THE WANDERER, JUNE 21, 2007
JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH
President Paul?
Is it possible? Behold, there are signs that Ron
Paul is now gaining support. All his many virtues make
him a misfit in the Republican Party, which would love to
be rid of him: He shames it by quietly and steadfastly
practicing the principles it preaches.
Over the years he has made enemies of George W. Bush
and Newt Gingrich; and he is a truer conservative than
Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan ever were.
This thoughtful, unassuming man has a rare ability
to get under people's skin without trying to. The anger
his gentle consistency provokes is something to behold;
it's not the Democrats who detest him, it's the
Republicans! He is, in spite of himself, a walking rebuke
to hypocrisy.
By rights Paul should be the hero of a Moliere
comedy, or a Frank Capra film. Politics is mostly
hypocrisy, and the man of simple good faith can be a
disruptive force, like the driver who observes the speed
limit when all the others are flooring it.
My own hope is that Ron will run for president on
the Constitution Party ticket, as the two big liberal
parties nominate Hillary and Rudy. It's not so much that
I want him to win -- wonderful though that would be -- as
that even if he lost, he could outshine his opponents and
change the terms in which American politics is discussed.
Islam at War
A rather chilling article in the June 10 issue of
THE NEW YORK TIMES sketched various Muslim views of whom
it is allowable to kill in wartime, and under what
circumstances. Civilians? Children? Americans? Israelis?
Sunnis? Shi'ites?
Of course it's a gross and unfair mistake to assume
that Muslims are unanimous about these questions, let
alone uniformly violent and pro-terrorist in their
conclusions. Far from it, as anyone with Muslim
acquaintances knows. The debates among them are subtle
and nuanced, like similar debates in the West.
The very fact that these controversies occur attests
to the conscience and civility of these people. I doubt
that the Mongols under Genghis Khan agonized over morally
permissible tactics.
Such problems arise now in large part because the
Muslims have been severely provoked by the Western
powers, especially the United States, where certain
interests have long agitated for war between the U.S. and
the Arab-Muslim world. It ill becomes those who invade a
country and kill and sometimes torture its people to get
indignant at the methods the defenders adopt and justify.
Having said all that (and much more could be added),
I must say that my mind keeps coming back to one point.
All this talk of "legitimate targets" sounds like the way
our own modern warrior-intellectuals talk, but what it
doesn't at all sound like is the New Testament.
Centuries after the Roman persecutions, when
Christians had political power, they did confront the
problem of warfare in ways they hadn't had to in the age
of the martyrs. And their criteria for just warfare were
far more severe than those of today's U.S. government.
But even that is a secondary matter. More important
is the fact that so much of the Koran is concerned with
war and violence. Never mind whether it is right or
defensible. It's simply strange. I'm baffled that anyone
could think that Islam superseded Christianity, that
Mohammed improved on Jesus or even St. Paul.
Try to imagine the epistles to the Corinthians and
Ephesians laying down conditions for just revenge and
decent polygamy.
I'm not suggesting that Muslims are bad people; far
from it. I merely feel that Islam itself borrows from,
and abridges, the Christian message, while completely
missing the essence.
It's rather as if you were to call Gandhi a failed
general or social engineer, when he was actually in a
different line of work altogether.
The Genius of GKC
Great genius can be permanently amazing, even
shocking. Working on a book about Shakespeare for
students lately, I've had prolonged exposure to HAMLET,
and I never get over it. How could any writer produce
something so inexhaustibly wondrous?
Then, last week, a friend gave me a copy of another
book I hadn't read in many years: G.K. Chesterton's
little study of St. Thomas Aquinas, THE DUMB OX. I've
always loved Chesterton, but this time I felt the full
force of his genius as never before.
I used to suspect Catholics overrated him a bit out
of partiality to a distinguished convert. Perish the
thought! At his peak (where we often find him) he is one
of the greatest, deepest, most eloquent and joyous
writers in the English language, not far below
Shakespeare, whom in some ways he even excels.
What a gift from God Chesterton is. I pity anyone,
especially the young Catholic, who hasn't read him.
+ + +
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--- Joseph Sobran
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