, one need only compare his gushing encomia to the emirates with his likening of Israel, the most modern and democratic country in the entire Middle East, with the racist “apartheid” of South Africa.)

The list of his Arab contributors goes on and on. I'd like to see the next TV interviewer talking to Carter about his book read this list and then ask him how he maintains objectivity about Israel while raking in money from Arab countries who hate Israel. And, that intrepid interviewer could also remind audiences of Carter's long, enthusiastic embrace of Yasser Arafat and Palestinian terrorists.

Although Carter had championed Arafat as a committed peacemaker since his presidency, in the face of ample evidence to the contrary, his apologies for the terrorist chieftain became particularly shameless in the 1990s. When Arafat and his PLO backed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, thereby loosing the support and -- more important for the corrupt Arafat -- the funding of neighboring Sunni Arab powers, Carter embarked on a Middle East publicity tour to revive Arafat’s diminishing fortunes. As recorded by Carter biographer Douglas Brinkley, “together [Carter and Arafat] strategized on how to recover the PLO’s standing in the United States.” In desperation, Carter turned up in Saudi Arabia on what Brinkley called “essentially a fund-raising mission for the PLO,” pleading with King Fahd to restore Arafat to the Saudi dole.

Now that Arafat’s Fatah has been replaced with Hamas, Carter has again proven himself a reliable ally of Palestinian extremism. Scarcely had the terrorist group ascended to power last January than Carter launched a media blitz urging the United States to circumvent its own laws against financing terrorism in order to fund Hamas. As the New York Times put with exquisite finesse, Carter called on Western nations to "redirect their relief aid to United Nations organizations and nongovernmental organizations to skirt legal restrictions” -- that is, to launder money to a terrorist group. When American policymakers declined to heed his advice, and Israel proved unwilling to bankroll the enemy seeking its destruction, Carter promptly denounced the both countries for their “common commitment to eviscerate the government of elected Hamas.”

One positive from Carter's despicable book is that he is now being exposed as the mediocrity many have always thought him to be. Prominent Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi are shunning him. I predict that Michael Moore will have to find another Democratic big wig to offer him seating at the 2008 Democratic convention. Jimmy Carter will no longer be a featured dignitary even in his own party.

Pictured: William Hanna (left) and Joseph Barbera with Tom and Jerry.

Toon giant Barbera dies

Hanna-Barbera founder created 'Flintstones,' 'Jetsons'

By RICHARD NATALE, MICHAEL SCHNEIDER

Joseph Barbera, who with William Hanna founded powerhouse animation factory Hanna-Barbera, creator of legendary TV gems as "The Flintstones" and "The Jetsons," died of natural causes at his home Monday. He was 95.

Barbera and Hanna (who died in 2001) won seven Oscars (for the "Tom and Jerry" cartoon series at MGM) early in their careers, and later earned eight Emmys as the duo set about defining TV animation.

The animation legends had mostly retired from the business by 1991, when Turner Broadcasting purchased Hanna-Barbera from owner Great American Broadcasting in order to launch the Cartoon Network.

Time Warner purchased Turner in 1996, and its Warner Bros. Animation arm absorbed the remaining Hanna-Barbera assets in 2001. But the Hanna-Barbera name lives on, as toons first created under Hanna's and Barbera's watch continue to be revived on both the small screen and in features.

Born March 24, 1911, in New York City, Barbera was educated at New York U.'s American Institute of Banking. He first worked as an accountant and, after selling his first cartoon to Colliers, was a freelance magazine cartoonist. He joined MGM as a story man in 1937, about a month after Hanna had come to the studio. The two soon were collaborating on projects. In 1939 they came up with the battling cat and mouse known as Tom and Jerry.

"We asked ourselves, what would be a normal conflict between characters provoking comedy while retaining a basic situation from which we could continue to generate fresh plots and stories," Hanna once explained. "We almost decided on a dog and a fox." The first Tom & Jerry toon, "Puss Gets the Boot," received an Oscar nomination for cartoon short in 1940.

Over the next two decades, under producer Fred Quimby, 113 "Tom and Jerrys" were produced, yielding 12 Oscar nominations and seven Oscars for "Yankee Doodle Mouse" (1943), "Mouse Trouble" (1944), "Quiet Please!" (1945), "The Cat Concerto" (1946), "The Little Orphan" (1948), "Two Mouseketeers" (1951) and "Johann Mouse" (1952).

Tom and Jerry also made appearances in MGM feature films including "Dangerous When Wet" and "Anchors Aweigh."

MGM promoted Barbera and Hanna to producers in 1955, but TV was taking its toll on movies, and the duo were ordered to dismiss their animators shortly thereafter. Refusing, they asked to be released from their contracts and, in July 1957 founded their own company, Hanna-Barbera Prods., to cater to the burgeoning television market.

To keep up with the rapid pace of television, they used "limited animation" (or "planned animation"), a technique invented by United Producers of America. Consisting of simplified actions, limited backgrounds, closeups and reusable stock footage, they were able to reduce the number of drawings per minute of animation from 1,000 to about 300.

This allowed them to deliver programming on a weekly basis, starting with "Ruff and Ready" on NBC in December 1957 -- six-minute segments to wrap around classic Columbia Pictures cartoons. Their first series was "The Huckleberry Hound Show," which began in syndication in 1958 and featured such characters as Yogi Bear, Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinx. In 1960, the show won an Emmy.

More importantly, what "Huckleberry" and his friends launched was a lucrative children's merchandising line of products, which generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues.

Since Huckleberry also promoted breakfast cereal, it seemed logical that in 1959, Kellogg would sponsor "Quick Draw McGraw" and his sidekick Baba Louie. Other characters included Snooper and Blabber, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy.

Yogi Bear got his own show in 1961, to be joined by Snagglepuss, Yakky Doodle and, eventually, Magilla Gorilla, Wally Gator and Jabberjaw.

In 1960, Hanna-Barbera created another milestone, "The Flintstones," the first primetime animated sitcom, on ABC. The show was dismissed by critics, and owed more than a nod to Jackie Gleason's "The Honeymooners." But it was a major ratings hit, running in primetime until 1966 and in syndication ever since.

The series spawned millions of dollars in merchandising, including vitamins and cereals, spinoffs, specials, even feature films like "'The Man Called Flintstone." In 1994, Universal produced a live-action feature film based on the series that was a worldwide blockbuster, grossing $400 million.

"The Flintstones" remained the longest-running primetime animated show in history, until "The Simpsons" took over that title in the mid-1990s.

"Top Cat" went primetime on ABC in 1961 and lasted a season. "The Jetsons" followed a year later and also ran in primetime for a year, before moving to Saturday mornings where it stayed for a decade (and also eventually spawned a feature-length film, albeit animated). Other nighttime HB offerings were "The Adventures of Jonny Quest" in 1964, "Where's Huddles?" in 1970 and "Wait Till Your Father Gets Home" in 1972.

Their daytime output was even more impressive: By the end of the decade HB Prods. was supplying a third of the major networks' 18 hours of animated fare.

The output of new characters never stopped, continuing with Penelope Pitstop, Motormouse, Wacky Races, Autocat and Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines (for which Hanna wrote the theme song, "Stop That Pigeon").

In the late '60s, HB resurrected "Tom and Jerry," toning down the violence for TV, and created loosely adapted literary classics such as "The Three Musketeers," "The Adventures of Gulliver" and "Around the World in 79 Days." They also dipped into live-action with "The Banana Splits Adventure Hour," "Danger Island" and "The New Adventures of Huck Finn."

Their biggest success of the period was the animated "Scooby Doo, Where are You?," a supernatural whodunit featuring a cowardly Great Dane.

Starting in 1970, HB Prods. adapted live-action films and series and spun them off into children's animation, including "Butch Cassidy," "Laverne and Shirley," Fonz and the "Happy Days" gang and "Mork and Mindy." They also created shows around the "Flintstones" characters like Dino, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm.

Always adaptable, HB met with great success bringing the comicstrip "The Smurfs" to animation as well as videogame "Pac Man."

In addition to series, HB created specials, including musical versions of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" (the latter won an Emmy in 1967). ABC After School Special "The Last of the Curlews" won an Emmy in 1972.

Hanna-Barbera returned to the theatrical market with full-length animated feature "Charlotte's Web" in 1973, based on E.B. White's children's classic, and "Heidi's Song" in 1982. Both used full animation techniques.

HB's live-action work includes the made-for-TV "Hardcase," "Shootout in a One Dog Town," "KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park" and "Belle Star," all in the 1970s.

Barbera also exec produced 1977's Emmy-winning telepic "The Gathering."

In the mid-1980s the duo created an entire series of animated tales, "The Greatest Adventure: Stories From the Bible." As they moved into the 1990s, there was "Wake, Rattle & Roll," "Fender Bender 500" and "Monster Tails." They even launched their own retail stores.

Hanna-Barbera Prods. was purchased by Taft Broadcasting in 1966, but Hanna and Barbera continued to oversee the 800-plus employees for the decades that followed. In 1988, Taft was absorbed by Great American Broadcasting, and Barbera was named president.

In 1994, Hanna and Barbera were inducted into the TV Academy Hall of Fame.

By the time Turner took over Hanna-Barbera in the 1990s, Hanna and Barbera were no longer actively involved. The duo continued as figureheads, however, until the end of the decade. By the time of Hanna's death, the Hanna-Barbera nameplate had been retired for new development.

The massive Hanna-Barbera library lives on, however, on cable nets including Cartoon Network and its classic toon spinoff, Boomerang.

Barbera is survived by his wife and three children.

From Libertas, a great movie blog, a take on the first Rocky film:

Rocky - (1976) - Spielberg and Lucas are often the ones given credit with ushering in the blockbuster era and ending the Easy Rider/Mean Streets era. And it’s hard to argue with that. But Rocky should get some of the credit as well because it’s a really a hybrid of the two. Its Mean Streets roots are obvious in both its setting and cast of seedy characters. But Rocky’s a hero, not an anti-hero. He’s guileless and decent and realizes the American dream. It’s not a film about disillusionment. It’s a film about hope and love and what makes America unique in the history of the world: That your fate lies within you, not within the system.

That this little million dollar picture enchanted a nation plagued by Watergate, Vietnam, recession, and a decade of films that called the American dream a lie, is no surprise in retrospect. It was an antidote to cynicism. It was unironic. It was sentimental and sweet. And it reminded us that winning didn’t matter. But going the distance was everything.

A remarkable, scrappy little film with perfect performances and a formula that would carry it another thirty years. Not always successfully, but hopefully it will bookend successfully. Rocky Balboa is a story that did burn in Stallone. One he had to tell to send this character properly off into the forevermore. And that’s something Rocky and those of us who love him deserve. So, I’ll be there hoping to be awashed in nostalgia and longing for that unique ache only movies can deliver. That ache you sit there with after the lights come up because you know a part of your life is over. Rocky is gone. But not dead. Because when you get to missing him, he’s right there on DVD. Immortal and ready for a visit.

Man, I love movies.

Pictured: The religion of peace playing another of its versions of three-card-monte.

From Rod Dreher's blog, Crunchy Con:
More on Separationism

Lawrence Auster notes this blog's discussion of his idea that the West must separate itself from Islam, for its own self-defense. Earlier, I'd written that I more or less accept his first four premises:

1. Islam is a mortal threat to our civilization.

2. But we cannot destroy Islam.

3. Nor can we democratize Islam.

4. Nor can we assimilate Islam.

...but I can't get to the conclusion:

Therefore the only way to make ourselves safe from Islam is to separate ourselves from Islam.

I acknowledged in my earlier post that I can't reach that conclusion in part because I don't want it to be true -- and that if that's my prime reason, it's intellectually indefensible. Wanting something to be true, or untrue, doesn't make it so. I'm still thinking about it, because the premise of Auster's that I wrestle with is No. 4, which holds that Islam cannot be assimilated. I doubt it can, but I hope it can, because if not, I see no reason why Auster's conclusion is wrong.

At the Dallas Morning News the other day, our editorial board received a delegation from the local Muslim community. They came in large part to complain about editorial coverage of the community, which is to say they came mostly to complain about me. Which is fine: they accurately recognize that I don't believe their claims that they are completely innocent of radicalism, and are wholly victims of irrational fear of Muslims. Once again, I came away from a meeting with them even more convinced of my views in this regard. I recorded the entire meeting, and hope to have the time in the next week or so to post lengthy excerpts. In summation, though, the group was defensive, evasive, and wouldn't give a straight answer to simple questions.

I asked the delegation's leader to clarify something he'd said to me and some colleagues last time we met, about his belief that homosexuals should be killed, adulterous women stoned, etc. He launched an elaborate defense of this position, saying that Judaism and Christianity are against homosexuality. Yes, I said, but they don't require that gays be killed for being gay. Do you believe that they should? An imam jumped in to explain why the sharia is right to require hand-chopping of thieves. Later, the delegation's leader said that if I'm asking him to apologize for what his religion requires, he's not going to do it.

Trying to get at the heart of the matter, I asked if they thought sharia should be the law of the land in our secular pluralistic democracy. Another round of long-winded answers, amounting to, "It would never happen here." That's not what I'm asking, I said; should it happen here. Someone explained that Muslim community would never be big enough in this country to make that happen. Which is, of course, entirely beside the point, but we moved on. I had my answer.

The group complained that the DMN editorial page picked out small faults in the Muslim community locally, and highlighted them. Among their complaints: our editorial criticizing the Dallas Central Mosque for stocking anti-Jewish, anti-Christian hate literature in its library. And the Dallas Central Mosque's teaching the violent, revolutionary, jihad-promoting writing of Sayyid Qutb to its teenagers. Members of the group said Qutb was an "obscure" writer who had some good ideas for improving Islam, but had some fringe ideas. They tried to portray him as a marginal oddball. Which is b.s. -- Osama bin Laden has cited Qutb as his spiritual godfather, and his work is at the intellectual center of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is no small thing that the largest mosque in Texas is having its teenagers read Qutb's work. One of my colleagues, a reporter who covered the British subway bombings when he was stationed in London, said to the group that he'd visited Islamic bookstores, and discovered Qutb's books and other Islamic extremist literature there on the shelves -- and this was where the subway bombers and radicalized Islamist youth in Britain were getting their ideas.

The group rejected the implications of this, with someone even suggesting that it was the West's fault that these youth were becoming radicalized.

And so forth. The conclusion I drew from this meeting is that the Muslim community's leaders here will not accept any criticism, no matter how legitimate, considering it to be bigoted. They will not admit to any radicalism going on in their community, and try to minimize it, even as it goes on. They said we were wrong to criticize the DCM's imam for turning up at a "Tribute to the Great Islamic Visionary, The Ayatollah Khomeini." Which is just nuts.

I don't want to think ill of the Muslim community in Dallas, or anywhere. But like I said, wanting to believe something does not make it true. Oh, and it was instructive to hear from this group that the adulteresses in the Prophet's time asked to be stoned to death. The Prophet was apparently doing them a favor. Wonderful.

What I keep seeing from these meetings is an attempt -- a sincere attempt -- to mau-mau the media into ignoring disturbing things going on in the American Muslim community. By all means we should cover the good stuff. The group the other day kept making the point, "You focus on the few bad things, and ignore all the good things." But charitable works don't somehow make it okay to include hate literature against Christians and Jews in your mosque, and certainly don't make it un-newsworthy. Being kind to others doesn't obviate concerns over what kind of fanatical jihad literature you're teaching to your teenagers. I do believe that most of the American media are unwilling to give this kind of thing the scrutiny it deserves. I'm pleased that my editorial board does not give them a free pass, and is not willing to turn a blind eye to this sort of thing -- even though it does cast into doubt the idea that Islam can be assimilated into American life.

It would help the case made by men and women like those of the delegation if instead of engaging in denial and trying to make journalists feel like heels for even raising questions, they would deal with them straight on. But to do that, I suspect, would amount to conceding that Islam, as they understand it, is incommensurate with basic American values.

From The Chicago Sun-Times:

And merry Xmas to you all
BY MARK STEYN

I passed through Shannon Airport in Ireland the other day. They've got a "holiday" display in the terminal, but guess what? It says "Merry Christmas." The Emerald Isle has a few Jews, and these days rather a lot of Muslims, and presumably even a militant atheist or two, but they don't seem inclined to sue the bejasus out of every event in the Yuletide season.

By contrast, the Associated Press reports the following from Riverside, Calif.:

"A high school choir was asked to stop singing Christmas carols during an ice skating show featuring Olympic medalist Sasha Cohen out of concern the skater would be offended . . . "

I hasten to add this Sasha Cohen is not the Sacha Baron Cohen of the hit movie ''Borat.'' The Olympic S. Cohen is a young lady; the Borat S. Cohen is a man, though his singlet would not be out of place in a louche Slav entry to the ice-dancing pairs. Likewise, the skater-puts-carols-on-ice incident seems as sharply satirical of contemporary America as anything in ''Borat,'' at least in its distillation of the coerciveness of "tolerance":

"A city staff member, accompanied by a police officer, approached the Rubidoux High School Madrigals at the Riverside Outdoor Ice Skating Rink just as they launched into 'God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen' and requested that the troupe stop singing . . . "

The cop and the staffer -- "special-events employee Michelle Baldwin" -- were not acting on a complaint from the celebrity skater. They were just taking offense on her behalf, no doubt deriving a kinky vicarious thrill at preventing a hypothetical "hate crime." The young miss is Jewish, and so they assumed that the strains of "Merry Gentlemen" wafting across the air must be an abomination to her. In fact, if you go to sashacohen.com, you'll see the headline: "Join Sasha On Her Christmas Tree Lighting Tour." That's right, she's going round the country skating at Christmas tree lighting ceremonies. Christmas tree lighting ceremonies accompanied by singers singing Christmas music that uses the C word itself -- just like Sasha does on her Web site.

Nonetheless, the Special Events Commissar and her Carol Cop swung into action and decided to act in loco Cohenis and go loco. Many of my fellow pundits find themselves fighting vainly the old ennui when it comes to the whole John Gibson "War On Christmas" shtick, but I think they're missing something: The idea of calling a cop to break up the singing of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" would strike most of the planet as insane. The Rubidoux High School Madrigals should have riposted by serenading the officer with the beloved Neal Sedaka classic, "Oh, Fool, I Am But A Carol" (I quote from memory).

Now it's true there are Jews who don't dig Christmas. There was some story out of Seattle the other day about a rabbi who objected to the "holiday trees" at the airport and threatened a lawsuit unless they also put up an eight-foot menorah. So the airport goes, "Oh, dear, you're threatening a lawsuit? OK, we'll take down the trees." And in an instant the trees were history. Not "history" in the sense of a time-honored tradition legitimized by its very antiquity. But "history" in the sense of the contemporary American formulation of something you toss in the landfill in the interests of "diversity."

So then the rabbi and his lawyer are reeling under a barrage of negative publicity and suddenly it's their chestnuts being roasted on the open fire. "Whoa," they say. "Why are we the bad guys? We love Christmas trees. What made you think we had anything against Christmas trees? Just cuz we threatened to launch a gazillion-dollar lawsuit? What could be more American than that?" In Newsweek, Rabbi Marc Gellman managed to miss the point and deplored the "cowardly response" of the airport. But what "cowardly response"? Instead of going to court and almost certainly losing, they raised the stakes, put the plaintiffs on the defensive and forced them to call off the dogs. The "holiday trees" are now back.

Everyone who knows Rabbi Bogomilsky says he's an affable fellow, he doesn't want to Scrooge up anybody's Christmas, he's an all-around swell guy. No doubt. But in the week when the president of Iran hosts an international (and well-attended) Holocaust Denial Convention (which simultaneously denies the last Holocaust while gleefully anticipating the next one), this rabbi thinks it's in the interests of the Jewish people to take legal action against "holiday" decorations at Seattle Airport? Sorry, it's not the airport but the plaintiff who's out of his tree. An ability to prioritize is an indispensable quality of adulthood, and a sense of proportion is a crucial ingredient of a mature society.

This isn't about religion. Jesus is doing just fine in the United States. Forty years of ACLU efforts to eliminate God from the public square have led to a resurgent, evangelical and politicized American Christianity unique in the Western world. What the rabbi in Seattle and the cops in Riverside are doing is colluding in an assault on something more basic: They're denying the possibility of any common culture. America is not a stamp collection with one of each. It's an overwhelmingly Christian country with freedom of religion for those who aren't. But it's quite an expansion of "freedom of religion" to argue that "those who aren't" are entitled to forbid any public expression of America's Christian inheritance except as part of an all-U-can-eat interfaith salad bar. In their initial reaction, Seattle Airport got it right: To be forced to have one of everything is, ultimately, the same as having nothing. So you might as well cut to the chase.

What, after all, is the rabbi objecting to? There were no bauble-dripping conifers in the stable in Bethlehem. They didn't sing "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," either. That's, in effect, an ancient pop song that alludes to the birth of the Savior as a call to communal merry-making: No wonder it falls afoul of an overpoliced overlitigated "diversity" regime. Speaking of communal songs, they didn't sing "White Christmas" round the manger. A Jew wrote that. It's part of the vast Jewish contribution to America's common culture.

Seattle Airport could certainly put up a menorah. And maybe a commemoration of Eid, and Kwanzaa, and something for solstice worshippers, and perhaps something for litigious atheists. But to do that is to turn society into a kind of greater airport departure lounge -- to say it's no more than an assemblage of whoever happens to be in it at any particular time. Successful societies (unlike plastic trees) have deep roots: Nobody should be obliged to believe Jesus is the son of God, but likewise nobody should take such umbrage at trees and tinsel and instrumental versions of "Silent Night" that he would deny the reality of the land he lives in to the vast majority of his fellow citizens. Because the logic of that leads not to a diverse secular society but to an atomized ersatz non-society. And, as those other touchy types the Islamists well understand, once you put reality up for grabs, all kinds of pathologies suddenly become viable.

On which note, God rest ye merry. It's tougher than you'd think.

©Mark Steyn, 2006