SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
May 2004
Volume 11, Number 5
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
Managing Editor: Ronald N. Neff
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CONTENTS
Features
-> Habla Ingles?
-> The Moving Picture (plus Exclusives to this edition)
-> The Jewish Faction
Nuggets (plus Exclusives to this edition)
List of Columns Reprinted in This Issue
FEATURES
Habla Ingles
(pages 1)
The Bush administration is floundering abroad. The
Iraq occupation is failing; military victory and regime
change turn out to be a lot easier than transforming a
whole culture. It's hard to run a school in Democracy
when the students are killing the teachers and mutilating
their bodies.
Meanwhile, the enemy George Bush forgot (or thought
he'd crippled in Afghanistan and Iraq) rocked Europe with
horrifying bombings in Madrid that moved Spaniards to
change their own regime, electing a Socialist who pledged
to pull Spanish troops out of America's Iraq "fiasco."
The Polish government hinted that it might follow suit,
having been misled by American propaganda about those
ever-elusive "weapons of mass destruction." At home, yet
another former Bush insider, Richard Clarke, gave
sensational testimony that Bush's inner circle had been
obsessed with Iraq, not terrorism, all along. Polls show
that Bush still has plenty of support in the United
States, but he doesn't have much overseas.
When, days after the Madrid bombings, the Israelis
killed Ahmed Yassin, founder and leader of Hamas, they
achieved a purpose no commentator seems to have noticed.
Ahmed Yassin, 67, was a half-blind quadriplegic in a
wheelchair emerging from his morning prayers in a Gaza
mosque; he and several bystanders were slaughtered by a
rocket fired from a U.S. Apache helicopter. The Muslim
world and Europe were outraged. Bush responded with a
feeble protest: He was "troubled."
He should have been more than troubled. He was the
real target. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon knows very well
that assassinating alleged terrorists only provokes more
terrorism. He also knows that doing so, using American
weapons, helps isolate the United States along with
Israel against the rest of the world. Bush senses that
this isn't helping him win Iraqi hearts and minds for
Democracy. In fact, it serves the purposes of both Sharon
and Osama bin Laden.
But Bush doesn't seem to grasp that this is the
whole idea. When the chief foreseeable result of an
outrageous provocation is to embarrass an ally, that
result can't be called inadvertent. It is intentional.
Sharon is not stupid. He has gotten where he is today
through shrewd provocation. This is his style, and it has
served him well throughout his career. He has often
tested Bush, and Bush has failed every time. The killing
of Ahmed Yassin was the worst humiliation Sharon has
inflicted on him yet.
Last year, when an Israeli bulldozer killed Rachel
Corrie, a young American peace activist, Sharon found the
lesson of the 1967 USS Liberty still held: The Israelis
may even murder Americans without incurring penalties
from their friends in the U.S. Government.
Sharon, whom Bush has called "a man of peace," is
our president's Alpha male. Sharon, not Saddam Hussein,
has taken the measure of his courage. The only proof that
he has a spine at all is that when Sharon growls, Bush
manages to curl his tail between his legs, a mammalian
gesture of submission that requires at least a vestigial
backbone. Bush's English may not be so good, but his body
language is eloquent.
The Moving Picture
(page 2)
Fred Barnes, editor of the neocon mag THE WEEKLY
STANDARD, reports from Baghdad: "Here's what you learn
quickly in Iraq: The transformation of the country into a
peaceful, free market democracy is a bigger, more
demanding, and far more difficult project than you ever
dreamed." Yes, Fred, Evelyn Waugh could have told you
that. The Iraqis are "difficult to deal with. They're
sullen and suspicious and conspiracy-minded." Could it be
that people just don't love their conquerors? Perish the
thought! After three pages of a surprisingly (for a
neocon) discouraging account of the occupation, our
correspondent concludes on a brave note of hope: "I'd
like to see one other thing in Iraq, an outbreak of
gratitude for the greatest act of benevolence one country
has ever done for another. A grateful Iraqi heart would
be a sign of a new Iraqi attitude and a signal of sure
success." Yes, it would. Just as another regional
conflict could be resolved if only those Palestinians
were more grateful for Israeli democracy.
* * *
President Bush is often derided as a "cowboy." Well,
it would be one thing if he were a Gary Cooper, taking on
the varmints with patient cunning. The trouble is, he's
Yosemite Sam.
* * *
This year's presidential election pits a Catholic
against a Protestant. Guess which one is pro-abortion?
* * *
Garry Wills begins the preface to the paperback
edition of his book WHY I AM A CATHOLIC: "Some who have
read this book *still* ask why I am a Catholic." Well,
yes. In fact an atheist philosopher who reviewed his
earlier work, PAPAL SIN, loved the book but asked the
same question. That should have told Wills something. But
he goes on, with immediate self-congratulation: "They
must have a stereotypic view of what Catholics are, and I
do not fit it." Is it stereotypic to expect a Catholic to
defend the Church, rather than to make a career of
denouncing her and denying some of her defining
doctrines? Wills does explain, after a fashion, why *he*
is a Catholic (basically, because he was raised as one);
but he leaves you wondering why on earth anyone else
should be. What an evangelist.
* * *
Peter Ustinov has died at 82. Not only was he a
hilarious actor, as witness his Oscar-winning performance
in SPARTACUS; he also made the neglected -- and utterly
serious -- 1962 classic film adaptation of Melville's
BILLY BUDD, which he produced, wrote, directed, and acted
in. Over the years this gem has lost none of its dramatic
and moral power.
* * *
We've also lost another suave Englishman in Alistair
Cooke, who had retired only weeks before his death at 95.
In radio, books, and, finally, television, he was the
eternal old-fashioned Edwardian gent, observing America
with a benign intelligence that did more honor to this
country than any patriotic boast could do. His 1977 book
SIX MEN offers delightful prose portraits of Charles
Chaplin, Edward VIII, H.L. Mencken, Adlai Stevenson,
Bertrand Russell, and Humphrey Bogart. If he ever wrote
or spoke an infelicitous sentence, I must have missed it.
* * *
Also gone is John Henry Williams, enterprising son
of Ted Williams, who has succumbed to leukemia at 36. Who
gets the head?
Exclusive to the electronic version:
The news media reported, with evident relief, that
during one recent week the new remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD
had beaten THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST at the box office. I
gather they were afraid Mel Gibson's flick was going to
stay on top forever? But secularists shouldn't
necessarily gloat. DAWN may not seem to be a Christian
movie, but it suggests that Gibson has already set a
trend: It features not one, but *thousands* of
resurrections.
* * *
USA TODAY reports that classic Disney cartoons have
been retouched on video to eliminate offensive stuff like
ethnic jokes (the Big Bad Wolf posing as a Jewish
peddler) and even tobacco (Pecos Bill smoking
cigarettes). So it has come to this: We must now seek out
black-market pornographers if we want to see hard-core
Disney.
The Jewish Faction
(pages 3-6)
{{ Material dropped from this feature in the print
edition or changed solely for reasons of space appears in
double curly brackets. Emphasis is indicated by the
presence of asterisks around the emphasized words.}}
Jews in America are often spoken of as a "minority."
So they are, in more than a numerical sense, as I will
explain. But despite their small numbers they are also a
powerful faction, though the term "faction" is rarely
applied to them.
In Federalist Number 10, James Madison gave a
{{ famous and }} useful definition of the word: "By a
faction I understand a number of citizens, whether
amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who
are united and actuated by some common impulse of
passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other
citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of
the community."
The organized Jewish faction is what I call the
Tribe. It's a bit more specific than "the Jews"; but it
includes most Jews, who, as many opinion polls show,
overwhelmingly support the state of Israel and,
furthermore, overwhelmingly favor "progressive" causes
like legal abortion, "sexual freedom," and "gay rights."
What is striking about the Tribe is not that its
positions on such matters are necessarily wrong, but that
they are anti-Christian. They are even anti-Judaic, in
that they contravene the moral code of Moses. Jews today
define themselves formally by descent (or, less politely,
race, though the term is taboo) rather than by religion;
and, less formally, by antagonism to Christianity. It
would be inaccurate to say that the Tribe adopts certain
social attitudes and political positions even though
these are repugnant to most Christians. It adopts them
chiefly *because* they are repugnant to Christians.
Within the Tribe, one of the worst sins a Jew can
commit is to become a Christian, as witness Jewish
hostility to Jews for Jesus. An irreligious or atheist
Jew may claim Israeli citizenship at any time, but a Jew
who has converted to Christianity may not. This
antagonism is so predominant that the Tribe opposes not
only government endorsements of Christianity, but even
the public exaltation of the Old Testament (as in
displays of the Ten Commandments on public property)
because Christians have adopted it too. The
"Judaeo-Christian tradition" is a sentimental myth,
treasured by many Christians but by very few Jews.
The Tribe has no pope or authoritative body defining
its creed, but its attitudes aren't hard to discern. As
Samuel Johnson says, a community must be judged "non
numero sed pondere" -- not by numbers, but by weight. And
the preponderance of Jewish sentiment is clear: it
loathes Christianity and Christian influence in public
life. It resents Christian proselytizing, one of the
first Christian duties (virtually banned in Israel). It
considers the Gospels the very source of what it calls
anti-Semitism. In fact, the very word "anti-Semitism" is
basically a Tribal synonym for Christianity.
This was all spelled out for even the most naive
observer by the fierce Tribal reaction to Mel Gibson's
film THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. The barely concealed
hatred of Christianity came roaring forth long before the
movie was {{ even }} finished. {{ The columnist }}
Charles Krauthammer spoke for many Jews when he wrote
that the story of Christ's Passion had "resulted in
countless Christian massacres of Jews, and prepared
Europe for the ultimate massacre -- six million Jews
systematically murdered within six years -- in the heart,
alas, of a Christian continent." Alas indeed!
That Christianity caused the Holocaust, along with
"countless" other Christian persecutions of Jews "for
almost two millennia," was a given for Jews commenting on
the film. Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League,
along with other Jewish leaders, flatly predicted that
Gibson's film would cause hatred and violence against
Jews -- implying, of course, that Christians are fully
capable of such rabid conduct even now, though it would
be directly contrary to Christian doctrine. William
Safire of the NEW YORK TIMES virtually blamed the
Holocaust on Christ himself, citing the words "I come not
to bring peace, but a sword" as evidence of
Christianity's inherent violence.
Since the allegations about the past are never more
definite than Krauthammer's unspecified "countless"
(would that be more, or less, than six million?), we are
dealing here not with genuine historical memory, but with
a mythological caricature of Christian history that still
obsesses the Tribal mind, both shaping and expressing its
present feelings. So much for "interfaith dialogue." As
Rabbi Jacob Neusner has observed, for most Jews today
Auschwitz has replaced Sinai as the definitive moment in
the Jewish past. And Auschwitz is projected all the way
back to Calvary.
It's now a Tribal article of faith that until the
Second Vatican Council in 1965, the Catholic Church
taught that all Jews were "Christ-killers." This is of
course false, as older Catholics know first-hand and as
anyone else can easily ascertain. The notion that the
Church "reversed" this supposedly ancient teaching
displays modern ignorance of the way the Church does
business: It assumes that she can arbitrarily make and
unmake doctrines, like a contemporary dictator changing
the Party line overnight. She acts slowly and
deliberately precisely because she can *never* repudiate
a settled teaching while claiming infallibility. Even
Catholic children used to grasp that.
When I joined the Church in 1961, the only Jews I
knew personally were some quite amiable neighbors. If
anyone had told me that the Halman family down the street
bore special responsibility for the Crucifixion, I would
have been utterly mystified. So bizarre an idea would
have been an impediment to my conversion: it simply
wouldn't have made sense. And it never occurred to my
Catholic mentors; they didn't need a new Church council
to tell them that it was nonsense. They didn't speak
nonsense. It had nothing to do with loving or hating Jews
as such. I was far more inclined to hate Protestant
heretics at that point, but I never even thought of
blaming them for, say, Communist persecution of
Catholics. It would have been about as rational as
blaming Julius Caesar for Pearl Harbor.
The Tribe, however, embraces the mythical charge of
"Christ-killing" in order to reverse it: Christians are
Jew-killers. And it all began, by implication, with
Christ himself, whose followers, immediately after his
death, naturally began implementing his principles of
charity by persecuting Jews, a course they have persisted
in "for almost two millennia."
Astute readers will sense a discrepancy here.
Christians were in no position to persecute anyone
{{ for nearly three centuries, }} until the conversion of
Constantine in A.D. 313. Meanwhile, they suffered some
pretty severe persecution themselves. According to the
Acts of the Apostles, it began with the Jews who rejected
Christ and tried furiously to exterminate the infant
Church. We also know this from the testimony of one of
the persecutors themselves, the turncoat Saul of Tarsus,
whom we know as St. Paul. Paul himself died as a result
of charges brought by the Tribe before Roman officials,
just as Christ had.
The Tribe's cohesion and survival over the two
succeeding millennia has often seemed miraculous, even to
Christians. By a fine irony, the Talmud claims "credit"
for Christ's death beyond what the Church has actually
taught: It says that "our sages" justly condemned him to
death as a sorcerer, not even mentioning a Roman role in
the event. The Gospel of John merely says that "his own
received him not" and the creeds say that he "suffered
under Pontius Pilate," passing up golden opportunities to
affix Tribal guilt at the outset.
At any rate, Christians knew from the start how the
Tribe felt about them, and nothing has changed since then
except that today's Christians have become remarkably
naive about it. Christ tells us to forgive our enemies,
but he doesn't ask us to pretend that they are our
friends. He predicted persecution as the natural price of
discipleship; hence we are to be "wise as serpents, but
harmless as doves." Christians have often failed on both
counts, but the guidelines are clear enough. In fact,
Church officials have often condemned popular Christian
outrages against Jews, the worst of which occurred during
the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Not only
Christian charity but worldly common sense could see that
the Jews were being victimized by a superstitious fury, a
madness brought on by an inexplicable calamity.
Anyone who concentrates on the Tribe risks losing
his sense of proportion. This includes, preeminently, the
Tribe itself. If the history of Christian Europe is the
history of persecution of Jews, the first question that
naturally arises is why the Jews have chosen to live in
Europe for so many centuries. If you were wanted for
murder in Detroit, why would you choose to move to
Detroit, of all places on earth? Why have "Diaspora" Jews
persistently settled in Christian lands, instead of
rushing en masse to their "homeland" in the Middle East,
the Holy Land itself? "Next year in Jerusalem"? Why, as
Dodger fans used to say, "wait till next year"?
May I utter here, in the privacy of my own
newsletter, the dark and reactionary suspicion that the
perpetually plaintive Tribe was actually *content* to
live in Christian lands? Even today, more Jews choose to
live in Christian America than in the state of Israel,
typically attacking Christians for supposed bigotries
they harbor instead of thanking Christians for their long
record of tolerance and benevolence.
Again, the Tribe seems, by its own account, to have
a long and puzzling tradition of migrating to
anti-Semitic countries. Or rather, "anti-Semitism" is the
explanation it gives for its own perpetual unpopularity,
and at the root of anti-Semitism, it insists, is
Christianity (though a new explanation has to be found
for its unpopularity in the Muslim world).
Enough already. It's time to face the possibility
that Jewish problems are sometimes due to Jewish
attitudes and Jewish behavior. My father once remarked to
me that the Jews are disliked everywhere they go because
of "their crooked ways." Though, as I later learned, Dad
had been an altar boy, he said nothing about
Christ-killing; he'd long since left the Church and he
didn't particularly care who had killed Christ. As a
matter of fact, he didn't particularly dislike Jews; but
he did think it was their ethics, not their biblical
record, that had earned them their low reputation.
{{ The popular verb "jew" would seem to bear him
out. So do countless ethnic jokes about Jewish sharp
dealing and devious conduct. So, in fact, do Talmudic
passages authorizing Jews to relieve gentiles of their
property, if they can do it without incurring anger
against Jews in general. These are the sorts of things
that actually irritate (and sometimes amuse) non-Jews.
Has anyone ever heard a joke about Jews killing
Christ? }}
The Tribe's obloquy long predates the Third Reich's
propaganda. Government libel campaigns, a feature of the
modern world of mass communication, rarely succeed for
long; even popular myths die out over time. But a durable
reputation, lasting over many centuries, is hard to
account for unless it contains some truth confirmed by
experience. Few Christians have said that the Jews killed
Christ; they have always said that the Jews *rejected*
Christ, as indeed Jews still do. The Tribe itself makes
rejecting Christ a defining feature of Jewishness, even
more than adhering to Judaism.
Where does the charge of Christ-killing show up in
Christian culture? I have done a bit of spot-checking in
English literature during the Christian era, in three
famous stories about Jews.
"The Prioress's Tale," in THE CANTERBURY TALES of
Geoffrey Chaucer, is a pious fable about a small boy
whose throat is cut by malicious Jews, who then throw the
little corpse into a pit. The story is designed to put
the Jews in a bad light, by contrasting Christian piety
with inhuman Jewish cruelty; yet it says nothing about
the Jews' having killed Christ.
The most famous and fascinating Jewish character in
secular literature is Shakespeare's Shylock in THE
MERCHANT OF VENICE. He is a villain, but he also speaks
his piece so eloquently that readers are still divided
over his creator's attitude toward him. Is he more victim
than villain? At any rate, one thing is clear: Though
Shylock's Christian enemies call him a bloodthirsty
usurer, a "wolf," "misbeliever," "cutthroat dog," and so
forth, none of them, even in their most violent
vituperation, suggest that he is guilty of killing
Christ. The idea of Jewish guilt for the Crucifixion,
which Krauthammer insists obsessed Christians "for almost
two millennia," never even crosses their minds!
More important for our purposes, Shakespeare doesn't
connect Shylock with the Crucifixion either. Shylock
speaks of Christ and Christians with brusque contempt, he
is tortured by his daughter's elopement with a Christian,
but, for all his cruelty, he never adverts to the
Crucifixion. The play assumes enmity between Christians
and Jews, but not the sort the Tribe's rhetoric would
lead us to expect.
An even more telling example is another play of the
period, THE JEW OF MALTA, usually ascribed to Christopher
Marlowe. Its chief character, Barabas, is an uninhibited
exaggeration of the villainous Jew: He walks abroad at
night poisoning wells for the sheer, gleeful pleasure of
it; he poisons his own daughter for becoming a Christian
nun. His cunning malice, comic in its sheer extremity,
knows no bounds; in contrast to Shylock, Barabas is
robustly implausible. Yet nowhere in the play is there
any hint of the theme of Christ-killing. That would be
beyond even this absurd Christian fantasy of the
hate-crazed Jew.
And of course Charles Dickens created an
unforgettable Jewish villain: Fagin in OLIVER TWIST.
Though far from inhuman, he is certainly disreputable,
teaching urchins to pick pockets and receiving stolen
goods. Dickens usually refers to him simply as "the Jew."
But again, there is no hint that this Jewish rascal bears
any guilt for the Crucifixion.
Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton, two of the
greatest Catholic writers of the last century, were often
critical of the Jews -- each wrote a book about them --
and today are routinely referred to as anti-Semites.
Neither of them accused the Jews of killing Christ. In
fact, both sought solutions to the "Jewish problem" which
would be fair to Christians and Jews alike; Chesterton
was pro-Zionist, Belloc anti-Zionist, and both spent many
pages defending the Jews against common charges. But
neither of these alleged bigots thought the accusation of
deicide was worth mentioning, either to assert or to
refute.
In truth, the charge of "Christ-killing" is hard to
find anywhere, outside of schoolyard taunts. Yet the
Tribe "remembers" it, just as innumerable baseball fans
used to "remember" seeing Babe Ruth's legendary (and
apocryphal) "called shot" in the 1932 World Series, the
most famous home run never hit. Such non-happenings are a
regular feature of Tribal memory, as witness the many
testimonies of "Holocaust survivors" that have turned out
to be delusions or outright forgeries. A large proportion
of the Tribe is still absolutely convinced that Pius XII
was "Hitler's Pope," despite mountainous, and mounting,
evidence to the contrary. (Hitler's media called Pius
"the Jews' mouthpiece.")
Similar bogus memories {{ of victimization }}
surround the state of Israel. Far from facing extinction
in 1948, Zionist Jews enjoyed great military superiority
to the Arabs and ruthlessly drove the native Palestinians
from their homes with liberal applications of terrorism.
Since then the Jewish state has behaved according to the
harshest Jewish stereotypes, deceitfully, parasitically,
and cruelly. It was supposed to provide Jews with a safe
haven from persecution, where they could at last be
self-sufficient; instead, it has depended for its
survival on foreign aid, chiefly American. Proclaiming
democracy and equality, it has imposed racial tyranny of
the sort the Tribe roundly condemns everywhere else.
And it has failed in its whole original purpose of
ensuring Jewish safety. Despite its military power and
nuclear arsenal, it has engendered such hatred among
Arabs that Jews are afraid to go there and fret for its
survival -- even as they fret about nonexistent Christian
anti-Semitism in pro-Israel America. As the Good Book
says, "The guilty flee when no man pursueth." Zionism has
vividly shown that the Tribe is perfectly capable of
making enemies without the help of the Christians it
still, after almost two millennia, loathes.
What is the source of this deep enduring hatred of
Christianity? No doubt there are several; an obvious one
is the Church's claim to be the New Israel, a spiritual
one, supplanting the old ethnic one. Even many secular
Jews resent "supersessionist" Christian theology; it's
apparently an affront to be replaced as God's Chosen
People even if you no longer believe in God. This offense
is avenged by blaming Christians, especially popes, for
the Holocaust, any doubt of which the Tribe treats as
heresy. {{ In many Western countries the Tribe has
succeeded in criminalizing the expression of such
doubts. }}
Moreover, Christianity's universality has given it a
worldwide appeal that Judaism by its nature can never
enjoy. This consigns the Tribe to a permanent minority
status, confounding its proud expectation that with the
coming of the Messiah it would rule all nations. Worse,
Christians take it for granted that their ethic is
immeasurably superior to that of the Jews; this isn't
even debatable, for the Tribe can find no ground for
persuading Christians that the Jewish ethos is better.
Just as the dwarf is obsessed with height in a way people
of normal size can hardly imagine, the Tribe is obsessed
with its marginal minority status, which it experiences
as victimization, imagining slights and insults --
"anti-Semitism" -- even when none are intended. Its
inverted pride expresses itself in claims of persecution.
The Jews are still "chosen," if only for a singular
Christian hatred. The emergence and military power of the
Zionist state have partly assuaged this "ressentiment,"
while Arab hatred and Western disapproval have also
reinforced the feeling of persecution.
A subtle twist on this theme is offered by John
Murray Cuddihy in his book THE ORDEAL OF CIVILITY. For
the Jews, argues Cuddihy, adapting to the modern West has
indeed been an "ordeal," as they have found themselves
regarded as backward and "crude" against the "refined"
standards of Western Christian man. Such Jewish
ideologies as Marxism and Freudianism are disguised
apologias for the Jews, denying the superiority of
Western standards. For Marx, capitalism boils down to
mere greed; while for Freud, romantic love boils down to
mere lust. Both view Western manners as mere hypocrisy,
self-deluding airs put on by the goyim. Marxist and
Freudian reductionism have had tremendous attraction for
Jewish intellectuals, and not a few gentiles who feel
alienated from the Christian world.
The exaltation of alienation has been the
distinctive achievement of the Tribal intellectual. To be
alienated is to be superior, "chosen." There is something
richly symbolic in the creation of the state of Israel,
where an alien population has claimed the right to
dispossess the native one. Here is the psychic Tribal
drama played out in the real world, with the usurpers of
Palestine brazenly calling their regime a "democracy,"
while feeling victimized by the angry population they've
robbed and murdered.
President Bush sometimes says that minority children
suffer from "the soft bigotry of low expectations." They
get the message that nobody expects them to achieve
anything, so they don't even try. The very term
"minority" now signifies a group not only recognized as
having what Cuddihy nicely calls "accredited victim
status," but felt to be incapable of meeting normal
standards of conduct. Polish-Americans, for example, are
a numerical minority, but not a "minority" in this subtly
condescending sense.
One might also speak of a "soft" anti-Semitism of
low *moral* expectations. Most gentiles respect Jews for
their intelligence and ability, but they have also come
to take certain kinds of Jewish misbehavior for granted.
Israeli racial supremacism is assumed as inseparable from
"Israel's right to exist"; loose Jewish charges of
anti-Semitism, especially against Christians, are
likewise so predictable as to cause little surprise or
outrage. In public life, at least, the Tribe has embraced
this baneful form of "minority" status and the implicit
contempt that goes with giving up hope of normal
civility.
As with other "minorities," the Christian habit with
the Tribe is simply to pretend not to notice obvious and
distressing things. This, we assume, is just their
nature; they aren't going to change; maybe they can't
help being this way.
This is what "interfaith dialogue" has come to:
Christian despair and surrender.
NUGGETS
CONSCIENCE OF MANKIND: A new biography of Stalin quotes
his reaction to Hiroshima: "War is barbaric, but using
the A-bomb was a superbarbarity." (page 9)
NO MORE DO-NOTHING GOVERNMENT! Op-ed headline in the
WASHINGTON POST: "No Excuse for Inaction on Burma." About
time somebody said it. (page 9)
CHRISTIAN CHARITY, WITHIN THE LAW: If you suspect I
exaggerate when I say that tyranny has come to America,
consider this. A married couple I know recently lost
their house and all their possessions in a fire. (Thank
God, they and all their children were unhurt.) A message
soliciting help ended with this sentence: "We'll be
passing around the hat here, and have also asked the
ethics officer to let us know what people can do under
the Federal gift rules." (page 11)
THE BUSH-KERRY BAFFLER: This isn't an election; it's a
conundrum. Sure, the choice between the Big Two is always
lousy, but 2004 offers a special methodological problem:
How do you even decide the criteria for selecting the
lesser evil? It's as if Saddam Hussein had made a
voluntary transition to democracy by offering Iraqis a
choice between Uday and Qusay. (page 12)
Exclusive to the electronic version:
SEMANTIC NOTES: Notice that according to our hawks, it's
now "terrorism" to ambush invading soldiers, at least if
they are Americans bringing democracy.
POSSIBLE EXIT PLAN: There may finally be only one way for
the United States to restore stability to Iraq and
disengage: by tearing up the new constitution, putting
Saddam Hussein back in power, and bringing the troops
home.
REPRINTED COLUMNS
(pages 7-12)
* Hollywood, Old and New (March 11, 2004)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040311.shtml
* Masterminds (March 16, 2004)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040316.shtml
* Chutzpah and Hubris (March 23, 2004)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040323.shtml
* Bush League Fantasies (March 25, 2004)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040325.shtml
* Seeing Double (March 30, 2004)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040330.shtml
* Advice for Notre Dame (April 1, 2004)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040401.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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[ENDS]