From The New York Times:
Rehearsal for Defeat
By MAX FRANKEL

THE COLDEST WINTER
America and the Korean War.
By David Halberstam.
Illustrated. 719 pp. Hyperion. $35.

David Halberstam discovered his calling in Vietnam, watching men die for a strategic lie. A gutsy reporter not yet 30, he warned of a quagmire in the making by a government in denial. It made him angry, then famous, and he became a lover not of war but of war stories, the grit and stink of combat, be it military, political, bureaucratic or some combination thereof.

With remarkable energy, he went on to produce 20 books in 40 years, most notably big heaves about America’s war machine but also voluminous studies of our news media and auto industry, and poignant memorials to the civil rights marchers of the ’60s and the fallen firefighters of 9/11. As if to relieve those brooding labors, he alternated them with worshipful accounts of athletic feats, but they, too, focused on competitors under stress and reflected on their sweat-soaked devotion and their betrayals, by fate or higher authority.

Still more such books were in his head when Halberstam, a vibrant 73, was killed in a car crash last April. There can be no consolation for that loss, but perhaps solace of a kind in knowing that just five days earlier he had finished his most operatic war story, “The Coldest Winter,” about the Korean War of 1950-53. The book was born of his desire to resurrect a war “orphaned by history,” a war that was cruel and inconclusive and claimed the lives of 33,000 American soldiers, 415,000 South Koreans and about 1.5 million North Korean and Chinese troops.

Combining his typically prodigious research with more than a hundred interviews, Halberstam has graphically (if sometimes tediously) recreated the trench warfare up and down that frozen peninsula, juxtaposing accounts of the petty backstabbing and vainglorious posturing at the Tokyo headquarters of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the catastrophic miscalculations by Truman, Stalin, Mao and Kim Il Sung of North Korea.

The result is an outsize but fascinating epic directed simultaneously to battle buffs and pacifists, history enthusiasts and political moralists. With sometimes numbing detail and elegant maps, it evokes the nobility and crazy heroism of outnumbered American grunts in a dozen of the war’s critical engagements, cinematic scenes that alternate with crisp essays about the mindless way the war began, the reckless way it was managed and the fruitless way it ended.

Halberstam’s subject is illuminated, of course, by the fact that Korea was but the first of three American conflicts of his time that presidents ordered for dubious strategic ambitions, without the comprehension of either Congress or the public. Korea was where America first revealed its imperial ineptitude and where our military leaders vowed never again to wage a ground war in Asia. As Halberstam barely needs to mention, then came Vietnam, then Iraq.

War in Korea was provoked by “a colossal gaffe” — the failure of Secretary of State Dean Acheson in a routine speech to include non-Communist South Korea in America’s Asian “defense perimeter.” That oversight caused a reluctant Stalin to unleash North Korea’s army for what Kim promised would be a three-week blitzkrieg to reunite all Korea. He very nearly succeeded.

MacArthur, the reigning American monarch over a defeated Japan, had done nothing to prepare either his own or South Korea’s forces for the attack. The first night, he mistook it for “a reconnaissance-in-force”; a day later he decided in panic that “all Korea is lost.”

America’s leaders knew little about either half of Korea, but haunted by the failure to deter Nazi aggression in the 1930s and by the “loss” of China to Communists in 1949, they decided instantly to resist what they insisted on viewing as a coordinated Sino-Soviet drive to Communize the world.

Ever the patriot, Halberstam bemoans not so much the fact of our intervention as the mind-set behind it, which led to “an American disaster of the first magnitude, a textbook example of what happens when a nation, filled with the arrogance of power, meets a new reality.” The underrated North Koreans virtually destroyed two American regiments and cornered our retreating forces for three blood-soaked months at the edge of the Sea of Japan.

MacArthur responded with his career’s most brilliant tactical stroke, which paradoxically inspired an even greater disaster. Instead of reinforcing his surrounded troops, he threw a Hail Mary pass, staging an amphibious landing at Inchon, 150 miles to the north, seizing Korea’s narrow waist and decimating the suddenly encircled North Korean invaders. Feeling invincible now, MacArthur refused advice that he settle for a defensible line well south of the restive Chinese forces massing at their Korean border. And with Truman rushing across the Pacific to bask in the general’s glory, no one was able to restrain him.

MacArthur ordered the swift conquest of all North Korea, confident that the Chinese would not dare challenge him. But hundreds of thousands of Chinese lay in wait to spring American history’s greatest ambush. Halberstam writes: “The bet had been called, and other men would now have to pay for that terrible arrogance and vainglory.”

Yet again the Americans were routed, and MacArthur’s obsessive reaction was to agitate for total war against China, nuclear if necessary. He had to be fired by Truman in April 1951 so that more sober generals could settle for “a grinding, limited war” that asked men to “die for a tie,” a stalemate that eventually restored the original border between the Koreas.

With his experience of Vietnam still fresh, a young Halberstam had brilliantly mocked “the best and the brightest” who misled us into that debacle. It was his way of honoring the sacrifices he had witnessed and exposing the ruinous politics that had driven American policy.

At the end of his life, unfolding a similar plot in Korea, he settled for a subtler, even ambiguous diagnosis. “The Coldest Winter” still venerates the grunts on the ground and damns their feckless commanders. It once again recalls the ugly fears and smears of the partisan wars at home that provoked politicians to send Americans to bleed needlessly abroad. But in looking over the carnage that was Korea, Halberstam wonders quietly about “the odd process — perhaps the most primal on earth — that turned ordinary, peace-loving, law-abiding civilians into very good fighting men; or one of its great submysteries — how quickly it could take place.”

And so he ends his last great book not in his own voice but with the reflections, in old age, of Sgt. Paul McGee, who felt that despite the public’s disillusionment and forgetfulness, he and his friends had done the right thing. They “had shared those dangers, and that set them apart from almost everyone else for the rest of their lives,” Halberstam reports. “They did not need words to bind them together; their deeds were the requisite bond.” McGee felt that “he was glad he had gone and fought there. It was a job to do, nothing more, nothing less, and when you thought about it, there had not been a lot of choice.”

David has left us with a long salute to duty.

Max Frankel, a former executive editor of The Times, was once David Halberstam’s colleague at the paper and later became his neighbor in New York.

From The New York Times:
Stars Join Forces to Salute (and Support) a Rock Legend
By NATE CHINEN

NEW ORLEANS — One Saturday night in May, Fats Domino took the stage before a full house at Tipitina’s, the club that has become, like him, a New Orleans institution. His half-hour set made headlines for a few reasons.

It was Mr. Domino’s first show since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. It was a benefit for the Tipitina’s Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to restoring the city’s musical culture and helping its musicians. Besides that, it was Fats Domino, and these days that’s more than reason enough.

Mr. Domino, 79, made many of the rhythm-and-blues hits that laid the groundwork for rock ’n’ roll. He’s also something of a recluse, and a perfectionist known to cancel appearances without warning or cause. Yet he is still a presence in the city he has always called home.

“For lack of a better way of putting it,” Irma Thomas, known as the Soul Queen of New Orleans, said recently, “he’s a living, walking legend among us in New Orleans. Between him and Louis Armstrong, they were the first big names to put us on the musical map.”

On Sept. 25, Vanguard Records will release “Goin’ Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino,” making use of some other big names, including B. B. King, Paul McCartney, Robert Plant, Willie Nelson, Neil Young and Norah Jones. They appear alongside New Orleans heroes like Dr. John and Allen Toussaint.

The foundation will dedicate a portion of the proceeds to the renovation of Mr. Domino’s publishing office, adjacent to his spacious house in the Lower Ninth Ward, which was severely damaged by the flooding after Katrina. He had to be rescued by helicopter from his home; he lost several pianos and most of his possessions, and looters stole most of his gold records from the 1950s.

Of course, even without the flood it would not have been hard to rally support for Mr. Domino. “He’s been around all this time, and I’ve never read or heard anything bad about him,” Mr. King said recently. “And as far as I’m concerned, he’s just a great musician, and a lovable person.”

“Goin’ Home” arrives roughly one year after “Alive and Kickin’,” Mr. Domino’s first album in more than a decade, which was also released as a benefit for the Tipitina’s Foundation. “He really wanted to put it out through our organization,” said Bill Taylor, the foundation’s executive director. “He was aware of what we were doing, and he reached out to us.”

Over a bowl of gumbo at Cochon, a Cajun restaurant in the warehouse district, Mr. Taylor described the process behind “Goin’ Home,” for which he receives credit as executive producer. “The first hurdle was that I had no idea what I was doing,” he said. “I had never done anything like this.”

But Mr. Taylor set his sights high from the start: his first request was to Yoko Ono, to use a version of “Ain’t That a Shame” that John Lennon recorded in 1973. “Within like a week, she gave us permission,” he said. “Then Elton John signed on next. And at that point there was enough star power behind it that the dominoes started falling pretty quick.” (His domino metaphor did not seem intended as a pun.)

With more than 30 tracks, recorded not just in New Orleans but in places like Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Kingston, Jamaica, the album presented some fearsome logistics. Further complicating matters was Mr. Taylor’s decision to feature New Orleans musicians. In the spirit of the tribute concerts that followed Katrina, “Goin’ Home” includes novel pairings like Joss Stone and Buddy Guy with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band; Mr. King with Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk; and Lenny Kravitz with the Rebirth Brass Band.

Mr. Taylor often paired songs with artists. Elton John is a natural on “Blueberry Hill,” as are Tom Petty on “I’m Walkin’ ” and Randy Newman on “Blue Monday.” Los Lobos offer a solid update of “The Fat Man,” one of the earliest rock ’n’ roll records. Mr. McCartney does his best Fats impression on “I Want to Walk You Home,” backed by Mr. Toussaint on piano.

More than a few of the album’s tracks came together serendipitously. Mr. Plant had agreed to record a track with the Cajun group Lil’ Band o’ Gold, but when he arrived in New Orleans the acclaimed Soweto Gospel Choir was headlining at Tipitina’s. A meeting was arranged, and Mr. Plant also recorded “Valley of Tears” with the choir, in a hushed style that calls Paul Simon’s “Graceland” to mind.

“So you have the Led Zeppelin guy with a South African gospel choir doing a Fats Domino song,” Mr. Taylor said. “It’s an example of what happens here musically every day.”

On Sept. 29, some of the album’s local luminaries, including Ms. Thomas, Dumpstaphunk and Big Chief Monk Boudreaux of the Mardi Gras Indians, will play at a release party at Tipitina’s. Like the album, the show will celebrate not just Mr. Domino’s legacy but also the remarkable songwriting partnership he enjoyed with the trumpeter Dave Bartholomew.

Mr. Domino, who now lives in Harvey, La., in a gated community on the west bank of the Mississippi River, rarely gives interviews, though he has said he was honored by “Goin’ Home.”

But in one of the chance coincidences that seem to happen often in New Orleans, a reporter on his way to the airport in a taxicab lucked into what passes for an interview with Mr. Domino.

The driver, Walter Miles, turned out to be Mr. Domino’s chauffeur. “I drive him all over,” he said. “We talk to each other two or three times a day.”

With that, Mr. Miles dialed a number on his cellphone and passed the phone to the back seat. There was Mr. Domino, with his unmistakable New Orleans drawl. What followed was less an interview than genial small talk.

“Where you from?” he asked, getting right to the heart of the matter.

Lessons from Jena, La.
By JASON WHITLOCK

Now we love Mychal Bell, the star of the 2006 Jena (La.) High School football team, the teenage boy who has sat in jail since December for his role in a six-on-one beatdown of a fellow student.

Thursday, thousands of us, proud African-Americans, expressed our devotion to and desire to see justice for the “Jena Six,” the half-dozen black students who knocked unconscious, kicked and stomped a white classmate.

Jesse Jackson compared Thursday’s rallies in Jena to the protests and marches that used to take place in cities like Selma, Ala., in the 1960s. Al Sharpton claimed Thursday’s peaceful demonstrations were to highlight racial inequities in the criminal justice system.

Jesse and Al, as they’re prone to do, served a kernel of truth stacked on a mountain of lies.

There are undeniable racial and economic inequities in our criminal justice system, and from afar the “Jena Six” rallies certainly looked and felt like the righteous protests of the 1960s.

But the reality is Thursday’s protests are just another sign that we remain deeply locked in denial about the path we need to travel today for true American liberation, equality and power in the new millennium.

The fact that we waited to love Mychal Bell until after he’d thrown away a Division I football scholarship and nine months of his life is just as heinous as the grossly excessive attempted-murder charges that originally landed him in jail.

Reed Walters, the Jena district attorney, is being accused of racism because he didn’t show Bell compassion when the teenager was brought before the court for the third time on assault charges in a two-year span.

Where was our compassion long before Bell got into this kind of trouble?

That’s the question that needed to be asked in Jena and across the country on Thursday. But it wasn’t asked because everyone has been lied to about what really transpired in the small southern town.

There was no “schoolyard fight” as a result of nooses being hung on a whites-only tree.

Justin Barker, the white victim, was cold-cocked from behind, knocked unconscious and stomped by six black athletes. Barker, luckily, sustained no life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital three hours after the attack.

A black U.S. attorney, Don Washington, investigated the “Jena Six” case and concluded that the attack on Barker had absolutely nothing to do with the noose-hanging incident three months before. The nooses and two off-campus incidents were tied to Barker’s assault by people wanting to gain sympathy for the “Jena Six” in reaction to Walters’ extreme charges of attempted murder.

Much has been written about Bell’s trial, the six-person all-white jury that convicted him of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery and the clueless public defender who called no witnesses and offered no defense. It is rarely mentioned that no black people responded to the jury summonses and that Bell’s public defender was black.

It’s almost never mentioned that Bell’s absentee father returned from Dallas and re-entered his son’s life only after Bell faced attempted-murder charges. At a bond hearing in August, Bell’s father and a parade of local ministers promised a judge that they would supervise Bell if he was released from prison.

Where were the promises and supervision before any of this?

It’s rarely mentioned that Bell was already on probation for assault when he was accused of participating in Barker’s attack. And it’s never mentioned that white people in the “racist” town of Jena provided Bell support and protected his football career long before Jesse, Al, Bell’s father and all the others took a sincere interest in Mychal Bell.

You won’t hear about any of that because it doesn’t fit the picture we want to paint of Jena, this case, America and ourselves.

We don’t practice preventive medicine. Mychal Bell needed us long before he was cuffed and jailed. Here is another undeniable, statistical fact: The best way for a black (or white) father to ensure that his son doesn’t fall victim to a racist prosecutor is by participating in his son’s life on a daily basis.

That fact needed to be shared Thursday in Jena. The constant preaching of that message would short-circuit more potential “Jena Six” cases than attributing random acts of six-on-one violence to three-month-old nooses.

And I am in no way excusing the nooses. The responsible kids should’ve been expelled. A few years after I’d graduated, a similar incident happened at my high school involving our best football player, a future NFL tight end. He was expelled.

The Jena school board foolishly overruled its principal and suspended the kids for three days.

But the kids responsible for Barker’s beating deserve to be punished. The prosecutor needed to be challenged on his excessive charges. And we as black folks need to question ourselves about why too many of us can only get energized to help our young people once they’re in harm’s way.

I’ve been the spokesman for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Kansas City for six years. Getting black men to volunteer to mentor for just two hours a week to the more than 100 black boys on a waiting list is a yearly crisis. It’s a nationwide crisis for the organization. In Kansas City, we’re lucky if we get 20 black Big Brothers a year.

You don’t want to see any more “Jena Six” cases? Love Mychal Bell before he violently breaks the law.

IS THERE A TRIAL LAWYER IN THE HOUSE?
by Ann Coulter

September 19, 2007

The only "crisis" in health care in this country is that doctors are paid too little. (Also they've come up with nothing to help that poor Dennis Kucinich.)

But the Democratic Party treats doctors like they're Klan members. They wail about how much doctors are paid and celebrate the trial lawyers who do absolutely nothing to make society better, but swoop in and steal from the most valuable members of society.

Maybe doctors could get the Democrats to like them if they started suing their patients.

It's only a matter of time before the best and brightest students forget about medical school and go to law school instead. How long can a society based on suing the productive last?

You can make 30 times as much money as doctors by becoming a trial lawyer suing doctors. You need no skills, no superior board scores, no decade of training and no sleepless residency. But you must have the morals of a drug dealer. (And the bank wire transfer number to the Democratic National Committee.)

The editors of The New York Times have been engaging in a spirited debate with their readers over whether doctors are wildly overpaid or just hugely overpaid. The results of this debate are available on TimeSelect, for just $49.95.

"Many health care economists," the Times editorialized, say the partisan wrangling over health care masks a bigger problem: "the relatively high salaries paid to American doctors."

Citing the Rand Corp., the Times noted that doctors in the U.S. "earn two to three times as much as they do in other industrialized countries." American doctors earn about $200,000 to $300,000 a year, while European doctors make $60,000 to $120,000. Why, that's barely enough for Muslim doctors in Britain to buy plastic explosives to blow up airplanes!

How much does Pinch Sulzberger make for driving The New York Times stock to an all-time low? Probably a lot more than your podiatrist.

In college, my roommate was in the chemistry lab Friday and Saturday nights while I was dancing on tables at the Chapter House. A few years later, she was working 20-hour days as a resident at Mount Sinai doing liver transplants while I was frequenting popular Upper East Side drinking establishments. She was going to Johns Hopkins for yet more medical training while I was skiing and following the Grateful Dead. Now she vacations in places like Rwanda and Darfur with Doctors Without Borders while I'm going to Paris.

(Has anyone else noticed the nonexistence of a charitable organization known as "Lawyers Without Borders"?)

She makes $380 for an emergency appendectomy, or one-ten-thousandth of what John Edwards made suing doctors like her, and one-fourth of what John Edwards' hairdresser makes for a single shag cut.

Edwards made $30 million bringing nonsense lawsuits based on junk science against doctors. To defend themselves from parasites like Edwards, doctors now pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical malpractice insurance every year.

But as the Times would note, doctors in Burkina Faso only get $25 and one goat per year.

As long as we're studying the health care systems of various socialist countries, are we allowed to notice that doctors in these other countries aren't constantly being sued by bottom-feeding trial lawyers stealing one-third of the income of people performing useful work like saving lives?

But the Democrats (and Fred Thompson) refuse to enact tort reform legislation to rein in these charlatans. After teachers and welfare recipients, the Democrats' most prized constituency is trial lawyers. The ultimate Democrat constituent would be a public schoolteacher on welfare who needed an abortion and was suing her doctor.

Doctors graduate at the top of their classes at college and then spend nearly a decade in grueling work at medical schools. Most doctors don't make a dime until they're in their early 30s, just in time to start paying off their six-figure student loans by saving people's lives. They have 10 times the IQ of trial lawyers and 1,000 times the character.

Yeah, let's go after those guys. On to nuns next!

But Times' readers responded to the editorial about doctors being overpaid with a slew of indignant letters -- not at the Times for making such an idiotic argument, but at doctors who earn an average of $200,000 per year. Letter writers praised the free medical care in places like Spain. ("Nightmare" in the Ann Coulter dictionary is defined as "having a medical emergency in Spain.")

One letter-writer proposed helping doctors by having the government take over another aspect of the economy -- the cost of medical education:

"If we are to restructure the system by which we pay doctors to match Europe, which seems prudent as well as inevitable, we must also finance education as Europeans do, by using state dollars to finance the full or majority cost of higher education, including professional school."

And then to reduce the cost of medical school, the government could finance "the full or majority cost" of construction costs of medical schools, and "the full or majority cost" of the trucks that bring the cement to the construction site and the "the full or majority cost" of coffee that the truck drivers drink while hauling the cement and ... it makes my head hurt.

I may have to see a doctor about this. I should probably get on the waiting list now in case Hillary gets elected.

That's how liberals think: To fix an industry bedeviled by government controls, we'll spread the coercion to yet more industries!

The only sane letter on the matter, I'm happy to report, came from the charming town of New Canaan, Conn., which means that I am not the only normal person who still reads the Times. Ray Groves wrote:

"Last week, I had the annual checkup for my 2000 Taurus. I paid $95 per hour for much needed body work. Next month, when I have my own annual physical, I expect and hope to pay a much higher rate to my primary care internist, who has spent a significant portion of his life training to achieve his position of responsibility."

There is nothing more to say.

Banish the Concept of Nation-Building
By Thomas Sowell

If nothing else comes out of the Iraq war, it should banish the concept of "nation-building" from our language and our minds. "The track record of nation-building and Wilsonian grandiosity ought to give anyone pause," as was said in this column before the Iraq war began.

We can now add the track record of Iraq to the list of disasters.

The very existence of Iraq is a result of Woodrow Wilson's grandiose ideas about "the right of self-determination of peoples," which led to the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious allied powers after the First World War.

Some of the most bitter and intractable conflicts of our time have arisen in nations carved out of the Ottoman Empire, whether in the Balkans or the Middle East.

You cannot turn a territory and its population into a functioning nation with the stroke of a pen or the drawing of lines on a map.

Real nations evolve over time out of the mutual accommodations of peoples, not by imposing the bright ideas of theorists from the top down.

No small part of African nations' problems comes from the fact that most became nations only in the sense that conquerors carved up African territories among themselves to suit their own convenience.

There was no nation of Nigeria until the British drew some lines on a map and gave it that name. There is no reason to think that such a nation would have evolved on its own, given the mutually antagonistic peoples living in that vast territory.

Iraq is an object lesson in another sense. You seldom hear about the area of the country controlled by Kurds because that has been the most peaceful and orderly part of Iraq, and the media are drawn to death and destruction.

In his insightful new book, "Mugged by Reality," author John Agresto says: "I do not believe one American, soldier or civilian, has been killed or even hurt in Kurdish Iraq since the war began -- or maybe ever."

The Kurds are a people. They are not just some folks thrown together by others who drew lines on a map. They had their own leaders before there were any national elections in Iraq.

As Agresto points out, democracy is a means, not an end in itself.

Natan Sharansky's book "The Case for Democracy" argues persuasively for the international, as well as internal, benefits of democracy, seeing it as the kind of government that reduces the dangers of war.

President Bush became an enthusiast for the idea and spent hours talking with Sharansky in the White House.

Perhaps he should have spent a little time talking with Amy Chua, whose book "World on Fire" points out that democracy -- in certain kinds of societies -- is a recipe for disaster, despite how valuable it has been in Western nations.

Democracy means voting. It does not mean freedom. When we lump the two ideas together, we confuse ourselves and others.

Britain was a free country long before it became democratic. In Germany, Hitler was elected democratically. In much of Africa, democracy in practice has meant, "One man, one vote -- one time," as elected leaders put an end to both elections and freedom.

It would be wonderful to have free and democratic nations throughout the world, and that would very likely reduce military conflicts, as Sharansky and others say. But we do not ensure freedom by holding elections.

According to John Agresto, in Iraq "the 'democratic' government now entrenched is as sectarian and incompetent as we ever could have feared." He is unwilling to say that the invasion of Iraq "as originally conceived" was a mistake but he fears that it has become "a tragedy."

This is not a plea for withdrawal. Whatever the situation when we went in, international terrorists have chosen to make this the place for a showdown battle. We can win or lose that battle but we cannot unilaterally end the war.

It is the terrorists' war, regardless of where it is fought.

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.

Nationalized Health Care is Broken
By John Stossel

Last week I pointed out that Michael Moore, maker of the documentary "Sicko," portrayed the Cuban health-care system as though it were utopia -- until I hit him with some inconvenient facts. So he backed off and said, "Let's stick to Canada and Britain because I think these are legitimate arguments that are made against the film and against the so-called idea of socialized medicine. And I think you should challenge me on these things."

OK, here we go.

One basic problem with nationalized health care is that it makes medical services seem free. That pushes demand beyond supply. Governments deal with that by limiting what's available.

That's why the British National Health Service recently made the pathetic promise to reduce wait times for hospital care to four months.

The wait to see dentists is so long that some Brits pull their own teeth. Dental tools: pliers and vodka.

One hospital tried to save money by not changing bed sheets every day. British papers report that instead of washing them, nurses were encouraged to just turn them over.

Government rationing of health care in Canada is why when Karen Jepp was about to give birth to quadruplets last month, she was told that all the neonatal units she could go to in Canada were too crowded. She flew to Montana to have the babies.

"People line up for care; some of them die. That's what happens," Canadian doctor David Gratzer, author of The Cure, told "20/20". Gratzer thought the Canadian system was great until he started treating patients. "The more time I spent in the Canadian system, the more I came across people waiting. ... You want to see your neurologist because of your stress headache? No problem! You just have to wait six months. You want an MRI? No problem! Free as the air! You just gotta wait six months."

Michael Moore retorts that Canadians live longer than Americans.

But Canadians' longer lives are unrelated to heath care. Canadians are less likely to get into accidents or be murdered. Take those factors into account, not to mention obesity, and Americans live longer.

Most Canadians like their free health care, but Canadian doctors tell us the system is cracking. More than a million Canadians cannot find a regular family doctor. One town holds a lottery. Once a week the town clerk gets a box out of the closet. Everyone who wants to have a family doctor puts his or her name in it. The clerk pulls out one slip to determine the winner. Others in town have to wait.

It's driven some Canadians to private for-profit clinics. A new one opens somewhere in Canada almost every week. Although it's not clear that such private clinics are legal, one is run by the president of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Brian Day, because under government care, he says, "We found ourselves in a situation where we were seeing sick patients and weren't being allowed to treat them. That was something that we couldn't tolerate."

Canadians stuck on waiting lists often pay "medical travel agents" to get to America for treatment. Shirley Healey had a blocked artery that kept her from digesting food. So she hired a middleman to help her get to a hospital in Washington state.

"The doctor said that I would have only had a very few weeks to live," Healey said.

Yet the Canadian government calls her surgery "elective."

"The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live," she said.

Not all Canadian health care is long lines and lack of innovation. We found one place where providers offer easy access to cutting-edge life-saving technology, such as CT scans. And patients rarely wait.

But they have to bark or meow to get access to this technology. Vet clinics say they can get a dog or a cat in the next day. People have to wait a month.

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.

From City Journal:
Islam, the Marxism of Our Time
Some troubling signs in Europe

Theodore Dalrymple

17 September 2007

From an Islamist point of view, the news from Europe looks good. The Times of London, relying on a police report, recently observed that the Deobandis, a fundamentalist sect, now run nearly half of the 1,350 mosques in Britain and train the vast majority of the Muslim clerics who get their training in the country. The man who might become the sect’s spiritual leader in Britain, Riyadh ul Haq, believes that friendship with a Christian or a Jew makes “a mockery of Allah’s religion.” At least no one could accuse him of a shallow multiculturalism.

According to Le Figaro, 70 percent of Muslims in France intend to keep the fast during Ramadan, up from 60 percent in 1989. Better still, from the Islamist point of view, non-practicing Muslims feel increasing social pressure to comply with the fast, whether they want to or not. The tide is thus running in the Islamists’ favor.

Best news of all for the Islamists, however, comes from Germany. Two of the men that the German police arrested in early September for plotting a series of huge explosions in the country were young German converts to Islam. It is impossible to know how many such German converts there are, but it is thought to run into tens of thousands, principally men; in the nature of things, it is also uncertain how many of them are attracted to extremism, but few people are so attracted by moderation that they are converted by it.

The man believed to be the leader of the little group, Fritz G., the son of a doctor and an engineer, was himself a student of engineering, of mediocre attainment. He grew up in Ulm, where a quarter of the population is now Muslim, and at the time of his parents’ divorce, when he was 15, he began to frequent the Islamic Information Center of Ulm, and also the comically named Multikultihaus in the neighboring town of Neu-Ulm, where young men of jihadist views, including Mohammed Atta, had long congregated. In 2004, he was spotted at the Ulm Islamic center, selling a journal called Think in the Islamic Way. In December of that year, the police found propaganda in favor of Osama bin Laden in his car. In 2006, he went to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.

His fellow conspirator, Daniel S., came from a well-off family and converted early in life to radical Islam. He traveled to Egypt to learn Arabic, and then returned to Germany, where he sometimes irritated his neighbors by praying loudly in Arabic three times a day.

All this suggests that Islam is fast becoming the Marxism of our times. Had Fritz G. and Daniel S. grown up a generation earlier, they would have become members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang rather than Islamic extremists. The dictatorship of the proletariat, it seems, has given way before the establishment of the Caliphate as the transcendent answer to some German youths’ personal angst.

This is good news indeed for Islamists, but not so good for the rest of us.

From KausFiles at Salon.com:

Demi-Semi-Amnesty:

Democratic Sen. Durbin's revived "DREAM Act" is typically billed as a way to address "the tragedy of young people"--students who were brought into the country when they were very young, and now want to attend college. I was going to criticize it because it inevitably offers an incentive to future illegal immigration--i.e. "sneak across the border and your already-born children can go to U.S. colleges, pay in-state tuition, and become citizens!" It seemed precisely the sort of compassionate measure that should become possible after the borders had been shown to be secure for several years (as opposed to after a few quick showy raids and deportations).

But it's actually not that bad. It's much, much worse! Kris Kobach persuasively argues that, thanks to loose drafting, it's potentially a huge de facto legalization program of the sort many observers thought had been defeated. For example [emphasis added]:

There is no upper age limit. Any illegal alien can walk into a U.S. Customs and Immigration Ser­vices office and declare that he is eligible. For example, a 45 year old can claim that he illegally entered the United States 30 years ago at the age of 15. There is no requirement that the alien prove that he entered the United States at the claimed time by providing particular documents. The DREAM Act's Section 4(a) merely requires him to "demonstrate" that he is eligible—which in practice could mean simply making a sworn statement to that effect.

There's more--e.g., once you file an "application," you can't be deported. ...See also Noam Askew. ... Action Plan: Ask John McCain about the "DREAM Act" on his new "Forget Immigration!" Tour. ... 1:25 A.M. link

From Chroniclesmagazine.org:
The Atheist’s Redemption
by Joe Sobran

In my last appearance in this space, I wrote erroneously that Christopher Hitchens had favored both Anglo-American wars on Iraq. In fact, he strongly opposed the first one, back in 1991. I remember this so vividly (I was delighted with him at the time) that I can’t understand how I could be so embarrassingly forgetful when I wrote as I did. I owe him an apology, which I cheerfully offer.

Still, I can’t help suspecting that the current war, which he does support, may help explain his newly aggressive atheism. By applauding Bush’s war, a quasi-Trotskyite venture in “global democratic revolution,” Hitch, as his friends call him, has lost a lot of face among his old comrades on the left. Attacking “religion” was the perfect way to recoup. So Michael Kinsley was probably right to praise his book god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything as a shrewd career move.

However, as Dr. Johnson said of Rous­seau, “A man who talks nonsense so well must know he is talking nonsense.” Is Hitch (or should we, by analogy with “god,” call him “hitch”?) pulling the public’s leg just a bit? When he speaks of religion as belief in a “celestial dictatorship,” he betrays the Trotskyite reduction of all relations to raw power; surely, he is aware that Christians regard God—or “god,” if you like—as a loving Father, not a gigantic bully. But when he says (on page 114) that Jesus’ very historical existence is “highly questionable,” you have to wonder if he is lying, insane, or just full of hitch.

Can he be serious? The most famous and influential man who ever lived . . . never lived? Can anyone really suppose such a marvelous character was invented? That a few unschooled and inartistic writers could have thought up immortal words suitable to Him? That countless martyrs would endure agonizing death to bear witness to One whose reality was in doubt? Tell us another one, hitch. Better yet, say one thing even your fellow unbelievers will find worthy of Jesus, one thing men will quote a year—or two thousand—from now.

The hitchbook is open to many objections, but one of its oddities is its startling profusion of anachronistic indignations. Why should a materialist get so sore about the supposed evils of war, racism, sexism, bigotry, Nazism, “the” Inquisition (was there only one?), caste systems, and Mel Gibson? Did “religion” cause all of these things, and if so, so what? Why shouldn’t they exist in hitch’s universe? Couldn’t they have evolved on other planets anyway? Isn’t hitch guilty of humanism? If we discovered a Mel Gibson on Mars, why should we care? And why does hitch single out Martin Luther King, Jr., as the only praiseworthy Christian? And why, after renouncing communism, is he so forgiving toward communists, including King’s pals?

And why don’t these obvious questions occur to hitch himself?

One reason I’m a Christian is that Jesus predicted books such as this: He warned us that, just as the world hated Him, it would always hate us, too, and so it does, after 2,000 years.

Another reason is more personal. Life has been so kind to me. It has warped me with blessings. I’ve had a few minor complaints lately, but, as a child, I was so showered with love that I can’t disbelieve in God or believe that He is cruel.

Nor can I take hitch seriously, except as a man who appears to be pitifully indisposed to gratitude. He can imagine “religion” only in what a believer recognizes as its most deformed versions, which prove nothing at all about its normal, lovely, and perfect form: the Catholic Faith. He’s looking for reasons to hate it, while never acknowledging even one of the things that make millions of men love it. If I were an atheist, I might write a book in praise of such a gorgeous illusion.

One of hitch’s sneakiest moves is his attempt to pin the label “totalitarian” on religion. Surely, he knows that the essence of the totalitarian is the utterly arbitrary authority of the ruler, who can switch all the rules at any moment.

No Muslim, Jewish, or Catholic ruler has ever claimed the right to do anything so absurd—to be “above” morality. (The U.S. Supreme Court may do so.) It would defeat the whole purpose of having an unchanging Scripture. At one point, hitch himself even seems to admit this, but he plunges on like a fast-talking salesman who hopes you won’t notice the self-contradiction. Safely “audacious,” he treats communism not as a vicious crime (like those of Mel Gibson) but as an amiable, if slightly regrettable, weakness. After all, it’s one he shared until late in his life, something more than a youthful flirtation. But any sense of guilt he may feel doesn’t make him swerve from his mission, which is not to confess but to accuse.

Hitch accuses Christians of “wish-thinking,” but fails to see how the same charge may apply to atheists who think they may ignore and violate the Ten Commandments with utter impunity. The man who fears he is in danger of damnation, on the other hand, would seem to deserve exemption from any such imputation. Me, I’d rather not spend eternity in Hell.

Joseph Sobran is a syndicated columnist.

From BeliefNet:
Fundamentalists to the Right,
Fundamentalists to the Left
What my hate mail tells me about Christian factions today.
By Frank Schaeffer

I abandoned Protestant Christian fundamentalism many years ago for Greek Orthodoxy. I converted because the Orthodox tradition embraces paradox and mystery. For someone raised in a strict Calvinist home, relief from absolutist certainty was most welcome.

But Christian fundamentalism has not abandoned me. It's come back to haunt me in both liberal and conservative forms. I find myself a minor lightning rod in the culture wars: apparently, I haven't chosen sides well enough.

You see, I write novels and nonfiction for a living. My novels describe a boy growing up in Switzerland as the son of American Calvinist missionaries. In these books, I take what I hope is an empathetically amusing insider's look at what it's like to grow up in a home run by zealots who make it their life's work to separate themselves from the World.

My most recent nonfiction work, "Keeping Faith, A Father-Son Story About Love and The United States Marine Corps," I co-wrote with my son John. It's about the aftermath of his 1999 decision to join the U.S. Marine Corps.

So now I'm swimming in a vortex of indignant e-mail from members of both the "Christian right" and the "Christian left." Some Christian evangelical/fundamentalists who disliked my earlier novels find my latest one particularly offensive. They've written to me that they hate everything about it, starting with its "pornographic" cover (a bra and postcard of the Matterhorn are featured). In the book, the fourteen-year-old protagonist is torn between his volcanic burgeoning sexuality and a fundamentalist family so strict that he has never seen a movie, watched television, or danced (read an excerpt).

Apparently, some fundamentalists recognize themselves in the parents portrayed in the book and don't like looking in the mirror. They also don't like sex. The gist of their angry letters is: Take a number, God will kill you soon.

On the other side of the fence, my liberal readers assume I must be "some sort of right-wing war monger" because the book I wrote with my son expressed admiration for the Marine Corps. They accuse me of being the sort of imperialist who would stone Jesus to death if given the chance.

These two groups of Christians presumably don't like one another, but from where I'm sitting, they are more alike than different. To these members of the religious right and left, there seem to be only two choices: for or against their dogmas. And, like certain fundamentalist Muslims much in the news of late, they too seem to have no concept of the separation of art, culture, and religion. Dogmatic purity must be adhered to in all endeavors and the slightest deviation is a serious offense. Moreover, no one with a sense of humor about religion (let alone sex!) need apply.

I know something about fundamentalism. I'm the son of a fundamentalist evangelist. My late father, Francis Schaeffer, was a guru/prophet to his evangelical followers. Almost 20 years after his death, thousands of his books still sell each year. My father was very influential in the beginnings of the so-called Religious Right. Through his voluminous writings, he provided intellectual underpinnings for the views of tens of thousands of fundamentalists on such issues as a literal interpretation of scripture.

The Christian fundamentalists who stumble across my novels because of the family name detest them because they're about religious people and are set in Europe, where my parents had their mission. Some evangelical readers take them as biographies and are offended that the parents in the stories are portrayed warts and all, thus besmirching the memory of Francis Schaeffer. Other fundamentalists just don't like anything that pokes fun at the narrow legalistic Christianity in which they have invested themselves and with which they are inflicting their children.

Meanwhile, one liberal reader e-mailed me about my Marines book: "You seem not to understand the simple purpose and message that was Christ's life... I, for once, am gladdened that MY [Catholic] church has demonstrated the backbone to speak against this criminal invasion [of Iraq]... Yes, Jesus was/is a radical and you seem to be the kind of person in the crowd throwing stones at him for challenging the status quo." Never mind that my son and I wrote our decidedly personal, non-political account before the Iraq war was even on the horizon -- in fact, before 9-11.

And, in a letter that appeared in the Los Angeles Times (April 17, 2003), another reader suggests that my problem is that not only that am I pro-Marines but that I'm white. "Schaeffer obviously suffers from guilt based on perceived privilege of class and race. (He is white, of course.) It is the use of young people like his son for imperialist projects in the invasion of Iraq that is the shame here, not a rejection of military service..." You get the idea.

Then a reader who liked the Marine book but hated my latest novel wrote: "WHY did you write these novels? Are you trying to insult the evangelicals? If so, you are succeeding... I admonish you, remove these books from the marketplace." Then this from a fan who used the fact that my son is currently deployed in the Middle East to amplify his critique: "In your 'Zermatt' you get cheap laughs at fundamentalists who actually believe in avoiding fornication even as your own 'heart,' your son, is in harm's way. Frank, God isn't mocked. A friend of mine just died of a massive stroke Friday night. Repent before it's too late. It isn't going to matter what Publisher's Weekly said about you back in 2003 when you stand before God's throne...."

So I'm caught in the shrinking space between two calcified political doctrines of the left and right. My correspondents seem so certain of everything -- especially that God is on their side.

I hope there is still room in our polarized country for Christians like me, who don't subscribe to any one-dogma-fits-all. It seems to me that life is too short, sweet, and mysterious for us to be able to exhaustively "explain" anything much, let alone explain everything with certainty.

For those of us who write, the choice these days seems to be between picking an ideological side (and learning to see things in black and white), or being wanderers unwelcome in either hostile camp. Come to think of it, that is not a bad place to be, at least for someone who believes in paradox and mystery.

IN BOOKSTORES OCT 1 2007

Crazy For God
How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right,
and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back

By Frank Schaeffer

New York Times best-selling author Frank Schaeffer chronicles his past as the youngest son of the influential evangelists Francis and Edith Schaeffer, his coming of age as a rising evangelical star amidst the likes of Billy Graham and the Gerald Ford and Bush families… and his eventual journey out of the fold.

Advance Praise for Crazy for God

"We are fortunate that Frank Schaeffer's path has taken him from the rigid fundamentalist thinking of his youth to where he is now, working not in stark black and white, but in the blessed gray from which true art arises. CRAZY FOR GOD is a brave and important book."
--Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog

Brutally honest… offers particularly eye-opening accounts of his [Schaeffer's] personal encounters with the likes of Pat Robertson, James Dobson et al."--Booklist

Frank Schaeffer grew up in Switzerland's L'Abri, an idealistic community founded by his parents, the American evangelicals Francis and Edith Schaeffer. By the time he was 19, his parents had achieved global fame as best-selling authors and speakers, l'Abri had become a mecca for spiritual seekers worldwide-from Barbara Bush to Timothy Leary-and Frank had joined his father on the evangelical circuit. By the age of 23, he had directed two multi-part religious documentaries (which are still required viewing at thousands of schools and churches in the English-speaking world) and had helped instigate the marriage between the American evangelical community and the anti-abortion movement. But as he spoke before thousands in arenas around America, published his own evangelical bestseller, and worked with such figures as Pat Robertson, Jack Kemp, Jerry Falwell, and Dr. James Dobson, Schaeffer felt alienated, precipitating his own crisis of faith and eventually resulting in his departure.

Schaeffer has since become a successful secular author (Portofino, the first of the autobiographical Calvin Becker Trilogy, was based on his childhood experiences in Europe), but only after an odyssey which included struggling as a low-budget film director ("Baby on Board" with Judge Reinhold). Schaeffer, who Cal Thomas, Vice President of the Moral Majority, once introduced at a huge rally as "the best speaker in America," was reduced to stealing pork chops out of Ralph's supermarket in his underwear, rather return to the fold and take on any more high-paying evangelical speaking gigs.

With its up-close portraits of the leading figures of the American evangelical movement, and the empathy and humor of the prose, Crazy for God is a uniquely revealing and powerful chronicle of one man at the center of a crucial moment in our recent history.

From National Review Online:
One Mean and Nasty War
Massachusetts tough talk.

By Mark Steyn

This year I marked the anniversary of September 11th by driving through Massachusetts. It wasn’t exactly planned that way, just the way things panned out. So, heading toward Boston, I tuned to Bay State radio colossus Howie Carr and heard him reading out portions from the official address to the 9/11 commemoration ceremony by Deval Patrick, who is apparently the governor of Massachusetts. 9/11, said Governor Patrick, “was a mean and nasty and bitter attack on the United States.”

“Mean and nasty”? He sounds like an over-sensitive waiter complaining that John Kerry’s sent back the aubergine coulis again. But evidently that’s what passes for tough talk in Massachusetts these days — the shot heard around the world and so forth. Anyway, Governor Patrick didn’t want to leave the crowd with all that macho cowboy rhetoric ringing in their ears, so he moved on to the nub of his speech: 9/11, he continued, “was also a failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other.”

I was laughing so much I lost control of the wheel and the guy in the next lane had to swerve rather dramatically. He flipped me the Universal Symbol of Human Understanding. I certainly understood him, though I’m not sure I could learn to love him. Anyway I drove on to Boston and pondered the governor’s remarks. He had made them, after all, before an audience of 9/11 families: Six years ago, two of the four planes took off from Logan Airport, and so citizens of Massachusetts ranked very high among the toll of victims. Whether or not any of the family members present last Tuesday were offended by Governor Patrick, no-one cried “Shame!” or walked out on the ceremony. Americans are generally respectful of their political eminences, no matter how little they deserve it.

We should beware anyone who seeks to explain 9/11 by using the words “each other”: They posit a grubby equivalence between the perpetrator and the victim — that the “failure to understand” derives from the culpability of both parties. The 9/11 killers were treated very well in the United States: They were ushered into the country on the high-speed visa express program the State Department felt was appropriate for young Saudi males. They were treated cordially everywhere they went. The lapdancers at the clubs they frequented in the weeks before the Big Day gave them a good time — or good enough, considering what lousy tippers they were. September 11th didn’t happen because we were insufficient in our love to Mohammed Atta.

This isn’t a theoretical proposition. At some point in the future, some of us will find ourselves on a flight with a chap like Richard Reid, the thwarted shoebomber. On that day we’d better hope the guy sitting next to him isn’t Governor Patrick, who sees him bending down to light his sock and responds with a chorus of “All You Need Is Love,” but a fellow who “understands” enough to wallop the bejasus out of him before he can strike the match. It was the failure of one group of human beings to understand that the second group of human beings was determined to kill them that led to the crew and passengers of those Boston flights sticking with the obsolescent 1970s hijack procedures until it was too late.

Unfortunately the obsolescent 1970s multiculti love-groove inclinations of society at large are harder to dislodge. If you’ll forgive such judgmental categorizations, this isn’t about “them,” it’s about “us.” The long-term survival of any society depends on what proportion of its citizens thinks as Governor Patrick does. Islamism is an opportunist enemy but you can’t blame them for seeing the opportunity: in that sense, they understand us far more clearly than Governor Patrick understands them. The other day, you may recall, some larky lads were arrested in Germany. Another terrorist plot. Would have killed more people than Madrid and London combined but it was nipped in the bud so it’s just another yawneroo: Nobody cares. Who were the terrorists? Mohammed? Muhammad? Mahmoud? No. Their names were “Fritz” and “Daniel,” “Fritz,” huh? That’s a pretty unusual way to spell Mohammed.

Indeed. Fritz Gelowicz is as German as lederhosen. He’s from Ulm, Einstein’s birthplace, on the blue Danube, which, last time I was in Ulm, was actually a murky shade of green. And, in an excellent jest on western illusions, Fritz was converted to Islam while attending the Multi-Kultur-Haus – the Multicultural House. It was, in fact, avowedly unicultural – an Islamic center run by a jihadist imam. At least three of its alumni – including another native German convert – have been killed fighting the Russians in Chechnya. Fritz was hoping to kill Americans. But that’s one of the benefits of a multicultural world: There are so many fascinating diverse cultures and most of them look best reduced to rubble strewn with body parts. Fritz and a pal, Atilla Selek, had previously been arrested in 2004 with a car full of pro-Osama propaganda praising the 9/11 attacks. Which sounds like a pilot for a wacky jihadist sitcom: Atilla And The Hun.

Fritz Gelowicz. Richard Reid. The Australian factory worker Jack Roche. The Toronto jihadists plotting to behead the Prime Minister. The son of the British Conservative Party official with the splendidly Wodehousian double-barreled name. All over the world there are young men raised in the “Multi-Kultur Haus” of the west who decide their highest ambition is to convert to Islam, become a jihadist and self-detonate.

Why do radical imams seek to convert young Canadian, British and even American men and women in their late teens and twenties? Because they understand that when you raise a generation in the great wobbling blancmange of Deval Patrick cultural relativism – nothing is any better or any worse than anything else; if people are “mean and nasty” to us, it’s only because we didn’t sing enough Barney the Dinosaur songs at them – in such a world a certain percentage of its youth will have a great gaping hole where their sense of identity should be. And into that hole you can pour something fierce and primal and implacable.

A while back, I had the honor of a meeting with the president, in the course of which someone raised the unpopularity of the war. He shrugged it off, saying that 25 percent of the population is always against the war — any war. In other words, there’s nothing worth fighting for. And I joked afterwards that some of that 25 percent might change their mind if Canadian storm troopers were swarming across the 49th Parallel or Bahamian warships were firing off the coast of Florida. But maybe not. Al Qaeda’s ad hoc air force left a huge crater of Massachusetts corpses in the middle of Manhattan, and Governor Patrick goes looking for love in all the wrong places.

How many people in any society think like Deval Patrick? That’s the calculation to make if you want to figure out its long-term survival prospects.