SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
July 2004
Volume 11, Number 7
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
Managing Editor: Ronald N. Neff
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CONTENTS
Features
-> America the Liberator
-> The Moving Picture (plus electronic Exclusives)
-> Meet Uncle Joe
-> The Dudelike Achilles
Nuggets (plus electronic Exclusives)
List of Columns Reprinted in This Issue
FEATURES
{{ Material dropped from features or changed solely for
reasons of space appears in double curly brackets.
Emphasis is indicated by the presence of "equals" signs
around the emphasized words.}}
America the Liberator
(page 1)
The occupation of Iraq is turning out as badly as
any pessimist predicted, and the Bush administration has
been embarrassed not only by events but by revelations.
Though during the 2000 campaign George W. Bush expressed
proper scorn for "nation-building," that's exactly what
he has undertaken in Iraq -- without even a plan except
to install as puppet leader a shady Iraqi emigre, Ahmad
Chalabi, who has now been exposed as the huckster the
State Department had tried to warn Bush against
embracing. Chalabi, though absent from Iraq for decades,
also supplied sources for the "inside information" that
Saddam had an arsenal capable of attacking the United
States.
Not that it really depended on Chalabi, a pet of the
neocons who are now modestly disclaiming full credit for
the war they not only conceived but clamored for. Several
books have confirmed that the Bush League wanted war with
Iraq long before 9/11 and conceived the "war on terror"
with every intention of turning the war fever against
Iraq. The dreaded weapons still haven't been found. But
Bush now conflates die-hard Saddam loyalists with their
enemies, the Islamic Iraqi resistance, under the
{{ handy }} heading of "terrorists."
{{ Only such fraudulent semantics give the endless
war any seeming consistency. Anyone who shoots at an
American invader qualifies as a terrorist. }} To bad
semantics Bush adds weary analogies to World War II,
which, whatever you think of it, parallels this war about
as closely as the Kentucky Derby parallels the Trojan
War. He spent the 60th anniversary of D-Day in France,
trying to siphon inspiration from the Normandy invasion.
Bush shamelessly pretends that the United States has
"transferred sovereignty" to Iraq, whatever that means,
without removing American troops and even standing ready
to increase them, should the new prime minister request
them (or should he not). Bush was genuinely embarrassed,
though, when it transpired that U.S. soldiers had been
torturing Iraqi detainees in the very prison Saddam had
made notorious for diabolical torments. The best defense
the war's remaining advocates could mount was that the
American tortures were far less egregious than Saddam's.
So this is what Iraq's "liberation" has come to:
kinder, gentler torture. Uday and Qusay have been
supplanted by Lynndie England, who is now the most famous
flower of American womanhood in the Middle East. And to
give our civilization its due, Lynndie merely pointed
smirkingly at organs Saddam's men would have cut off.
Think of it: When democracy takes root, complete with
equality of the sexes (a key item on the Wolfowitz agenda
for cultural as well as political change), the Arabs may
produce their own Lynndies.
In politics, especially during wartime, people
habitually say things that would be recognized, in any
other setting, as insane. Bush talks as if, by "staying
the course," America can still win Arab goodwill, even
after all the years of supporting Zionism, two Bush wars,
the mass murder of "sanctions," frequent casual bombings
(let's not forget Bill Clinton's contributions),
conquest, occupation, and obscene torture.
{{ Fred Barnes of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, as you may
recall, has summed up the Bush-neocon attitude
definitively: Iraq owes the U.S. "gratitude" for "the
greatest act of benevolence one country has ever
performed for another." Has national self-delusion ever
been expressed in words so stupefying? }}
The Moving Picture
(page 2)
The death of Ronald Reagan at 93 was sad and moving
even for those of us who had become disillusioned with
his politics, as I had. It was painful to imagine that
wonderful personality destroyed, while he still lived, by
what we used to call "senility" or "second childhood," as
if it were an almost harmless affliction, rather than a
deadly one. The strength of Reagan's conservative legacy
may be surmised from this fact: congressmen of both
parties propose to honor him by increasing Federal
funding for Alzheimer's research.
* * *
Ah, the Reagan years! Supply-side economics, David
Stockman, John Hinckley, enterprise zones, gender gap,
Star Wars, James Watt, Robert Bork, original intent,
Iran-Contra, Ollie North, Mario Cuomo, Bitburg, bracket
creep, AIDS, war on the poor, Hymietown, Geraldine
Ferraro, Joan Quigley ...
* * *
The prosaic Richard Nixon, of all people, said it
best: "Politics is poetry, not prose." Watching Reagan,
you knew what that meant. He was the most seductive
politician of the late twentieth century.
* * *
I vividly remember my old friend Peggy Noonan's
elation at landing a job as a Reagan speechwriter. (That
was more than 20 years ago!) She was, of course, a
smashing success, and she both loved Reagan himself and
rejoiced in her work. She knew how her own eloquence
would be enhanced by Reagan's delivery, as Verdi might
enjoy writing arias for a particularly brilliant tenor.
Pity those who write speeches for the incumbent, and who
must carefully avoid writing over the poor dunce's head.
* * *
Another nice memory: Reagan speaking at a National
Review dinner, where he and Bill Buckley traded witty
barbs. Hope and Crosby were never so hilarious.
* * *
In his genially triumphal way, Reagan managed to
convince conservatives that they had conquered. I fell
for this myself. It finally dawned on me that liberalism
was still in charge; and that far from defeating it,
Reagan had merely come to terms with it, going along with
most of the features of the monstrous welfare state
(while expanding the warfare state). What he did achieve,
though misleading, was not contemptible: a change in the
rhetoric of American politics. Even Bill Clinton felt
obliged to say that "the era of big government is over,"
and even Bush claims to be a conservative.
* * *
Neoconservatives -- or, as I like to call them, the
Learned Juniors of Zion -- are comparing Reagan to their
heroes, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Most
unfair. Reagan never did a fraction of the harm these two
supreme opportunists did.
* * *
A judge in (where else?) Massachusetts has ruled
(you've read less than half the sentence, and already
your muscles have tensed up, haven't they?) that it's not
libelous to call someone a homosexual, on the perfectly
reasonable grounds (you can guess the rest) that to deem
it libelous would be to perpetuate the benighted and
bigoted stereotype that there's something wrong with
sodomy. Soon the courts may have to decide if it's
libelous to accuse Barney Frank of chasing women.
Exclusive to electronic media:
Democrats are bewailing the nasty partisanship of
the Republicans in Congress and on the Bush team, not
without reason. At the same time, a bit of proportion is
in order. It suddenly occurs to me that I haven't heard
one name mentioned in years: that of Jim Wright, the
House majority leader during the Reagan years, when the
Democrats ruled Congress. They didn't come much nastier,
this side of Jack the Ripper. Wright was finally forced
out of Congress for unethical conduct.
Meet Uncle Joe
(pages 3-5)
Joseph Stalin's crimes are so staggering in scale
that they defy calculation. We naturally assume that such
a man must have been thoroughly demented. But without
palliating his horrible career in the least, a British
author offers a startling new view that makes him at
least comprehensible as a man.
What was Stalin like personally? Well, here's an
intimate glimpse. At the height of his power in the
Soviet Union, he asked his aged mother, "Why did you beat
me so hard?" Her tart reply: "That's why you turned out
so well." (So that explains it!) She then asked
curiously, "Joseph, what are you now?" "Well," he
explained, "remember the tsar? I'm something like a
tsar." Unimpressed, the pious old woman commented, "You'd
have done better to become a priest." This answer
delighted him. He always enjoyed a good laugh.
This story comes from a new book by Simon Sebag
Montefiore, a British journalist, STALIN: THE COURT OF
THE RED TSAR (Knopf). Drawn from unpublished memoirs and
interviews with Stalin's surviving intimates and their
families, this 785-page tome is the richest family
portrait, as it were, of the tyrant and his inner circle
we are ever likely to see.
Who was this man who ran one of history's most
colossal reigns of terror? Montefiore's most fascinating
revelation is that Stalin was by no means a full-time
monster. As Lenin's successor, he was, so to speak, a
monster ex officio. But as a man, he also had his
sentimental and even tender side. True, this kinder,
gentler Stalin was somewhat unreliable, but it was there,
somewhere, even if it was buried by the crimes of what I
suppose we must call his mature years. It would be absurd
to speak of his redeeming qualities. But it would also be
misleading to imagine him as a purely pathological demon.
He was far from the affable "Uncle Joe" beloved of
Churchill and Roosevelt, but he was recognizably human.
The book begins with an account of the suicide of
Stalin's second wife, Nadya Alleluyeva Stalin, in 1932.
She apparently left a bitter note, now lost, blaming
Stalin for her misery, then shot herself. He was
shattered. He had loved her, in his way, and had
apparently been faithful to her; he was "no womanizer,"
Montefiore says, and he never remarried. In fact, he was
somewhat prudish (many Hollywood films, tame by today's
measure, offended him). Like many of his bloody inner
ring, he could be a doting father as well. At any rate,
he talked emotionally about Nadya for the rest of his
life.
Born in a shack in rural Georgia in 1878, Joseph
Vissarionovich Djugashvili grew up in "a poor
priest-ridden household," where his drunken father as
well as his mother beat him severely. Actually, there is
some doubt about his paternity; Stalin himself once said
his real father was a priest. His mother's fidelity seems
to have been erratic.
Soon after entering a seminary, he became an atheist
and embraced Marxism. After his expulsion he joined a
revolutionary group, adopted the name "Koba," and was
arrested and sent to Siberia seven times. The tsarist
penal system was so easy-going that these were "almost
reading holidays," says Montefiore, and Stalin escaped
six times without finishing his terms. He chose the name
"Stalin" in 1913, partly because it was similar to
"Lenin."
During this period he married his first wife -- whom
he also loved passionately -- and had a son, as well as
two sons by other women. He rose quickly within the
movement and caught Lenin's eye as a reliable Communist.
Stalin is often thought to have been more cynic than true
believer, and he was later accused of "betraying the
Revolution," but Montefiore argues plausibly that he was
always, from the start, a fanatical Communist. He merely
equated the Revolution with himself. The rest followed.
Montefiore quotes Stalin's "creed of Terror": "The
further we move forward, the more success we have, the
more embittered will the remnants of the destroyed
exploiter classes become, the sooner they will resort to
extreme forms of struggle." The maxim "Better safe than
sorry" has never been applied with more rigor. Stalin
defined the class enemies very broadly, eventually
including among them old Party cronies he suspected as
potential rivals, however orthodox their Communism. They
must have been shocked to hear themselves accused of
heterodoxy, but for Stalin the only true Communist was
one who was utterly devoted to the actual Revolution --
that is to say, himself. Dialectically, you can almost
see his point.
Stalin was too realistic to assume that his equation
of himself with the Revolution would come easily to
everyone who believed abstractly in Marxism. That would
have been the sheerest vanity, and vanity was not among
his vices. On the contrary. A Communist who went by the
book, he knew, might have difficulty swallowing one-man
rule and seeing in one pock-marked little Georgian the
personification of the Russian proletariat. It would be a
tough sell, but over time Stalin would prove to be an
able high-pressure salesman.
Complicating the ideological situation were the
bitter enmities among the early Communists themselves.
When they came to power in 1918, the charismatic Leon
Trotsky had already earned the hatred of most of his
peers, including, fatally, Stalin. Lenin came to distrust
Stalin in his last years, but by then it was too late to
prevent his succession. Trotsky was forced into exile,
whence he bedeviled Stalin until 1940, when one of
Stalin's agents penetrated his lair in Mexico and put an
ax in his skull. (Ordering assassinations abroad was one
of Stalin's specialties. He even contemplated having John
Wayne murdered when he learned that the actor, previously
one of his favorites, was vocally anti-Communist.)
The last thing Stalin wanted was a successor. When,
after Lenin's death in 1924, he became, after a brief
power struggle, the unrivaled Soviet dictator, he set
about making sure he wouldn't have a successor any time
soon by doing away with all potential claimants to his
throne. His treachery to those closest to him was
terrifying -- and effective. As Montefiore says, "His
antennae were supersensitive."
One early prospective successor was Sergei Kirov, a
golden boy of the Revolution, murdered in 1934. Kirov
(born Kostrikov) loved opera and mountain-climbing, had
good looks and great charm, and made friends easily. He
and Stalin became close, and there is no doubt of
Stalin's real affection for him for some years.
Montefiore suggests it was a case of love turning into
envy and hatred; in any case, the companionship began
promisingly. The two men played billiards together, went
to the beach, swapped dirty jokes, teased each other, and
once attended a puppet show put on by Stalin's daughter.
After Nadya's suicide, they became even closer; Kirov
"cared for me like a child," Stalin recalled.
Kirov was a faithful Bolshevik who (for instance)
once ordered a bourgeois shot for hiding his own
furniture. He was loyal to Stalin; he resisted an effort
within the Party to supplant Stalin with him, and even
warned Stalin about it. "Thank you," Stalin said. "I
won't forget what I owe you." He probably didn't. Nor did
he forget that Kirov might still supplant him. Frictions
developed between the two, and at times harsh words were
exchanged; it was noted that nobody else dared speak so
freely to Stalin, and they were, said one witness, like
"equal brothers."
One day the workaholic Kirov, arriving at his
office, was shot in the back of the neck. His assassin,
captured on the spot, said he was sent by the Party.
Stalin at once ordered an investigation but made sure it
didn't get far. He arranged an elaborate funeral and
praised Kirov generously. At the same time, he took
advantage of the moment by pinning the murder on Gregory
Zinoviev (born Apfelbaum) and Lev Kamenev (born
Rosenfeld), Lenin's two closest comrades. They had saved
Stalin's career in 1925, and he obviously never forgot
what he owed them either. The purge of the Old Bolsheviks
had begun.
Stalin's hand in Kirov's death has always been
suspected, but never proved. We do know that it was all
very fishy; that he recovered from the loss of his old
friend resiliently, making the most of the opportunity it
presented; and that his old cronies believed he was
behind it. His guilt can hardly be ruled out in
principle, especially considering his decided lack of
zeal in finding the real killer or killers (apart from
the minor functionary who pulled the trigger). In
addition, just before his death Stalin had become
"suffocatingly friendly" to Kirov, seeming to put aside
their differences -- and Stalin's sudden seeming
forgiveness was always a danger sign.
In view of all this, the judgment that Stalin was
"paranoid" misses the mark. In his way, he was quite
rational. It makes a certain sense to get rid of a
million people too many rather than one too few. His
essential sanity is evident in his sense of humor; a
somewhat rough humor, to be sure, but shrewd, witty, and
even aphoristic. Some of his sayings are famous: "One
death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
"The Pope? How many divisions does the Pope have?" When
he quarreled with Lenin's revered widow, Krupskaya, he
threatened to appoint someone else as Lenin's widow.
Stalin even had enough of a conscience to be shocked
by the "superbarbarity" of using the atomic bomb on
Japan. But, adapting to the reality of the time as
always, he set about getting the bomb for himself. If the
enemy had it, after all, it would be irrational for him
to forswear it.
With the annihilation not only of tsardom, but of
traditional Russian culture and religion, there was no
safety in law, custom, or even friendship. Only raw power
remained. The only safety lay in treachery. Lavrenti
Beria, dreaded head of the secret police (and another
charming and devoted family man, when he wasn't raping
and torturing girls), tersely put it, the only rule was:
"Strike first." Stalin was a voracious reader of
Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky; his favorite play was
MACBETH, which he obviously, again in his own way, took
to heart. Time and again Stalin would assure an old
comrade of his undying affection hours before having him
killed.
The lesson sank in quickly. As Stalin "liquidated"
the founding generation of Communists, nobody lived in
greater fear than his own courtiers. If Stalin suspected
you for any reason, even a reason you couldn't fathom,
you were a goner. It was that simple; and it was inherent
in the logic of the revolutionary situation. Despite
Marxist-Leninist iron laws of history, everything
depended on one man's whim. Stalin understood this
perfectly and acted accordingly.
Even flattery might not save you; it only earned
Stalin's contempt and suspicion. On some occasions,
oddly, he respected and spared the few who dared stand up
to him. Not that open defiance was much to be
recommended. For the most part, only the obsequious
survived. His cruelty coexisted with a sentimental
streak, which may surprise us more than it should. He
often expressed gratitude to people who had befriended
him in his youth, maybe because only they, in his whole
life, had shown him real kindness when he was still
powerless; once he even wrote a thank-you letter to a
prison guard who had bent the rules for him. He must have
missed the days when he could trust others.
The price of being dreaded by everyone is that you
can't trust anyone. Stalin's notorious "cult of
personality" amounted to deification. He was so deeply
feared that when he would mispronounce a word at a Party
congress, subsequent speakers would take care to
mispronounce the same word. Stalin also took a keen
interest in the fine arts, and one musician was so
frightened in his presence that he soiled his trousers.
One regular feature of Stalin's court was the
late-night banquet, at which the Communist haves,
forgetting the plight of the country's myriad have-nots,
ate and drank in a splendid opulence the tsars would have
envied. Stalin, of course, dominated the festivities,
often amusing himself by tormenting his underlings; he
also showed off his fine singing voice. Everyone got
drunk (Stalin made the others taste the wine first as a
precaution against being poisoned). Once he ordered
Nikita Khrushchev, his faithful "Butcher of the Ukraine,"
to get down on his haunches and dance the gopak. The fat
Khrushchev was so awkward that Stalin joked that he
looked like "a cow dancing on ice."
Khrushchev never forgot such humiliations; neither,
it's safe to say, did the others. "A reasonable
interrogator," Khrushchev later observed, "would not
behave with a hardened criminal the way Stalin behaved
with his friends at the table." Given that all Stalin's
friends at the table =were= hardened criminals, we may
take this with a grim smile; but we see his point.
Unfortunately for Stalin's memory, Khrushchev turned
out to be his successor; and in 1956 Khrushchev delivered
a secret speech to a Party congress denouncing Stalin's
crimes, which, when leaked, shocked and amazed the world.
But the "crimes" Khrushchev had in mind weren't the
deaths of millions who died in famines, labor camps, and
the Lubyanka prison; they were the deaths of loyal party
members Stalin had purged (and maybe the mortification of
those who'd been forced to play the buffoon for his
amusement).
Many have speculated on why the Soviet elite adopted
its massive de-Stalinization program. Most of the answers
have been rather theoretical. But after reading this
book, I think the real answer is quite simple: After
living in servile terror of Stalin for decades, incurring
incalculable guilt while enduring brutal insults for
their pains, Stalin's hatchet men hated him with all
their hearts. But they had to wait until he was dead to
take their revenge, though Beria claimed (probably
falsely) to have killed him.
After Stalin, Beria is the most fascinating of the
many Red courtiers Montefiore portrays in detail. Though
more cruel than Stalin himself, he was a man of great
intelligence, cultivation, and even charm, warmly admired
by his own underlings. He loved his wife and children,
albeit he was also a promiscuous philanderer who
kidnapped women and even schoolgirls, often having them
killed after violating them. Shortly after Stalin died in
1953 (apparently of a stroke, but perhaps poisoned),
Khrushchev had Beria executed -- not for his hideous
crimes, but because he favored more liberal policies!
The startling truth Montefiore exposes, though, is
that at the heart of this monstrous system were men who,
while committing the most appalling horrors, remained in
some ways surprisingly ordinary. In many respects their
inordinate power dictated their crimes, while they
managed to retain a portion of their private humanity.
Maybe that's also the case in states closer to home.
The Dudelike Achilles
(page 6)
As Homer and Virgil tell it, the gods started all
the trouble. Wolfgang Peterson's TROY is a colossal new
film with a novel ambition: to recreate the Trojan War as
if it were historical fact. As spectacle, it's stunning;
Peterson handles vast naval convoys, huge crowds, and
great battles with confidence. But as an addition to the
Troy mythology, it rings as hollow as the Trojan horse.
Drawing chiefly on Homer and Virgil, the story
begins with the elopement of Helen (Diane Kruger) and
Paris (Orlando Bloom). Since she is married to one of the
Greek kings, Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), this means war,
with Menelaus's brother, Agamemnon (Brian Cox), seeing
his chance to unite all the Greeks under his command and
add Troy to his empire. Paris's father, the Trojan king
Priam (Peter O'Toole), and his elder brother Hector (Eric
Bana), are horrified by what he has done, but they are
sure the Greeks won't be able to penetrate Troy's
imposing walls. The Greeks, however, have a walking
weapon of mass destruction: Agamemnon's ace in the hole,
Achilles (Brad Pitt).
Pitt, the famous young heartthrob, might have been a
disaster as the great warrior, an Achilles who would be
less "godlike," as Homer calls him, than dudelike. But he
gives it a good try. He has added impressive muscles to
his frame, and his carriage in combat is swift,
startling, and deadly, as chillingly aggressive as a
panther. In that respect, this Achilles lives up to his
fearsome name.
One problem, though, is Pitt's renowned face. Nobody
could look less Greek. His long blond hair makes his
features look bunched together, with narrow eyes, pug
nose, large lips, and weak chin. His voice also lacks any
hint of thunder. Sorry, this just isn't Achilles.
Bana is a worthy Hector, valiant, but too civilized
to save a civilization. As Paris, Bloom appears about
14 years old. As Helen, Kruger shows both touching
emotion and a radiant face that might well launch, at a
stingy estimate, a thousand ships. Sean Bean makes a
charming Odysseus.
TROY unfortunately tries to fuse the versions of
Homer and Virgil. They don't mix. The ILIAD tells the
story of Achilles' rage, first at Agamemnon for insulting
him, after which he goes into a sulk and refuses to
fight; then at Hector, for killing his friend Patroclus,
after which he returns to action, more savage than ever.
In the second book of the AENEID, Virgil describes the
subsequent fall of Troy, in which, in the film, Achilles
is killed.
Tempting as it may be to treat all this as one
story, it doesn't work. Homer confines his narrative to
one episode, in which Achilles, after ending his feud
with Agamemnon, slaughters Hector and desecrates his body
in bottomless revenge for Patroclus. He relents when
Priam himself, in one of the most tremendous scenes ever
written, surprises him with a midnight visit and begs for
his son's corpse. Homer ends his story with Hector's
funeral, foreshadowing but not showing Troy's
destruction.
In the film, the city's spectacular fall is the
climax, featuring that famous wooden horse, a brainstorm
of Odysseus that upstages Achilles' brute force. The vast
tragedy of the ILIAD is reduced to a mere episode leading
up to this. Priam's plea loses nearly all its power, as
if the film just wants to get it over with and move on to
the "real" action. The wrath of Achilles is no longer of
independent tragic interest. Homer supplies only a
subplot.
This presents another problem: Why should we care
about Achilles during the sack of Troy? The film solves
this one in the time-honored Hollywood way: by giving him
a love interest. In whom? In Briseis (Rose Byrne), the
captured Trojan girl who occasioned his quarrel with
Agamemnon. This is certainly a new twist: Neither Homer
nor Virgil imagines Achilles as a romantic soul, but the
film has him seeking out, finding, and passionately
embracing this drab chick in the midst of the burning
city, when he should be having fun with the other guys.
So when Paris, at that very moment, spots him and shoots
an arrow through (as fate would have it) his Achilles
tendon, then a couple more through his newly discovered
heart, he dies neither a Homeric nor a Virgilian but a
rather Wagnerian death.
Is there anything missing? Well, yes: those gods. No
doubt there would be technical difficulties in filming
them plausibly, but without them the myth of Troy, from
which the furious passions of the Olympians are
inseparable, becomes mere alternative history. One
doesn't wish to encourage polytheism, but this is taking
secularism too far. Why bother demythologizing a myth?
The ancient story is flattened into an account of
Agamemnon's cynical geopolitical strivings, slightly
spiced up by Achilles' love life. Fun to watch, but
that's about it.
NUGGETS
NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Gerald Ford recalls that he wanted
Ronald Reagan to be his running mate in 1976, but his two
principal advisors told him that Reagan should be put on
the ticket "under no circumstances." Ford, of course,
lost the election. The advisors were Dick Cheney and Don
Rumsfeld. (page 9)
THE FAITH GAP: USA TODAY reports that religion is a
better predictor of voting habits than race, sex, age,
and other variables. Churchgoing people tend to vote
Republican; people who don't attend services are much
more likely to vote Democratic. (page 10)
Exclusive to electronic media:
LOOK, MA! Over the objections of his wife, former
President Bush celebrated his 80th birthday by skydiving.
Can he encourage his son to take up this exciting sport?
I'm sure many of us would watch with the keenest
interest. And crossed fingers.
CAREER NOTES: Jennifer Lopez has married for the third
time. The happy event didn't even make the front pages,
which were preoccupied with the Reagan funeral. Not long
ago it would have been the other way around.
HOME SCHOOLING SCORES AGAIN: The NEW YORK TIMES has
published excerpts from the recently discovered memoirs
of two former slaves. Both somehow acquired literacy from
other slaves at a time when it was illegal to teach
slaves to read and write. What is striking about the
snatches I read is that both were more literate than many
products of today's public schools.
QUERY: I'm no lawyer, let alone a political scientist,
but would someone please explain, in simple language,
just what it means for an invader to "transfer
sovereignty" to natives of the invaded country?
REPRINTED COLUMNS
(pages 7-12)
* Yankee, Come Home (May 4, 2004)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040504.shtml
* The Faithful and the Faithless (May 6, 2004)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040506.shtml
* Bush the Infidel (May 13, 2004)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040513.shtml
* The Soul of John Kerry (May 25, 2004)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040525.shtml
* The Greatest Generation? (June 1, 2004)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040601.shtml
* The Great Comedian (June 8, 2004)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040608.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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[ENDS]