Sobran's --
The Real News of the Month
April 2000
Volume 7, No. 4
Editor: Joe Sobran
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THE MOVING PICTURE
Pages 1-2
John McCain ran a brilliant campaign against George W.
Bush, but undid himself with the nasty temper for which he is
hated by so many of his fellow Republicans in the Senate.
Rumors of that temper, it turns out, were not exaggerated.
Annoying conservatives as much as he attracted liberals,
McCain finally "suspended" his campaign after losing
California, New York, and other big states in the Super
Tuesday primaries. But he promised to continue his "crusade"
for "reform"; he pointedly refrained from pledging to support
Bush; and he didn't even speak of the imperative of beating Al
Gore. Something's up.
* * *
Will McCain run as a third-party candidate? Dick Morris,
Bill Clinton's former strategist, thinks he should and argues
that he could win the presidency, either on the Reform Party
ticket or on his own. McCain says he won't take the third-
party route, being a loyal Republican; but he didn't express
any doubt that he could win if he ran independently. And I
doubt that his ego, inflated by media adulation, could resist
the temptation if he convinces himself that it's feasible.
Then there's the Coriolanus factor: he's also bitter enough to
do it for revenge on Bush and the conservatives. I agree with
Morris, but I also think McCain's volatility would probably
lead him into a fatal flake-out before November.
* * *
If McCain goes third party, it will be interesting to see
whether his Zionist neoconservative boosters bolt the
Republican Party to support him. McCain would be free to drop
any pretense that he's conservative; would they want to take
that step with him?
* * *
Ordinary conservatives will stick with Bush, of course.
Their battle cry is, as ever, "Let's support the lesser evil!
We're realists! We've got nowhere else to go!" And they will
wind up, as ever, gaining nothing. Backing the "lesser evil"
means only delaying defeat. It never means victory. A string
of "lesser evils" going back to Richard Nixon has only
resulted in entrenched tyranny. Liberals haven't had to settle
for lesser evils, so they've gotten what they want from the
Democrats. Where is it written that a surrendering
conservative is better than a conquering liberal?
* * *
Al Gore is planning to make a big issue of Bush's visit
to Bob Jones University. Bush could easily counter by making
an issue of Gore's cuddling with New York's premier racial
demagogue, Al Sharpton, in whom life surpasses Tom Wolfe's
satiric imagination. But it's probably safe to assume that
Bush will let Gore keep him on the defensive until election
day. Being a Republican means constantly having to say you're
sorry.
* * *
Speaking of Bob Jones University, *of course* it's anti-
Catholic. The same could be said of *any* non-Catholic
religion. If you reject the Pope's claim to be the Vicar of
Christ, certain things would seem to follow. But the school's
"bigotry" is being denounced by liberals who have been
consistently defending blasphemous works of art and homosexual
sacrilege without worrying too much about "anti-Catholicism."
Better an honest enemy like Bob Jones than friends like these.
* * *
American children have always been taught that King
George III was a tyrant. Personally, I think I could endure
life under a tyrant who didn't care whether I smoked, didn't
limit the amount of water I could have in my toilet tank, and
taxed me at a rate of less than a nickel on the dollar. Anyone
in our time who demanded a return to the days of George III
would be branded an "anti-government extremist."
* * *
Dr. Laura Schlessinger, under attack by organized gaydom
as "the queen of hate radio," can take care of herself without
my help; but if I were she, I'd reply: "Don't assume I hate
you just because I find you disgusting. True, you claim moral
parity with marriage for perversion; you deny and despise
God's law as 'bigotry'; you communicate disease; you want to
take away our freedom by forcing us to associate with you; and
you demand the right to seduce our children. But I should hate
you just for that?"
* * *
California voters, ignoring an intense propaganda
campaign, have adopted Proposition 22, which denies
recognition to homosexual "marriages." Score one for
"bigotry," which now means just about any moral attitude that
used to be unanimous.
* * *
A recent 60 MINUTES segment concerned a Jewish CIA
employee who was fired on suspicion of consorting with Mossad
agents; the show concerned his charge that he was the victim
of anti-Semitism and "racial profiling." Far be it from me to
defend the CIA, but if the Mossad is still trying to recruit
Jews to betray the U.S. government, a la Jonathan Pollard,
it's not the CIA but the Israelis themselves who are doing the
racial profiling and who are operating on the assumption that
Jews are especially corruptible.
* * *
Henry Kissinger, our most swinging secretary of state,
once coined a famous aphorism: "Power is the ultimate
aphrodisiac." If that's true, Madeleine Albright, Donna
Shalala, and Janet Reno must be the three hottest babes in
Washington.
* * *
A New York driver has been refused permission for a
license plate reading "WAFFN SS." How do I know? Because the
story made the front page of the NEW YORK POST, with the
headline "Nazi license furor." Another close shave for
civilization as we know it.
* * *
You've probably noticed that media reports on the murder
of that Flint, Michigan, six-year-old by her classmate avoided
the subject of race. As so often happens, we saw the white
victim but had to infer the race of her killer. Gradually we
learned that he lived in a "crack house," et cetera. Since the
victim was white, nobody called the crime "racially
motivated." At about the same time, a black nut in Pittsburgh
fatally shot several white people with the express intention
of sparing blacks, but the phrase "racially motivated" was
avoided. It's not as if he were John Rocker.
* * *
I hate to say it, but if it's George W. or Al Gore, I'll
take George W. During a debate with Bill Bradley, Gore called
the Constitution a "living document."
* * *
In protest against the rise of Joerg Haider and the
Freedom Party, I've decided to boycott Austrian economics.
Progressive Hopes
(pages 3 and 4)
[Material exclusive to the electronic version is enclosed in
square brackets.]
"Once socialism is established," George Orwell predicted
in the 1930s, "the rate of mechanical invention will be
greatly accelerated." I read Orwell's prophecy during the
1980s and was struck by how ludicrous it seemed. After more
than half a century of socialist economies (including
Communist ones), not a single new invention -- not so much as
a can opener -- had been produced. Socialism had only
impoverished every country where it existed, and had moreover
totally stifled the creative faculties. Nobody could have
foreseen how bleak it would actually prove.
All of which is even truer of the purest form of
socialism, Communism. Even the few remaining Communists are
somewhat chastened, having witnessed the repudiation of Stalin
and Mao by their successors. The "New Soviet Man," the Five-
Year Plan, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution,
Building a New Society -- all these old slogans sound like
grimly ironic epitaphs. "I have been over into the future, and
it works," burbled Lincoln Stevens, arriving home from Moscow
in the 1920s. The only good news for the Commies and their
fellow travelers is that they have never been called to
account, a la Nuremberg, for the colossal crimes they
committed, ignored, and defended. But we tend to forget how
long even most anti-Communists took Communism's insane
promises seriously.
As we bid adieu to the twentieth century, it seems
worthwhile to review not only its achievements and atrocities
but its hopes. Time after time its optimistic expectations
have been rendered absurd by events. A whole book keeping
score of twentieth-century enthusiasms is long overdue;
meanwhile, a brief account will have to suffice.
Of World War I it may be enough to quote the archoptimist
Woodrow Wilson's description of it as the "war to end all
wars." Marshall Foch more sanely called the Versailles Treaty
"a 20-year truce." The historian Harry Elmer Barnes even more
prophetically spoke of "perpetual war for perpetual peace."
At the 1943 Tehran Conference, the three archcynics --
Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin -- adopted Wilsonian language
to promise a postwar world of eternal peace, liberty, and
justice: "Emerging from these cordial conferences, we look
with confidence to the day when all peoples of the world may
live free lives, untouched by tyranny, and according to their
varying desires and their own consciences." It's doubtful that
anyone took this verbiage seriously; but by then utopian
democratic jargon had become standard issue, even (or
especially) for the bloodiest despots.
Catholics may recall the high hopes for liturgical reform
in the wake of the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65. The
vernacular Mass and the relaxation of old disciplines were
supposed to inspire a new piety in the laity, who were given a
larger role in the rites, including the freedom to receive the
Eucharist in their hands -- traditionally regarded as a
desecration. The upshot, as such observers as James Hitchcock
and Michael Davies noted many years ago, was precisely the
reverse of what the liberals predicted and far worse than the
reactionaries feared: Mass attendance immediately plummeted
and tens of millions of Catholics in the United States alone
have fallen away from the Church. Those who remain formally
within the Church feel free to defy Catholic teaching on such
matters as contraception and abortion; most no longer believe
that the Eucharist is the true Body of Christ; and young
Catholics are stunningly ignorant of Catholic doctrine.
The general liberalization of religion has failed in the
same way. The attempt to keep Christianity and Judaism au
courant with contemporary fads has merely enfeebled the sense
of the sacred, turning worship into thinly disguised self-
indulgence. A "nonjudgmental" God is not God at all and,
precisely because he needn't be obeyed, can't be adored. "If
God does not exist," says Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov,
"everything is permitted." And a God who permits everything
doesn't really exist. What's the point of calling such an
entity "God"? Yet the progressive churches, by making few
demands on their members, have steadily lost membership, while
the reactionary churches, insisting on divine commandments,
have thrived.
Jews may likewise recall that the establishment of Israel
was supposed to create a "homeland" where Jews would live in
safety and harmony with their Arab neighbors, in a democratic,
socialist, earthly -- and godless -- utopia. This too has
proved a delusive hope. Israel remains dependent on the United
States, bitterly at odds with neighboring countries, and in
constant danger of war and terrorism. Most Jews still prefer
to live in the Diaspora, and especially in the United States.
Contrary to all Darwinian wisdom, the only form of Judaism
that retains its vitality is the Judaism that refuses to
"adapt": Orthodox Judaism.
Similarly the end of European colonialism was supposed to
allow African and Asian peoples, freed at last from foreign
exploitation, to enjoy the fruits of self-determination. In
most cases the former colonies have gone from modest
contentment to wretched poverty, epidemic disease, and
terrifying tyranny, with little prospect of improvement. The
United Nations, advertised as "the Parliament of Man," has
fallen somewhat short of expectations; the best that can be
said of it is that it has been nearly impotent, serving
chiefly as an arena of mutually contradictory propaganda
efforts to which nobody pays much attention anymore. We can be
consoled by the reflection that it must have disappointed its
chief architect, Alger Hiss.
The sexual revolution was heralded as offering not only
new freedom but new felicity, as old taboos and inhibitions
yielded to the indulgence of our healthy natural appetites.
The net result has been mass misery: more divorce, disease,
anxiety, heartbreak, and of course an explosion of
illegitimacy, with all the crime and disorientation that come
of the disruption of the family. The horror of abortion has
become normalized as a "constitutional right" and an everyday
occurrence; sodomy and pedophilia have been liberated; and
countless souls are lost to sins that are no longer recognized
as perversions.
Pornography too has been normalized to the point where it
is inseparable from ordinary popular entertainment. Nudity in
films, which was supposed to make them more "true to life,"
has instead damaged them aesthetically and morally. Unbridled
hedonism has brought only frustration and depression; even the
clergy have been corrupted. The advocates of unbridled sexual
expression predicted that releasing the erotic would diminish
violence; but the reverse has happened. Lust and violence are
eternal partners, and the porn culture, far from breeding a
gentle eroticism, has liberated cruelty and sadism. The "new
candor" hasn't banished hypocrisy; it has merely given it new
forms, with hypocrites claiming to represent "honesty."
"Civil rights," meaning increased state power to dictate
private association, has not produced either freedom or racial
equality, but only more tyranny and bitterness. Far from
achieving a "color-blind" society, we now have a race-obsessed
one, with a criminal "underclass" that didn't exist before.
The welfare state, which promised to lift people out of
poverty, has merely habituated them to it, while burdening and
endangering the general population. "Affirmative action" has
proved only that when you promise to impose justice for all,
you leave everyone feeling aggrieved. Racial differences,
whether inherent or cultural, have turned out to be stubbornly
irremovable; but progressive ideology has taught us that the
results of those differences are due only to "racism" and must
be remedied by giving the state even more power over private
relations and private property.
Progressivism spoke of "eliminating" -- not merely
opposing or reducing or discrediting -- such huge and
amorphous conditions as poverty and prejudice. Lyndon
Johnson's "War on Poverty" would end in permanent victory, a
"Great Society." Johnson actually promised to abandon that war
if it didn't succeed, just as the Catholic hierarchy promised
to undo the post-Vatican II liturgical innovations if they
didn't produce the desired results; but the Great Society
programs and the Novus Ordo Mass are still with us. Futile
"reforms," once established, seem as hard to eliminate as the
evils they originally purported to cure.
Progressive faith became obligatory, and it was heresy to
doubt that the world could be radically remade. Since
liberalism insisted on learning the hard way, it was fitting
that many white liberal parents should be shocked to find
their children fearing and hating blacks not because of
ignorance and "prejudice," but as a result of their own
experience in integrated schools. (By the end of the century
the number of liberals with children in integrated schools had
notoriously declined.)
It's fascinating that even such an astringent critic of
inflated utopian language as Orwell (of all people!), who
would eventually create some of the darkest images of modern
tyranny, should have succumbed, in his salad days, to the
temptation to idealize the future. His may simply be an
outstanding case of learning from one's mistakes, like other
noted apostates from progressive hope: Arthur Koestler,
Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, and so many of the most
penetrating debunkers of the future that was never to be.
[Such men needed a special kind of courage to denounce
the official illusions of the twentieth century. As the French
Catholic poet Charles Peguy said near the beginning of the
century: "We shall never know how many acts of cowardice have
been motivated by the fear of seeming not sufficiently
progressive."]
"I have a dream," proclaimed Martin Luther King Jr.,
whose "dream" was inspired by his reading of Marx and other
progressive prophets. Like countless visionaries, he was
unaware of Michael Oakeshott's admonition: "The conjunction of
ruling and dreaming generates tyranny." Which might serve as
the epitaph for the twentieth century.
Hating Ali
(page 5)
In one scene of Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST,
Cary Grant is in a Chicago train station where a female
announcer's voice recites the stops of a departing train. They
include Ypsilanti, the modest Michigan city where I grew up,
all the way through college and three years of grad school.
(It was 35 miles from Detroit, where I was born in 1946.) When
I first saw this scene, it startled me: the mere juxtaposition
of the most cosmopolitan of movie stars with the name of my
home town.
If anyone was a child of the media age, I was. My
knowledge of the world came from movies, television,
journalism, and, yes, books, though books were the least of
it. I had almost zero experience of life outside Michigan.
Canada and Ohio were nearby, but I rarely visited either. Even
a drive to rusty old Toledo seemed like an adventure. Yet
through the media I acquired an enormous amount of superficial
knowledge of the outside world.
The superficiality of my knowledge didn't stop me from
having passionate feelings about the things and people I
"knew" -- national politics, Hitchcock films, sports figures.
Among the latter was Muhammad Ali. I'd never come close to
meeting him in person, but I hated him like a personal enemy.
I watched all his fights, hoping to see him pulverized by a
right cross; it never happened, never came close to happening,
until in 1971 Joe Frazier decked him with a left hook in the
final round of their first fight.
During the 1960s Ali seemed a subversive figure, a Black
Muslim who didn't have nothing against them Vietcongs and
challenged the whole system I thought of as both legitimate
and threatened by the anarchy of my generation. To me he was
still Cassius Clay, which he called his "slave name," while
"Muhammad Ali" struck me as an absurd affectation: was he
trying to pass for an Arab? I was resolutely out of step with
everything the media were promoting as hip and progressive
(synonyms then, and now too). Protesting the Vietnam War,
favoring "social justice," and admiring Ali all went together
in the ensemble of prescribed attitudes for my generation; I
was against all of them. I fed on the media, my pipelines to
reality, yet I resented their attempts to mold me.
Looking back, I wished I'd allowed myself to savor Ali's
peerless skill as a boxer. Today he seems one of the more
wholesome figures of the time. The New Left may have idolized
him, but as a devout Muslim he was morally conservative (if
not always morally upright); and he was both right and
courageous to resist the draft. It's embarrassing to recall
not just how much I loathed him, but that I felt strongly
about him at all. As far as I was concerned, he might have
been a fictional character. I was like those silly women who
write love letters to soap opera heroes.
Of course Ali -- and other media celebrities -- have the
same effect on millions of other people who are just as
provincial as I was. It didn't help that Ali's chief media
booster was the abrasive Howard Cosell, of whom Jimmy Cannon
wrote the caustic last word: "His real name is Howard Cohen
and he wears a toupee and he says he tells it like it is."
Remember the days of telling it like it is?
For me there's a touching irony in the fact that Ali now
lives in retirement on a farm in Michigan, mumbling and
trembling as a result of countless punches to the head. And of
course we're all sentimental about him now. His old
braggadoccio, so infuriating at the time, is now remembered as
a jolly game he played with us -- except by Frazier, who still
hates his guts for the merciless ridicule Ali heaped on him.
And in Frazier's defense, it must have been no fun at all to
be called "ugly," a "gorilla," and a traitor to black people.
What made it so painful was that it worked: Ali succeeded in
turning most black fans against Frazier. "The Greatest"
wielded a very sharp needle.
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED recently named Ali one of the great
sportsmen of the twentieth century, but in fact, nobody did
more to destroy the old standards of sportsmanship. Joking or
not, his boasts and insults set us on the way to the surliness
and trash-talking that are now routine not only in boxing but
in other sports. There are still modest, gentlemanly, even
chivalrous athletes, but they seem like throwbacks to the days
of Floyd Patterson -- another of the fighters Ali humiliated,
dubbing him "the rabbit" before whipping him cruelly in the
ring.
I like Ali so much better now than I did when he was in
his prime that I somehow remember him in those days with an
admiration I certainly didn't feel at the time. Even then I
must have known that I was lucky to be seeing such a
completely masterful athlete -- a once-in-a-lifetime performer
on the Babe Ruth scale. And his zanily brave personality was
part of his greatness. He was surely the greatest genius ever
to score 78 on an IQ test.
The Rockwell Connection
(page 6)
THE HOLOCAUST IN AMERICAN LIFE, by Peter Novick,
published by Houghton Mifflin, is receiving warm and well
merited praise for its thoughtful study of how "the Holocaust"
-- a term that gained currency only long after World War II --
has become a central symbol in recent public discourse.
Novick, a historian at the University of Chicago, is a liberal
Jew who frankly deplores the uses to which the Holocaust has
been put (instilling guilt in Jews and gentiles alike,
disparaging other atrocities by comparison, justifying hard-
line Israeli policies, distorting history, et cetera).
One section of the book casts a surprising light on my
own life. The Holocaust began to assume its present importance
during the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel for his role
in the mass murder of Jews. At the time Israel was widely
criticized, even by Jews, for kidnapping Eichmann in
Argentina, where he had hidden after the war, and for claiming
jurisdiction in the case, since his crimes had been committed
not only outside Israel, but before it came into existence.
Among the most derisive critics of Israel was William
Buckley's NATIONAL REVIEW, which felt that the trial could
only help the Soviet Union by inspiring renewed anti-German
feeling. The magazine's editorial sarcasms about Jews are
startling to read today and are no doubt deeply embarrassing
to Bill Buckley, who since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war has
strived to ingratiate himself with Jews, especially
neoconservative Zionists. My own criticisms of Israel and what
Pat Buchanan called its "Amen Corner in this country" led
Bill, in the later years of my service at NATIONAL REVIEW, to
repudiate my writings on the subject as, if not actually anti-
Semitic, at least inviting the imputation of being so. Which
did my career, as the Brits say, a bit of no good.
In fact, my criticisms of Israel were made from
conservative principle and were no harsher than NATIONAL
REVIEW's editorial positions on the subject in its early
years, when James Burnham set the tone for its foreign policy
views. Israel was then seen as a dubious proposition in terms
of Cold War strategy, and the magazine deplored and ridiculed
political pandering to the Jewish lobby.
I was puzzled and hurt when Bill publicly scolded me for
opinions which I believed he still shared; he expressed no
real disagreement with them, publicly or privately; he merely
treated them as a case of bad manners on my part. They enraged
"the COMMENTARY crowd" and interfered with his attempt to
curry favor with them; I could understand that much. But why
was he so jumpy about the Jews?
More than one observer remarked that he was acting as if
he was being blackmailed. Yes, that was how he *acted;* but I
had no reason to think it was really the case. One friend of
his and mine said he seemed "terrified" of his own father's
animosity toward the Jews, but this was no secret and he often
wrote and spoke about it himself (excessively, in fact).
Anyway, it wasn't something that could really be held against
Bill; his father had died in 1958.
But I think Novick has finally found the answer. Bill
must have been anxious about his own earlier writings about
Jews and Israel. And more. In a footnote at the end of the
book, Novick mentions that in 1962 Bill acknowledged having
paid the American Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell to promote
NATIONAL REVIEW; Bill said Rockwell returned the money
"promptly and amiably" when he failed to deliver. This was
part of the past Bill was trying to bury, and he surely knew
how it could be made to look if one of his editors spurred his
new Jewish "friends" to rake through the records. But at the
time I knew nothing of the Rockwell connection. I only wish I
had. Bill never mentioned it to me. No doubt there were other
things he didn't mention: he must have known how many more
skeletons there were in that closet.
Later Bill would make the rather bizarre boast that his
chief contribution to the conservative movement was to rid it
of anti-Semitism. I was disgusted by this posturing at the
expense of other conservatives, who didn't deserve the
implicit smear; in the light of his relations with Rockwell,
it seems especially hypocritical for him to pretend that his
ruling passion had always been anti-anti-Semitism.
And yet, in his defense, it should be said that during
the Cold War Bill was ready to make alliances with all sorts
of people as long as they were anti-Communist, not excluding
Zionist Jews like Harry Jaffa and Max Geltman. Rockwell was
incidental to all this, but in the belated Holocaust mania it
would have been easy to portray Bill as a Virtual Nazi -- as
indeed he was often maliciously portrayed before 1967.
But apparently I fell victim to his campaign to clean up
his past. That campaign was one minor result of the way the
Holocaust, as Novick says, has caused countless people to
revise the facts of history, including their personal
histories.
Boxed Copy
Trust your stereotype: A NEWSWEEK cover story on homosexuals'
"struggle for acceptance" calls it "absurd" to say that the
movement is heavily pedophilic. Oh? Then why, when
conservatives are always being called on to repudiate elements
of the "far right," are organized "gays" never asked to
repudiate the pedophiles who always participate freely in
their events? Why is lowering the age of consent a feature of
the homosexual agenda? After all, even Hugh Hefner, Larry
Flynt, and other hetero advocates of sexual license have never
made the age of consent an issue. (page 9)
Occasions of sin: It's said that a famous fundamentalist
preacher sent his son to Notre Dame -- presumably to ensure
that the boy wouldn't be exposed to papist doctrine. (page 11)
Devil's advocate: Speaking of which, Notre Dame's liberal
theologian Richard McBrien has written a book of capsule
biographies of the popes, titled simply LIVES OF THE POPES.
And a useful book it is, as long as you substitute the word
"orthodox" whenever Fr. McBrien writes "reactionary." (page
11)
True colors: George Will, who persuaded Bob Dole to run for
president in 1996, now has another brainstorm: George W. Bush
should take Colin Powell as his running mate. "[The] fact that
[Powell] is pro-choice and favors affirmative action would
help insulate Bush from certain skepticism." Better yet, it
would take away any pro-lifers' excuses for supporting Bush.
(page 12)
Exclusive to the electronic version:
Nomenclature notes: H. Rap Brown, whom you may remember as a
riot-inciting black militant from the 1960s (does "Burn, baby,
burn" ring a bell?), now goes by a pseudo-Arab name and has
been arrested for fatally shooting a cop in Atlanta. Reporting
the story, the NEW YORK TIMES describes him as a "civil rights
activist." I guess that would make Bill Clinton a "selfless
public servant."
Not again! The Clinton Administration is under investigation
over yet another batch of suspiciously missing documents. The
Justice Department is trying to discover whether the White
House deliberately withheld subpoenaed e-mail messages over
possible fund-raising irregularities (a/k/a crimes), as well
as the famous FBI files and a young intern named Monica
Lewinsky. The White House says it was another honest mistake,
due to a computer glitch; but several former computer
contractors say Clinton aides threatened them with jail terms
if they told anyone about the missing messages, many of which
were addressed to Al Gore.
Guess who's paying (as usual)? One of the most generous
contributors to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign, it
transpires, is the unwitting American taxpayer. He's kicked in
about a hundred grand to pay for her flights on military
aircraft. And she doesn't have to worry about prosecution this
time: as first lady, she's legally entitled to fly at public
expense. Of course this privilege was created at a time when
nobody dreamed that a president's wife would use it for the
purpose of obtaining elective office.
Laying down our arms: The Most Ethical Administration in Our
Nation's History has found a new way to induce Americans to
surrender their liberties. It has now bullied Smith & Wesson
into agreeing to add safety features to its product by
threatening the gun manufacturer with ruinous lawsuits. The
rule of law is giving way to the rule of lawyers, and they
just *adore* Bill Clinton (notwithstanding that he himself now
faces disbarment).
O tempora: Sad to see Michael Caine, normally aloof from
Hollywood's depravity, collecting an Oscar for playing a
lovable abortionist in THE CIDER HOUSE RULES. In one of
Caine's early hits, ALFIE (1966), he played a lecher whose
cynicism was exposed when he arranged an abortion for a
girlfriend; even Alfie knew how ugly abortion was. Times have
changed.
Reprinted Columns (pages 7-12)
* The Culture of Tyranny (page 7)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/000203.shtml
* The Fueher Furor (page 8)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/000210.shtml
* Hillary! and Humanity (page 9)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/000215.shtml
* Who Are the Snobs? (page 10)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/000229.shtml
* Lesser Evils (page 11)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/000302.shtml
* The Meaning of McCain (page 12)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/000307.shtml
All articles are written by Joe Sobran
Copyright (c) 2000. All rights reserved.
This material may not be disseminated or distributed in any
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-- either in print or on the Internet.Those wishing to publish
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Contact fran@griffnews.com for further details.
[ENDS]