Stephen Heiner

Interview with Sir Charles Coulombe: On America 1861-1865

2012-01-28T08:54:00.000-06:00

In December 2010 I had the opportunity to interview Charles Coulombe, who had long been a friend by correspondence, and who I had met briefly, but with whom I had never been able to have the long-form interview I have become so accustomed to and with which I've built a subscription site.

This interview is one of three I did with Charles when he visited Kansas City last November for interviews, barbeque, and a quick tour around the town.

Accepting the premise that it's ludicrous to pretend to comprehensively cover the themes of perhaps the most important turning point in our nation's history in 30 minutes, we do try to talk about what we think was lost in 1865, what is always lost when there is change, and the role of Catholics and the Papacy in and with the Confederacy.

I normally release excerpts of my interviews with the teaser to subscribe to my video site. This video is one of a series of full-length interviews I am releasing between now and the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas on March 7th which will give non-subscribers a chance to see what subscribers get (the subscribers have had access to this interview for 30 days already). Learn more about my interviews here.

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Conservative, not Republican

2010-11-29T12:34:00.003-06:00

Dedicated to the felicitous memory of
Chalmers Johnson 1931-2010

Some time ago one of my former MBA classmates, confused by positions I had taken on some issues (because those stances didn't fit into neat partisan boxes), had asked, “but aren’t you a ‘crunchy arch-paleo-conservative?’” I laughed, as I realized how incomprehensible that label may be, especially in a world dominated by blowhards like Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher, and Bill O’Reilly. T.S. Eliot once famously defined himself as a “royalist, classicist, and anglo-Catholic.” Simplicity is best when trying to describe an overarching philosophy.

This month we also had the Midterm elections, in which the so-called "Tea Party" was responsible for energizing voters. When friends asked if I was happy because "conservatives" won, I realized that most people still think of "conservatives" as a large, amorphous, indistinguishable-in-its-parts blob.

So rather than describe an ideology (which conservatism is not) or a system of beliefs (which conservatism is not), I propose to look at two particular current issues through my lens, which I purport to call a “conservative” one. As I do so I will explain why such positions are conservative. To save a whole lot of time at the outset, I should mention that having a show on, or being featured on, Fox News is not necessarily a sign of conservative bona fides. It’s simply a sign that you’re probably a Republican, which for decades has meant: 1) collusion with big business to the detriment of small business, 2) warmongering, 3) bad foreign policy, 4) bad monetary policy, and much, much more in the way of harmful tyranny.

Jingoism and the American War Machine

While I was at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California, I heard a great many things in the 13 weeks that culminated in my earning forever the title “United States Marine.” But perhaps the quote that has stayed with me the longest came from one of my professors during a military history class: “A true warrior prays for peace but trains for war.” Conservatives are antiwar by disposition because they know what horrible wreckage it makes of communities and people; but, when brought to a war, conservatives’ antiwar sentiments are not an intellectual pacifism. Conservatives seek to know whether a war is just before engaging in it.

Before I speak about the wars that Americans are most recently acquainted with, our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is important to look back to where American imperialism began: the Monroe Doctrine.

This staple of US history tests was an assertion made by a very young country that an entire hemisphere was under its guardianship. Yet, how often the Europeans laughed at the hubristic assertion in its nascent days, they have lived to see that Monroe Doctrine metastasize with an addition of a Roosevelt Corollary, a “war to make the world safe for democracy,” and the non-disputable notion of American exceptionalism and policing of the world cheered on by the simians at the Project for a New American Century.

The idea of using bayonets to “make” the world “safe” for “democracy” was last effectively challenged between 1861-1865, in the War for Southern Independence. During this time the last stand of the American who believed in home, family, states’ rights, and tradition, was made. They stood against the collusion of Big Government and Big Business, encouraged by (surprise!) a Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, and they stood for the constitutionally guaranteed right of secession. The South painfully learned the lesson which America would later impart to other regions as “benighted” as the South: “if we disagree with you, and you have assets we want, we will invade you, loot you, and lamely try to convert you, and usually fail; we will afterward give up and go home.” When the South could hold out no longer, and had to learn to love Big Brother, the Old Republic died.

Since that time, America has, with few exceptions, often unthinkingly entered wars that have only caused more problems. World War I, which would have finally ended on its own exhausted terms (like the American War at Appomattox) rather than the triumphant revanchism when we went “over there” and tipped the scales in favor of the “Allies,” determined to see “good” and “evil” in an utter mess that Europe had gotten herself into and that we had no part intervening in. To this day the vast majority of Americans don’t know that the reason the Lusitania sunk so spectacularly was because it was carrying munitions and those ignited when the torpedo hit the hull (Never mind that carrying munitions de facto made it not a civilian ship and hence a legitimate target on the open seas).

Our ill-timed intervention in the “Great War” led to a horrific guilt laid on the backs and hearts of Germans, who were only too happy to devote themselves to a man who celebrated them and their kultur and told them they weren’t trash and weren’t solely responsible for the greatest war ever fought on Europe’s soil. No Versailles means no Hitler, and that simple conclusion was something I realized as a 17-year old in AP US History class.

But what about World War II? Surely that was just? Perhaps, but can we not see that it only occurred because of how we mismanaged the peace of World War I? This is to say nothing of the horrific murder of innocent Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These atrocities were committed by the “indispensible nation” and were rivaled only by the bombings of Dresden, Tokyo, and London. The end of WWII provided the excuse and odd mandate for Alfred Thayer Mahan’s wildest dreams to come true: a global empire of bases to buttress sea power and global military dominance that has its current expression in what Donald Rumsfeld articulated as a “lilly-pad base” strategy.

Insertion of troops in Japan and later Korea continued to perpetrate the notion that America, the only nation who took up arms to “help people” had any business having troops in Asia. We would continue to not learn this lesson in Vietnam. Andrew Bacevich, in his well-written Washington Rules, thoughtfully laments that perhaps the greatest tragedy of Vietnam is that we learned absolutely nothing from it.

The military industrial complex, so named by a former Supreme Allied commander (who knew a thing or two about the military, perhaps), once it had experienced the exorbitant benefits of war, would never again settle for the measly dividend of peace. New wars and new enemies would fuel new weapons and new money for budgets, black and otherwise. This would eventually have outgrowths in the horrid revolving door between both military contractors and defense personnel and people who are supposed to oversee and regulate the relationship between the same: a model which has been copied by the agro-industrial and medical-industrial complexes.

Understanding America’s misconceived Adventures Abroad in this broader context, to say nothing of the secret wars of the CIA which have caused still-coming blowback, helps us to understand why Gulf Wars I and II and Afghanistan had to happen.

In none of these wars was America’s national security threatened. Indeed, like the brutal takeovers of Hawaii and Guatemala in years gone by, what was at stake was powerful business interests, never the sentiments or vital interests of the native peoples. In the most recent wars America has been engaged in, we have followed the Eisenhower Doctrine of securing an uninterrupted flow of oil as vital to our national security.

This was even more distressing as we commemorated the 9th anniversary of 9/11 this year. Iraq did not attack us on 9/11. Afghanistan did not attack us on 9/11. Even if you believe the government conspiracy theory that is articulated in the 9/11 Commission Report (a document which, like the Patriot Act, most Americans have no real knowledge of), it is humorous to consider that the Taliban, funded by and supported by former CIA asset Osama bin Laden, was given its strongest growth during the US-funded radicalization of the mujahedeen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and is today supported by the Pakistani ISI, who, of course, receives money from us through our aid to Pakistan: an aid package masquerading as bets against “terrorism.” Irony is supposed to be funny, though darkly at times, and we are told that America, the soi-distante “Exceptional Nation” will triumph where the British and the Soviets failed on the border of a nuclear Pakistan. Not bloody likely.

We will lose the war in Afghanistan and its consequences will bleed into the failed state that Iraq is destined to become, even as President Obama, in Nixon-esque fashion, finally gets us out of something he was elected to end.

In the meantime, America’s reputation continues to suffer under President Obama, who has continued to let the NSA and CIA run wild, has tacitly sanctioned the use of torture and secret prisons, to say nothing of the status quo continuance of the mishandling of North Korea and the never-ending treatment of Japan as a client state in military matters, directly contravening the will and desires of the majority of the Japanese people. So much for democracy.

The Bailout

Conservatives believe that peace and security follow the ancient axiom that charity begins at home. What matters are small, local communities that together form a nation, and usually, a people. America today is neither a nation nor a people, so it was with surprise to everyone that Congress responded to the first bailout bill by defeating it, in response to commonsense Americans jamming congressional phone lines with threats.

The talking heads who got America into the financial mess in the first place by absurd suggestions (Alan Greenspan’s stupid encouragement of home equity loans, the idea that you should transform an asset into a liability so that you can buy more consumables), encouraged by government backing of private initiatives (the eventual Fannie/Freddie bailout and the complete asleep-at-the-switch behavior of the ratings companies like Moody’s, the banks, and the charlatans at the SEC, which behaved in typical governmental fashion when, warned of a certain Bernie Madoff, chose the path of ignorance. This governmental trend of ignoring actionable, backed intelligence shows no signs of abating. Witness the Christmas 2009 underwear bomber’s father’s warnings, or numerous FBI and CIA officials warning of 9/11, best exemplified in President Bush’s Presidential Daily Brief of August 2001, entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in US.”) were shocked, shocked that Americans were against giving wheelbarrows of cash to banksters.

Yet, the bailout proceeded. The banks, protected in law since the deeply harmful and pernicious Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and emboldened by President Clinton’s Republican-backed repeal of Glass-Steagall, get to socialize risk while privatizing profit. Just like our war policies, which socialize harm and privatize profit for Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, KBR, Halliburton, and Blackwater.

The bailout continued into a new and trendy Keynesianism that believed that printing paper money and giving it away to the states would solve everything, and 5 minutes of watching any cable news channel will tell you that we will have “recovered” as a nation the minute our drunken orgy of spending restarts by indicating greater amounts of purchases of Nintendo Wiis or Apple iPads, or other similar non-contributors to our economy or culture (I’ve often told my students that the engraving “designed in California” on the back of their iPods is a psychological consolation prize because “made in China, at the expense of 250,000 American jobs” didn’t sound so great).

As long as Americans believe “always low prices” to be more important than the Sermon on the Mount, we will be subject to “free markets” where Americans think of themselves as consumers first and as members of a community dead last. This of course leads to the death of communities and the bankruptcy of the consumer.

The “wisdom” of the free market has irresistibly led to the almost complete end of American manufacturing. Americans have become the biggest debtor nation not just because we irresponsibly spend billions of dollars on insanely stupid militaristic imperial overreach, ignoring the lessons of history that all empires eventually fall, but because every minute of every day of every hour we buy goods from other countries. Those countries then use that money to build infrastructure while we merely consume most of the products we buy while finding ourselves on an out-of-control classic death spiral in manufacturing. Ever the “exception” America sets out to be a great nation while manufacturing nothing.

Government can change laws but it cannot change culture. People and religion change culture. Anyone who knows history knows that people can be temporarily distracted by celebrity and flash for a while (President Kennedy and the current man in the Oval, for example) but over time people are moved by the Permanent Things.

“I agree with a lot of the things you say, Stephen,” said one of my former students over dinner recently. “But it isn’t practical.” America is in the final stages of many different terminal diseases. Extreme times call for extreme measures, and here are a few (not all) extreme measures we can take as a country and a few common-sense measures we can take as individuals.

Globally

1. Withdraw from Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany, Korea, and Japan over the next two years and close the majority of our 700 bases and secret prisons worldwide. Spend money retraining our to-be-laid-off men and women in uniform in critical areas of need in our economy (we are still in a position to lead the "green" revolution). We can use the money from the obscenely bloated $770 Billion defense budget.

2. Stop foreign aid to all countries. This paternalistic policy has a lot more to do with political control than humanitarian concerns, as it effectively cripples the organic economic growth of developing countries.

Nationally

1. End the Federal Reserve, but only after a comprehensive audit that illustrates the depths of deceit this private cabal has subjected the entire country to since its evil conception on (appropriately named) Jekyll Island.

2. Seal our borders and stop being a release valve for a corrupt Mexican government. The subsequent political pressure buildup should cause a serious revolution that deals with the real problems in that country instead of making those problems now the problems of two countries.

3. End governmental regulation of things best handled by people, not governments. Government doesn’t educate people, people do. End the Department of Education.

Locally

1. Buy from local merchants whenever possible, even if it means you pay slightly, or a lot, more. I understand that many things are bought online, but try to keep a community together, or when hard times hit, those national chains not anchored to your place will leave. Where will be your always low prices then?

2. Buy your food locally and not from agribusiness, be it from a farmers’ market or from a small local supermarket. Pay more for your food, and eat less. We’re an obese nation because we can’t stop stuffing our fat faces.

3. Put together a plan to be completely debt-free, have a savings account, have a few weeks’ supply of food and water in case of an emergency, and have some items of fungible value, be it gold or silver jewelry or coins, or even, as Kirkpatrick Sale recently sensibly suggested to me, bullets, to sell and trade should a catastrophic situation, God forbid, befall us.

At the end of the day, conservatives resist “change” because we know it probably won’t work anyway (6,000 years of civilization means a lot of people have tried things already) and because we prefer the devil we know to the one we don’t. We resist striving towards Babel-like-heaven-on-earth brave new worlds because we know such strivings to be vain in every sense of the word. We know we are fallen human beings, and imperfect until He perfects us, we are content to work out our salvation in fear and trembling, looking to our God, families, local communities, and nation first, and everyone and everything else after that.

The GRE? No Sweat.

2010-10-28T16:02:00.000-05:00

This article originally appeared in the Sigma Tau Delta Fall 2010 Newsletter.

Standardized testing is a blight on our educational system. It exists simply because of the overwhelming number of applications to undergraduate and graduate programs. When grades, personal statements, portfolios, and letters of recommendation fail to winnow, admissions committees look to a timed multiple-choice exam. They need a tiebreaker and this is the “best” the system has come up with. It’s deplorable, but I’m here to offer you advice about how to do better on the GRE, not to complain about things we can’t change.

Before you start worrying about this test, make sure the schools you are looking at actually require it. If they do, ask if they care only about the verbal score or about both the math and the verbal. You will also want to know whether they require you to write the two preliminary essays in front of the test. Some schools rely on your portfolio and allow you to simply skip those essays when you are testing.

Make sure that you ask about the relationship of those scores to admission as well as funding; for example, some schools may only care about your verbal score for admissions, but if you want money, your math score will matter, too.

The verbal section, then, is almost an afterthought for an English major. There are four components to it: sentence completions, analogies, reading comprehension, and antonyms. Thus, vocabulary is the dominant skill tested. Now, everyone knows that you develop great vocabulary by reading, but that doesn’t mean the occasional arcane word won’t make it in to your particular exam. That’s because each exam is different.

I don’t mean different just because it’s on a computer. It’s different because the test is adaptive. As a CAT (computer-adaptive test), the test responds to your right or wrong answers and gives you more difficult or easier problems, respectively, based on your answers. The catch? Difficult problems are worth more, so if you are doing well, it should feel challenging all the way through.

So, when you are looking at that more difficult problem, and you have it narrowed down between two or three answers, remember to stop focusing on those answers and go back to the problem and think about what word you would use if you weren’t looking at the answers. When you have that firmly in your mind, only then go back to your answers. At that point you will hopefully be leaning more one way than the other.

As for the reading comprehension, try not to fall into old habits. Look at the question presented before you feel the need to read or skim the passage. If the question is about line #12, read the context and then answer. Reading the whole passage may make you feel psychologically better, but with a ticking clock, it doesn’t really help. If, on the other hand, the question is about “the author’s tone,” then of course you have to read/skim the passage.

As far as the math goes, the handicap is not that the math is difficult. It is that many English majors didn’t have to take too many math classes in college so they are rusty, to say the least. There are resources that cover the math that you will need. The Princeton Review puts out a great series called Math Smart, which has two volumes. If you know the math covered in these books you will have the raw material in order to do well.

Before you even start studying for the test, you should visit the websites of either Kaplan or the Princeton Review. They offer free practice GREs, and you can take one to see how you would do and also to figure out what you need to study. If you choose the self-study route (you are a disciplined nerd), then pick up The Official Guide to the GRE, 10th edition. It’s the only book put out by the test makers and it offers answer explanations to questions that have actually appeared on past GREs. You will also want to take the free practice GREs provided here: http://www.ets.org/gre/general/prepare/powerprep/download/

For those of you less-disciplined nerds, or those who feel like a test prep course might help, make sure that you get a referral from a friend or colleague. Test prep does help, but at the graduate level, it’s very dependent on the quality of the instructor, and that is uneven throughout this great land of ours.

Finally, if you do not prep at all, have the good sense to at least take a practice test before you go in there. English majors may procrastinate, but hopefully, we don’t resist good advice.

Stephen Heiner has, for the last six years, owned a test prep company called Get Smarter Prep. It is currently based in Kansas City, with branch offices in Omaha and St. Louis. He earned his BA in English Literature at Rockhurst University. He was the Midwestern Region Student Representative for 2009-2010.

Reflecting on 9/11: Lessons Still Not Learned

2010-09-09T22:03:00.000-05:00

On August 7, 1964, Congress, urged on by President Johnson, passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The measure passed unanimously in the House and with only two dissenting votes in the Senate. Three days before this the President had ordered retaliatory bombing on North Vietnam in response to an alleged attack on one of our destroyers on August 4^th. In his speech to the nation, President Johnson said that “we seek no wider war” and that these actions were being taken “in support of freedom and in defense of peace.” This resolution was the camel’s nose into the dark tent of the Vietnam War.

Yet, today, most Americans can’t tell you what the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was, and more tragically, even among the cognoscenti who could, most of them don’t know that declassified documents and tapes have shown that President Johnson and Secretary of Defense MacNamara lied and obfuscated about the events of August 2^nd and 4^th in order to further their own agendas in Southeast Asia. (There is a helpful book which compiles the White House tapes of that time period and features these conversations.) What does a forgotten incident and a forgotten resolution tell us, so many years later? That history repeats itself, and that because we are an ignorant people, we don’t even know it has repeated.

This Saturday is the 9^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. These attacks were the pretext for an emotional response which President Bush delivered on September 20^th, 2001. In this speech, President Bush not only targeted Al-Qaeda, but every single terrorist group in existence, committing us to an endless and unwinnable “War on Terror.” The Afghan Taliban government (which we had birthed and nurtured through our support of the mujahedeen in their previous war against the Soviets) asked for the United States to produce proof that Bin Laden had orchestrated the attacks and pledged to turn him over to us in exchange for it. President Bush, predictably, responded with an invasion.

But this was not all. The events of 9/11 led to the passage of the Orwellian-named “Patriot Act” which was passed into law in the dead of night, and was read by virtually no one because of its 342 page length. This act, to this day not well-known or understood by the majority of either those who voted to make it law nor by those whom it ostensibly governs, gives the President and the government broad powers to spy on and imprison American citizens, without warrants, charges, or habeas corpus.

9/11 was also used as part of the pretext for invading Iraq. Just as with the Gulf of Tonkin case, military intelligence was skewed and distorted in order to produce “evidence.” In this case, the “evidence” was of weapons of mass destruction. Secretary of State Colin Powell bravely went to his political funeral at the UN as he presented “evidence” of chemical sites in Iraq that were later shown to be outdated photographs or simply phantoms in the desert. The Congress, no longer in the emotional shock of 9/11 in October 2002, more strongly dissented; still, the Iraq War Resolution – a resolution to attack a country that had not attacked the United States and posed no clear or present danger to our national security interests – passed in the House 296-133 and in the Senate 77-23. As you read the dissenting words of those 2002 debates, you clearly hear the echo of the lone two dissenting senators to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964: “That means sending our American boys into combat in a war in which we have no business. which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly drawn, which is steadily being escalated. This resolution is a further authorization for escalation unlimited. I am opposed to sacrificing a single American boy in this venture” (Senator Ernest Gruening, D-Alaska); “I believe that history will record that we have made a great mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United States…I believe this resolution to be a historic mistake. I believe that within the next century, future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to make such a historic mistake” (Senator Wayne Morse, D-Oregon).

As we look back at the almost decade since 9/11, we must ask ourselves: what have we done and what have we failed to do?

In Afghanistan

We are still at war with a people that have managed to best both the British and the Soviet Empires because they will not allow outsiders to tell them how to run their own country. General Stanley McChrystal quite infamously flamed out, in of all places, Rolling Stone. President Obama understandably relieved an insubordinate general, but failed to reflect upon the never-ending war in this quagmire of empires, instead choosing to “double down” in a new “surge.” We remain at war with the Afghan people, we continue to prop up a puppet in the person of Harmid Karzai whose enforceable jurisdiction barely qualifies him to be the Mayor of Kabul, and we will likely, as we did in Vietnam, withdraw only to watch the country collapse into civil war.

In Iraq

As this article is being written, American “combat troops” have left Iraq but nearly 50,000 have remained to support and augment the Iraqi security forces. Despite years of hand-holding, including President Bush’s politically unpopular but militarily effective “surge,” the country is still unable to govern itself. Iraq has been without a government for nearly 6 months now, as Sunni and Shia (terms most Americans are still unable to parse) cannot seem to find a way to work together. There are 70,000 troops in Germany and the entire Third Marine Division on the island of Okinawa nearly 60 years after World War II. We already have a model for garrisoning troops in areas of past war and we may continue to follow this prescription in Iraq. If we were to completely leave Iraq, the country would likely collapse into civil war. Colin Powell’s prescient (and unheeded) words to President Bush in Crawford during the lead-up to the war provide a tragic and fitting coda: “you break it (Iraq), you own it.”

In America

Although Guantanamo Bay is closing as a prison for terror suspects, many new secret prisons and “black sites” for interrogation have been opened. This is, of course, to say nothing of the disgusting track record of Guatanamo Bay as a detainment camp. Since September 11^th 2001, 775 detainees have been brought to Guantanamo. At this moment, 176 remain. The vast majority of detainees (a cute legal novelty dreamed up by the Bush Administration) have been freed without charges or trial and only 3 have been convicted of anything.

Despite the fact that every single one of us who pays for air travel pays for our own security fees (check the “September 11^th Security Fee” on your itinerary next time you are feeling curious) our government has still managed to feed us the lie that we can always be safe everywhere instead of the more reasonable and adult explanation that there are bad people out there who want to hurt others and that the best that security can do is manage this. Incidents of domestic terrorism have risen since 9/11.

Worse than this, we now submit to naked body scanners at airports, which expose us to untold levels of radiation and worse, the indignity of the knowledge that our government archives, and does not delete, these images.

In the world

Terrorist attacks around the world have surged since 9/11, and as unmanned drones continue to bomb Pakistani civilians, Pashtuns on either side of the Afghan/Pakistani border will become increasingly radicalized. But then again, we are no stranger to radicalization. In 1998, acknowledging America’s role in arming Osama bin Laden and giving his movement impetus, Zbigniew Brzezinski infamously said: “What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” History has come to show Mr Brzezinski’s words (and conclusions) as rather simplistic and overstated.

Islam

Most Americans continue to view Islam in its mild Americanized expression. In France, despite the fact that Laïcité is the secular law of the land, Muslims routinely (and with impunity) shut down city streets for Friday prayer. This is to say nothing of the riots and murders that happened because of the Mohammed cartoon controversy. Europe is becoming Muslim simply because Christians aren’t reproducing. Muslims are reproducing, and at far more than the replacement rate, and so Europe is losing its even vestigial Christian remnants.

Perhaps we in America don’t see Islam as a threat because we still buy into the panacea of multiculturalism, which sees as inimical the idea of a people with a distinct cultural identity. Everybody is the same as everyone else, and everyone contributes equally. We in America see Islam as one more color of our multicultural rainbow to embrace, when we should see that it is a storm which threatens to smash the remaining stained glass windows of Western Civilization.

Lingering Questions

As new construction moves forward at Ground Zero in New York, and as “conservatives” mendaciously attempt to appropriate the rights of owners of private property, Americans still don’t know exactly what happened on 9/11. The official government conspiracy theory is that 19 hijackers flew planes into buildings, that we had no clue this was going to happen and could do nothing to stop it, and that Osama bin Laden singlehandedly masterminded everything.

The 9/11 Commission Report (never read by most Americans) doesn’t address the anomaly of Building 7, which fell later in the day despite never having been hit by aircraft (or that its collapse was announced on the BBC 20 minutes before it happened). It doesn’t address the fact that NORAD stood down while hijacked planes freely roamed the sky for 40 minutes. And, it doesn’t address the President’s Daily Brief of August 6^th, 2001, entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in the US.” The conventional wisdom has been to blame the terrorists rather than to examine our own failures. The conventional wisdom prevented us from questioning the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and Colin Powell’s fraudulent UN presentation.

Conclusion

The Gulf of Tonkin was used to get America into the Vietnam War. We learned, years later, that it was a lie, which necessarily premised the entire Vietnam War on a lie. 9/11 had much more juice, and scared Americans into two wars abroad and a nascent police state at home. If we do not study and reflect upon the events of our history, we will be ill-equipped not only to judge our present situation, but also to recognize a new 9/11 when it happens.

To those whose deaths we remember this Saturday, our prayers are that your deaths will no longer be used to promote illegal and unjust wars and the end of domestic liberty. We pray that we may, as yet, recover our republic, in a small way, by reading history, and more importantly, by understanding it.

iCant, Part II: How I ended my 6-relationship with my Blackberry

2010-08-18T21:10:00.001-05:00

This piece was my first piece ever on Front Porch Republic and even made it to Andrew Sullivan's Atlantic blog.

It was also subsequently printed as an op-ed in the August issue of The Four Marks and in the December 2010 Dimensions: Newsletter of the Thomas More Center for the study of Catholic thought and culture.

Why Oil Spills, Earthquakes, Climate Change, and Hurricanes Don’t Matter

2010-07-20T10:59:00.001-05:00

This article originally appeared as an op-ed in the July 2010 issue of The Four Marks. For more information on The Four Marks, please click here. I apologize that I have not mastered footnotes in blogger yet, so I have used asterisks and hashmarks instead.

When I’ve spoken about the oil spill to numerous friends and colleagues, I’ve witnessed a type of dialogue I’ve rarely seen – one in which the talking points of the right, left, and even the center seem wanting, and in which friends of liberal bent seem open to solutions like a low-yield tactical nuclear device. Let’s, as Lewis Carroll’s Alice did, begin at the beginning.

***

Why do we have 4000* oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico?

We want and need oil. Despite talk of wind and solar power, neither sun nor air shall power our vehicles, help manufacture our shoes, clothing, and containers, nor will they provide soil fertilizer for our crops. Oil, for better or worse, is a very integrated part of our way of life. The problem of oil is so often seen from the myopic viewpoint of the cost of gasoline.

We are drilling in the Gulf so that we don’t have to drill on land. West Texas alone would slake our dark thirst, were it not for the fact that oddly enough, it is cheaper to drill offshore instead of pounding through the thick rock and sediment and paying the high taxes associated with land drilling.

Why did the oil spill happen in the first place?

Well, oil spills are neither a rarity nor commonplace. They seem to happen irregularly. I still remember when our flight from San Francisco to Tokyo was diverted to Anchorage when one of the passengers suffered a medical emergency; I was transfixed by the disaster that was the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The water had this pacified and black look to it, and nothing seemed to move. Prince William Sound almost seemed aware of its inky black cloak, and like Prince Hamlet, was content to sulk and seethe in sadness and anger.

It is becoming clear to those of us who bother to look outside the controlled corporate mainstream media (Fox News, MSNBC, NPR, etc.) that there are some disturbing “coincidences” that dovetail with the Deepwater Horizon explosion:

1. Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, dumped 1/3 of his holdings (1.4 million pounds sterling) in BP weeks before the oil spill, a move that avoided over £423,000 in losses.#

2. Goldman Sachs dumped over 40% of its holdings in BP in the first quarter.**

3. BP was aware of problems at that site up to two months prior to the blowout.##

Ever mindful of the thoughtless and useless label “conspiracy theory” I will simply point out that you don’t have to have an overarching “what really happened” vision to know that these are strange events to happen in sync. Add this to an agency whose idea of “regulation” is drinking and copulating with the executives they are supposed to be monitoring*** and you have an explosion waiting to happen. And it did.

So, supervised by, and accountable to, no one, BP, (not British Petroleum, Mr. President – even a five-second search on Google could have told you otherwise and saved you from a firestorm in the British Press. Weren’t you supposed to be so smart?) through gross negligence, allowed this spill to happen.

Now, the big question is, if there is a link behind all of these coincidences, cui bono? Some are intriguing that this serves as a distraction from upcoming wars in Iran and North Korea, or as political cover for a carbon tax. But I find none of these explanations particularly compelling, in light of the fact that BP had to dirty the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, risk a massive public backlash, and pay out, over $29M### so far (but that is really an oil drop in an ocean for a company with a market cap of $99B, and that’s after $7B in losses in the past weeks.). What might be more terrifying than the oil spill is the yet-unknown reason why BP allowed it to happen.

What can be done?

Apparently, nothing. (As this column goes to press, BP has tried over 7 very public ways to deal with the blowout. All have failed.) Rachel Maddow, not exactly a raving conservative, had a moment of clarity last week on her show when in a faux redux of Obama’s yawningly dull Oval Office address, she pledged to “never again allow a company to drill at such a depth unless it could guarantee that it could fix a disaster.” This common sense aside, I think it is a clarion moment for us. Yes, we don’t know everything. Yes, the earth is sometimes beyond our control. Yes, we own the earth, we aren’t just renters. Yes, you break it, you bought it.

Future Policy and the Road Ahead

Well, clearly the road ahead cannot be guided by the right or the left (but alas, it will). The left tells us “no more drilling” just before dashing off to another location on a NetJet. The right says, in its laissez-faire absurdity, “accidents happen.” (I grieved, but was not surprised to hear this nostrum from a Republican friend.) The truth, more than ever, is that Almighty God gave us stewardship not only over the animals, but also over the earth and its elements. The title of this piece mentions earthquakes, climate change, and hurricanes because I see them as connected with the oil spill. Surely, earthquakes happen, hurricanes roar, and climate change occurs (yet who would Al Gore have blamed for the Ice Age, I wonder) because our earth is a dynamic, powerful, and beautiful God-designed masterpiece. But can’t we shape our response to these disasters, human and natural, with common sense?

Haiti

This country was broken and ruled by corrupt despot strong-men long before the earthquake happened. Haiti, already forgotten by our move-on-to-the-next-thing 24 hour media, won’t be fixed by money and aid. Money only makes embedded corruption worse (op. cit. Hamid Karzai and his US-backed group of Afghan thugs and drug dealers).

Hurricanes

Why in God’s name do we allow people to build homes in areas of Florida that are so routinely ravaged by hurricanes that insurance companies won’t touch them with a 1000-foot pole? Private profit gauged against public risk, a dogma enshrined in the backed-by-both-parties Bailouts, is never more ridiculous as when people in Kansas have to pay for poor regulatory policies in Florida via FEMA aid.

Climate Change

Despite the delicious irony of this year’s climate change conference being held in Amsterdam in one of the coldest winters in its recorded history, some men, filled with hubris, still think that mankind has a key role in changing temperatures on this planet. This attitude, despite the fact that the planet has survived for many years without our help and may survive for many years after we have managed to kill each other off completely, and despite the fact that one explosion from a major volcano can create more carbon monoxide than the cars in Los Angeles can generate in 20 years, is very chic among the degenerates who read trash like The New Yorker. Temperatures on a planet change over time. Note to creationist-hating pseudo-intellectuals: check your science books.

The carbon tax was crafted by elites to benefit elites. It does nothing to address climate change and enshrines the absurdity of taxing something that every human produces every moment of their waking existence and which plants require in order to live!

***

We can’t stop using oil. We use too much of it. But perhaps that is the greatest lesson of the oil spill. As we are overwhelmed by the massive life-disruptions to hundreds of thousands who make their livings from the Gulf, and the millions more who will be affected in yet-undiscovered butterfly effect sequences, we would do well to ask ourselves how we can live a more sustainable lifestyle. Certainly not through thoughtless boycotts of BP gas stations (a move that hurts our neighbors more than it hurts BP), or raving that we will never drill again. Logically, it will be through making our lives more local – more tied to our communities, so that when disaster strikes us at home, we won’t be so far from help, as it seems our fellow citizens on our southern coasts are. We can’t plan for disaster, but we can plan to make its impact, when it happens, much less drastic.

FOOTNOTES

* www.csmonitor.com/2005/0726/p03s01-usgn.html
# www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7804922/BP-chief-Tony-Hayward-sold-shares-weeks-before-oil-spill.html
** http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0602/month-oil-spill-goldman-sachs-sold-250-million-bp-stock/
## www.prisonplanet.com/bp-aware-of-cracks-in-oil-well-two-months-before-explosion.html
*** www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html?_r=1
### www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/26/bp-has-paid-29-million-in_n_590411.html

Immaculée Ilibagiza puts everything in perspective

2010-06-18T07:48:00.000-05:00

One of the unexpected pleasures of my week at Acton has been hearing the story of this amazing woman. For many of us, our knowledge of the genocide in Rwanda came through reading news stories or by watching Don Cheadle's fantastic performance in Hotel Rwanda. I received an extraordinary gift on Wednesday night by getting to hear Immaculée IIibagiza's real-life story of the genocide.

This young lady, who you can learn more about here, managed to hide from machete-wielding murderers in a small bathroom with 7 other women for over 3 months. They were brought food by a man who had to be so secretive about their presence that not even his children knew.

If Anselm was right, and theology is faith seeking understanding, then Wednesday night gave those of us attending Acton University a live theology lesson. Immaculée not only managed to survive this ordeal, which she attributes to praying the rosary which her father gave her before he saw her for the last time, but she managed to forgive those who killed her family (all of them were wiped out) and the relatives of those killers. Her living testament to this love and forgiveness was to rebuild her family's house. In the spirit of forgiveness, Hutus and Tutsis now pray the Rosary together in that house weekly.

To be sure, we are studying great ideas, but the sentiment of my tablemates as we stood up from that talk, touched by Immaculee's humility, forgiveness, and strength, was the same: "everything else doesn't really seem to matter much, does it?"

Confessions of a Conference Junkie: My first day at Acton University

2010-06-17T00:04:00.003-05:00

I'm in Grand Rapids this week, at my fourth academic conference this year. My name is Stephen Heiner, and I'm a conference junkie. A lot of my friends know this already, but Acton is among the largest of the ones I have attended.

In the past three years, I have attended

A Liberty Fund Colloquium on Just War Theory
A Rockford Institute Summer School on the American West
A Rockford Institute Winter School on the Greek Roots of Christendom
A John Randolph Club meeting on the theme, America's Future: Hell or Texas?
An Abbeville Institute Summer School on Reconstruction
An Abbeville Institute Scholars' Conference on Nullification and Secession
A Sigma Tau Delta Regional Conference
and three Sigma Tau Delta International Conventions (it's an English Honor Society)

This year I am slated to attend three more events.

You might be asking yourself why I come to these events. Well, that brings us back to Acton. Here are the questions I posed to (or were posed to me) by alleged (I'll explain that in a moment) strangers in my first 24 hours in Grand Rapids (some of them started at baggage claim):

How is the Orthodox notion of the Trinity different from the Catholic notion?

What's all the fuss about Tom Woods v. distributists?

Are you a Lefebvrite?

How does this whole ecumenical thing work, anyway? Do I pretend like they aren't heretics?

Are you in union with the Church?

How do you think small businesses like yours will survive in this economy?

Who are you cheering for in the World Cup?

What do you mean, you don't believe in Purgatory?

Will the real Kobe show up for Game 6? (He did).

Of course she's Immaculately Conceived! (oh, that wasn't a question)

Where are these "grand rapids" anyway? Looks pretty peaceful to me.

These are questions I expect at academic conferences, because I'm surrounded by people who are smarter than me, people who make me feel like I'm at the deep end of the swimming pool. They are questions that will generally be asked and answered with a civility, gentility, and true desire to understand so rarely seen in the "real world." And they will be delivered passionately, but not emotionally (okay, sometimes emotionally - I've made a "no talk about the Iraq War" resolution to myself this week on advice from friends who've attended Acton in the past).

And that's why I go - I get to agree and disagree with people who care passionately about ideas. And from those discussions I gain new friends, insights into myself, and reflections I'll ponder on for weeks and months after. In a world driven by consumption, these anti-consumptive activities paradoxically fill me up (that, and all the snacks I eat continuously that are too, too available just outside our classrooms).

Acton delivers what I've come to expect at "these sorts of things," and some extra items:

1. A truly diverse crowd. There are attendees from 6 different countries, including what appear to be at least a dozen priests and even more seminarians. We have Catholic priests, Orthodox priests, and every shade of Protestant minister. It is overwhelmingly male (I'd guess 70/30), but the women who are here are quite attractive (not that a single guy notices such things).

2. A dazzling array of lectures. While I endured the "foundational series" of lectures with the rest of my Acton freshmen colleagues, tomorrow starts the courses that we hand-picked ourselves. Here are a few of them:

Virtue and Liberty in the American Founding

The New Deal and the Great Society: Moral and Economic Failure

Distributivism: The Theory and a Critique

Benedict XVI and Caritas in Veritate

3. A thoroughgoing friendliness. I don't lack for new friends or friendliness at any conference I attend, usually (it's one of the perks of attending), but it's almost as if people already knew that they were supposed to go up and just introduce themselves. Which is why I said "alleged" stranger earlier - these people may not be strangers, maybe because they've read your work (I was surprised over breakfast when someone introduced himself and said he read my truerestoration blog) or maybe because you can't really be strangers with people with whom you agree on so many things. There is also an abundance of staff who know what they are doing and are there to help you at every turn.

4. A huge spread of books. Always a Scylla/Charybdis dance for me, a person who isn't allowed to go into a Barnes and Noble alone due to my propensity to buy dozens of books at a time, Acton has a full, full spread of books, with a $1 and free table to boot! Wait, did I say this was a good thing?

I start my advanced courses tomorrow, but I don't need to wait until then to tell you that you should be here next year. I can't guarantee you'll get in, because out of a pool of over 800 applicants less than 400 were accepted this year, but if you do get in, you might get most of your way paid. I got a travel scholarship in addition to a student scholarship. Which, given what a wonderful opportunity a week at Acton provides, is like getting paid to learn. Which might be the most satisfying thing of all.

Lost and Found: Final Reflections on a show that changed television

2010-06-08T10:16:00.001-05:00

There are plenty of spoilers here, as there were in my last two pieces on LOST (here and here). For those of you catching up with the series, read on, forewarned.

Patrick McGoohan, star and creator of the hit 1970s show The Prisoner, left England for a few weeks following the airing of the final episode of the show. The buildup to the final episode had been enormous, and people were so unhappy with the ending that he received death threats and angry calls. David Chase experienced much of the same thing because of how he ended The Sopranos. (Perhaps the only person who hasn’t had to deal with those levels of vitriol is David Simon, but that’s because of how perfectly planned out The Wire was, but I digress.)

In interviews over the years, McGoohan often commented in reflection about the final episode, when it is revealed who the ever elusive “#1” was, that he felt he should have had subtitles and a blinking sign to indicate exactly what “it” meant. He was being facetious, of course, but he was expressing the contradiction of meaningful television and seemingly meaningless endings: that perhaps an audience not fundamentally literate will not accept anything other than a straightforward “tell-me-what-it-means” ending. One of my old professors remarked to me that the reason that many thought LOST was “the best thing ever” was because it had, in some ways, treated them to the feeling of reading a long, thoughtful novel, and some (maybe many) had never experienced that.

The shortcomings of the LOST finale aside, perhaps the illiteracy of the audience can explain the outrage about the finale. LOST was never a great show for a coherent narrative, but it was groundbreaking and perhaps ranks among the greatest shows ever in its depth of character development. LOST made us care deeply about these characters not just because we saw them in the present, but because we saw, in fits and starts, their pasts, and alternative presents.

LOST was fundamentally about friendship, redemption, and time. The show was about many other things, to be sure, but I’d like to focus on these things as we examine the finale.

Friendship

The Sideways allowed us to grasp the possibilities of three things: 1) what if the Island had never been able to draw Oceanic 815 in and what the fantasy lives of those onboard might have been; 2) what if, even in this fantasy world, friends managed to find each other, and 3) what if they could have had all their experiences connect them in this other world so that they could “move on” to whatever was next?

When Josh Holloway’s Sawyer irritatedly tells Jacob in the final episode that they didn’t need/want to come to the Island because they were “just fine” Jacob quickly answers, “No, you weren’t.” He knew that each of them were broken and in need of “fixing” in some way. As we see the creed of “Live together or die alone” lived out in the finale among these friends we understand that despite being haphazardly thrown together, every single person had an opportunity to deal with their brokenness. Some succeeded, some failed, but everyone was given the chance.

Their bonds of friendship and love, forged in the furnace of an Island with supernatural powers, inhabited by Others, and even before them, by an ancient race that must have built the demonic statue that guarded the Island, from the present to the past and to the future, were everlasting. Despite the disappointment of the ecumenical chapel where apparently all faiths are really one, we can accept that friendship is eternal, because of the three cardinal virtues, Scripture says that only one remains at the end: Charity.

Redemption

St. Anselm famously stated, “credo ut intelligam” in an explanation of what theology is. Indeed, we “believe so that we may understand.” John Locke, our crippled man of reason, is forced to become a man of faith when he realizes that, whether or not he understands it, the Island has cured him. He didn’t choose faith. Faith was foisted on him. As he accepts and grasps this faith he becomes more and more suited for his role in saving and preserving the island (As an aside here it should be noted that Terry Quinn's "Locke-Ness Monster" of the final season is also a commentary that those who could have been protectors of the Island could have been its worst enemies as well. Locke could have chosen evil, but he chose good. Just as the "Man in Black" could have accepted his fate as well).

Locke is set in opposition to Jack. Jack, a doctor, is also a man of reason, but we could say he is an incorrigible man of reason. Dedicated to “fixing” things we often find that his quests to “fix” often break. This single-minded devotion to fixing comes from a good heart and that is perhaps the reason why we, as the audience, never fault him for it. Yet, he is constantly confronted with the prospect of faith, until the death of Locke – the death of faith “embodied” – is the grain of wheat that is crushed in order for the leaven to rise in Jack. Locke’s death gifts faith to Jack, and he helps to lead the Oceanic 6 back to the Island.

The Island is par excellence a green world (both literally and figuratively) where our characters can, in the parlance of the first season, be new “Adams” and “Eves” in a place where their old lives don’t count. They can put on the “new man” if they choose. They can choose to live for others…or for themselves. It is faith that saves Jack in the end, but it is not the blind faith in his ability fix things despite a daddy complex, it is the faith that understands the fallenness of man and bravely sallies forth in light of that. It is Plato’s knowledge that courage is not simply the absence of fear, but the comprehension of it.

Time

In the Consolation of Philosophy Boethius explains the problem of Divine foreknowledge by explaining the concept of the “eternal present.” God sees all things that ever happened and that ever will happen in one vision of now. The Island, in its now present, now past, now future iterations reminds us that throughout time the choices of man have always been the same. Yes, we have cycles of choices, tragedy, and hope recurring, but we are not prisoners to that cycle. It is free will that enables us to write our fate/destiny/salvation, not simply manage it in the simplistic karmic wheel to nowhere.

Thus, if as some say, the Island and all the episodes of six seasons were simply a dying dream of Jack in the bamboo forest as he expired on the day of the original crash, we are not forsaken, for now we have time to remember our friendships, to contemplate our fallenness, and to do what is best with the time that has been given us.

iCant, Part I: What's Wrong With the Smartphone

2010-05-25T23:52:00.003-05:00

This article originally appeared as an op-ed in the May 2010 issue of The Four Marks. For more information on The Four Marks, please click here.

You are in a lobby. By an airport gate. In a coffee shop. At a bus stop. At the office. In class. In any of these situations you will find someone, head inclined slightly downward, who is staring at the small screen of a smartphone. They might be texting, playing a game, or be looking through a universe of (mostly) useless – though amusing – applications for those phones. They are mesmerized by what appears to be magic to them. But, more importantly, they are unable (and perhaps afraid) to be alone. Who or what has robbed them of this ability? The long answer? Pong.

Pong was the first video game played on a console. It came on the original Atari system and could be played against the computer or with another player. It was essentially ping-pong, with a very rudimentary wheeled controller allowing you to move your paddle back and forth to catch and deflect a ball.

Pong was only slightly before my time. My youth is peppered with memories of the original 8-bit Nintendo, the Sega Genesis, the never-took-off Turbografx 16, the Super Nintendo; video games reached their apotheosis just as I entered high school with the (then) mind-blowing Nintendo 64. All of these consoles accomplished their dual purposes each and every single time I played games on them: 1) the user is kept in front of the console as long as possible, and 2) the user is removed from reality.

The most often-used retort I hear whenever I denigrate video games is also the most irrelevant: “Everything in moderation.” That’s something you can say about cornflakes, or chocolate, or alcohol, or tobacco, or firearms. These are inanimate objects. Video games are, strangely, animated. They keep stimulating, keep pushing, keep asking you to play. Surely, there is an element of addiction in anything pleasurable, but video games have managed to harness the multi-sensed power of television and have created the hook to keep you playing.

Anyone who doubts this power has forgotten his childhood; I have numerous memories of my mother having to yell just to get my attention when I was in the midst of video game bliss. If you don’t have childhood memories of video games, simply observe the Twitter generation at play on these devices. They are in another world.

This other world (call it Pandora, if you want) features hours of amusement that leave your eyes tired, your fingers cramped, and your life utterly wasted. What is sacrificed? Playing outside. Games with friends and family. Reading. Painting. Shooting baskets. Making baskets. Making anything. Disassembling anything. Hiking. Cooking. Writing. We are robbing our youth of their imagination: one of the most precious gifts they have.

These video games beat as waves upon the unthinking shore. One day the tide and beat of the waves form one sandy pattern. Another day, another. But nothing is left that lasts…and time marches on.

These video games, which married amusement to the magic of television, have now metastasized. Add a telephone. Add a camera. And email. And an endless procession of (mostly) useless applications (apps). A sprinkle of fairy dust. Poof: you have the indispensible device – the smartphone, most pervasive in our pop culture in the example of the iPhone.

iPhone users represent a quirky group of people. They are people who love their phones like one might love a pet or a child, they think they are cooler and better than you, and cannot comprehend their lives without this device. It is always on, never further than 3 feet from them, except perhaps when they are bathing (though I suspect there will soon be an app to eliminate that drudgery), and interacted with during every waking moment of every waking day.

As we contemplate this reality, and I pose the “what if” question – not just to myself, as the owner of a smartphone – a Blackberry Storm – but to my friends and acquaintances, I am constantly met with howls: “What if you stopped using a smartphone?” I ask. They reply, “What? How??” (insert howling noises and guffaws)

Ironic, isn’t it? Technology that is supposed to free us actually enslaving us. How have millions of humans been happy throughout the centuries without smartphones? How?? Will anyone argue that his smartphone makes him happier as a person? More fulfilled as a human? It is a pet, a distraction, a lie. It robs you of your ability to be alone, your ability to grip reality, and, as you sit awash in the imagination of thousands of unique apps, you find yourself fundamentally un-imaginative, and un-original.

But the iPhone is almost already passé. Its new cousin, the iPad, reminds us that we never have to live without big screen, high definition, always-on access to the internet. The Internet used to be a “place” one “went” when he was by a computer. It is now ubiquitous and pitched to us as indispensible.

I have made the “indispensible” arguments on behalf of smartphones numerous times myself: “How would I find directions, send email, google necessary facts or numbers?”

I have come to believe that the answers to these questions, and thousands of less necessary reasons to have a smartphone, lie in the simple acceptance of the fact that every gift comes with a price. Is the instant gratification that I get for those things worth the trade-off? Put another way, are the tangible benefits of your smartphone: always-on access to the internet, email, google, and other toys, worth what it takes from you: your time, your imagination, and your inner peace?

I have come to believe, even while recognizing the fact that I have created several businesses around the sine qua non of having a smartphone, that the answer to that question is a firm No. I have come to reject the notion that I have to be held hostage to a device. I designed my lifestyle around a smartphone. I can un-design it too.

How will I escape? I’m plotting. I’m scheming. I’ll let you know when I escape the asylum, and return to the real world of books, people, and sunlight. I’ll be free in an app-less world. And then I’ll tell you how I did it.

How to Get Out of a Speeding Ticket 101

2010-01-10T17:17:00.005-06:00

originally published on 29 August 2006, in Falmouth, Massachusetts

There is no full-proof way to do this. But, since there are many steps along the way to a final fine and points on your record, there are many ways that the ticket can, in a way, fail. Look at it that way. 85% of people pay a ticket no questions asked. This guide is for the other 15%.

First: Before you're pulled over...

1) Never speed in areas you are unfamiliar with, unless you're driving cross country and the terrain is flat, without trees.

2) Never drive above 20 miles an hour over. Besides being cited for reckless endangerment, it is much more difficult to safely slow down.

3) Be observant. This is a good driving skill, anyway. Look especially at bridges, overpasses, and trees which can easily obscure a cop (in areas that are densely this way, you probably don't want to be more than 10 over).

Second: When you see a cop...

1) Stop as quickly and safely as possible. Don't come to a stop on the freeway, but if you overbrake, the worst that will happen is that you will hit the gun under the limit. Brake too slowly and you're likely to still be over when you're in range.

Third: When the lights start flashing...

1) Pull over as quickly and safely as possible. Utilize turn signals.

Fourth: When waiting for the officer...

1) If you forgot to put on your seat belt, which you should never do, put it on, but not in a totally obvious manner. If the cop asks you if you just put it on, sheepishly answer yes. Don't lie to him. There are few things they hate more than lying.

2) Also, before he gets there, have your license, registration, and insurance out with both hands on top of the steering wheel. Have your window completely rolled down. Turn off the engine, music, etc. Get off your cellphone.

3) If you are in the military, put your military ID under your driver's license when you hand it to them. If they are prior military, they might let you off. When I was in the Marines, this worked twice, once to a "I don't ticket Marines, get outta here." The third time, the cop asked why I had given the military ID - I played dumb and just said it was extra identification.

At this moment, the cop who addresses this speeder has already started to form an opinion...

You pulled over quickly, safely, using your signals. You have all your documents in order. You say "Sir" or "Officer" when speaking to them.

Fifth: The officer comes to the vehicle...

They ask if you know how fast you were going. Chances are you don't necessarily know the speed you were going when you got gunned, but if you know, generally, it was around 70, guess 62. That's a reasonable error if the speed limit was 55. It's 7 over, but there it is. He then tells you you were going 62 or higher. You might make a face indicating that it was a complete accident. Apologize - and tow the line between obsequiousness and casualness. He'll go back to decide what to do with you.

Now, at this point, two things can happen (ticket or warning). The officer will run your license, and if you have any recent tickets (in the last 2 years) on your record, you're not in a good place. Don't move around a lot in your seat or call a friend or turn on the music or the vehicle. Sit in your seat. If you do anything, occasionally put your head in your hands for effect. Don't look at the officer through your rearview, he can see you. Occasionally, you can flick your eyes up there, but in a quick way, not in the way you used to check out that girl in high school, watching her until the very moment she raised her eyes to look at you.

Moment of truth:

He comes back with a ticket or a warning.

If it's a warning, as I have pulled off in Kansas, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, California, Missouri, and Pennsylvania, thank the officer profusely, even shaking their hand, promise to slow down - and actually do so. You're on proby for the next hour, at least.

If it's a ticket, take it; don't be sullen, be courteous. Apologize anyway and take your medicine.

The date on your ticket is likely anywhere from 3 weeks to 6 weeks from the day you got it.

At this point, 85% of people, despairing, pay their ticket and get the corresponding insurance hikes. That's what the courts are counting on.

If the name of the game before was politeness and cooperation, now it is delay, delay, delay.

First, depending on your locale, you can get anywhere from a 45-90 day extension on your court date. Don't write to ask for this extension until 7-14 days of the court date. You can send this certified, but its not necessary.

Some courts are automated enough that you can request these extensions online. Check the back of your ticket for details.

At this point, after you've delayed, you've now bought yourself more time (if you need it, as a stupid speeding college student often did) to either pay for traffic school and bail or the fine. If you haven't attended traffic school in 18 months, take it. It's the easy way out. Some states let you do it online (California, for example) and if you're very busy, an extension can be given, but don't mess around with this or you'll end up getting the ticket. Go to traffic school and get it over with, because the Court has to receive your certificate by the due date, so never wait until the last day, you'll lose.

If you have decided to proceed to your date, this is fine. You're not going to a trial, you're showing up to receive a court date.

Invariably, you'll be summoned to be there by 9am or 1pm, and they won't get to you until 10am or 2pm, respectively. If your police officer doesn't show up at this hearing (you do enter a plea), then your ticket is immediately dismissed and you go home happy. If the police officer is there, well you'll get a date for your trial. But, it's possible the officer won't make this preliminary hearing. He could be sick that day, it could be a day off, or the the middle of a planned vacation, his wife could be having a baby, or any number of personal things that may take him away. I've walked away from two tickets this way.

But what about my lost half day of work? Well, think about it as a short vacation, and think of the necessary insurance hikes that last for three years if you don't do this or if you lose.

Once you get an assigned court date, find a day that will be convenient for you that is within 30 days of your court date and politely ask for an extension. Remember, delay!

The court may or may not grant your request, but if you are polite enough to the pencil and paper pusher bureaucrat living through their own Dostevskian anti-hero Ed Norton in Fight Club reality, you'll probably get your request (I've gotten extended 5-6 times).

You now have to prepare your case. In the case of speeding, unless you pay a lawyer $500, it's your word versus his, and you'll lose. Judges implicitly trust the police (and well they should), and you're just a law-breaking citizen. Dress well, however, you don't want to predispose the judge to dispose of you.

Now, we are concerned with speeding in this article, so you either were or were not. Unless you have expert technical knowledge of speedometers or radar guns, you've got nada.

The entertaining part is watching everyone else present their cases. I bring a book, but invariably I become engrossed in the proceedings. It's like Judge Wapner, but live.

People will get up, draw diagrams, present photos, read written statements, it's hilarious. Do not laugh unless the judge and the police laugh. Much of the proceedings are an exercise in controlling your laughter.

So now what? All right, let's break down the scenarios.

1) Cop doesn't show, you win (have had this happen twice).

2) Cop shows, you haven't been to traffic school, the judge asks, why didn't you choose traffic school - you say, I didn't know I could choose that - the judge might (probably) let you...

3) Cop shows, you've already been to traffic school. You can request something called secondary level traffic school in some states. This is a 12 hour instead of an 8 hour school, and can only be requested in person. The judge may ask why, and you might answer that you don't want the points on your record. But here it's helpful to note the myth of traffic school.

In some states, traffic school merely erases the "points" that go on your record. It still dings you, and your insurance still goes up.

I found out this unpleasant fact when I applied for new car insurance in Kansas. Geico (I gave into the gecko, okay? I loved that robot song commercial) told me of a ticket that I thought I "erased" due to traffic school but had shown up. In this case it would have been better for me to go to trial or pay the ticket because "points" only matter if you accrue enough to suspend a license, and if you're on that end of the spectrum, you're not likely to be reading this anyway, if you even read.

4) Cop shows up and you defend yourself. There's not really a defense for speeding. The most you can say is that you don't think you were going over and why, i.e. I was looking at the speedometer at the moment I was gunned, and I don't think I was going that fast - be convicted (definitely no pun intended here :-) but not overly passionate. If you say absolutely nothing in your defense, the judge will get upset, presuming that you only showed up hoping that the cop wouldn't come, and he might raise your fine.

In some states, you can request a "diversion." This is double the fine of your bail and makes the ticket disappear. Like traffic school you can only do it every 18 months. You may or may not have to present in court to request it.

So, you're at the end of my little course. Now to regale you with stories.

1) Most recently, in Laguna Beach, a cop showed up on his day off to testify that the "engineering survey" hadn't been done in a timely fashion. Meaning, every 5 years, the road is examined to make sure the speed limit is appropriate. The cop issued me the ticket (in this case 70 in a 55) in a period after the 5 year expiration but before a new inspection had been done. Since Laguna wasn't timely in its inspection, I got off completely.

2) In New Mexico I got a 90 in a 75 and wrote to the judge personally to ask for a hearing by proxy, as traveling to NM for a trial was a hardship. The judge, impressed by my politeness, told me he would dismiss the case if the cop no-showed. He didn't show and I walked (from 2 states away).

3) In New Hampshire in 1999 a punky California driver (me) received 2 speeding tickets in a month, somehow confusing the speeding norms on the West Coast with the strictness of the same on the East. He pled poverty, and got a massive amount of community service hours instead. They worked out to $5/hour, but the point was, he didn't have to dip into his very limited funds to pay the two tickets he'd stupidly obtained.

4) In Philadelphia I received an $80 parking ticket because the nose of my vehicle protruded into a driveway. One notarized letter ($10), a stamp, and ten minutes of my time, got it dismissed and saved me $70.

5) In Los Angeles I received 2 parking meter tickets. I appealed both, and one was dismissed because the traffic cop had written the ticket so quickly that he got my VIN # wrong. The other one, I had to pay, alas.

So what's the short story to this long tale? Don't speed. Or move to an area where people just aren't in a hurry to get places. Like the Midwest.

And remember, delay, delay, delay. Government is not at all efficient, and they might trip on themselves before you get to pay that fine and take the hit.

Lost in Transition

2010-01-07T16:50:00.005-06:00

At the end of three weeks of travel in Asia, I found myself at Tokyo’s Narita Airport. The plan, 3 months ago, had been: land in the city, immediately take a shuttle into town (I was sure it was only 30 minutes away, like most airports are, from the city center ), and then just go on a fabulous journey for 20 hours and then get back on a flight, without sleep, and collapse for 11 hours of sleep before getting back to America. Halfway through my trip, that morphed into a “well, maybe it would be good to get some sleep and thus I should get a hotel room, but I still plan on taking the town by force late at night” idea. When I landed in Narita last night, the plan was that maybe I should go directly to my hotel room, take a hot bath, order room service, call my girlfriend, collapse in my bed watching strange Japanese TV, and have pleasant dreams, followed by sleeping in, breakfast in bed, and a leisurely ride back to the airport. Which is exactly what happened. All except the breakfast in bed thing. I paid vestigial homage to my Tokyo dreams by calling the front desk around 7pm. “Are there trains into Tokyo?” “Yes, sir, but the best way to get them would be to go back to the airport, and the train will take you an hour and a half, and the last train comes back around 9pm.” He already knew what I would ask and answered perfectly. One last try: “What about taxis?” “Around $200-$300US.” Okay. Back to bed.

Let me explain. It wasn’t that I didn’t find Tokyo very worth exploring, or that I somehow had forgotten that I wouldn’t be back that way anytime soon (I had taken 2 decades to come back to Asia this time); it was more that I wish it had happened in the front of my trip as opposed to the back. Travel takes as much from you as it gives, perhaps more, and Tokyo was cold, but not anywhere near the Arctic breezes currently ravaging the United States. I knew I was heading back to reality and I was bracing for it, but wasn’t looking to embrace it just yet. And when I left Tokyo today, my customary charm and the ease with which I get my way was stifled by relentless Japanese adherence to rules.

I have flown roughly 100,000 miles in my life on perhaps 15 different airlines. I am well acquainted with baggage rules, and I have often flaunted them because I know I can usually talk my way out of an extra luggage fee. I’m quite convincing – and God wouldn’t want me to waste that talent, would He? In any case, without exception, International Flights almost always let you take two pieces of checked luggage gratis. You can take around 60 pounds or 23 kg. I had taken four pieces (two checked, two carry-on) of luggage to the airports at Kansas City, Los Angeles, and Singapore. I had even transitioned through Tokyo on the way to Singapore with that load, but at 14:50 Tokyo time today a very efficient Japanese lady gave me the equivalent of what the Black Knight once uttered in Monty Python’s Holy Grail movie: “None shall pass.” She looked down at my two large checked pieces, then over to my two large carry-ons. “Sir, we can’t let you take those on.”

I was casually filling out bag tags, thinking I was going to get away with it, for the fourth time this trip and for probably the twentieth time in my life. I looked up, purposely misunderstanding her: “Oh, don’t worry, they will fit in the overhead bin.” “No, sir, I mean you can’t take those on, they are too big.” “You mean, they are too big – they won’t fit? But I have fit them in the overhead bin before.”

Now, this is partially true. I had come to Asia with two large roller pieces, a garment bag, and a duffle bag. Inevitably I purchased gifts for my family and employees, and I was also given mementos to take back. The two large roller pieces and the garment bag swelled to their absolute limits, and I bought an even larger duffle bag. I had taken the duffle back from Thailand to Singapore, but with a small backpack, it wasn’t such a dramatic flouting of the rules, though I had talked my way out of that too.

“Well sir, I’m sorry, we can’t do that.” Okay, I’ll play along. “Well, how much is it for another checked bag?” I knew it would be at least $100US for an international flight. “22,000 Yen.” “I don’t know how much that is.” Yes I did. A ton! “Around $220US.” I widened my eyes deliberately. “Well, I don’t have $220US. I’m a college student, and I’m at the end of a three week trip, I’m bringing back gifts for my family from my relatives, and I don’t have that kind of cash on me.” I managed to tell the (rather Jesuitical) truth – I was a college student, even though I was taking the Spring semester off from my MBA (I was feeling burned out), I was at the end of a three week trip, I was bringing back gifts from my relatives (and a ton of stuff I had bought), and I had zero cash on me (I had no American currency for weeks, my Thai baht and Singapore dollars were completely spent, and I had overspent the budget I had allotted for myself for the trip). She took my combination of plea for pity, statement of facts, and begging for mercy at face value, and then she went to her supervisor to go to bat for me.

Now, this exact situation had played out in the US at LAX when I left. My garment bag, which was “regulation” and has been for its entire existence, was ruled “too tall” to be carry-on. When we “went to the supervisor” there, he nodded his head in agreement that it was regulation but that at LAX they were a bit more strict as of late, and that’s why he was checking it on for free. This was not only because it made sense, but because in America the customer is always right, and I had presented my case politely and without rancor. Nowhere else in the world is the customer always right, and I was about to be reminded of that.

The supervisor came over, speaking to my girl – Paola was what was listed on her nametag – not a very Japanese name, but I took it as the face value transliteration of her probably “Miko” type name. He then turned to me, and said in a perfect American accent, “How can I help you?” I restated my case, except this time I threw in the slightest air of exasperation, as if I couldn’t quite believe I was having to explain this to a couple of airline employees, and I added: “You know, this is the fourth of four segments I have flown with American or an American codeshare, and I wasn’t stopped at LAX and I wasn’t stopped in Singapore.” “Well, our records showed you checked three bags in LAX, and you weren’t charged for that.” Oh, snap. I was exposed. “Yes, that’s right,” I nodded, “but,” I pointed to the garment bag, “they said that was ‘too tall.’ Have you ever even heard of that before? That’s totally regulation.” Change subject, hope to throw them off. “Okay, I agree, but your other carry-on bag is too large.” Counter. “But I wasn’t charged or stopped at two other airports.” Parry. “Well you should have been charged, it’s not fair for you to bring on so many bags. What if everyone else acted like you?” A hit, a very palpable hit, I could almost hear Osric say in the background. Although it had lessened in my old age, my youth was possessed of Raskolnikovean “rules are for other people” disease. Here was a little bit of it coming out. He saw that I was faltering. “And, you know, baggage rules are listed on the website. It’s your responsibility.” Flailing, I uttered, “Well, you are the only segment out of four that has stopped me, three flights, and the fourth one this happens, don’t you think that’s a minority viewpoint?” Lame, I know. It’s so lame that I am embarrassed to write it now. But, I’m committed to telling you exactly what happened, despite how badly it reflects on me. He had me. I had flaunted the rules and had come up against a good employee and a by-the-book supervisor, who spoke unaccented idiomatic English who had my number. After the necessary thoughtful pause, I asked, “What can I do?” Now Paola jumped in, as if she had been waiting to come to my rescue after her supervisor had administered his beatdown. “Well, we could combine the luggage, or you could mail some of it back,” she pointed to the Japanese post office, literally 100 meters from our position.

Now, stop and think about this for a second. Because, this is damned brilliant on the part of the Japanese. Be tough about baggage and offer a cheaper alternative to the 22,000 Yen penalty. What if we had a US Post Office inside every major airport? What if there was a special “airport postage bag” which offered a flat rate and a rush rate? What if we even had one behind security, so that if any of your items got confiscated (I had a beautiful $100 silver cigar lighter taken once that I had completely forgotten about. I haven’t bought a new one since. I guess I’m still in mourning.), you could still send them to yourself? Well, I won’t hold my breath for innovation from our post office, which still manages to staff their locations in inverse proportion to the number of people waiting in line.

“May I leave my things here and consult regarding these rates?” “Yes, certainly.” The supervisor regarded me with a calm countenance, not for one second betraying the self-satisfaction that any efficient company man must feel upon defeating an adversary (I mean, “customer”). I had to give him that. His look seemed to say “I’m done here” and he was right: I didn’t see him again after that interaction.

“Can I see what your rates are?” I blurted out, in what seemed like totally clunky, though perfectly American English. In non English-speaking countries English always sounds like an alien, unknown tongue. I even remember that in Britain last summer I always hesitated before speaking, because I knew I wouldn’t sound like Darcy when I spoke, and how hickish would that be? The Japanese earnestly strove to be helpful though, and returned a wonderfully blank stare to me. “How much?” I hoped that a more common phrase, said slowly, would ring true in their ears. “Oh, hai. Here-ah.” He handed me a color coded card. I knew that the piece they would make me mail home was around 20 kg. My fingers ran down the chart to 20 kg, which looked to be the maximum. I then moved left and right and seized on the 10,000 Yen figure. “What does this 10,000 Yen mean?” He looked at where my finger was pointing, scrunched his eyebrows to conjure up the English, and then said slowly, “Ah, 2-ah months.” “Two months?” I exclamation-pointed. I slid my finger over to the right to the higher rate. “Ah, tu-er weeks.” Again to the right. “Ah, fivre days.” 22,000 Yen. The same it cost to check it. I shook my head and robotically said “Origato gozyemas” with the briefest of bows.

Paola was dutifully waiting. I was early for check-in. Or maybe everyone else was late. “Can’t do it.” We looked blankly at each other, then at the luggage, then at each other, then back at the luggage. “Do you all have a box,” I asked? “Yes, but it is not free, it is $10US.” Adaptive, she had already figured out that this American couldn’t count to Yen and did the conversion for my ignorant self. “That’s fine, let’s give it a whirl.” She brought the box out. I still was thinking “in the box” and lowered one of the pieces in. It didn’t fit. At this point, I realized I was going to have to just try to pack everything into the box, lose a piece of luggage – maybe mail it back empty.

I consigned myself to an uncluttered, semi-private part of the check-in area and went to work. 23kg, I thought. I was an efficient packer, I mean I had managed to pack all of this stuff in the first place, right? I brought over what I thought was a pretty full load. “27kg” the machine remorselessly displayed. Paola looked despondent – on my behalf. I think I had won her over with my determination. “All right, what if I do an overweight bag – or in this case, box?” “$50US,” she replied. “Okay,” then let me make this one overweight to the max…what is that? “32kg.” “Okay.” I walked over, grabbed two pairs of shoes, two t-shirts, and a pair of shorts. Oh, and a stuffed lion for my always rawring-around-the-house nephew. “31.8.” I triumphantly smiled. She frowned. “But, I’m afraid the box will break. Look, put some more in your other checked piece. Even if it is over I will only charge you for the box being over.” “Wow, thank you.” The box finally closed for business at 30kg, my other checked piece was 25kg, two pounds over. Now, back to the carry-on. I thought at first that I would be able to put my duffle bag inside my garment bag, until I remembered the design element that sold me on that duffle bag and simultaneously precluded it from going inside my garment bag. It had a rolling metal rack, which meant the bag couldn’t be folded. “Well, then you’re the one I’m sending home,” I thought to myself. I emptied out its contents into the garment bag, then zipped it tight.

I walked up to the counter with a steady ease. I wasn’t going to print a big “Mission Accomplished” sign and put it on an aircraft carrier, because, well, I still had a few things to do, and I didn’t want to celebrate prematurely and have it thrown in my face for the next 5 years. “I think we’re done,” I exhaled with visible relief. She was visibly relieved too. She had to do the normal double duty of issuing boarding passes and then passing through security to do gate check-in. She had already printed my boarding pass, sent my checked pieces through, and handed off the situation to her relief, who was ready to take my credit card to pay for the box and the fact that it was overweight.

I had taken four pieces of luggage and reduced them to…five. The box had eaten up contents but no luggage, one of my black rollers ate the smaller one, I had my garment bag, which held the contents of my formerly full duffle bag, and I had the most sensitive and expensive stuff in a small backpack which had formerly been packed away but was now deployed for duty. I went over to the Japanese post office. I filled out all the paperwork and handed over my credit card. “Oh, velly solly, sir, we only take-er Japanese cash.”

He bowed deeply, as if he anticipated I would hit him over the head like colonial overlords of old, which is incredibly funny, considering Sino-Chinese relations vary from frosty to cold, depending on which way the wind is blowing. (I mean, I look Chinese, as evinced by no fewer than 20 people coming up to me in Singapore speaking Mandarin, thinking I understood a word of what was coming out of their mouths.) I mean, wasn’t he supposed to be in denial about what Japanese history books mendaciously call the “possibility of an incident at Nanking” which the rest of the world knows as the Nanking Massacre, or more properly, Nanking Total Disgusting Inhuman Slaughter of Human Beings by a Deranged Race? And as a Chinese, wasn’t I supposed to hate him for it? No on both counts. He was part of the new Japanese generation, which had no notion of its history, and accepts the Yasukuni War Shrine and its resistance to historical realities, or more probably, had no notion nor care for anything that happened prior to 1990. And I was only half-Chinese, and my grandmother had probably drained the last of the dregs of the cup of anti-Japanese sentiment, though my mother did mention the atrocities when she saw my facebook photos of the WWII monument in Singapore. “That’s the only time I ever saw my father with tears in his eyes.” And you should see my maternal grandfather: he was fierce.

I went to the nearest ATM, withdrew cash, and took a picture of the 10,000 yen note. It was odd, because an American ATM would never give you a $100 bill if you asked for $100. It would give you five $20s. Or if it were an ATM run by the federal government, it would have given me $20 and told me that the rest was for Goldman Sachs and GM, thank you very much. I paid, and went to security.

The security check was just as I have faced in America, except that they didn’t make me take off my shoes, because, you know that really keeps us safe in America! However, when I rounded the corner on the jetway I ran into a small army of people. Incredulous, I mouthed, barely aspirating, “You want to check my carry-on luggage?” “Yes,” came the perfectly unaccented English answer. Hands inside, rummaging around, feeling for something hard and metal, perhaps? Something that had made it through the X-ray machine or something I had picked up in duty-free: killer wasabi, peut-etre? It was over soon enough. I turned around to face…a woman who was going to feel me up. I stretched out my arms, restrained the urge to laugh, and got a cheap massage.

I slowly put my backpack on, grabbed my garment bag, and reflected on the tightness of Narita’s security. I had been checked at the entrance to the airport. Security had boarded our hotel shuttle and demanded to see all of our passports (standard procedure for every single vehicle that enters the airport) while another officer checked the baggage and under the vehicle. We then got the standard security metal detector perp walk. Then a check of my carry-ons, followed by a pat-down, as if I was going to the VIP section of a club. Put this in greater context. Japan has a limited military – mostly engineers – because we are even more afraid of their military coming back than we are of Germany’s. However, the Pentagon has in recent years lobbied for Japan to get more weapons, ostensibly to fuel the sales of the only thing America actually makes anymore: weapons. This, and the practical (and stupid) reason of providing a buffer against China, as if we will be able to convince Japan that their interests are more aligned with ours than with China’s. Everyone knows that this will be China’s century and that America will fade, and quickly, and the Japanese know that too. Playing on old prejudices will not work, despite how hard-headed some of the elders of either Japan or China are. The rising generation, the ones who will lead Asia in this century are either too unconcerned with history or don’t know history at all. They are looking forward, at the future. I cannot remind people enough that none of the Asian races like the idea of finishing second ever, and will not rest until they are #1 in everything, China being the likeliest candidate to do it (take the pole position) in my lifetime. And Americans of any generation, except any that are still alive who lived through the Great Depression, have never known America as anything but super-sized everything, and as a result, have never thought that we’ve had to compete for something. Don’t worry, that wake-up call is coming. Keep sleeping, though. Hit the snooze button. Yeah, again.

Add to this security the presence of over 30,000 troops on the South Korean border, and the entire Third Marine Division at Okinawa, and you have an incredibly dumb place to stage a terrorist attack. Further, since Japan doesn’t have a stupid, aggressive, and thoughtless foreign policy, no one wants to attack them. The logical prima facie adducement from this, according to the myopic Bush and Obama Administrations is that Japanese people must be really restricted in their freedoms, because terrorists hate America because of our freedom. That’s why they attack us, say the Stupid Parties. No, elephant and donkey, they attack us because we interfere in their countries, overthrow their governments, manipulate their only natural resources, and because their religion – in the Koran specifically – rewards the killing of unbelievers with Paradise and believes that the world ideal was, is, and will be, an entire Muslim world (Daar el Salaam). It is the only religion in the history of mankind that rewards, without conditions, Heaven to the believer who kills the unbeliever and urges relentless ruthlessness towards “unbelievers,” specifically Jews and Christians (Surah 2 : 190, Surah 5 : 51, Surah 8 : 36, Surah 9 : 12 Surah 9 : 73)?

At some point we will realize that profiling doesn’t have anything to do with seeing if someone “looks” Muslim, but rather, is Muslim, and using this “profiling” to put massive civil restrictions on Muslims until their religion changes to fit reality: i.e. the other 5 billion of us won’t tolerate a religion that rewards killing believers of other religions just because they don’t accept ours. America managed to beat polygamy out of the Mormons, didn’t it? Why can’t we beat “martyrdom” out of Islam? Because that would be racist! Xenophobic! Intolerant! No, just honest, real, and taking Islam at its word, and expressing repulsion at that word. Let’s put it in Islam’s court.

I know; I’m not holding my breath.

So, I lost a bag, paid $120 all told for postage and the luggage. But I learned two lessons. One I have learned many times and will one day learn completely (I’m 90% there): the rules do apply to me, too. The second: Japanese politesse doesn’t exclude being firm. The Japanese might say
顧客は、彼が間違っていない限り、常に正しいです。 “The customer is always right, unless he is wrong.”

They’re right.

Thirteen things to like about Singapore and Five Issues to Consider

2010-01-06T16:22:00.003-06:00

It has been over two decades since I last lived in Singapore. My childhood homes have been demolished and rebuilt as unrecognizable new entities. My first real primary school has relocated. Much of Singapore has changed. Yet, much remains the same.

I think what is primarily different to me is my perspective as an American. When I last lived here I was a Singaporean (and very young). There are so many promising things about this beautiful nation-state – yet there are also large question marks looming behind them.

So follows the ruminations of an ex-Singaporean citizen and a past, present, and future American citizen. Take it in the spirit it is offered in: guarded, cautious optimism.

Thirteen Things I like about Singapore, lah:

1. CPF. This stands for “Central Provident Fund.” It is a forced system of savings that automatically deducts around 13% of a given paycheck and deposits that money into an account that buys Singapore government bonds. The yield is low (the Singapore government surely makes quite a bit of money on those funds) but the account is yours and you can monitor its growth and development from Day One. Once you reach a certain corpus in the account (I think around $30,000SG), you can also start diversifying your portfolio, choosing investments other than government bonds. When you retire you can start withdrawing from this account, and at a certain age, can choose to withdraw the entire amount at once. This does everything right that American Social Security does wrong:
a. It is limited in scope. You can only withdraw what you put in.
b. It is not optional.
c. The account is yours to manage and upkeep, not part of some amorphous, accountable-to-no-one “pool.”

2. Home ownership. There’s not really a day that goes by that a Singaporean won’t take the opportunity to point out to you that 93% of Singaporeans own their own home. Due to the proactive opportunities afforded by the HDB (Housing Development Board – Singaporeans love acronyms, not only because they are neat and clean, but also because they are understood across language barriers), most Singaporeans effectively own their own homes. When you have that many property owners in a society, you get a lot more people who care about clean streets, clean neighborhoods, and low crime, because guess what – they feel like it’s their town. This drive for home ownership is overdeveloped, however, so much so that a young married couple would rather live separately at their respective parents’ homes rather than rent a “starter apartment.” In America, as in most countries, no one would ever expect a young couple, as a common practice, to buy a brand new home as newlyweds. In Singapore, it is a sine qua non (and often what a girl will expect when dating a guy…)

3. Cleanliness. MRT stations. Streets. Stores. Restaurants. Singaporeans have been trained to keep the place generally clean – and compared to many cities in the world, Singapore is spotless.

4. Courtesy. My very first day in Singapore, when I only had big bills on the bus, someone offered a $1 coin so that I could pay my fare. It’s things like that, or the fact that there are special seats on buses and subways for the elderly, the disabled, and the pregnant – and that people actually get up when such people need seats – that prove that you really can program a people to be polite, if you keep repeating mantras over and over and over.

5. Safety. In three weeks in Singapore I did not hear a single police siren. Not one. In an area of 240 square miles, housing 5 million people, there are only 11,000 people in jail. Follow the rules – or you will be punished. Since Singapore doesn’t have a history of letting criminals off the hook, many who would play at crime just decide to be “good” instead. Despite the good-natured tip I heard from several to “watch for pickpockets” I never once encountered even the shadow of such an encounter.

6. Encouragement to travel and recreate. On the subways you will find ads for travel to Macau or Taiwan or Malaysia. Get away – you deserve it – is the message delivered on the subway to the common man – and Singaporeans do travel – all of the Singaporean couples I encountered during my stay had left the country for a vacation in the last year. Americans, cursed by Puritan imbalance, have guilt about taking even a week off. Singaporeans have no such trouble.

7. A strong economic base. People are working round the clock in Singapore. There are road and construction projects everywhere. There is no shortage of jobs nor any sign of a recession in Singapore. I watched unparalleled spending in every possible way while I was here.

8. Sensible monetary policy. Instead of allowing a cartel of private banks to steal money from the public (like the United States does through the Federal Reserve System), Singapore has a guarded and fairly conservative monetary policy that allows them to do things like give (not loan) $5 Billion to Indonesia when the Tsunami hit in 2004. When a government can just give $5B to a neighbor, you know that they have a strong portfolio. Singapore famously weathered the George Soros theft-cum-monetary implosion in 1997 and that’s because they had and have steady hands at the till.

9. Public transportation. There isn’t a place in Singapore not reachable by some combination of walking, buses, subway, and taxi – and not at sky-high prices. Singapore has made a conscious and concerted effort to make the entire island accessible to anybody during reasonable hours. The system is efficient. I never waited more than 20 minutes – even during non-peak times – for a bus, never more than 5 minutes for a train, and never more than 2 minutes for a taxi. There are 10,000+ taxis on the island.

10. National Service. Despite the irony of the fact that I specifically repudiated my Singaporean citizenship over a refusal to do the mandatory 2.5 years required of all Singaporean males, then went on to enlist in the United States Marine Corps Reserve while in college, I have always thought that national service (for males only) is a good thing. While there has been discussion over the years for the females to do it – some local women say that their girls are too spoiled – this has never really gained traction. However, if National Service were required for women, there could certainly be training in nursing and other practical arts that women excel in – for combat has not ever been, nor will it ever be, their primus modus.

11. Small Business is strongly encouraged. Not only did Singapore dedicate the majority of its “bailout funds” to small businesses, but everywhere you look, there is a small business – be it the corner food stall, small store, niche item store, or whatever it might be, there are thousands and thousands of small businesses on this little island that flourish because people don’t believe you have to have category killer megastores like “Best Buy” or behemoths like “Wal-Mart” to live (in fact, Wal-Mart opened, failed, and closed in Singapore some time ago).

12. Health Care is affordable. Because I happened to be sick when I arrived –from an ongoing sinus infection which I had before I left, I had two opportunities to use medical care in Singapore. On one occasion, my wait was 15 minutes, and my visit and meds cost $30US without insurance. The same visit with insurance in America would have cost me $70. What is wrong with that picture? On another occasion, when I wanted more powerful medicine, I waited an hour, but was seen at nearly midnight, and was charged $40US for a consultation and the shot. That would have probably cost over $200 in America, again, with insurance.

13. Food. Singapore’s #1 selling point to tourists: you can spend 30 days here and eat different foods three times a day for all of those days and still not have eaten everything Singapore has to offer you. Singapore has given me ten pounds of additional body weight to take back to America to work off.

So there are 13 things I like. Never let it be said that I did not start with the good news first. The remaining points are items that I think every Singaporean citizen should care about (and Singapore is a lot more engaged democratically, partly because not voting is an offense that can cost you the franchise) because if they are not addressed, all of these “things I like” (except, perhaps, the food, thankfully) will be imperiled in some way.

Five Areas of Concern about Singapore, lah:

1. The PAP. The People’s Action Party, founded in part by Lee Kuan Yew and led for many years by him, has governed Singapore exceptionally well over its very short history as a sovereign nation. That being said, in its we-know-better-than-you style of governing, it has effectively crippled its people. Robbed of a charismatic or effective leader, the system will be a dead weight, as Singaporeans have been taught to be good followers, but have hardly been schooled in how to lead. They have not been thought smart enough to do that for themselves, and so the government does things like arrogantly erecting 32 toll booths throughout the city, with another 32 to come soon, with no explanation other than fiat. Singapore works fine because Lee Kuan Yew and people he formed are still in power. How will it work when he’s gone? The party is called “Pay and Pay” and “Poor also Pay” for a reason. When will Singaporeans turn the tap off? When will Singaporeans lead instead of being content to simply follow?

2. Cost of living. This cost only continues to rise and is obviously due to limited land space – that’s not something Singapore can do anything about – and puts Singapore into a constant frenzy of building, working, and consuming. Wash, rinse, repeat. While I think that the HDB’s do-good policy of providing subsidies to those who need it is brilliant, at some point in this century Singapore will absolutely run out of livable space. Then what? Singapore has to have a sustainable growth plan – one that realizes maps – and countries – have boundaries.

3. Singapore, like America, is a nation without being a people. When you say “Singaporean” you could mean “Malay” or “Chinese” (the majority) or any number of races. The same problem happens with “American” though as a country founded primarily by European immigrants, we do have a dominant group of ethnicities (much like the Chinese dominate in Singapore). As the demographics develop in this century it will become clear that those ethnicities who have an identity (note: people have an identity when they have common cultural ties: food, clothing, religion, etc.) as a people will constitute the nation (we in America will become mostly a Hispanic country, as they are the only demographic really interested in having kids, apparently). Those who do not, will not. This ties directly into my next point, which is

4. Singapore’s declining birth rate. Without fail, throughout the march of history, as civilizations have increased their disposable wealth, their birth rates have declined. A declining birth rate is the sign of a narcissistic people, self-absorbed and so blind to the wonder of the world that they possess neither the generosity nor the sacrifice to pass it on to another generation. Show me a civilization that thinks children are a calculation on the same footing as “career” or “vacation” or “lifestyle” and I will show you a civilization that will be shortly extinct, irrelevant, or both. Singapore recently offered a monetary incentive for a third child –precisely (and ironically) the wrong response – people don’t have children because it “makes financial sense” – they have children because they are obeying God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, and because they love the beauty of our world – no matter how flawed or fallen it can be at times – so much that they want to share it with others. Children are not assets, though he who has a large family will never have to worry about medical insurance or retirement. The ancients knew that. We, too smart for them, have forgotten.

5. It is alarming to me that the most conspicuous, most talked-about new development in Singapore is – a casino resort. Is this what Singapore aspires to lead the region in? Instead of spending an extraordinary amount of money on actually building a world-class university that can compete with institutions in Britain and Australia, Singapore is content to watch the flower of its youth go to study in foreign countries where inevitably, they fall in love with the culture and…don’t return to Singapore. How tragic it is that Singapore has concluded that the biggest contribution they can make to the global economy and the biggest investment they can make in their future is another boring, vacuous, dime-a-dozen casino resort. We only need to look to Dubai to see where “impress others” development leads to. If Singapore wants to be serious about leading – which as I pointed out, the PAP doesn’t foster – it needs to educate its leaders at home in a world-class university – not abroad. That’s just one suggestion. I’ll leave it to Singaporeans who know their country best and have the courage to lead, not just follow, to consider alternative sources of pride than the Integrated Resort.

Singapore’s mythical symbol is the Merlion. Fierce yet gentle, a giant model spits out water daily at One Fullerton, directly across from the construction site of the new IR. It was recently struck by lightning, a very bad sign for a still-very superstitious Chinese population. Let us hope it was not a bad omen, but perhaps rather a wake-up call to a smart, resourceful, good-hearted, and hard-working populace.

Two Days in Thailand

2010-01-06T02:49:00.006-06:00

“1300 Baht.” “No, no, 800 baht.” I shook my head and indicated I was going to need a lower price. I had been told to offer back 50% of whatever I was offered. As I had come out of the terminal and looked around for taxis, I had surveyed a “fixed rate” sheet and the beach where my hotel was – Kata Beach – had a fixed rate of 750 baht. As of this writing 1000 baht is about $30US. Of course, my rather tired brain had forgotten that those rates don’t really matter at 3am. That’s the time it was…

One of the nice things about flying a budget airline is the privilege of bragging to other people about how cheap it was for you to fly. Prior to this flight I could have bragged: “Hey, I flew from Singapore to Thailand for $60, man!” Now I got to brag: “So, I showed up for my flight 90 minutes early and it was delayed for 7 hours, so I got to sleep until then…hey, wait!” Customer service doesn’t really matter to a budget airline. So you’re delayed 7 hours and it changed your plans a lot – so what? You can’t complain because you paid next to nothing. Later, on our 25% full flight, I understood why they weren’t motivated to move a bit faster. Budget airline – budget dependability.

It didn’t matter at this point. I was tired and I wanted to get to my hotel. The driver pulled out the map – “Kata Beach…65 km, boss…long way…for you, special price, 1200 baht.” “No, 1000 baht.” He smiled and shook his head. I always feel ridiculous, like most Americans do, when I bargain. Part of it is the fact that I own a company that charges the highest rates in town for what we do, so the way that I usually react to a price “reaction” from a client is “Oh, is that a lot?” or “Well, if price is an issue, then I don’t think we are the best fit for you.” I feel like a chump bargaining because I would rather just get to the “best price” right away – my mother, sisters, and a large majority of my relatives would disagree – but there’s plenty of bargaining for them to be had if they want it. I’m mostly retired.

We went back and forth a bit more. I did a bit of mental math – 65 km – it would be about an hour on the curvy coastal roads. Who knew where the guy lived – maybe he had to drive all the way back after taking me to the tip of the peninsula. “Okay, okay,” I said, beaten. It was about $35US, which is a perfectly reasonable cab rate (less than I would pay from Kansas City International to my home in Overland Park, Kansas). Odd that I felt beaten even though I didn’t even want to bargain in the first place.

We made our way onto the road, with an extra passenger – a friend of the cabbie who would need a ride. The driver didn’t ask me if I minded probably because he knew that like most Americans, I would have responded with a typical sanguine, “Sure, why not?” Perhaps one of the greatest reasons the last ten years has been so jarring to the world is the cognitive dissonance of the smiling, friendly, pay-full-price American with the war-oriented, diplomatically-ignorant, improvident Colossus that neoconservatives and Fox News have cheered on. How can such a clearly friendly and amicable people be so ignorant, warlike, and bad with money?

We passed a 7-11. The chain clearly had a presence here just as it did in Singapore. One of the things I have finally come to terms with is that the rest of the world LOVES American products. It loves them because of these products are ingeniously designed, because they appeal to the lowest common denominators in everyman, but probably, the world most loves American products because these products are easy to use. What's not to love? So, as I write part of this piece in a Starbucks, one of only a few locations in Patong Beach with wireless internet for the public (the other is a McDonald’s, and since I haven’t stepped foot inside a McDonald’s for 5 years, I thought Thailand would be a particularly bad place to do it), I’ve finally accepted that it is okay for others to like American products. It’s funny, especially around my liberal friends, who love to talk about how cool they are for knowing the most out-of-the-way eatery or the most obscure band, to watch people react to corporate culture. “Omg, Stephen, you went to a Starbucks in PHUKET? I would have staged a damn protest. Freaking Starbucks.” Forget that Starbucks is largely responsible for paving the way for Italian coffee as we know it in America. Forget that almost all of their coffee is fair-trade and that the coffee is damn good for the 98% of us who don’t have sommalier’s olfactory sensibilities, or who live in Lawrence, Kansas ( also insert here Laguna Beach, Santa Monica, Berkeley, Portland OR, Seattle, The Village, or Boston), whichever comes first. Supporting small businesses is cool man, trust me, as a small business owner I drink that kool-aid...but I don't get crazy about it.

“Where from, Boss?” “America.” “Ok, ok.” Quiet beachiness was on either side of the road. Dogs wandered onto the road and we were driving slowly enough that we could just flash the lights at them and get them off the road. We could have been driving down the road to the Florida Keys or the narrow road from Cabo San Jose to Cabo San Lucas. It was quiet and lovely.

English fluency is abysmal in Thailand – but who needs to be fluent? Arabic numbers are universal, and people routinely bargained by typing in the number they wanted into a hand-held calculator that the vendor thrust at them. Thai sounds like a mixture between Vietnamese and Malay, and since I confess complete ignorance to Thai’s origins or alphabet (though I can recognize instantly the characters which comprise the brand of Tom Yum Ramen soup I have bought for years…N.B. to my fellow whiteys: I don’t mean “Top Ramen” or the other trash ramen you can buy at a normal supermarket, I’m talking about the designer ramen you can only buy at ethnic grocery stores and feature little to no English on the packets. I’ll speak more about this delight some other time) perhaps that limited aural assessment is accurate.

We got to the hotel and no one was at the front desk. The cabbie patiently called the front desk with his cell phone, hoping someone would hear the ringing. It was to no avail, and about 20 minutes later our front desk person was back – he had been off running an errand. I paid the cabbie – he put his hands together as if he were praying, and bowed to me. I quickly did the same, thinking it to be customary (it is, I found out later). I went upstairs to my room, sent a few text messages, and went to bed.

I was only in Phuket for two days but I had two priorities – not “normal” Phuket party priorities.

First, I had to finish editor’s-level proofing a manuscript for a book I would publish in Spring 2010 – I had had it with me for weeks now and with the vacation winding down I absolutely had to finish it, and I had only gotten 50 pages into the 400 page scholarly work (also, editor-level reading means you cannot enjoy the book as a normal person – you are constantly looking for typos, variations in style, noting if the right tone has been struck in a particular passage, wondering if the footnotes extensive enough…it’s like watching the director’s commentary track on a DVD and then being quizzed on both the actions in the movie and the commentary).

If I got that handled, I also wanted some custom-tailored suits. Such items are very expensive in America (anywhere from $500-$2000 a suit), but not so here. Why not? Fake fabrics? Nah. Bad worksmanship? Nope. The proprietor explained to me at the end of our transaction (I had bought 2 suits and 6 shirts, all custom-tailored, for about 25% of what I would have paid in America): “We don’t pay very many taxes here. If we do get an inspector from the government here who says something to the effect of ‘we think you owe more taxes’ I tell them to wait while I get our records. I then bring out an envelope with the right amount of baht in it, and that’s that.” So there it was: cheaper prices because of laxer enforcement of laws, with a dash of bribery.

As I walked around outside I laughed a bit about how uptight we were in America about some things. Here, people were walking around with beers in their hands – and no one was walking into traffic or causing problems – why did we think it was so terrible to let people drink in public? Why do we feel we need to tax businesses so much that they pass the cost onto the consumer so much so that the disparity between buying a tailor-made suit in Phuket and the exact same one – same material and tailoring – in London or New York is a ten times multiple, completely unrelated to the exchange rate? In either case, I didn’t worry about it too much longer, I was going home with some awesome new suits, tailored in 24 hours.

In either case, even though I pride myself on not being a consumerist, I was worried at the feelings that such bargains stirred in me. One of the major indictments of the American economy is that anymore it is motivated by the most base and empty needs of self-validation. Americans are ever more denuded of culture, meaning, and religion, so buying things becomes more and more a way to have worth and meaning in life – but as 2010 begins it is clear to me that America – which has, through our thieving Federal Reserve, tried to slowly buy its unbelievable debt and then gradually inflate it away – is headed for a depression of record proportions. Not only do we have no money, but we have no instruments with which to earn real revenue – we don’t make anything – and in a recession people back off from buying services – which is mostly what we do in America (the funniest career being in “financial services,” a term I think history will equate with “Nazi,” “charlatan,” or both, in the tradition of Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds).

I made this a constant theme in any extended conversations I had with those who spoke the glorious English language. I cannot speak for those who speak other languages, but English speakers enjoy engaging each other in foreign locations. Two things were agreed upon, 1) the “Great Recession” would get worse globally, and even more so in the West, and 2) Americans were heavily in denial about it. “it can’t happen here” should be set to music and become our new national anthem.

***

My second day in Phuket offered its own bit of knavery (and I don’t often get to use that word – you will see why it is le mot juste presently). There is an enormous underground economy in the city. As I alluded to above, it is part of why prices can be kept low. However, there’s always a price to be paid.

My bought-two-weeks-ago-already-falling-apart American Tourister backpack would not make the return flight to Singapore, much less the continued journey to Tokyo and then to Los Angeles. I needed a new backpack and a larger duffle bag to accommodate the purchases of the trip. I took the taxi to Phuket Town, which featured a 5-story Robinson’s. Now, of course Robinson’s is a chain, but I wanted genuine articles, not some knock-off on a street corner. I also knew that if I flashed my passport they wouldn’t charge me GST, and so I wouldn’t have to go through the shuffle of paperwork at the airport later. The cab ride was 400 baht – outrageous, really, but I was already so beaten that I put up little, if even any, resistance. On the way there the cab driver claimed that he wanted me to stop by a tourist store because he would get a “gasoline coupon.” Someone once said that there were lies and damned lies (I say someone because it's been attributed to no less than 5 different people). This was a specimen of the latter, of course. He was going to get a commission – whether or not I bought anything. I said no. He turned on the plaintive pleading. “Please boss, help me out, just five minutes.” Shaking my head, I exhaled an “Ok,” thinking I might knock out the final five or six family gifts I needed to buy.

I wandered through the large store, which was fairly busy with other tourists who had been snookered, willingly or no, into the same scam. I wandered over to the items I wanted to buy and noticed a rather permanent-looking “50% off Sale” sign. Okay, so this guy brings me here, I see 50% off, so I buy, and then he gets a commission off what I buy, probably, and the company still makes money, so these items are really marked up. I handed over my credit card. WE then went on to Phuket Town.

After I picked up new luggage at Robinson’s (the cab driver who had pleaded to be helped claimed he “had an appointment” and thus couldn’t wait for me. I felt like such a whore – except that I had paid him cab fare and had enabled his commission – so it was like paying to be a prostitute) I came out looking for a cab. “You need cab?” “Yes, I need cab.” “Where to?” “Kata Beach.” “400 baht.” “No, 300 baht.” The same pained, half-crazy look that I had come to realize was de rigueur when a tourist quotes a reasonable counteroffer came over his face. He shook his head. “300 baht is what I paid to come here.” I, of course, didn’t mention that was a total lie, and that I had not only paid 400 baht, but had dropped 2000 baht on souvenirs on the way. If you can’t beat them, join them, I thought. “Look, I’m not paying more than 350 baht. I’ll walk.” I was serious – I wasn’t going to play their games. The cab driver came up and asked, “Have you stopped at any souvenir stores?” Sigh. “Yes, I did this morning. A big one.” “If I take you, 350 baht.” So I would have to play the game. “Okay, okay.”

I went to this store, more than four times bigger than the other store, and filled with even more milling tourists from even more buses. I left after the dutiful ten minutes of browsing through mostly garbage.

I got to Kata Beach, staked out a chair and ordered Pad See Eau (wide fried noodles served with bak choy, egg, chilli, and sweet soy sauce), an Orange Fanta, and opened up the manuscript. I only had a hundred or so pages to go, and it was such a beautiful day.

The manuscript I was working on was the first substantive and scholarly work on the absolute disaster that the post-Vatican II Novus Ordo Missae – “New Mass” in regular-people-speak – was. It will be the first lengthy book so published in my lifetime (there have been some others of a little larger than pamphlet length), and will cause a great stir among the Catholic Traditionalist community that will receive it with intellectual honesty. It will be my publishing house’s sixth book and while it will not become a runaway bestseller (I don’t have any pictures of tall leggy blonde Republican warmongers masquerading as conservatives to plaster on it, nor do I have the built-in unthinking yes men of Right Wing Talk Radio to buy it. I agree with Albert Jay Nock that literacy is overrated, for it often cheapens what we print.) I have always tried to remember what Henry Regnery once said about publishing (before he started printing the garbage of idiots): “The books that are most needed are often precisely those that will have only a modest sale." I found it consistently amusing that I was giving the publisher’s eye to a scholarly work with more than 50% of the footnotes in Latin while surrounded by people who had such strange ideas about swimwear.

There was Gorilla Man, who had enough hair on his body to make up for hairless guys like myself. There was Topless Lady, who had her probably 10 year-old son help her adjust her chair. There was Show-Off Girl, with enough ink to be her own ad for a tattoo parlor, and who consistently felt the need to stand up and exhibit her leave-nothing-to-the-imagination “clothing” if it might be called such. There were Gay Men on Holiday, who made sure even what little swimwear they were wearing was stylish and worn with the appropriate panache. There was also You’re Way Too Fat to Be Wearing that Man and Woman, who made you ask the incredibly obvious question – why do you think you can wear that and subject the rest of us to all that cellulite and undigested donut remains: have you no decency?

I finished the afternoon by way of a lovely conversation with my British neighbors on the sand. They had been there for four weeks, and were staying three more. They were trying to weather the recession in a place where the Pound Sterling stretched furthest. They were definitely in the right place.

For some reason or another, on both nights, monsoon rains stayed away all day and allowed us to enjoy the ocean unmolested, and then poured their wrath down after sunset. Convenient for the beach – inconvenient when you need to get to the airport and there’s only one road up a peninsula and you’re not the only one trying to make a flight.

***

My cab driver was late in picking me up and when he said “45 minutes” to the airport – which would put me there 45 minutes before an International flight; a sort of time shaving that would bar me entrance onto some US domestic flights – I hoped he was being extremely conservative. It was pouring rain outside and we were going 40 km/h. I sat back in my chair.

What would the mature man do? Realize there’s nothing he can do about the situation and sit back and hope for the best? What does the smart man do? Pray. And so I did. I varied between asking Our Lord and His Mother for help in getting to the airport on time, and if not, that His Will be done – perhaps I wasn’t supposed to get on the flight.

See, if I don’t make that flight, I don’t get back to Singapore in time to unpack from this trip, then repack for the flight to Tokyo. If I miss that flight, then I get back to America even later, and I had been gone a long time…the longest vacation I had taken in my life to that date.

The turns seemed endless and the rain obscured any signs I might see of “airport this way” or some comforting reassurance. On the few occasions I could spot a sign it was mostly in Thai, with very small block letters of English underneath – and there were no distance measurements.

At 9:00pm I started leaning forward in my chair, like a cyclist in the Tour de France. Somehow psychologically it gave me comfort to know that despite the fact that I was hermetically sealed inside a vehicle, my posture indicated with deadly seriousness that I was in a rush. My driver noticed the lean and probably laughed inside. Then drove faster…he wasn’t going to let my frantic aerodynamic pose be wasted.

When we got there (finally) it was 9:15pm. My flight was at 10pm. I bounded out of the car through the sliding doors into a…security checkpoint? My bags went through a scanner, and everyone, thinking this was a joke apparently, walked through the metal detector, set it off, then stepped to the side for the wand inspection (this was a initial inspection – I would still have to go through another when I got my boarding pass). Well, when in Phuket…I then raced to the next terminal over (my driver had dropped me at the wrong one) and managed to catch a JetStar employee just as she was about to shut down the desk. She started incredulously at my huge duffle bag while I was checking in. “You are on JetStar Light, so you are only allowed 10kg.” My bag was displaying 12.22kg. JetStar is one of those Easyjet-esque no-frills airline where you get charged for everything – sometimes even if you have carry-ons that are too heavy. “And you have a backpack, too.” I shrugged, looked purposely dumb, and said that I had done a bit of shopping. She told me that she’d let me go through, but they might stop me at the gate and charge me there. I told her I would take my chances and sped to security.

Again, the security measures were a joke, much like they were in the United States before 9/11…hey wait a minute, they’re still a joke. I might have been in Asia for a week, but I didn’t miss the fact that the probably-government-staged “Underwear Bomber” managed to buy a one-way ticket with cash (red flag #1), get onto a flight without a passport (red flag #2), and got walked through security by what witnesses have identified as a “well-dressed Indian man” (dot, not feather, and red flag #3 FTW). See, here’s the thing. If you don’t invade countries for oil, don’t mess in the internal politics of sovereign nations, and you don’t believe in empire, there’s not really a reason to attack you, and the rest of the world will understand when you lash back at people who do attack you without cause (as the entire world did for about a week after 9/11 before we squandered global goodwill in one fell swoop). Republicans, as well as the purblind Obama Administration, would have you believe that the Bin Ladens of the world want to kill us because of Britney Spears. No, oh Ivy-educated ones, they want to kill us because we’re over there. For all the insignificance of Thailand militarily, it was comforting to know that somewhere, somehow, people managed to worry about their own countries before inflicting their know-it-all policies on the rest of the world, and that the Thai, who have the freedom to fly without being patted down or body scanned, seem to have escaped the clutches of the so-called “freedom-hating” Muslims. But let’s leave President Bush’s third term, carried out by his yes-man, President Obama, aside.

I made it through security and spotted…A Dairy Queen.

Now, many of you who know me know that I don’t eat fast food (Chipotle and Inn-N-Out Burger are not fast food, they are examples of good food fast, but I don’t worship at the altar of Inn-N-Out like it’s God’s gift…but, I digress) but for the first time in three weeks, I wanted a chili dog. A big fat one. Maybe two. It’s not like I needed to eat more. I’m fairly certain I had gained ten pounds in Singapore. No joke. But for the first time in three weeks I wanted American food. It made me feel good, and was a reminder that I would be home soon.

Perhaps that’s the greatest gift of travel. When I returned after my semester in Italy my sophomore year of college, I didn’t eat pasta for six months. I had dived into the culture wholeheartedly when I had been in Rome, and being home meant everything I knew. In learning what you don’t know about every place that isn’t home, you often find out many things you didn’t know about why you love the place you call home. And on the morning after the Twelfth Night of Christmas, I too could appreciate that the Wise Men were coming home to the Lux Mundi.

Somewhere over the South China Sea, on approach to Tokyo
On the Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ, MMX

Being Conservative

2009-12-23T19:57:00.007-06:00

“What’s your conference about?” asked one of the two fairly comely jog-suit-attired girls in the elevator. “I saw you with a nametag yesterday.” “Well, looks like I forgot it this morning,” I quipped and was instantly relieved as the bell signaling that we had arrived at the lobby sounded. What I wasn’t able to do, because I lacked the requisite time, was tell her I was at a conservative conference, in particular the 20th Annual Meeting of the John Randolph Club, which had as its theme “The future of America: ‘Hell or Texas?’”

And why couldn’t I? How long does it take to say “I’m at a conference for conservatives…?” About the same amount of time it takes for bile to rise to the mouth and blood to boil at the instant connection of the word conservative to George W. Bush, arguably our worst US president since FDR, but solidly in the top 5 worst of all time, in contention with that worst of presidents, Abraham Lincoln. The blood and bile of course would block out the rest of my words, and no dialogue would have occurred. I have witnessed this on numerous occasions, with people of all sorts of ages and backgrounds.

But could I blame them? For 95% of America and almost 100% of the Left, “conservative” means the likes of simian buffoon Sean Hannity, windbags like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, strange, disingenuous people like Glenn Beck, and the chores of their compatriots, waterboys, and spear carriers at National Review, Fox News, and The Weekly Standard, chores which include justifying pre-emptive war, torture, rendition, wiretapping, and senseless jingoistic NATO nostrums, among other pleasantries.

Indeed, had I told those twenty-somethings, who were in town for the Rock-n-Roll Marathon, that I was “conservative” – and I was dressed the part, in Brooks Brothers with a pocket square – they might have rolled their eyes or laughed. And that would have been the end of that.

Conservatism, like anything of value or merit, needs more than a catchy tagline written by the Don Drapers of today. It needs deliberate, thoughtful, and perhaps most importantly, civil explanation and discourse. The consequences may still often be the same, demonstrated by my liberal friends: opposition. The best that you might achieve often sounds like, “I had never thought about it that way.” And of course this is an homage to a celebrity conservative of yesteryear, who once quipped that a liberal is one that professes openness to another point-of-view and then is shocked to discover that there is one. But in these exchanges, at the very least, the visceral reaction to self-righteous cable news pundits is diffused, ears are temporarily opened, and an actual sharing of ideas occurs.

And if nothing else, the conservative ironically teaches the liberal some tolerance, for the conservative understands that people don’t change because their government tells them to (you will accept gay marriage!), or because the mean-nothing words of some guy who is apparently “looking out for you” compels them (I have an idea, why don’t you shut up, Bill?), but rather they change due to the lathing effects of tradition, time, family, community, and religion.

Of course, I’m not advocating being mute or running from the label “conservative.” Like any title worn by fallen children of our first two parents, it carries its own baggage, for better or for worse (think of the word “Catholic”). What I might have done that would have planted a mustard seed might have been to, instead of avoiding the question, which our current President possesses inimitable skill at doing, have answered: “We are conservatives who believe that Fox News is warmongering propaganda masquerading as news and who think that Tea Parties are not the answer.”

Elevator bell dings.

Singapore, 20 years later...

2009-12-15T12:02:00.005-06:00

No one else was in line. I sauntered up, pulled my wallet out of my pocket, and for a moment, was relaxed. I had managed to make it to the airport on time, have my luggage checked without incident, and had managed to clean my apartment, office, arranged to have keys dropped off for the housesitter, and even taught 2 students that morning. As I pulled out my driver’s license, it hit me. I had forgotten my passport. I was flying from Kansas City to Orange County, California, but the reason I needed the passport was because the next morning I was on a flight to Singapore, via Tokyo. This journey, 20 years in the making, was going to be held up by a small booklet.

“I can’t get on this flight,” I said to the TSA agent and walked out of the queue. Okay, think.

Jessie just dropped you off – she’s going to be leaving the keys at the office for your assistant Lin. Have her go into your house and get the passport and come back up. Go do damage control at the ticket counter.

I made the call. Jessie was surprised to hear from me, as I had just said goodbye, but even more surprised when she realized what was going on. I gave her general directions as to what to do and went to the ticket counter. “I need another way to get to Orange County.” Now, at 3:30 on a Sunday, in a major metropolitan airport, this might not seem like a large task – but the reality is that it is a 3 hour half-transcontinental flight, and we were running out of flights. I was at the Southwest ticket counter. I had rediscovered this airline this year, and had flown with them nearly a dozen times in as many months. I knew they were going to perform. The supervisor did not let me down. “We can get you into Orange County at 9:15.” “But, I have dinner plans at 8:30. What’s happening out of Dallas?” More clicking and tapping. “I could also go to San Diego, LA, or Ontario, or Long Beach,” I said, spitting out the four other choices that people in the LA metroplex have within a 2-hour radius. “I could get you into San Diego at 6:40.” I did the math – land, 20 minutes for baggage claim and rental car, at best, followed by 75 mph on a California freeway, no infrequent occurrence – I could be in Orange County by 8:45 – 15 minutes late for dinner. “I’ll do it.” “When’s your passport getting back?” I looked back at my watch. I had called Jessie 20 minutes ago – she was probably almost at my house – I told her to call me when she got there and I would guide her through my house to where my passport was – top drawer of the desk in my bedroom.

“Thanks very much, ma’am. I’m going to sit here for a moment and book a rental car.” The kiosks I was standing by were out of order, so no one would mind. She nodded. I flipped open my HP netbook and got onto the one website that wouldn’t let me down on a same-day reservation – Priceline.com.

The virtues of Priceline need to be extolled at some point, and I need to give away some handy tips, but the reader’s digest version is that the premise behind name-your-own-price is that an airline, hotel, or car rental company would rather take the nonrefundable cash money you are offering right now and possibly give you the rental at cost rather than have seats go empty, or have beds be unused, or cars sit idle. You have to make sure that you toe the line between absurd and cheap in order to get the best deals. Among my many Priceline triumphs was a booking at the Hyatt Regency in Montreal for the days up to and after New Year’s 2004. When I asked what “best available” was when I checked in that night, I could barely restrain my smile when I heard her say in a Quebecois accent, “$200 Monsieur, but, nothing is available, you know.” I had bid and paid $50USD a night months prior.

Conjuring that triumph, I set about to fix the mess that the passport omission had caused. I selected a pickup at San Diego and a drop at LAX. Often times a “drop fee” might be accessed – like when I drove a car from Tampa to Fort Myers earlier in the year – but I knew it would probably be waived in this market. I started bravely – a full size car for $30. Priceline’s computers tried to warn me – “We suggest you bid $27 or $29 – your chances would then be great.” Nope. I was going to get out of this, and cheaply too. My first submit was a turn-down.
Priceline allows you to rebid on the condition that you change something about your last bid – the pickup or departure dates, the locations, or the class of car you were willing to accept. I kept hitting and missing, working my way down from “full-size” (a Chrysler 300 or equivalent) to my final bid – an economy car (a Ford Focus). I relented and bid $30. The computers took it and reported my savings: I had paid, after taxes, $103.42 below the lowest published price of $142.50.

I got on the plane and managed to sit next to two of the most interesting guys on the plane. Buddies from KU from before even I went to college, they struck up a conversation with me and we started our nearly nonstop 3-hour conversation by finding out from Chris (the guy who worked in advertising) that he had won a trip to Hawaii from the Marriott from Twitter. “Ah, an actual use for Twitter,” I said smilingly, with just the slightest hint of a “I really mean it” tone. I had just, several weeks earlier, given a talk to my Rotary Club during which I shared my disgust of Twitter, and had to get an account in order to legitimate my talk. Since then I had used it as a multi-platform updater – to update LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter at the same time. In fact, I had managed to twitter, shortly after my Priceline rental car triumph, that I was a “travel ninja.”

We landed at San Diego to a balmy 58 degrees. We had just had our first major snowstorm of the year some days before in Kansas City, and 58 degrees felt nearly like summer. We watched the massive carousel turn, and as hundreds of people from four different Southwest flights stared at the moving metal slats I couldn’t help but think of the opening scene from Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001. Here we were, all these years later, not staring at an obelisk, but at a conveyor belt, completely incapacitated and detained until it gave, out of its metal maws, our precious belongings that our loving government, via the TSA, had rifled through just a few hours ago. It was comic, for those who were observing and not just vacantly waiting, numbed by a long flight.

My new friends left, vowing to meet up in KC when I got back from Singapore. I looked at the empty carousel and feared the worst. I walked to the Southwest baggage office. “Where are my bags?” I asked quietly, desperately. “What do they look like?” she asked. I laughed. “They are two black 22s,” I replied. “22” is the term in baggage that refers to the rolling, soft-exteriored, extending-handle style of luggage used by 90% of travelers. It’s sort of like saying “I’m looking for a silver needle” when looking at a haystack. But I trusted in Southwest’s efficiencies. “I don’t think it got moved over from your Orange County flight.” “So it’s going to SNA?” “Yeah, I would look there first.” “But, I have a flight out of LA tomorrow morning.” “Well, we don’t fly to LA from here, so it would have to go through Phoenix or Vegas.” My stomach dropped. I reached into my pocket, pulled out the small blue booklet of paper that said “The United States of America” on it and cursed my forgetfulness. But I had no time to linger; I was late for dinner.

I went to the browser on my phone and hit “reply all” to the previous Facebook message that had only earlier in the day confirmed the dinner time. “It might be longer, guys. Let’s shoot for 9:00pm.”

I then sped-walked to the shuttle buses for Avis. Even though I had paid for the economy car, agents are always looking to upgrade you, and I told her that I wouldn’t mind paying a few dollars more not to be in an emasculating ride. “I could do a standard for $25 a day.” “No, I only have the car for 14 hours, never mind.” She was already trying to reoffer. “How about a 2-door Altima for $8?” “I’ll take it.” She called out to her guys on the lot. I heard the walkie say back, “All we got are the four-door Altimas right now.” I tried not to smile when she said, “I’ll give you the four-door at the same rate.” Lemons into lemonade, right?

I burst onto the freeway with a vengeance. California freeways look like giant seas of concrete. They are often six lanes across on either side and the presence of other drivers/maniacs driving 80 mph and faster allow you to hide at a steady 72-75. I don’t know what I was thinking, and I don’t know how fast I was going when I saw the CHP flashing lights behind me.

I let out a long sigh, punctuated by the still-lingering cough which my sinus infection gifted me with. I pulled over, and managed to facebook my friends before the officer came up to my window: “Dinner cancelled, I got pulled over. If you still want to hang, text.”

“Do you know why I pulled you over?” came the very familiar question. Now, some years ago, I had written an article on “How to get out of a speeding ticket 101” (which I think is in my “revising” bin for some reason or another – I suppose I’ll reprint it now in light of this latest occurrence). In broad strokes, I made the point in that piece that getting out a ticket starts at the very moment of interaction with the officer. Have your driver’s license and registration and insurance ready in your hand and hand it to him before he asks for it. Put your arms into the 10-2 position and answer “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” to his questions. Be brutally honest – they don’t often get that. But this officer didn’t know about that article, and I had to re-prove my techniques with him.

One of the benefits of the youthful features my half-Chinese ancestry affords me is that I can switch, in a heartbeat, between the worldly, driven entrepreneur, who wouldn’t really be that nonplussed in the presence of a Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, and the youngish, probably in-college student, who is just trying to get a break, please (insert Oliver Twist voice here).

“May I ask why you are in such a hurry?” Be brutally honest. “Well officer, I forgot my passport and missed my flight to Orange County, so I had to fly to San Diego instead, and I had to rent a car because I had dinner plans with some friends before I fly out to Singapore tomorrow. I was born there and this is going to be my first time back in 20 years.” Not what he expected – either the story or the honesty. He switched into friend mode. “You know, mathematically, going 85 instead of 65 isn’t going to get you back into OC that much sooner, and you constantly run the risk of getting pulled over, like right now, which then slows you down more, and then you have to drive 130 mph to try to make up that time…” He trailed off, smiling, hoping I got his meaning. I nodded sheepishly, trying to look as dumb as possible. “I’m really sorry, Officer.” It wasn’t a pathetic voice – it wasn’t even defeated, but it was resigned, and that was all I needed. ‘I’m going to give you a warning, but I want you to slow down out there. I want you to make that flight tomorrow to Sing. It’s a beautiful place, I’ve been there.” “I appreciate that, Officer, thank you very much,” I said as I took back my Kansas license, which had probably been an even greater advocate in my favor (“This kid isn’t even from here, he’s from frickin’ Kansas, and he’s about to go back to his birthplace. Yeah, I’m a nice guy.”).

I began to drive off, and he shouted, “Beware the merlion!” “I shouted an, “I will,” and laughed myself. He was alluding to the mythical lion-fish creature that ceremoniously guarded Singapore’s waterfront. Despite all appearances, maybe it was my night after all. It was the 14th speeding ticket I had gotten out of in my life, either through exchanges like that, protesting or appealing by mail, or showing up in court.

I was good for a while too. I thanked my guardian angel for the these-aren’t-the-droids-you’re-looking-for Jedi tricks he played on the officer, aided by my performance, and set the cruise control at 65 on the dot. I settled into the far-right lane, which in California is known as the “granny lane,” for it features those odd creatures who actually want to drive the posted speed limit – a feat I have no problem performing in Kansas, as enforcement is so much more serious there than in California, Kansas cops – especially those from Johnson County – not having any substantive crime to worry about.

I turned to an independent San Diego radio station that had sprung up since I had last been there, and laid my head back on the headrest. Eventually the quiet drive gave way to turning down the radio and chatting with a friend on the phone. I sped up. It was 70, but I was still within 5 miles – perfectly acceptable for my new CHP friend. His memory faded as I hit North County SD and the Encinitas area. By the time I crossed the border into Orange County and into the mostly-Marines-and-their-dependents town of San Clemente, I was back to my old California driving habits – careful weaving, speeds varying between 70 and 85.

I made it to dinner at 10:30 – two hours late. But before I did that, I had to stop at John Wayne and see about my luggage. I was at the luggage office. I was pretty tired at that point, and walked all the way back to the car to get the bag tags, only to realize they were in my KU warmup jacket I was wearing. I shook my head and walked back.

Two smiling faces looked at me, and offered me peanuts, pretzels, and water when they heard my story. “Okay, they are either in Phoenix, ready to come in first thing tomorrow, or they continued on to Vegas, which is where the Orange County flight went.” “So…?” “So, that flight just got in, so check the carousel and see if they are there.” The bags started dropping fifteen minutes later. No dice.

My guy – Bill I think – was already working the phones. “Look, we are going to get them to LA tomorrow – that way you can just pick them up and go to your flight.” “I can pay for that.” Their glances told me that I wasn’t going to.

“Okay, just call me when you know.” Not even ten minutes later he called and told me that I could get them after 8:30am – at LAX – tomorrow. I thanked him and went to my first meal of the day, about 14 hours after I had gotten up. You can get a goodly distance on Bloody Mary Mix and pretzels, I had found out, but I was running on fumes.

Two of my closest friends in Orange County were at the restaurant. I ordered an Old-Fashioned, three appetizers, and devoured just about everything. I lamented their recent spike in cynicism about the opposite sex, and I shared some of my travails of the past year in that field, and that I had reason to be optimistic about the New Year, for any number of reasons. They guffawed and said, “We’ll see.”

I was only slightly disheartened. They had reason to be cynical. They were dating California girls, after all, and as the fictional Frank Moody has opined on at least one occasion – California seems hellbent on destroying its female population – by making women feel inadequate, not pretty enough, not curvy enough, not young enough, or not tan enough. Even the most grounded girls get their heads infected with this garbage, and as someone who has dated girls from Laguna Beach and girls from Kansas City, there is a culture in the Midwest that sees marriage – with one person, of the opposite sex, for life – and kids, as a goal to aspire to, not something to avoid as long as possible while wild oats are sown all over the place. Whatever bad experiences I had had in Kansas City, the vast majority of the women I dated wanted to get married, and didn’t judge themselves by the girls on “The Hills,” despite the fact that they may still watch such shows avidly.

“You’ll see in February, when you visit.” “Sure, man.”

We retired to Mike’s house and listened to a song he had recorded back in 2004 about an unruly roommate of Jeff’s and mine. The song was set to the tune of my favorite Pearl Jam song, “Yellow Ledbetter,” and we howled with laughter.

A couple hours later, I set the most obnoxious alarm possible on my phone, knowing that my total sleep in the last 48 tick-tocks was no more than a total of 10 hours and that I would need an irritating noise to wake me from my reverie. Humans are the only creatures who go to bed when they are not tired and wake up when they are. I awoke four hours later, pretty deep in REM sleep, right at 6am. I had promised to meet my Dad for 6:30am breakfast.

Now, you have to know a couple things about my father. One, he’s probably the kindest, gentlest person I know. Every single friend I know is always stunned to find that we are related – not because I am any less outgoing than my father – we are both “people people” – but because he’s so much more sanguine than me – my overly driven, choleric personality had deep roots with my mother’s genes – but I have even surpassed her indefatigable drive and, at the end of the last year of this decade, found myself ready to dial it back several notches after years in overdrive.

The other thing about my father is that he loves us very much, and he had happily taken the morning off work from his part-time job at Disneyland just to have an hour-long breakfast with me. My father had spent 18 years abroad before he met and wooed my mother, so he has no shortage of travel stories and tips. Something I occasionally ask my dad is a sort of time-capsule question. The last time I did this was last year, as I was walking towards Kauffman Stadium, ready to meet some friends for yet another Royals disappointment: “Dad, what were you doing at my age?” “Well, son, when I was 29, I was living in Iran. It was during the time of the Shah, you know. I had a chance to take some classes at Tehran University and was working for Atlantic Richfield at the time. The Russians and the Americans were always looking for information and I was approached – not in any formal way, you know – about providing tips.” I smiled. At my age, my Dad was in a tolerant, cultured Iran, one free of the Muslim thugs that currently run that disaster-waiting-to-happen-with-Israel “republic.” It put things in perspective then and did now too.

He handed me the Frommer’s I had asked him to pick up the night before, along with an “ung-pao” - a little red envelope that usually contains money. One was empty, one was full of money. It was addressed to my “Popo” (Grandmother in Mandarin). There was also a just-penned note from my mother, and a tiny book of “traveler’s prayers.” “Read it on the plane, okay, Son?” I nodded.

I dropped him at home and embraced him. I was 30 and a business owner, but he still was my Dad, and was reminding me of all the things a traveler should keep in mind. I had flown nearly 50,000 miles in 2009, and I learned travel by having to move 20 times in my life – ten times with my parents – but my maturity allowed me to accept his advice with grace and smiles instead of the impertinent impatience my not-so-distant youth might have expressed.

I drove off, vaguely remembering that I could get to LAX via the 5 Freeway – somehow. It’s odd – as much as I could have, years ago, drawn you a probably to-scale, highly accurate map of the freeways of the greater LA, OC, and San Diego regions, non-use of the knowledge had made it non-existent, and some minutes later I called my father. “What do I do from the 5?” “Well, you should have taken the 91 to the 605 to the 105.” Of course, I had forgotten that the 105, which had taken 20 years to build because of the unbelievable amount of property that had to be bought and bulldozed, stopped just short of connecting to the 5, and I would have to take the 605 connector south for a few exits so that I could pick up the 105.

Traffic was so slow I was able to take pictures and upload them to my facebook, captioning them, “Yet another reason I don’t miss Southern California: traffic, anytime.”

I pulled into the Avis lot, after – for the first time that I can remember in ages – filling up the car with gas. I always made the mistake of paying for the tank and not using it, or only using it a bit and forgetting to refuel, both not horribly costly mistakes, but rookie mistakes, still. I wasn’t going to forget this time. I haven’t, for years, noticed the price of gas. It’s a resource that you have to use, and it’s as common and necessary as water and air to any humans living in most modern American metropoli (please note that the following cities are excepted: Seattle, Portland, OR, San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Philly). I just pay and only know there is an issue with prices because I hear people complaining. But, here I was in California, so I peered at the display. $2.48. Was that a lot, I wondered.

Twenty dollars later, I pulled into the Avis parking lot and told my shuttle bus driver that I was going to Terminal 1, the Southwest terminal. As I walked to the Southwest baggage office, my step quickened as I saw what I thought were my two suitcases. They were, thankfully, and I bought a smarte-carte, a free one being nowhere in sight, and walked ten minutes down to American’s International terminal at LAX. Checking in was fairly hassle-free, and I even used a kiosk. I made my way to security. But first, I had to pass the carry-on luggage policy.

This woman’s unfortunate Sisyphusian task involved making passengers put their obviously too-big carry-ons in the metal slats that masquerade as fair measures of what fits in an overhead bid. I don’t envy this lady’s job, and even in my frustration at being told my bag was “too tall” (an epithet a man or woman might hurl at a very attractive member of the opposite sex who was not height-compatible, but totally out of place here, I thought) I didn’t think she enjoyed doing this to people. I was going to fix this.

I explained to the nice Asian girl behind the counter that the last two time I had flown American internationally (it had been to London and Buenos Aires) that I carried bags at least as big, if not bigger, than the garment bag that was currently being rejected by the gatekeeper. “Is it like $20, $40?” I asked, reaching for my wallet, ready to pay. She smiled painfully and shook her head and said, “This is international, so…” I interrupted with, “No, not $100…” Her nod interrupted my response. Brutal honesty, so proven in the past 24 hours, again ruled the day. “Look, I don’t have $100 with me.” I didn’t. The utter pointlessness of carrying American currency when you were going to be in Asia for three weeks had not been lost on me and I had no cash. Now, I could have said I had credit cards, but why volunteer information? “Let me see what I can do,” she smiled.

I stood behind some good-looking golden retrievers, who were going to accompany their loving owner to his final destination. I think I need to get a dog this year, I thought to myself as I waited patiently. I saw her point me out, speak to him. I let my faded Banana Republic jeans and gray Skechers speak for me: “Yes, I’m a college student carrying no cash, and (implied) I don’t have that kind of money.” He motioned me forward. “Sir, I travel with this garment bag all the time, I know it fits in the overhead compartment.” “Look, I’m sure you’re right, but we’re really strict here at LAX.” “Well, sir, I don’t have $100 with me.” Politesse almost always works, not only because people, not just Americans, want to be heroes in some small way, but also because being polite makes it hard for someone to say no.

“Okay, I’m going to check it for free. They probably aren’t going to give you any trouble in Singapore coming back.” I expressed my gratitude and went back to the gatekeeper, one bag lighter. She waved me through without a stop, and now I was going through TSA.

My father had suggested, along with my mother, that I bring some American chocolates back for my grandmother, as she would treasure anything from America. I smiled, especially because from my youth, my mother has cultured a palate in her children that leans towards European chocolate, which doesn’t use the inordinate amounts of sugar found in American chocolate. But I nodded when I was given my instruction, and dutifully picked up some Godiva and Ghiradelli boxes in the duty-free shop.

I called my assistant, went through some final phone calls and correspondence from parents for Get Smarter, the company I would be leaving for 3 weeks in person, but not electronically (owners don’t ever really get to “leave” their business, but then again, employees don’t often, as I did this year, get 13 weeks of vacation. It’s give and take.) I wished her a Merry Christmas, and made her promise to email at the end of every business day with the tasks – email, phone call, or correspondence, that I needed to attend to while on the other side of the planet.

I sat down in my chair, back among the mooing cattle we have to be in coach. It was 11:40am. I had started my travels at 3pm in Kansas City the day before, and I wasn’t even 1/10th of the way to my destination. But I was ready. I closed my eyes, leaned back, and started listening to David Gray’s “Flame Turns Blue” as the Boeing 777’s wheels left our lovely planet’s surface.

I was going to know the place again, for the first time.

Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, December 14th, in the Year of Our Lord MMIX.

Hell or Texas? The John Randolph Club Scholarship Prompt, 2009

2009-10-19T17:20:00.005-05:00

This essay was written in response to the John Randolph Club’s scholarship question for 2009: “At a Tea Party in April, Governor Rick Perry declared to wild cheers that Texas had the right to secede from the United States. Was this remark imprudent political posturing, a courageous assertion of States’ rights, or something else altogether?

For more information about the John Randolph Club, please click here.

“You may all go to hell; I will go to Texas.”

-Davy Crockett, on departing to join the defenders of the Alamo

Governor Rick Perry’s remark about the legal possibility of the secession of Texas at one of the so-called “Tea Parties” in April 2009 was political posturing at its best, but what was perhaps more sad were the cheers that duped “conservatives” gave in response to it. To claim something as a legal right or possibility which has no basis in reality is a delusion unworthy of people who claim that they are guided by an enduring moral order. But to understand Governor Perry’s remark, you have to understand the sort of event he was attending.

Governor Perry was attending one of the “Tea Parties” of 2009. Allegedly named after the famous Boston Tea Party, these gatherings proved to be a motley collection of “angry” people, who brought effigies of the President, questioned his place of birth, and kept saying the word “socialism.” Of course, this was a one-day stunt. The “revolutionary” sheep obediently went back to their jobs the next day where they continued to be oppressed by their “socialist” “illegitimate” president. If the Tea Parties had had any sort of real backbone to them, they could have marshaled together and, so close to the IRS filing deadline, demanded an actual accounting of the bailout from Ben Bernanke, who impudently responded “No” when asked by a member of Congress if he would disclose which banks had received money from the government (read: us and our children’s children’s children) and what amounts they had received. This demand from a truly angry, truly organized group of citizens, could have been linked to a refusal to pay income taxes until such an accounting was had. Could you imagine the government trying to prosecute hundreds of thousands of middle-class families because they demanded an accounting from their government? That would have been a media event. That would have spoken truth to power. That would have been a party worth having, and worth joining, at that.

Yet, while the people missed their opportunity to make a statement, the politicians did not miss theirs. Governor Rick Perry, who has attended Bilderberg Group meetings in possible violation of the Logan Act, hardly the actions of a traditional states’ rights conservative (and Texan, for that matter) called the attendees of the “tea parties” “patriots,” and “right-wing extremists” that he was “proud” to be affiliated with, and in an exemplification of the political gobbledygook of our day, said, “"We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their (sic) nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot." So, Governor Perry, we might secede, but probably not, but, who knows? Who knows, indeed.

Rick Perry’s milquetoast speechifying aside, it seems that no one is willing to claim that Texas has an explicit right to secede. Now, Texas has the original implicit right to secede which was guaranteed by the Constitution and further articulated in the “compact theory” of that document formulated and defended by John C. Calhoun. That same right was forcefully and criminally repudiated by Abraham Lincoln and the Northern States during the War to Prevent Southern Independence. Even if that implicit right had not been explicitly repudiated (which it has) by that War, the Texans of today completely lack the mettle necessary to reclaim such a right.

Not only has the state (first under Governor Bush, then under Governor Perry) allowed its borders to be forcefully invaded by illegal aliens, and has further allowed those aliens to be aggressively subsidized by the Texas taxpayers, while their lawbreaking is given a blind eye as that alien population’s reproductive rates force ascendancy over the dying native population; not only has it played a driving role in NAFTA and the new NAFTA superhighway that may one day pass through my home in Overland Park, Kansas; not only has it given us one of the worst, least conservative, most imperialist Presidents in the history of the “republic;” this state simply lacks the political will to defend its sovereign rights. And true to the modern political paradigm that the media mistakes for the “conservative” movement in America, Rick Perry gave this red meat to the rabble; said rabble all went home at the end of the day, to return to their jobs the next, a whole lot of grumbling and “anger” out of their system. The liberals reacted in shock and horror to the inarticulate hillbillies, and the 24-hour news channels earned their keep for a few days, not yet having Michael Jackson to gab about.

Political posturing? Perhaps. But it looks like such weak words from a weak statesman from a state weak with internal poisoning by an invading population have come to pass for “defending rights” in a state that hosts a memorial to the consequences of ideas: The Alamo.

Oh, Mr. Crockett, would that we could go to Texas. I fear all we have left is Hell.

4 Reasons Obama doesn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-09T18:40:00.003-05:00

Competing but failed titles for this piece included: "Why Five Guys in Oslo don’t know much of anything" and "We could just call it the 'He’s not George W. Bush' Prize"

David Brooks remarked in a brief segment on NPR today that he found it outrageous that Obama had won only the Nobel Peace Prize, when he had given speeches on physics and economics as well. I agree, and would add that given that the President had terrible poetry read at his inauguration, perhaps he deserves the Prize for Literature also.

In all seriousness (as hard as it is to get serious with a topic like this), why does the President deserve this prize? Ten months into George W. Bush’s third term, what has he accomplished in the way of peace?

1. The Mideastern peace process is, at best, stalled. President Bush was the first president who ever spoke of a “two-state” solution. This President continues that line, gives a speech in which he insists that there be no new settlements, which Bibi Netanyahu promptly ignores. So much for the power of speeches. And where is the peace? Has the road to peace even been re-mapped and re-affirmed?
2. Obama has continued G.W. Bush’s policies of torture and rendition. Gitmo may be “closed” but new secret prisons have been opened in undisclosed locations all around the world. “Enemy combatant” has been banished and has been replaced with the Newspeak phrase “prolonged detention.” What peace is achieved in torture?
3. Obama has also continued, nay, escalated Bush’s War in Afghanistan, burial place of empires. To what peace?
4. Obama’s escalation of drone-powered bombings of Pakistani civilians has killed more of these innocents in nine months than were killed in all of 2008. Again, Obama surpassing the “high-water” marks of the Bush years. Killing civilians – peace?

Let’s call this what it is: Europe’s bailout to the flagging popularity of “their” president, as they start to perceive that the zeitgeist here in America reflects that we less and less consider him “our” messiah. Charity doth cover a multitude of sins, but do we really believe that an award from five men in Oslo will cover the mediocre thus-far results of this presidency? A failed and failing health-care reform? A unaccountable debt-ridden bailout for banksters with no recovery in sight? A failed Olympic bid? Obama needs a win, and the Europeans delivered one to him for those who don’t know better.

Yet, in the tenor of George Bush’s third term, Obama hubristically accepted the Nobel Prize instead of refusing it, as he should have, by deferring to those who have actually achieved rather than those who have only spoken. Growing up as children, we are taught to treasure prizes as the result of hard work and dedication. In accepting the award, Obama refused an opportunity to re-teach that lesson to our children: awards are for what you do, not for what you say.

Sorry Europe: the award for “Thank God you’re not George Bush” is nine months late, and several euros short. Oh, and pointless. Non, merci.

The 123 Books that shaped my 20s: 1999-2009

2009-07-29T20:30:00.001-05:00

As someone with books stuffed everywhere I can find room for them in my house, I am no stranger to "lists of books to read." I'm a great collector of such lists, and being a choleric, a big checker-off of such lists.

Throughout the years I have slowly accumulated a group of books that I look back to as life-changing. The phrase "it changed my life" is so hackneyed in our days, and in the mouths of careless MTV youths, it will be used to describe their reactions to cultural items like, oh say, Zach Braff's Garden State.

Yet, hackneyed as the phrase may be in our modern parlance, these books really have changed my life. At their most forceful, they have caused radical changes - like the complete cold-turkey stoppage of eating fast food after I had only read half of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation - or the "I get it" moments of Michael Gerber's E-Myth Revisited or the sick feeling of acknowledgement in Chalmers Johnson's foreign policy classic, Blowback. At their least forceful, they have stirred the waters of my soul - as Hamlet has done in the dozens of times I've read that play, or as Tolstoy did to me in Anna, or as Alphonse Ratisbonne made me weep as I read his conversion story.

Some have changed the very way I think - Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and the Tipping Point, as well as G.K. Chesterton's What's Wrong with the World, Neil Postman's Technopoly, Joseph Pieper's Leisure the Basis of Culture, Veuillot's Liberal Illusion, and Belloc's The Servile State.

Others informed my consistently skeptical attitude towards our modern utter lack of education and point in broad and fine strokes historical events that have defined the last century - Bowden's Black Hawk Down and Guests of the Ayatollah, Jim Wilson's Retreat, Hell!, and Warren Carroll's The Last Crusade. Others, like the 4-part Woodward series on the Bush Presidency, threw into stark relief a thousand points of dim light regarding that failed administration.

The list is not intended to be complete. Indeed, at only 30, I hope, God willing, to continue to learn about the good, the true, and the beautiful as long as I may.

Further, this list is not supposed to be a list of the alleged "Great Books" - though I've read those. Pascal's Pensees, or Erasmus' Folly, or Calvin's Institutes or Machiavelli's The Prince or Hobbes, blah blah blah. While this may be heresy for me to say (though I doubt it), I found them interesting, but not life-changing. This is not to say you shouldn't pick up a copy of Locke's Second Treatise on Government. It may change your life.

There were obviously times I couldn't read what I wanted at all - like the 3 months I spent in boot camp, or my junior year of college when I had 4 English classes in one semester! One was a dearth - another was overmuch.

In Book 7 of the Republic Plato opines that it may be possible to learn things too soon. One particular work that made this list was Moby Dick. I remember being assigned this as a 16-year old English student and absolutely hating it. I never finished it. Then, my sophomore year of college, after I had begun to digest Milton, Shakespeare, and Dante, I came back to Moby Dick. What a world opened! Melville's ability to set a scene - to keep our attention - to play with names - to thread a narrative - overwhelmed me: How could I have been so wrong?! As I've grown older, I've realized I wasn't wrong. I just wasn't ready yet.

Books are not on this list because I have read them dozens of times, but rather because reading them at least once was enough for me to know that I had changed - even a little - and that has made all the difference.

I've grouped them by category, in no particular order - though I did make sure to list business books last. Practicality, while it has claimed ascendancy in my actions these past years, still is the servant of contemplation of the permanent things - an activity which may be incoherent in our modern age, but which is, I believe, the only way to survive our ongoing madness.

Books that changed my life – Cultural Commentary and the Permanent Things (31)
An Essay on the Restoration of Property, Hilaire Belloc - a short essay discussing the importance of private property
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Malcolm Gladwell - documentation, told in a narrative format, of why you should trust your instincts
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, David Brooks - a quite funny account of "bourgeois bohemians" and the forerunner to the hilarious "Things White People Like" blog
Catholic Manual of Civility, ed. by Dr. Marian Horvat - a short, not-dated book of etiquette
The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, James Howard Kunstler - a tour of 8 cities of the world, and their glories and shortcomings in the light of what we've always known about how humans live together
Crunchy Cons, Rod Dreher - a manifesto of what it means to not align the way you live with an ideology, but with the permanent things
The Death of Socrates, Plato - proof that conversations among friends are some of the most meaningful and enduring things in life
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser - the book that made me stop eating fast food 7 years ago
The Four Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, Timothy Ferriss - a reminder that life is what you make it, not what technology might force us to be
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner - a jarring contrarian view of trends in the tradition of Malcolm Gladwell
The Free Press, Hilaire Belloc - a startlingly modern view of new media - written almost 100 years ago
The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscapes, James Howard Kuntsler - a history of how our towns and cities died
Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century, James Howard Kuntsler - a book that utterly destroys our myths and notions about what we've always truly known about what was wrong with our cityscapes and land
The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature, Leon Kass - why food is something to be celebrated and enjoyed, not picked up from a drive-through window
The Idea of a University, John Henry Cardinal Newman - a passionate defense of the place of theology in a university; indeed a treatise on a university's raison d'etre being contingent upon its pride of place
Ideas Have Consequences, Richard Weaver - reminds us, among other things, that piety is not just something we owe to God, but to nature, each other, the past, and ourselves
The Intellectual Life, A.G. Sertillanges - "how to be an intellectual" or how to cultivate useful habits of learning
Leisure the Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper - the book that taught me that leisure is not just something for the wealthy, but something that lathes our daily lives
The Liberal Illusion, Louis Veuillot - what is wrong with classic liberalism
Liberalism is a Sin, Dom Sarda y Salvany - written like the Veuillot book, but from the point of view of a priest
The Life of the Mind, James V. Schall - a shorter, broader view of the Sertillanges book
The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, James Howard Kuntsler - a book I disagree with in several parts, but which deftly weaves together the convergence of trends - that the problem isn't just oil or climate or water shortage - but a failure to come together to thoughtfully and realistically solve our problems
The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle - proof that ethical questions predate Christianity and reside in the very heart of man
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals – Michael Pollan - dissects the who/what/why/where/when/how of our eating habits - it doesn't make a case for an all-organic diet, but I moved to one after reading it
On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and always have) in the Future Tense, David Brooks - a companion to Home from Nowhere and a sequel to Bobos, it exposes the shallowness of our suburban dreams
Restoring the Family, Dr. Marian Horvat - a discussion of the former (and hopefully future) traditional roles and rites of the family
The Rural Solution - essays on returning to the land
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Neil Postman - a prescient book that points out that technology is not evil in itself - but that it must always be considered - and at times rejected - if its benefits are outweighed by its detriments
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell - *the* book about influential trends in our society; social chaos theory
What's Wrong with the World, G.K. Chesterton - as always with Chesterton, a scathingly funny series of essays about the values of modern man
Witness, Whittaker Chambers - a reminder that not only was Communism not something in the distant past, but something that snaked evilly through our halls of government

Books that changed my life – Great Literature (18)
Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner - Faulkner's finest work - a sweeping commentary on what the War to Prevent Southern Independence wrought not just in Mississippi, but in individual souls
The Aeneid, Virgil - while no less that T.S. Eliot loved this book, I loved it from the first time I read it, despite my professor's almost-ruining of it for me
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy - full of the fine craft of the Russian novelist
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky - always remembered for its chapter on the Grand Inquisitor, it's worth much more than that
The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer - a reminder that English as we speak it hasn't been around that long, but that humans that behave like us are timeless
The Confessions, St. Augustine - full of memorable anecdotes from one who loved God passionately
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas - "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Revenge"
The Divine Comedy, Dante - the beauty of the Italian may be lost in translation, but the beauty of the ideas transcends them
Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift - talking horses, flying islands, little people, giants? Whose list is this book not on?
Hamlet, William Shakespeare - a play I've always contended was Shakespeare's best until recently; it is well worth reading over and over
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad - short, but you can feel the sweat on your neck as you go up the river
The Iliad, Homer - reading the first few lines of any translation will always give you chills to think of how connected this book can make one feel through millennia of Western civilization
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert - a tragic story about how the morality of everyday life did not appeal to Emma Bovary
Moby Dick, Herman Melville - the Great American Novel. Sorry Mr. Twain.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce - Joyce's source novel; it won't make reading Ulysses any easier, but at least you'll be pointed in the right direction
Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky - what Conrad might have read before writing Heart of Darkness, it's full of memorable, tortured monologues
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut - a thoughtful commentary about time and our conceptions about life
Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare - cross-dressing, true love, homoeroticism, torture - you know, Shakespeare!

Books that changed my life – Crisis in, and History, Doctrine, and Spirituality of, the Roman Catholic Church (31)
AA-1025: Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle, Marie Carre - about the communist infiltration of the Catholic Church; horrifying, but necessary reading
Against the Heresies, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre - commentaries on the encyclicals written prior to 1960; i.e. on the encyclicals worth anything
Animus Delendi, Vols I and II, Atila Sinke Guimaraes - part of Guimaraes masterwork on the Council and utter wreck it caused for the Barque of Peter
Baptism of Desire: A Patristic Commentary, Fr. Jean-Marc Rulleau - a guide to those tempted by Feeneyism, a seemingly ever-present object of affection for people with no lives
The Catechism of the Council of Trent, ed. St. Charles Borromeo - the real Catechism of the Catholic Church
The Conversion of Ratisbonne, Alphonse Ratisbonne - how the Mother of God can change hearts in an instant
Cranmer’s Godly Order, Michael Davies - an account of how the Anglicans changed the lex orandi in order to change the lex credendi; parallels in our modern age are astounding
Famine of the Spirit, Dom Hubert Van Zeller - a monk's beautiful meditations on the inner spiritual life
Hell, Fr. F.X. Schouppe - a topic no one in the modern age cares for, but everyone has to answer for
In the Murky Waters of Vatican II, Atila Sinke Guimaraes - THE work on the Council and its "meaning(s)"
Introduction to the Devout Life, St. Francis de Sales - a corollary to Sertillanges' The Intellectual Life, this instructs the neophyte in the love of God
Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the 20th Century, Romano Amerio - for those serious about studying Vatican II, this is the graduate course beyond the Guimaraes book
The Kingship of Christ according the the principles of St. Thomas Aquinas, Fr. Denis Fahey - a reminder that Christ's kingship must not just be over our hearts, but over our countries and planet
My Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis - a book that proves that one or two pages can cut our souls to the quick
The Ottaviani Intervention, ed. by Fr. Anthony Cekada - a timely, still-relevant document that questioned everything about the 1969 Novus Ordo Missae
Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness, Warren Carroll - Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness of North America; this book will make you grateful
The Popes Against Modern Errors, ed. Anthony Mioni - an excellent collection of the most relevant papal encyclicals prior to 1960
Previews of the New Papacy, Atila Sinke Guimaraes - documentation of the degredation that John Paul II has put the Church through
The Rhine Flows into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II, Fr. Ralph Wiltgen - an objective insider/outsider view that does not even know how honest it is being; a necessary companion piece to Guimaraes' Murky Waters
The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton - Merton's best; before he went off the deep end
The Sinner's Return to God, Fr. Michael Muller - one of my absolute favorite spiritual books by a masterly author; a defense of the need and efficacy of confession
The Soul of the Apostolate, Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard - a bedside book of Pius X; worthy worthwhile reading for anyone, though intended for a cleric
The Spiritual Combat, Dom Lorenzo Scupoli - the graduate course for Introduction to the Devout Life
The Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas - for those who don't think the Catechism is enough
This is the Faith, Canon Francis Ripley - a simple, systematic explanation of the Catholic Faith
True Devotion to Mary, St. Simon de Montfort - a book that reminds us that Mary is not just God's Mother
Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence, Father Saint-Jure and Blessed Claude de la Colombiere - a book-length answer to the questions posed by Christ asking about whether or not grasses or flowers worry about their daily lives
Tumultuous Times: Twenty General Councils of the Catholic Church & Vatican II and its Aftermath, Frs. Francisco and Dominic Radecki - history of the Twenty Ecumenical Councils of the Church and why Vatican II is like none of them
Vatican II, Homosexuality, & Pedophilia, Atila Sinke Guimaraes - a revelation of the unfortunate disease rampant in the ranks of the Vatican II clergy

Books that changed my life – Leisure Reads that stuck with me (9)
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, Mark Bowden - if you liked the movie, you will love the book; if you didn't like the movie, you will love the book; written in a taut, multi-point-of-view narrative
Blog, Hugh Hewitt - why blogs are relevant and how to write one
Bush at War, Bob Woodward - the first of the Woodward books on President Bush, it explains the moves that led us to Afghanistan
Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam, Mark Bowden - for anyone curious on why the 1977 hostage crisis went down the way it did
Plan of Attack, Bob Woodward - part two of Woodward's Bush at War series, it talks about the march to Iraq
Retreat Hell!, Jim Wilson - the story of the "Frozen Chosin," revered in Marine Corps lore
Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein - part of the Commandant's Reading List for PFCs, also a masterpiece of science fiction
State of Denial, Bob Woodward - part three of Woodward's Bush at War series; how Iraq went desperately wrong while the people who cared could not or would not do anything
Taking Down the House, Ben Mezrich - the basis for the blackjack movie 21; you'll read it in one sitting

Books that changed my life – Politics, Foreign Policy, History, & Economics (22)
The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, Kang Chol-Hwan - North Korea not so bad? Read this book
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, Chalmers Johnson - if you only ever read one book on U.S. foreign policy, read this one
Can Capitalism Survive? Benjamin Rogge - an exploration of the pros and cons of capitalism, with the reminder that it is not the only system that has ever worked in human history, and that maybe it doesn't actually work that well at all
City of God, St. Augustine - longer than it should be, but unmatched for its Christian take on political science
Confucius Lives Next Door, T.R. Reid - why you may learn to speak Chinese in your lifetime, if we keep giving away the store like we do
Economics for Helen, Hilaire Belloc - a short apology for Distributism
The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, Naomi Wolf - a startling jeremiad about an apathetic nation that I fear falls on the ears of a nation that can no longer hear
The Guillotine and the Cross, Warren Carroll - why the French Revolution hated Christianity
The Last Crusade, Warren Carroll - why the Spanish Civil War was about destroying Christianity
Money Manipulation and Social Order, Fr. Denis Fahey - a timely read for anyone who thinks the Fed will save us from anything
Moslems: Their beliefs, practices, and politics, Oussani and Belloc - give this to anyone who mouths the silly nostrum "Islam is a religion of peace."
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, Chalmers Johnson - the third part of Johnson's "American Empire" series, it sums up where the American Empire will lead us to: ruin
Neo-Conned!: Just War Principles: A Condemnation of War in Iraq - too thoughtful and thick for a neocon to read, unfortunately, but a great book to give to anyone else truly open-minded to hear why these wars are so desperately wrong
The Politics of Prudence, Russell Kirk - my first Russell Kirk book ever, and it did not disappoint; it outlines, not for the last but not for the first time either, the core principles of conservatism
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, Iris Chang - why Japan must re-remember this horrific crime
Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki - while I find Kiyosaki to be an empty suit and huckster, this book is a really great "big picture" view
The Revolution: A Manifesto, Ron Paul - reading this will help you understand that despite his lack of charisma, Ron Paul inspires today's youth because he's real
The Servile State, Hilaire Belloc - a road map of where capitalism will eventually lead us: nowhere
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, Chalmers Johnson - an unbelievable accounting of the 700+ bases we have worldwide, and their effects on the civilian populations around them
The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works – and How It’s Transforming the American Economy, Charles Fishman - the book to read about Wal-Mart, if you can stop foaming at the mouth long enough to do so
The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman - another empty suit and huckster, Friedman manages to take a 300 page book and make it 600+; but it's still well-worth reading
Three Billion New Capitalists, Clyde Prestowitz - understanding what drives our South Asian counterparts

Books that changed my life – Business and Entrepreneurship (12)
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do about It, Michael Gerber - the book that every successful small business owner lives, even if he hasn't read it
Good to Great, Jim Collins - beyond the hype, a book that teaches you that perfect practice makes perfect
How Full is Your Bucket?, Tom Rath and Donald Clifton - want a non-cheesy way to recognize people in the office and in your life? Read this
Little Black Book of Connections, Jeffrey Gitomer - how and why to network
Little Blue Book of Advertising, Steve Lance and Jeff Woll - a beginner's guide for the uninitiated
Little Red Book of Selling, Jeffrey Gitomer - it doesn't have all the answers about selling, but it does have some really funny points
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip and Dan Heath - this book should be taught in every marketing class ever, period
Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton - the beginning of "strengths-based" personality testing
Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell - why being successful is sometimes just inevitable
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey - how to be even better at getting things done and having your life to yourself and those you care about
Small Giants: Companies that Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, Bo Burlingham - the apostle of the small business, Mr. Burlingham reminds us that it isn't always about the money
Word of Mouth Marketing, Andy Sernovitz - a companion to Made to Stick, absolutely essential for anyone who doesn't have a lot of money but who wants to get the word out about a business

Reflections on the death of George Tiller

2009-06-03T17:06:00.000-05:00

Abortion, for those of us in the pro-life community, is murder. Plain and simple. We think that life, given the science we know now, begins at conception, when our unique DNA is determined and separate from our mother’s, and that a baby’s life is worth no less inside the womb than outside it. We lament the cowardice of the pro-choice community in not taking a stand on when life actually does begin, because that would force that community into a corner of accountability. Ignorance is bliss for them.

Partial-birth abortion, one of the types of late-term abortions that Dr. George Tiller performed, isn’t the smug easy vacuuming of a blastula or group of cells that will, barring complications, grow up to be a human. Indeed, it is a special type of murder. It is a type of abortion that finds in its trash cans bits of eyes, toes, flesh, and heart. It is a type of abortion that the defenseless, innocent baby will feel acutely, seconds before its life is extinguished forever, never having seen the light of existence beyond its mother’s womb.

Thus, it is not without a sense of irony to those of us with pro-life convictions that Tiller was shot in the head, of at all places, his church. After years of murdering children at their mothers’ behest in the safety of his own clinic, George Tiller was shot in the safety of his own church. He was caught, without foreknowledge, without the opportunity to say goodbye to anyone, in the one place where he thought he would be safe. In a sense, he died in the way that he murdered children – who were caught, without foreknowledge, without the opportunity to say goodbye to anyone, in the one place where it thought it might be safe – its mother’s womb.

These realities aside, the media is looking for one single “pro-life” personality to say the equivalent of: “Good, I’m glad he’s dead” so that they, people utterly devoid of moral authority on the question of abortion and murder, can scream “hypocrite!”

But they are naïve. Pro-lifers are precisely that – pro-life. We don’t want anyone to die for death’s sake. But in the absence of a law that respects God’s command to not murder innocent children, or to put it as St. Thomas Aquinas might have, that an unjust law is no law at all, am I to weep for vigilante justice that erases a murderer of babies from our midst? I may not endorse this vigilante’s behavior, but I will accept the benefits of the result. Fewer children will die because of his death. And that is good.

I will not weep for George Tiller. Nor do I expect the angels did at his judgment with God, which occurred in our time on June 2nd, 2009, but occurred in the eternal present with He who knows all hearts.

It is not for us, as humans, to judge intentions or conscience. Nor are we able to. Those weighty considerations are between every single person and God alone. But, we are able to judge actions. And the actions of George Tiller on his judgment day must have weighed heavy in the balance. As Christians, the best thing that we can do for him is pray for God’s mercy on his soul, that last week, in our time, when he was judged, when those dead children confronted him at his judgment, that he was not found wanting. For if he was, a fate worse than abortion would have awaited him.

Overland Park, Kansas

Violence, the Inner City, and the American Frontier

2009-05-18T22:58:00.006-05:00

I originally submitted this piece as part of a scholarship application to The Rockford Institute's 2009 Summer School, on the American West. It was part of an application that won a full scholarship. For more information on the Rockford Institute and this year's Summer School, please click here. The essay prompt was: "Defend or Refute: American inner-city violence is a legacy of the violent American frontier."

The American Frontier was confronted by many of the same problems that the inner city is plagued with today. The Frontier was populated by families who had a strong sense of tribal identity that led, when challenged, to a certain culture of violence. The Frontier was abandoned or only loosely patrolled by the law in a policy of salutary neglect. Finally, the Frontier was made up of raw nature and temporary buildings. People were given neither the time nor the ability to care about the place where they lived. So too we see the blacks in the inner-city today: overwhelmed by a culture of black-on-black violence, neighborhoods loosely patrolled by cops who want to avoid the most violent crimes, and crumbling concrete structures that stand as a legacy to white flight. The times may not have changed, but the remedy is still the same.

But before we can examine that remedy, we need to understand the problems more concretely. Who was it that populated the Frontier? People who wanted a fresh start. People who wanted to make their fortune. People who wanted to escape the cities. And, of course immigrants, who wanted all these things. You can take the immigrant out of the Old World, but you can’t take the Old World out of the immigrant. As these groups of settlers gathered in various cities, they found comfort in surrounding themselves with their religion, their culture, and their own people. When any of these things were attacked, they reacted just as they had for centuries in the Old World – with violence. As Malcolm Gladwell points out in his book Outliers: “Only in a culture of honor would it have occurred to the irascible gentleman that shooting someone was an appropriate response to a personal insult”. With law enforcement slowly building up – or more often, run by those of your own ethnicity – who was to question the law of the strong?

Yet, it is precisely the law of the weak that has prevailed in America’s inner city public schools, the harbinger of news for the next generation of inner-city violence. Overcome by violence, metal detectors at entrances, and staggering dropout rates, these schools bleed the best teachers year in and year out. The least able student becomes the common denominator for the rest of the class, and everyone loses. Without education and learning there are no acolytes for cultural change. The reason that many black Americans are deaf to the writings of Michael Eric Dyson or the legitimate criticisms of Bill Cosby is precisely because they lack the honesty to confront that they, like the men and women of the frontier were, are responsible for their own destiny. If the schools are bad, they have to take charge. If the crime bred by lack of jobs and opportunities dominates their neighborhoods, they have to be their own police, not their own enablers. And if the whites have fled to their comfortable fake-country-homes in suburbia because they too, lacked the courage to fight for a place worth living for and have instead exchanged it for neighborhoods where nobody knows your name, then it is in the black community’s greatest interest to take back these cities, often filled with beautiful, pre-Modernist architecture, at half their market values. This would all be fantasizing if the black community was not possessed of financial resources not available to the Frontier settlers: black entertainers.

Black entertainers dominate our culture in every aspect – from sports, to acting, to music. We’ve even exalted Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou, mediocre writers by any standard, to dizzying heights precisely because some new Harlem Renaissance has been imagined (the “poem” read at the Inauguration demonstrates how false this is, but that is for another paper, on lies we tell ourselves). Blacks can even now look to a black President. Yet, where is the change in their community? Bill Maher was interviewing Sean “P. Diddy” Combs some weeks after the election and he said something to the effect of, “Now that you have won the Presidency, can you sing about more constructive things than having sex with hoes, buying cars, and being better than others”? Sean Combs laughed and said, “Yeah, we’re straight now.” But we all laughed too, because we knew that wasn’t true. All of the black superstars who have “made it” have tragically lacked the ability to see beyond themselves. Having been raised in a culture that begged for escape and rewarded those who “made it out,” these entertainers, except for a few token examples, have not gone back to reinvest in their community. They invest in yachts, diamond-studded teeth, fancy cars, nice clothes – anything but the community that needs more than entertainers if is ever to make a contribution to the permanent things. As long as the black community doesn’t understand that the way forward is to understand the shortcomings of their past and not to live in the fantasy of their present, their worst problems will continue as endemic, and metastasize with the new rising Hispanic minority, which shares many of the same educational problems.

How did the Wild West stop being “wild”? Civilization came. Law and order finally overcame the law of the tribe and the law of the strong. People built places worth caring about and which they didn’t want to see shot up or burned in senseless brawls. Schools, churches, and parks were built. People took charge of their future, block by block, brightening their corner of the world. The solution to the problem of violence in the inner city starts in the same way – block by block, person by person – but it can only begin when the community realizes that enough is enough, and that just as an ordered soul creates an ordered space around it, so too the disordered world will create disordered souls. When this community decides to take the “souls of black folk” back the end of the beginning will be accomplished.

The Dystopian Nightmare

2009-05-06T22:37:00.003-05:00

This was written for a Utopian Novel class

If the earlier Utopian novels were an exploration of the interplay between nature and nurture, both before and after man had begun to acquire fantastic technology, then the descent into the Dystopian visions of 1984, A Clockwork Orange, A Canticle for Liebowitz, and The Lathe of Heaven are descriptions of how utterly the human project will fail, whether or not it strives for a Utopia. If the visions of Houynhnms served primarily as a way for sharp, painful criticism, viddying the actions of droogs is a numbing action, for the pain of the reality is too great.

What is Wrong with the World

In the Introduction to his novel A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess opined that though he didn’t think this was his best work (but it is precisely because it may have been his best work, because it so resonated with a public that saw the mirror held up to nature) it is for this novel that he will be remembered. What that memorable novel asks of the reader, in a nonstop fashion throughout its first part, is a suspension of disbelief that stands behind a screen of detachment. The acts of violence and the hollow minds that engender those acts horrify even the most jaded reader. Burgess’ vision is terrifying precisely because it’s not that difficult to imagine a future where the thugs are in control. Perhaps in a smaller country like England, which always seems to be a backdrop for our Utopias and Dystopias, such a future could happen even within our lifetime.

Whereas previous Utopian novels always focused on the compelling largeness of a society, Dystopian visions have to radiate their vision outward from the limited sphere of a single gazer. Winston, Alex, Brother Francis, and George Orr can only tell us what they know. They don’t have singular omniscient visions of their respective realities, and in that small, focused snapshot of the individual being slowly crushed by society, the struggle of each individual lends us insight.

What is particularly subversive about A Clockwork Orange is that the reader actually has sympathy for Alex. Throughout the first part he is busy with ultraviolence, in the second part ultraviolence is, in a way, done to him, and in the final part those extremes are reconciled. Surely such evil isn’t “nurtured by Society” and yet what Alex recalls as the headline of a newspaper after his attempted suicide was: “BOY VICTIM OF CRIMINAL REFORM SCHEME” (192). The victimizer victimized – who is the real puppet pulling the real strings? Burgess’ allusions to “society” and “government” are representative of the smoke and mirrors of the liberal nostrums we as a culture repeat in order to shift blame and accountability outside ourselves. If only we could return to the state of nature, if only we could suppress what is human...hence the brainwashing Alex receives. But it doesn’t take because humans are fundamentally defined by free will.

That free will is perhaps what makes Winston so fantastically triumphant and yet so lamentably pitiable as the hero of 1984. It is he who is brave enough to buy a notebook, to write “Down with Big Brother” in big defiant lettering, to meet with Julia, and to reach out to O’Brien. Yet, as he fights the tortures used to get him to accept doublethink (practiced in this day and age in black holes of jurisprudence, like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba), we cannot help but accept as true O’Brien’s assertion: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever” (220). The tortures used to harm his body provide “white space” in his brain where these assertions can float in and become truth. So too the reader realizes the inevitability of Orwell’s vision: a world with no true happiness and with no redemption in sight.

Yet, redemption is very much a theme woven throughout the complex A Canticle for Liebowitz. When all of humanity has destroyed itself over and over with bombs, it is the monks who remain, not just as guardians of knowledge, but as reminders of the salvific action of Christ. Singular in its recognition of a triumph – of sorts – for Christianity, Walter Miller’s novel reminds us over and over that the dead language of Latin might be the only thing that survives a nuclear holocaust – and not just because Miller knows that the monks of Monte Cassino survived his bombing during the war, or because of some wishful thinking of someone favorable to Catholicism, but because Latin evokes the Romans – men and women who were very much like us and like men and women from every previous age. If Orwell was right that he who controls the present controls the past, and that who controls the past controls the future, then it is precisely the enduring words of the Church (acting in the stead of Christ), whispered, muttered, and copied in Latin, in Miller’s vision that controls humanity’s future.

Ursula Le Guin makes that control of the future the whimsy of an ordinary man. Like Alex, Brother Francis, or Winston, George Orr is no one special. His godlike ability remakes the past, and in an actualization of the ideas of the Party in 1984, he controls the future by controlling the past. The dreams retroactively change people’s memories, and in the one instance where a character is confronted with the change of reality before her eyes (forced doublethink), she is forced to discard the reality she knows for the reality she sees. That is perhaps what is so frightening about The Lathe of Heaven: that even the main character has trouble remembering what his separate “lives” have been like. What hope do we have of remembering, if we can't even forget what we didn't know?

The Ugly Crash of Human Nature

If these dystopian novels give us a primarily individualist view of each imagined world, it also comments on how deeply flawed human nature is (again, returning to the non-redemptive theme). For instance, Winston is able to delight in the simple beauty of a paperweight, yet in the next breath he’s able to say that he “hates purity.” He delights in his adulteries with Julia and is glad she sleeps with many other men. If there is good in humanity, Orwell implies, it is systematically erased by the boot-stamping on the face.

Burgess’ vision of humanity is so dark that it’s not enough that good might be stamped out of humanity, but furthermore, mankind must undergo scientific procedures in order to “be good.” Even then, that good is not a “do good” but simply the negative “avoid evil.” The poignant notion we are left with in the final (restored) chapter of his novel is that goodness must be a choice and must come from within. No social engineering, no Five Year Plans can make the human spirit do something it doesn’t want to do. Mindless automatons result when the programming is forced, and you are left with something less than human.

Both Le Guin’s and Miller’s works go beyond the recognition of mankind’s evil to the acceptance of the cyclical nature of the interaction of good and evil. In A Canticle for Liebowitz, we see this across three different parts of the novel, each with many centuries of gap in between them. Men come and go, technology is attained and lost, but time marches on. In The Lathe of Heaven this same theme is expressed in the different iterations of the worlds that George Orr’s doctor concocts. Man can always think that the solution is around the corner: personal gain, population reduction, the graying of skin to “eliminate” racism. But all those worlds eventually are destroyed and pointless, and the inhabitants of the new/old Earth are left to fend with what they have at that given moment.

Conclusion

St. Thomas More, at heart a humanist, engaged in the thought experiment of Utopia to challenge our popular prejudices while appealing to the better angels of our nature. If the commentary about examining a potential spouse in the nude might be accepted in jest, the mocking of war as a scourge upon humanity which was to be avoided was in deadly earnest. As centuries passed within our own Western Tradition, the smoke from the Industrial Revolution obscured the light from the age of the humanists, and from those shapes and shadows emerged a vision that went beyond accepting our fallen human nature and instead condemned us to a forever cycle of our own destruction. But lest the image that we take from examining these Dystopias be the forever boot on the forever face, the grace that Brother Francis reminds us of in A Canticle for Liebowitz would perhaps be spoken best by the Savage of Brave New World, so desperately trying to quote his Shakespeare correctly: “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world” (Merchant of Venice V: 1). If it is darkest before the dawn, perhaps when the world is most devoid of good will it see the value in that light that has not been overcome by the darkness.

Nature and Nurture in Utopias

2009-05-05T22:56:00.002-05:00

This was written for a Utopian Novel class

The debate about nature vs. nurture is ancient, and as many people know, it is not confined to questions of anthropology. Christians accept human nature as necessarily fallen because it has been corrupted and vitiated by original sin. Others, like Rousseau, advance the “noble savage” theory wherein all mankind was “naturally good” before disgusting, corrupting influences like civilization and religion ruined the race forever. Among Utopia, Gulliver’s Travels, The Time Machine, and Brave New World, however, only Aldous Huxley chooses to examine the effects of “nurture” across an entire globe instead of just on an isolated island – and that is indeed what makes his analysis brave, new, and of an entire world.

There is a certain “willing suspension of disbelief” that goes along with reading any work of fiction. But in the Utopian genre, that suspension is fretted with either humor or regret, because the fundamental questions of society and human nature are being pointedly asked. What man who loves peace wasn’t pained as Gulliver, eager to prove his Houyhnhnm friend wrong about just how many men could be killed in war, went on to delineate the weapons of destruction in gruesome fashion? What man didn’t laugh as he followed Thomas More’s reductio ad absurdum regarding the marriage contract all the way to a prearranged examination of the potential spouse’s naked body? Surely, the most relevant epigraph for reexamining our human nature and social structures in the light of the Utopian genre must come from Hamlet’s mouth: “There is nothing either good or evil, but, thinking makes it so” (Hamlet II.ii).

Utopia – St. Thomas More

Over time some have wondered aloud how a devout Catholic allowed himself to participate in such a thought experiment. On one hand the answer is easy and available to most people – he was a humanist and like Erasmus, he was propagating a humanist point of view. Yet at the same time it is not a Catholic position to put forth any society as one to be imitated that is devoid of grace – or is Utopia devoid of grace?

Utopians have religion, but it is “religion” in the ecumenical way that people refer to “Christians” or “People of the Book” today. Indeed, Thomas More’s anticipation of the problematic formulations of the heterodox Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae seems to be very close to violating Pius XI’s position in Quas Primas, which is that error has no rights. More’s exact wording reads: “For this is one of the most ancient laws among them, that no man shall be blamed for reasoning in the support of his own religion” (154). Taken in and of itself, this would seem to imply a liberty of conscience, which the Church has always permitted. However, the Church has not always allowed the external expression of that internal thought. And that’s where examining our context gives us more perspective on More’s quote. He had been discussing someone who was speaking about Christianity with “more zeal than wisdom” and began to call all other religions “children of everlasting damnation.” Surely More was disgusted by those in his own time who preached in this manner. He preferred the cold-blooded logic of argument and hoped that others would follow his lead.

Yet, even Utopia is not Utopian. Laws exist – very specific laws which grant that someone must have transgressed them in the past. And so we come to the quandary of More’s society ruled by reason: why is it that men do not do the good they know, but indeed the evil they hate? More knew his Plato and Aristotle, but he also knew his St. Paul, and so his answer is that even if men live in a society governed and habituated by true reason and further, those men take steps to eliminate and minimize darkening of that reason, laws still have to be enforced, as in any society, for it to work. Some – that every man must work – seem quite reasonable by any standard. Others – like enforced celibacy for life should fornication occur prior to marriage – might make even the most stringent Dominican inquisitor uncomfortable.

And where does More stage all this? On an island. And why, precisely? Because he knows that he can perhaps make this case for one particular area, but it would be a bridge too far to imagine a whole world dominated by a system of thought. He would leave that for the authors who would take up the gauntlet he threw down.

Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift

Swift follows More’s insularity not just once, but in all the episodes of his novel. Even as we end the book, in the real world, we are on the island of England. And surely we cannot blame Swift. This makes the construct easier for the author – but for the reader too – for if we believe that at this very day and hour there are humans who prowl around half-naked and occasionally eat each other, then surely we can believe in an island of Mr. Eds.

While More confined his commentary to his problems with enclosures, welfare, the poor, and the aristocracy, among other things, in England, Swift gives us a more European view. Nothing, small or large, escapes his pen. He comments on the diet of many Europeans as he makes his crude bread from oats – “common enough in many parts of Europe.” As he lacks salt, he calls it a luxury, and then further an invention solely as a “provocative to drink.” He also engages some critical religious questions of the day – ones that burned hot in Europe for many years after Luther and Henry VIII – be they the rectitude of transubstantiation or the veneration of holy objects. Swift follows More’s lead in dismissing, at least in this construct, the notion that a religious truth can be objective truth. Instead, he limits these questions by contextualizing the highly metaphysical question of transubstantiation with the rather less important, and not metaphysical, question of the colors of vestments for Mass. Using this conflation he’s able to reduce these important questions to a “difference of opinion.”

Yet Swift’s disdain for human nature runs much deeper than More’s. He finds Europeans wretched and corrupted by civilization, but what he presents as humans in the state of nature – Yahoos – are much more repulsive. Where More provides a norm, Swift provides a Janus with no reflection of the better angels of our nature. But perhaps that is Swift’s precise take on Utopia. We can be openly savage and disgusting – as the Yahoos are. Or we can be savage through the perspective of the truly civilized and peaceful Houyhnhnhms – by examining our contentious political dealings, wars, double-dealing professions, and ways of life. Swift perhaps is asking the more difficult question – what do we propose as the sectio aurea?

The Time Machine – H.G. Wells

If Swift presented us with a Janus, Wells cuts that coin in half and separates it as two different races. For if we are what we do, over time, we will change what we are. The Eloi and the Morlocks are Wells’ anticipation of the critique of industrial society and capitalism made more concretely and directly by his later countrymen, Chesterton and Belloc. While Wells purports to be in the world of the future, given the confines of the novel, we are still within the island-construct of More and Swift. The Time Traveler’s journeys within the future are rather limited, and as such we still perceive them as being within an island of sorts.

Wells’ portrayal is all the more surprising in that in directly contradicts the onward and upward reasoning that was the mode of his day: we are better than we once were, those of us who come after us will be better yet. Wells’ treatment of two warring impulses in man – the desire to work so that he might be fed, clothed, and sheltered – and the desire for comfort which allows feeding, clothing, and sheltering to be the demesne of others, while you sit or sleep comfortably in an armchair, perhaps while copulating – results in an eventual divorce into two species.

Gone is the more specific social commentary that peppered Utopia and Gulliver’s Travels. Wells is simply warning us in the same way Hilaire Belloc would in The Servile State:

The future of industrial society, and in particular of English society, left to its own discretion, is a future in which subsistence and security shall be guaranteed for the proletariat, but shall be guaranteed at the expense of the old political freedom and by the establishment of the proletariat in a status really, though not nominally, servile. At the same time, the owners will be guaranteed in their profits, the whole machinery of production in the smoothness of its working, and that stability which has been lost under the capitalist phase of society will be found once more.
198

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

When the Savage quotes Miranda on the prospect of going to see “Civilization” Bernard laughingly chides: “…hadn’t you better wait until you actually see the new world?” (130). Yet the Savage is right. Huxley’s world is Brave and New – and no longer is Utopia an island. In Huxley’s world, Utopia is a way of life. In enthroning happiness as the summum bonum, Shakespeare’s very words have become irrelevant. As Mustapha Mond so adeptly notes towards the close of our novel: “…you can’t make tragedies without social instability. The world’s stable now” (198).

Huxley has taken the separated Eloi and Morlocks and combined them in a test tube, added growth hormone, then divided them into Alphas, Betas, Gammas, and so on. We now have the sexually promiscuous, focused on happiness part fused with the everyone-must-do-his-role part. Huxley has taken our separated Janus and made it the benign face of Mustapha Mond. Ironically, Huxley has not taken us to the future, but rather back to the Middle Ages while removing Christ and His Church. In that society that counted “age quod agis” as one of its nostrums, Brave New World is but a mirror. You did what you did, in a consistent routine. You were happy in your place, and death was something natural, to be accepted, and not to be mourned.

It’s not just the fact that Huxley is modern that makes this work more read and more popular than our three aforementioned predecessors. It’s the fact that Huxley’s portrayal is not only stunningly accurate, but many parts of it have already been fulfilled. Soma and the feelies have been combined into the “I” based entertainment that dominates our culture - iPhones, iPods, YouTubes. It’s what you want, when you want it. Everything is about entertainment – even news. It is telling that, as one editor of the Kansas City Star once told me, that USA Today, America’s most popular newspaper, is 60% graphic-based. As Andrew Postman, in his introduction to his father’s prescient and ever-relevant Amusing Ourselves to Death wrote: “our bottomless appetite for TV will make content so available, context be damned, that we’ll be overwhelmed by ‘information glut’ until what is truly meaningful is lost and we no longer care what we’ve lost as long as we’re being amused” (vii). Huxley has done more than take us to a sanitized, perverted, religion-free version of the Middle Ages. He has resurrected the sophistry that man is the measure of all things. What matters is not what you think – in fact, thinking is out altogether – but rather what you feel or hear or taste or touch. It would be simple to call it Cartesian, but the Cartesians actually cared about the consequences. The denizens of Brave New World do not.

Conclusion

Despite their differences in approach and the variances of their predictions about humanity, the Utopian genre, especially typified by these four novels, continues to provide relevant commentary about contemporary society. Each novel has something relevant to say about our current state of affairs. More would note that far from introducing a revolutionary novelty in the doctrine of religious liberty, the heresies of syncretism and indifferentism have come to dominate. Swift, in all of his Irish-children-eating fantasies could never have imagined that we have not just come to use animals as machines, but we even “farm” them with machines now – growing them in industrial cesspools, forcing them to eat something their stomachs are not accustomed to – truly, as the Mad Cow outbreak showed – nature is still rebellious when it is violated. Wells might have laughed to see that the Eloi do live aboveground, in high apartments and skyscrapers, and do solely live for money and play.

But it is perhaps Huxley’s reaction, captured in the words of Christopher Hitchens in an introduction to Brave New World, that is most relevant:

The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle, and Huxley assists us in attaining this valuable glimpse of the obvious, precisely because it was a conclusion that was in many ways unwelcome to him.
xxi

Implied in Hitchens’ summary is the understanding that ultimately all Utopian authors come to: if reason is not the sole answer, what is? And for those who reject or disdain notions of grace or conscience as salves or informers of reason, the answer must truly be frightening.

Works Cited

Belloc, Hilaire. The Servile State. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1977.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005.

More, Thomas. Utopia. Roslyn, NY: Classics Club, 1947

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York: Penguin, 1985.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York: Signet Classic, 1998.

100 Days: From one young executive to another

2009-05-01T20:00:00.006-05:00

Dear Mr. President

Last night at dinner I remarked to my fellow citizens that I have been truly taken aback by the last 100 days of your Presidency. These 100 days have shocked me in true and real ways that no childish posters about you being an "Al-Qaeda plant" or "Native Kenyan" ever could.

In thinking about a meaningful discussion of these past 3 months, I thought it might be relevant to frame it within the context of reaching my 3rd anniversary as a full-fledged employer and young executive, which I will reach in a little under 100 days. You purport to be the friend of the small businessman, so please take this letter to be a contribution to your ever-burgeoning knowledge of, and empathy with, my class.

I suppose I'll begin at the end, by telling you the two most important lessons I've learned as a young executive in the last 3 years:

1. Focus. One of your large corporate campaign contributors (both as a company and reflected in the contributions of individual employees), Google, prides itself on doing "one thing well." When I was a two-man operation with my partner Scott Tidwell, I had no overhead, no office, and no worries. We worked off referrals and had a grand old time. We were able to handle academic tutoring, test prep, and even college counseling. When we moved to Kansas and decided to be the big name in test prep in Kansas City, we realized almost immediately that we had to drop academic tutoring (too many competitors willing to work for next to nothing) and college counseling (too many counselors we wanted as friends and allies rather than enemies and competitors). We even subdivided our focus within test prep. Rather than take on Kaplan on the only real profit center they had in town, graduate test prep, and all the expensive computer databasing that would entail (in order to offer competitive prep in grad programs), we focused on being the best high school test prep in Kansas City. Even from there, we realized that Kansas City was a large amalgam and that we had to focus on dominating Johnson County before being able to reach the outlying suburbs of Lee's Summit and the Northland. Three years later, expensive lessons behind us, we have learned the lesson of focus, and we are prospering. But we didn't know this coming in, despite the fact that we had been in the industry several years.

2. The Virtue of Saying No. Whenever you're trying to make an impact with a group of people who don't know you, and when you're possessed of great energy, zeal, and staff, you don't want to say "No." "No" is negative. "No" means you can't. "No" is giving up. So I said "Yes" until I realized what colossal folly I had stumbled into. Board meetings for boards I didn't have to belong to. Chamber events that weren't mission critical. Networking groups and organizations from which our company derived zero referrals, despite my dynamic "working of the room." I finally posted signs throughout my office with the simple word: "No." I realized that "No" is not negative. I realized that "No" allowed me to do Lesson #1, which was Focus. I realized that "No" was really a much deeper "Yes" to something else.

So let's talk about where we can apply these lessons, which were expensive and hard-earned under your spendthrift anything-but-fiscally-responsible disgrace of a predecessor, to your own Presidency.

Focus.

You have come into office with an agenda that would make the most energetic of executives blanch. You've promised health care for all, continued safety against terrorists, improved diplomacy abroad, a better budget, more money and relief for college students, more money and relief for the poor and oppressed, "fairer" taxes by raising them on those who produce jobs for everyone else, etc. Do you truly believe you can accomplish all this? If you did, I surely hope that this bong smoke disappeared in the frightening red reality of our monetary crisis, in which your appointed dummy, Tim Geithner, has continued to make a fool of himself and you to this day and hour. He will be your Rumsfeld unless you wise up. I fear you will not.

Focus.

Nothing goes without the economy. Realize that bailing out AIG helps generate no new jobs, and in fact, doesn't even help keep them. Realize that "too big to fail" is a bogeyman whispered to you by discredited frauds who have nothing to lose and everything to gain from your (remember, that's our money) loans. Instead of a stimulus bill that spreads out like shotgun shell by trying to do everything (do we see a pattern here?) fire a rifle shot. Ask anyone for advice, but don't ask Tim Geithner or Larry Summers or Robert Reich - all of these ass-clowns never predicted the fall, and their remedies have been combinations of taking care of old friends, repatching up the failed system, and preserving the status quo.

Remember your evocative quote during the 3rd debate with the dead man walking masquerading as your Republican opponent in which you talked about taking a "scalpel" to our budget and the pain and precision that would entail? Where is the scalpel now? Sir, a blunt instrument is a very poor substitute for a scalpel. We have a cancer, and we need it out. We are willing to deal with the pain now to have a healthier economy later. This death by a thousand cuts is much worse, because most Americans don't even believe, don't even know, that we are dying. They subscribe to the myth, propped up by you, that we can just keep spending forever, that spending has no consequences, and that the world is ready, willing, and able to serve as our forever creditor.

Focus.

Realize that we can't exercise a coherent foreign policy by trying to tackle everything at once. For starters, realize that you only fight a war on two fronts by necessity, not by choice.

The Virtue of Saying No.

Say "No" to Bush-era policies of torture, secret prisons, rendition, wars on words that can never be won, and endless unjust wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Don't believe the narrative of 24 that all intelligence gained by torture is actionable, timely, accurate, and complete. Remember the Reinhold Niebuhr you told David Brooks was important to you and reflect upon the moral implications of torture, and the dangerous semantic game of inventing new words for old practices I'm worried you're already slipping into.

The Virtue of Saying No.

End your escalation in Afghanistan which will surely become your Iraq.

The Virtue of Saying No.

End your Bush-era foreign policy, characterized by a hawkish persona at State - Secretary Clinton who supported the unnecessary war in Kosovo that her husband initiated, as well as the untenable Russophobic stance in a world that finds NATO not only irrelevant, but more importantly, a blunt instrument (remember that blunt instrument discussion from earlier) in the hands of an America that doesn't seem to grasp just how quickly and decisively Russia dealt with Georgia after those Georgians (probably inspired by our "advisors" over there) invaded South Ossetia and murdered hundreds of civilians before Russia could come to its rescue.

The Virtue of Saying No.

End an Israel-first policy that treats that nation like a single mother. End its 3 billion dollars a year in foreign aid that cripples the Israelis as a people and make them realize, just like anyone else, they are going to have to live with their neighbors peaceably. They will find a way. Indeed, Yithzak Rabin might have done precisely that, had not one of his own, a Jew, killed him. End the kowtowing to the shameless Israel lobby, so ably and shamefully led by the never-to-be-prosecuted spy against the United States, Steve Rosen, former head of AIPAC. Remember that you once used the word "occupation" to refer to Israel's unreasonable treatment of people they consider second-class citizens. Make them realize that with their declining birthrate, a new apartheid in the promised land will not win them new friends among Arabs, among whom they so desperately need to cultivate such relationships.

The Virtue of Saying No.

Say "No" to endless spending that will not only indebt our nation for centuries to come, but will surely bankrupt us in the present.

The Virtue of Saying No.

Say "No" to funding abortions abroad. Is it our place to do this? With the taxpayer dollars of citizens morally opposed to it?

Mr. President, if three years of being a junior executive, of running a company of fewer than ten employees, have taught me these two lessons, I am also assured that the lessons are scalable upwards, to the dizzing heights of your office, and that these two rules, the idea of Focus, and the Virtue of Saying No, can work with a nation of 300 million as well. I know you're a new executive too. You've had a lot of experience, like I have, in doing everything but that, but now you've come to realize, as I did, that being an executive is a whole different ballgame. And whatever head start I had on you prior to January 20th, heck, prior to November 4th, you've been in the hot seat for a while now, and the cauldron of the chair in the Oval Office makes a man "get it" pretty quickly, so I know you know what I'm talking about.

Good night, Mr. President. And Good luck. I'd say to pray to Christ, but your recent actions at Georgetown showed that's not something I should ask you to do. But whether or not you believe in Christ, He believes in you. And, that won't stop me from praying for you. The head of our country needs prayers more than anyone else, save the Pope. So here's one person, at least, who prays for you, and that you will be guided by Truth and Justice in all your decisions. I remain,

Most Sincerely

Stephen Heiner
American Citizen

Thinking about LOST and 24...midseason 2009...

2009-03-23T00:12:00.004-05:00

Warning – this is written for those who have followed the current seasons of both shows. Otherwise you are wading waist deep into a world of spoilers.

Well, against all expectations, 24 has begun to redeem itself from its last disastrous season, if the first half of the season is any indication. The White House has been threatened and compromised. Nothing new there. Jack is on the run from the “establishment” law enforcement authorities. Okay. People who help and believe him are in the minority and under detention or are disabled. Fine. People get tortured for information. Yes. Pushing the envelope by giving us Presidents we haven’t had yet (a female this time, replacing the now-Allstate spokesman first-black-president-then-first-divorced-president Dennis Haysbert). Noted.

So what’s made the formula different? We are away from CTU – it’s been dismantled. The FBI, which is clearly in the old CTU set on FOX, has been compromised. Jack and the people he is working with are constantly on location throughout DC, which is a substitute for the LA backdrop which was so familiar for so many seasons. These are cosmetic changes. We still see “CTU/FBI” in play, and DC is substituted for LA.

What has made this season of 24 memorable is the thread that has been woven from Episode 1 through Episode 14. Senator Mayer was questioning Jack’s means to his ends. This has been consistently themed, both implicitly and explicitly, throughout the whole of this season.

Senator Mayer asks “If we are to be a force for good in this world, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard.”

In the heady early days of 24, which began around the time of our illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the question of torture was not in the forefront of discussion. Get information from the enemy, no matter what it takes. And pinheads like Bill O'Reilly cheered it on. While 24 only allows us to play with this notion, not seriously discuss it, because in the world of 24 everytime someone is tortured they give up truthful, relevant, actionable, and timely information, the point is, the show is finally questioning, even though -so-ever-obscurely, its raison d’etre. If torture is really wrong, then Jack can’t exist and all his sacrifices have been a waste.

But Jack’s telling line in Episode 14 of this season answers that: “I wish we lived in a world that didn’t need people like me.” Jack has come to accept his “monster” status and the trail of bodies that he inevitably leaves in his wake.

There is no love interest this season, perhaps because we know that’s beyond a real possibility for Jack. Also, our key principals in seasons past have been sidelined – Bill Buchanan is dead, Chloe is trapped at FBI, and Tony Almeida has disappeared for the last few episodes. Bringing back Tony, and Carlos Bernard’s tight, tough performance is probably 24’s biggest coup of the year.

Predictions, thoughts, questions for the second half of the season:

1. What is the agenda of President Taylor’s daughter, Livvy? She's definitely shady.
2. Why is our villain, Secretary of Defense Jon Voight, so simplistic? He’s nowhere near as evil as we’ve seen previous 24 villains.
3. What is the connection between Larry Moss and Renee Walker? Why have we not been told this whole time? Neither have played the “relationship card” but it’s latent in many confrontations.
4. We know that Jack can’t be killed. He’s invincible. But we’ve killed his wife, alienated his daughter, brought him back from the dead, left him to be tortured by the Chinese, and chased him halfway around the globe. How is 24 going to end our season and still push our envelopes? One thinks of the end of Season 3, where Jack pauses to cry at the very end of the day as our clock runs out. Perhaps we’ll be left with something like that – but that would leave us hollow, and vitiate a good deal of this season. We’ll see.
_________________________________________________________________

Fair disclosure, I’ve claimed before that LOST is the greatest show of all time. I don’t retract that statement. What I’ve come to realize this season is that the LOST universe has started to become as far-flung as Star Trek’s. Because Star Trek’s universe is so wide, and because there are so many rabbit holes waiting to be explored, this season’s foray back into the 70s gives us all kinds of different flight paths, if you will.

As before, it’s best to explore this character drama one person at a time:

John Locke/Jeremy Bentham – he’s back and the nominology beloved by the writers at LOST continues. Bentham was a utilitarian philosopher, so John/Jeremy is trying to do the greatest good for the greatest number. Fair enough. The island can heal John, fair. But the island can resurrect him? Of course. We already knew that vis-à-vis Jack’s father – Christian. Locke has to meet up with Richard Alpert, our ever-the-same-age Hostile/Other, and maybe/probably take the mantle of leadership again – perhaps against the Dharma initiative and old friends.

Jack – we can assume that Jack is in charge again – though Kate’s using him for sex becomes more and more despicable over time – though Jack, like most men, is happy to be used. I think the writers might finally have him reunite with his father this season.

Kate – as I said, despicable. She’s going to play the role of homewrecker now in the happy lives of James/Sawyer and Juliet. Never fails.

Sawyer – our erstwhile villain and man-for-himself has become the perennial man-for-others and has taken on the mantle of leadership in the absence of Jack and Locke. There isn’t anyone who watches the show who doesn’t love this character – and women have an added component of, let’s say, “liking” him. :-) Josh Holloway has never disappointed, and I don’t think he’s going to start now.

Sun/Jin – their reunion will be exciting and heart-rending, surely. But what of their child?

Hurley – Jorge Garcia will continue to deliver comic relief and a fundamental distrust of Ben Linus

Ben Linus – Michael Emerson’s Ben Linus, the man we love to hate, has left the LOST writers a “gotcha” card to play later in the season because of his unexplained ass-beating shortly before he gets on the plane to the island. Watch for that to be explained before the end of the season.

Desmond – he’s our free agent – our link with the real world. Since he’s completed his mission vis-a-vis relaying Daniel Faraday’s message to his mother, he’s out of the picture…for now.

Charles Widmore – our villain – or is he anymore after rescuing Locke and trying to help him get back to the island? Surely this is now clearly a power struggle between Linus and himself, but in LOST style, we are left in ambiguity as to who is our “good guy.” But perhaps, there is no “good guy.” Perhaps everything ties back to the island and we can’t root for anyone. And more importantly than ever, we now don’t have a motivating reason to get off the island, because we’re 20-30 years in the past and so there’s no way to get back to the loved ones they have left behind in the (non-static?) future.

Sayid – our hit man who has lost both Shannon (but you can catch Maggie Grace in Taken, a brilliant little surprise of a movie) and his long lost love and now-dead wife. He’s going to continue to be our Jack Bauer. Perhaps.

Faraday + Mom – if we are to believe that Eloise Hawking is right – then perhaps there are other, smaller islands. Now that we know it’s on the move, and more importantly, that it’s trackable, it’s a short amount of time until Widmore will go there. Or will he? He must have already known about this technology and let everyone return to the island…

Predictions: None. Part of the fun of the show is that it’s not named “LOST” without a reason. Perhaps that is the greatest and most valid criticism of it by my friends – no consistent and coherent narrative. But I won’t stop watching anytime soon. And a large number of my predictions for this season came true, but I could only make them at the end of last season. So now I anxiously look forward to completing this season...

Overland Park, Kansas

Why The Dark Knight was actually 2008's Best Picture of the Year

2009-02-23T00:21:00.014-06:00

I was inspired to write this piece about a week ago when a friend commented on my facebook status which opined that Slumdog Millionaire was not, like many had falsely also said about Garden State, a life-changing experience (for life-changing/paradigm-shifting movies, please see Requiem for a Dream, 21 Grams, Donnie Darko, or Trainspotting - also, like Slumdog, a Danny Boyle movie). Like Garden State, Slumdog was a good, entertaining movie. Nothing in the way of cinematography that we haven't already seen in a dozen Ridley or Tony Scott movies, and nothing in the score that many unheralded Bollywood films have served up for decades. No, the success of Slumdog lies in the fact that it is precisely the sort of indie movie that is supposed to win an Oscar. And that is also its most obvious failure.

What is supremely frustrating is that this rather ordinary movie won when the movie that was the finest one made this past year wasn't even nominated. I am speaking, of course, of Chris Nolan's brilliantly executed and instantly classic The Dark Knight, arguably one of the finest films produced in the last decade.

Sam Raimi's Spiderman made people realize that comic book movies could be taut, serious, and full of complexity, much like the best comics and graphic novels are. And Nolan's earlier Batman Begins banished our collective memories stained by outings like Joel Schumacher's clownish Batman & Robin. Nolan reminded us that comic book heroes are ultimately deeply related to humans, and he continues fine storytelling and an epic vision with his second installment of the Batman reboot.

In 2 hours and 12 minutes Nolan and his co-writer, Jonathan Nolan, manage to cover a whole panoply of human complexity and do it with a density fitting for a novel but perfectly suited to the best of what film offers us: graphic sweep. Because this is not a full fledged review, but only an outline of some elements of why The Dark Knight was such a fine film, please forgive the brief commentary...

The Dark Knight's themes

Doing what is right

We watch two ships full of passengers - one of convicted felons, the other of normal citizens, both face off with the difficult moral decision of blowing up the other ship to save their own. Augustine's principle of the double effect, the problem of group think, and the actual famous Prisoner's Dilemma all in action at the same time.

The unexpected

The episode above ties in directly to the unexpected - the convicts refusing to kill the civilians, the civilians waiting quietly for their annihilation via Joker's threat. One is supposed to blow the other up, and we fully expect it to happen as the clock counts down. But it doesn't...

What perhaps is most surprising is that earlier in the film, when confronted with his own choice, Batman goes for Dent instead of his true love - yet is it unexpected that Batman would put the interests of others above his own? We hear Maggie Gyllenhall try to calm Harvey down, shortly before she's blown to absolute bits, and Harvey loses half his face, forever.

The unexpected has a long history in the novel, but executed well in film, is breathtaking. A large majority of those of us in the theater were audibly aghast when we realized Batman had gone for Dent instead of Gyllenhall's Rachel Dawes.

The right to privacy

Bruce Wayne's incredible spy-machine, a device that makes NSA's tapping of our broadband look like the Pony Express and is the wet dream of any Bush administration flunkie or attacker of our civil liberties, used cell-phones in order to track specific words and conversations. Yes, it is used for good in this one specific instance, but it is Lucius Fox's refusal to cooperate in the absolute power (and as he sensed, the absolute corruptibility) of such a device, and Bruce Wayne's thoughtful foreknowledge of this faithfulness and his concurrence with it should be a lesson to us all.

The role of blackmail

It's always about money, isn't it? But how short-term is the thinking of the blackmailer when Morgan Freeman's character asks: "Let me get this straight: You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands. And your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck." What a memorable line - delivered with perfect deadpan comic timing - and perfectly illustrative of the tense strings of deadly earnest seriousness and lighthearted humor that Nolan so skillfully frets us on.

A city under pressure

Nolan doesn't give us a comicized, fake Gotham. It's real. It's in daylight. It's in nighttime. It's normal. It's under pressure and siege. It is a real reflection of a real city, and thus a real reflection of what Batman is really about - us. Real people facing real problems. And that's the dramatic irony that hits home - here a comic book hero is helping us explore the very non comic book issues of our daily lives.

Citizens inspired

Indeed, in one of the poignant parts of the film, a Batman dilettante, dressed in hockey pads and a rubber mask, is being tortured by Joker, and he, terribly scared, tells Joker - "he (Batman) helps us realize we don't have to be pushed around by scum like you." For this line to be delivered by a man who knows he is about to die would be a simple line inserted into the mouth of a superhero. But it isn't a superhero - it's an ordinary man, dressed in the garb of a hero, showing how one man can inspire a movement - that despite the utter unconventionality of a man dressed like a bat fighting crime - that crime sucks and it needs to be fought by people other than police - and the people get that, and respond, with bravery.

The wonders of technology

I wouldn't be a red-blooded male if I didn't tell you that when I watched the 18-wheeler flip and Batman do a wheelie off a building with his sweet Batbike I whooped pretty loudly in the theater. But that's not all Nolan wows us with. Gone are the cheesy ordinary gadgets from the utility belt, hello to the Q-type 007 gadgets of the 21st century. And we do like it, Mikey.

Anger

"Some men just want to watch the world burn." Michael Caine's understated and perfect delivery of this now classic line is not only so relevant in a financial crisis precipitated by the spawn of Gordon Gecko, but it's also so very problematic to those of us seeking a motive. Motive, the pure hard currency of those who think reason will carry the day and have no place for the supernatural in explaining crime and wrongdoing. Yes, evil is real. Yes, evil is supernatural, in the worst sense. And evil will not be reasoned with, no matter how dead you make God or how much you mock the constancy of Good and the necessity of its struggle with Evil.

Necessity to protect those we love

Not only does Batman go for Dent instead of Rachel, Commissioner Gordon has to let his family think he has died in order to play the Joker and thus capture him. This is Cincinnatus-like civic dedication. And that's where we know it's a movie, because we don't have those kinds of civil servants anymore, not at any level of federal government.

The contradictions in all of us

Batman - between Bruce Wayne and Batman. Between a playboy and someone who wants to settle down. Between duty and desire. Between Rachel and Dent. Between Gotham and the Joker.

Dent - Aaron Eckhart's brilliant performance really doesn't leave us any room for criticism. White Knight vs. Dark Knight. Truth vs. Dishonesty. Optimism vs. Cynicism. His own self-fulfilled Cassandra-like prophecy: "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Nolan's brilliant ending allows us, and Dent/Two-Face, to see both parts fulfilled.

Rachel - her true love and her real love. Waiting and Not Waiting. Dedication to a man who knows what his life's purpose is - yet he dies betraying it, while the man she left betrays himself to save the city. Juliet, eat your heart out.

Lucius and Alfred - loyal, trusted confidantes. Their very existence also confirms we are in a comic book, yet their genuine, real, and effortless performances are a real treat and a complement to the Bale/Eckhart/Ledger youthful crew.

This is all to say nothing of Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard's haunting and memorable soundtrack. The only danger of having someone like Hans Zimmer always doing movies like this is that sometimes you can't keep Batman from blending with Gladiator, which was ultimately derived from Holst's The Planets. But, onward to the so-called "Best Picture of the Year"...

Slumdog's themes:

formulaic love story = boy meets girl....tragic circumstances...separated...finally meet again...girl standoffish...boy steadfast in his love...girl comes around...but prevented by outside forces...finally meet again, and live happily ever after...

poverty in India = as I've said in other places, nothing we haven't seen long before in Gandhi or City of Joy.

good storytelling = Danny Boyle first gave us Trainspotting, so we don't doubt his storytelling ability, but this doesn't move anywhere near as fast as Trainspotting, nor are we confronted with utter unpredictability. In fact, the great weakness of Slumdog is that right from the beginning, we know we are headed directly for a happy ending. And that is its great tragedy.

great soundtrack = A.R. Rahman is well known everywhere but the US, so to say that this music is a "discovery" is like an American discovering the metric system or soccer, both of which seem to prevail everywhere else in the world except with us. In other words, it would be ignorant to call this a "great new sound" because it's been around for ages. We've just been too busy listening to Chris Brown and Britney and the like...you know, our meaningful American anthems.

And this movie beat out The Dark Knight?

Apparently not only Wall Street is capable of incredible stupidity: 8949 Wilshire Boulevard; Beverly Hills, California 90211. That, my friends, is the address of the Academy. Know that there is somewhere else for Stupid to live, should it leave Wall Street for warmer weather.

Overland Park, Kansas

Mennonites

2008-12-28T10:43:00.001-06:00

As my eye scanned the list of suggested topics for this paper, none stood out in particular. Sure, there was the man with the great German last name that my professor really liked, but I thought that his theories were silly, and I knew I couldn’t write a paper on him with a straight face. Then there was John Paul II, a pope I am very not-fond of. Vatican II, nope. Feminist theology, DEFINITELY not. Then it hit me. I could write about Mennonites. My best friend is a Mennonite, and I’ve always inquired, when the occasion has presented itself, into various points of belief of his religious sect. It would help me get to know him even better as a friend. Thus, the goal of this paper is to explore the historical Mennonite faith through two particular teachings, refer them to Catholicism, and discuss a point of agreement between the faiths and a modern point of controversy about Mennonites.

The Mennonites really began as Anabaptists, theologically speaking. The Anabaptists, among other things, primarily rejected the entire principle of infant baptism. Like most Protestant denominations, Anabaptists rejected the concept of “two pillars” of doctrine – Scripture and Tradition. Instead, they agreed, with Luther, that “sola Scriptura” was a guiding principle in the understanding and development of doctrine. So, very logically, the Anabaptists concluded that infant baptism was nowhere to be found in Scripture, and therefore, was not to be practiced. James Waltner, in his book This We Believe, comments: “Study of the Scriptures led Anabaptists to this view. Nowhere in the Bible did they find support for the common practice of baptizing infants. Instead, they found baptism related to repentance (Acts 2:38) and with the faith and commitment of the believer (Acts 8:12, 35-38)” (141). Needless to say, while this caused much debate, controversy, and most importantly, death – in the case of murdered Mennonites who were killed for their beliefs – at the time, today it is accepted as commonplace. The “Shared Convictions” published by the Mennonite World Conference on March 15, 2006 still retain this belief, in the 3rd point particularly: “As a church, we are a community of those whom God’s spirit calls to turn from sin, acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord, receive baptism upon confession of faith, and follow Christ in life” (General Council) (emphasis mine).

As noted above, Catholicism specifically depends on Apostolic Tradition in addition to Scripture, and the reference of 1500 years of the tradition of infant baptism was one starting point, but the Catechism of the Council of Trent states two other interesting, and compelling counterarguments. First, it states that there are two episodes in Scripture in which an entire household is referred to being baptized, and that an “entire” household must necessarily include children, possibly infants (I Cor 1:16 & Acts 16:33). But further, it adds: “Circumcision, too, which was a figure of Baptism, affords a strong argument…that children were circumcised on the eighth day is universally known. If then circumcision…was profitable to children, it is clear that Baptism, which is the circumcision of Christ, not made by hand, is also profitable to them" (177).

Baptism was the topic that named the Anabaptist movement, but it was a man that the Mennonites were named after: Menno Simon. A former Catholic priest, Menno had doubts about transubstantiation, the Catholic belief that the Body and Blood of Christ – the Real Presence – became present under the appearances of bread and wine during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. While he continued to have doubts, he found himself inspired by the zeal of the Anabaptists whenever he encountered them. This admiration eventually turned into comradeship, and on January 12th, 1536, he renounced his priesthood and his Catholic faith. His later writings go very far to show just how much he had resolved his “doubts” about transubstantiation. Here are some of his thoughts on the Mass, which deserve to be quoted at length:

…yea, they call the disgraceful and sinful mass, the sacrifice of the Lord; and the bread and wine his real flesh and blood; for this is the custom and manner of the ungodly, because they know not the true God, the God of heaven and earth, and believe not his holy and inestimable word; but hate the true service and are opposed thereto. In God’s stead they have a visible and tangible creature; and maintain a service of their own choice. So did Israel with the golden calf; with Baal and Moloch; and Antioch with his Maosim; the Babylonians with their Bel; the Egyptians with their Isis…
Simon, Part I, 50

With his likening of the Mass to pagan sacrifices, Simon shows that he has certainly more than resolved his doubts about transubstantiation. Indeed, if the Mass is idolatry, the above-quoted text is a condemnation of Catholicism as a standard-bearer for the very worst idolatry. Imagine, the Mass, put on a list with Moloch, a god appeased by the sacrifice of children!

The allusion to “sacrifice” is not without some merit – indeed, the Catholic point of view is that what is happening during the Mass – what the Protestants refer to as “the Lord’s Supper” – is an unbloody commemoration of the event at Calvary, not simply a remembrance of the Last Supper. Fr. Michael Muller comments: “Thus did He (Christ) also unite the two kinds of sacrifice of the Old Law in the one adorable Sacrifice of His Body and Blood, which He offered up under the appearance of bread and wine” (123).

But the questions of Baptism and the Eucharist are old arguments – ones that date to the beginnings of the Mennonite movement and have not significantly changed in the last half millennium. The Catholic and Mennonite positions on these two sacraments are irreconcilably opposed. But rather than dwell only on differences, let us examine one area in which there is some agreement between Mennonites and Catholics: social justice. On their official website, the Mennonite Church states as one of their core beliefs the importance of peacemaking: “We believe God defeats evil with sacrificial and unconditional love. We see peacebuilding as an achievable way of life” (www.mennoniteusa.org). The Catholic Church heartily agrees: “He who hates his neighbor loses his peace of mind, and becomes displeasing to God…If peacemakers are called children of God, those who stir up strife and dissension are called children of Satan” (Spirago-Clarke 390). It is heartening that both Catholics and Mennonites see peacemaking as integral to the mission of a Christian.

One final area of belief that needs to be addressed, because I have seen someone misrepresent the “Mennonite position,” is pacifism. At a later date, my friend Brian gave me a very lengthy explanation of the Mennonite position on this issue. In brief, it is this: Mennonites have traditionally been conscientious objectors. Again, in the words of Menno Simon: “…Christians are not allowed to fight with the sword…If we take this view of it we shall easily understand with what kind of arms Christians should fight, namely, with the word of God, which is a two edged sword…” (Part II, 434). Because of this religious belief, both Canada and the United States provided alternative non-war working activities for Mennonite men of draft age. Many of these Mennonite men served longer than their draftee counterparts, often serving long after the war ended in special “CPS” (Civilian Public Service) camps where they helped build roads, log forests, etc. Mennonites, as mentioned above, deeply believe in peace, so this strong stance against war and warmaking is intellectually consistent.

Alas, again we are at a divergence of views from Catholicism. The Catholic position on war can be summarized very succinctly (though an exposition of just war theory would be not just another paper, but an entire book): “If all men did the will of Christ there would be no war. But if some people refuse to do the will of Christ, those who desire to fulfill His will may be compelled to fight and may quite lawfully do so” (Rumble & Carty 287). To put it another way, in the words of one of my drill instructors from Marine Corps boot camp: “the true warrior prays for peace but trains for war.”

There are so many things that have struck me as I have done research for my paper, but I suppose I should confine myself to two points in particular. One, it is hard to imagine what it is to be in the really small minority. As a cradle Catholic, I have been, for my entire life, a card-carrying member of the largest Christian denomination in the world. We are a majority in many places. The Supreme Court of the United States has 5 Catholic justices, the President of Lebanon, must, by constitutional mandate, be a Catholic, and the Vatican is the only internationally-recognized country in the world that is ruled by the leader of a worldwide religion. Some estimates place worldwide numbers of Mennonites at 1.5 million, as of 2006. 1.5 Million. There are probably 1.5 Million Catholics in the state of Kansas! It made me realize that there must be a tremendous conviction in the hearts of Mennonite believers to see themselves as such a small remnant and as keepers of the true Christian faith. Two, I am grieved by how little people care to educate themselves about subjects that they know nothing about. I have, on two occasions that I can recall, witnessed people who probably knew nothing about Mennonites pontificate to me about what Mennonites “did” or “believed,” usually due to anecdotal evidence. If writing this paper has taught me one thing, it is that before you open your mouth in “knowledge” of another religion, you should take care to at least look up some basic facts about it.

Thus, in the Mennonite spirit of peacemaking, though I am a rabid Catholic and always will be, I will allow them the last words, words that I know Catholics can share and wholeheartedly agree with: “This much we know: separation from Christ is hell. Fellowship with Christ is heaven. This fellowship is open to us now” (Waltner 226).
Amen.

Works Cited

Muller, Michael. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books, 1992.

Pius V, St. The Catechism of the Council of Trent. Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books, 1982.

Rumble, Leslie, and Charles Carty. Radio Replies, Second Volume. Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books, 1979.

“Shared Convictions.” Mennonite World Conference. March 15, 2006.

Simon, Menno. Complete Works. Aylmer, Indiana: Pathway Publishers, 1983.

Spirago, Francis. The Catechism Explained. Ed. Richard Clarke. New York, Benzinger Brothers, 1921.

Waltner, James H. This We Believe. Newton, Kansas: Faith and Life Press, 1968.

On Animal Rights

2008-12-22T10:27:00.004-06:00

for an Ethics class

…and when the ass saw the angel standing, she fell under the feet of the rider: who being angry beat her sides more vehemently with a staff. And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said: What have I done to thee? Why strikest thou me, lo, now this third time? Balaam answered: Because thou hast deserved it, and hast served me ill: I would I had a sword that I might kill thee. The ass said: Am not I thy beast, on which thou hast been always accustomed to ride until this present day? Tell me if I ever did the like thing to thee. But he said: Never.
Numbers 22:27-30

The idea of animal “rights” is fairly new on the ethical stage, though the story of Balaam’s ass has been around longer than Christianity. The story is instructive for three reasons: 1) It reminds us that there is a long-standing human hegemony over animals. While there may have been more of a conflict in the days of wooly mammoths and the like, humans have since held a clear advantage over beasts that has only grown over time. 2) Balaam’s ass questions Balaam and asks if the punishment it is receiving is just. The implication is that beating would be fine, if it were deserved, but it does not seem to be deserved in this case. 3) Balaam’s single-word acknowledgement of his asinine behavior would seem to indicate that he realizes his behavior is unjust. Now the use of this story from the Book of Numbers is not an attempt to use the Bible as an authority regarding the ethical question of “animal rights,” which is so often before us in the modern age. Rather, it is simply to set a stage for our discussion – a discussion which is limited to the question: “Is experimentation on animals moral if the end is legitimate scientific research?”

Pain as intrinsic physical evil

Those who argue for the complete abolition of animal experimentation argue that pain – which animals can feel – is an intrinsic evil and that any action that causes intentional pain to another creature is immoral. They would argue that the PDE (Principle of the Double Effect) is in play – harming an animal to obtain a good is not permissible. Scientists would argue that the PDE is indeed in play, and that what is intended is making scientific advances for the good of humans, and that unintentional harm comes to some animals as a result – but that the pain of the animals is not, in itself, the end of the testing.

Animal experimenters, in the same vein as the “pain as intrinsic evil” argument, argue for animals’ dignity. Animal testing is an affront to the dignity of an animal and it is “Speciest” (they use the terminology of racism) to consider human dignity of more importance than animal dignity. Those opposed to the “speciest” label would probably reply that “dignity,” along with the idea of “rights” is something that belongs in the moral order, and it is not clear that animals partake of the moral order. Certainly, Balaam’s ass reminded us that what Balaam was doing was wrong, yet it did not attack his actions per se, but rather the context of a particular action.

The reductio ad absurdum for both of these arguments ends in two forks: 1) If it is immoral to cause pain to animals and an affront to their dignity, then how can domestication or slaughter of them for food ever be justified? 2) If animals are deserving of this right, what of other forms of life? Does not an amoeba have eyes? If I prick it, will it not bleed?

Utilitarianism

It would seem that the most obvious argument an ethicist would rely on in this argument is utilitarianism: the greatest good for the greatest number. If some cure for some disease or some way to reconstruct an organ can be obtained by experimentation – indeed, even some painful experimentation – on animals, the cost is not only worthwhile, but justified. Animal rights’ activists would argue, with some merit, that much of scientific testing is inane and serves no purpose whatsoever. Here are two particularly disturbing cases: “In one case, baby mice had their legs chopped off so that experimenters could observe whether they'd learn to groom themselves with their stumps. In another, polar bears were submerged in a tank of crude oil and salt water to see if they'd live” (www.scu.edu/ethics). These two examples are not justified by the PDE or utilitarianism. What good is being obtained? Far from good, this seems to be animal cruelty.

Yet, is animal cruelty an evil? Yes, certainly in and of itself. While God appointed Adam as King over all the beasts, the implication was that Adam was to be a good king. Even for those who reject a Creation or Deistic narrative, the idea of human hegemony over animals betokens a “good” hegemony, for beasts, dumb though they may be, may still rise up if mistreated, if only out of a sense of self-preservation – a primitive rational self-interest. Thus, while the utilitarian argument is a solid one, it falters in the face of idle, Frankensteinian curiosity that besmirches the noble aims of scientific research with a leering beastliness.

Rational Self-Interest

The reason why this issue is so little noticed is because it goes on in the periphery of our society. We all benefit from animal experimentation in some way – it might be a cosmetic that a woman wears that was tested on an animal, or an organ that is cloned that was first grown on the back of a lab rat – and so it is in our self-interest, as enjoyers of the benefits of modern society, to allow this experimentation to continue.

Yet, the arguments brought forth, and Balaam’s ass compel us to ask: “But, is it the right type of experimentation?” If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, the most basic awareness should be the watchword of a civilized society. Animal experimentation is not permissible for reasons of mere curiosity. The panoply of life on this planet is meant to live in conflict and harmony. When examining whether a particular animal experimentation should take place, the question posed to a rational being, the only type of being that can act virtuously, by virtue of our intellect and reason, to date not with certainty discerned in non-human creatures, must always be: “Is this directly concerned with bringing about a good for humans?” If this cannot be answered in the positive, the experimentation is indeed negative and unworthy of us as guardians of life on this earth.

That's my President, you أنت غبي الأحمق

2008-12-14T23:49:00.005-06:00

Before I say what I would like to say to the who threw his shoe at the President of the United States, let me clarify my position on the Iraq War.

1. I originally supported this war. I did not at the time we went to war in 2001 realize what was at stake, nor did I realize the erroneous conflation of the War on Terror with the War in Iraq. I didn't even know that the War on Terror was an excuse dreamed up to permanently take my civil liberties, including habeas, and that it would provide a proving ground for things like Gitmo, stepped-up rendition, secret prisons, etc. As I learned some things, I realized we were in an unjust war, and further, that our entire permanent war footing was untenable and unconstitutional. I've been solidly against this war since mid-2004. I may not have been right since the beginning, but I was honest enough to admit when I was wrong and change.

2. I did not vote for President Bush in 2004, nor did I vote for McCain or Obama in 2008. I am an anti-this-war old school conservative. I repudiate everything the Neocons, who long ago hijacked the Bush Administration, stand for.

3. I hope to hold the new President to his campaign promise - full withdrawal in 16 months.

That being said, my dear Iraqi journalist:

1. I recognize that you are frustrated. We have occupied your country for nearly a decade now. Before that, we embargoed it and starved your children and elderly. A million Iraqi children died because of those embargoes, and our Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, went on one of our television shows, 60 Minutes, and callously said that the price of those childrens' lives was "worth" what we were trying to do in Iraq - which you and I both know was to shore up our access to oil and put Iran on notice, among other things. The idea of spreading democracy at the point of a sword is a tradition that dates back to Woodrow Wilson, but I assure you it is not a founding principle of what is left of the American Republic.

2. I understand if you are angry. You may have had relatives killed. You may have had your job taken from you if you were subject to the unilateral anti-Baathification law that Paul Bremer laid down with no consultation and/or approval from anyone. You may have been part of the army that we disbanded, which had a trickle-down effect on your family and your ability to provide.

3. I understand that you want to show your frustration and anger. This is the right of any human, and as someone who lives in a free country, know that the occupying soldiers and Marines - some of them my friends who I knew when I served in our military - who are in your streets recognize that as well.

But please understand something. We as Americans will not stand for such disrespect for the leader of our country. Right or wrong, he is our President. I assure you, I have not been light on him over the years. But my disagreement for his policies would never translate into a physical attack on him. And I have been a US citizen since birth. I would argue that even the most vehement attackers of the President would not condone such behavior from fellow citizens. But you are not a US citizen, and your behavior violated the most basic law of hospitality - a value much revered in an Islamic country and part of the world.

Please be warned. This President's good humor let you off the hook this time. If you ever raise your hand in anger against his person (or his successor's person) again, you are likely to never hear the bullet which will enter your brain. And no one, not here in America anyway, would shed a tear for you.

Please be patient. We have elected a man who has promised to remove our occupying forces from your country in the next 16 months. All we can do is hope. That is easy for me to say, safe here from IEDs, roadside bombs, and rampant unemployment. But I urge you, whatever the saying is in Arabic, it is as true as it renders in English - the pen is mightier than the sword. Use your pen. Mightily.

Sarah Palin and Stupidity

2008-11-20T00:20:00.003-06:00

I can't help it. Every time her name comes up, I pile on. There's something ungentlemanly about it. I mean, the woman lost, why keep attacking?

I suppose I would attack anyone so intellectually incurious as Sarah Palin. I find intellectual incuriosity not just incoherent, but deeply insulting to the gifts that God has given us. My three strikes were:

1. Not knowing a Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade.

2. Not knowing a single piece of legislation that John McCain authored or sponsored.

3. Not knowing what the Bush Doctrine was.

I agree with Andrew Sullivan, who said on Bill Maher some months back, that her nomination was a disqualification in and of itself for McCain.

Yet, she still is on our lips and in our jokes.

For those still interested in reading - not about her, her family, or her beliefs - about what Sarah Palin's candidacy really meant, you will find plenty of good reading here.

The Bailout: thoughts from Machiavelli and Aquinas

2008-11-19T23:55:00.003-06:00

Fr. James Schall does a great job here of framing the current climate of the bailout crisis in terms of what Machiavelli, Rousseau, Aquinas, and others thought about property, excellence, and redistribution. Well worth the read.

from a Paul Craig Roberts column

2008-11-13T21:30:00.002-06:00

The world has tired of American hegemony and had its fill of American arrogance. America’s reputation is in tatters: the financial debacle, endless red ink, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, rendition, torture, illegal wars based on lies and deception, disrespect for the sovereignty of other countries, war crimes, disregard for international law and the Geneva Conventions, the assault on habeas corpus and the separation of powers, a domestic police state, constant interference in the internal affairs of other countries, and boundless hypocrisy.

The change that is coming is the end of American empire. The hegemon has run out of money and influence. Obama as “America’s first black president” will lift hopes and, thus, allow the act to be carried on a little longer. But the New American Century is already over.

You can read the original column here.

The Sigma Tau Delta Midwest Regional Conference

2008-11-09T11:11:00.007-06:00

So, nervousness. Yes, I've been on TV and radio, and done public speaking, and just had a column in the Kansas Star this weekend. But I've never presented to my peers in a formal environment.

I was nervous. But, after the first few words come out, you're just reading a paper to people interested enough not only to be there, after driving hundreds of miles (our furthest friends came from Tennessee and Michigan), but to be there at noon, for the first presentation.

It was a great experience. I got to be on the first and last paper presentation panels, and it was the last paper I presented, the one I thought would be least accessible and interesting to most people, the one on George Herbert's poem "The Altar", that won the "Best All-Around" paper for the conference. That gives me a lot of hope and confidence in submitting that one to the International Conference, which was planned on my birthday weekend, obviously for my benefit :-)

I made a lot of new friends, as I always do at events like this. When you're around others who love English as much as you are in a concentrated weekend of "English love" it's really hard not to come out with new friends. :-)

Also representing Rockhurst were Cameron Summers, Liz Brown, and Brian Talbert. Cameron and I had long discussions in the car between KC and Columbia, in between listening to podcasts of This American Life.

Some notable papers from the panels I was at:

Matt Burnett's collection of poetry which included "Meager Fly": a poem which discusses a fly's venturing into a cup of coffee.

Laura Citino's "The Shipwreck Coast", a CNF piece that discusses family, history, and "why?"

Charise Alexander's "Sex and the City: Four Women, One Voice, Many Silences", a fairly scathing critique of the show as a leap backwards for feminism.

Joel Slater's "Cognitive Dissonance in 'Bartleby'": how does Bartleby (not) reconcile Christianity and Capitalism?

Eric Dial's "Historical Scars": some amazing war poetry - some related to the story recounted in the film "Joyeaux Noel" and others about the recent war in Iraq. Devastating work.

Melissa Shaner's "Young Goodwife Brown": excellent "from a woman's perspective" historical poetry.

Plenary reading by Missouri Poet Laureate Walter Bargen: 'nuff said.

Photos:

Day 1:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10564&l=42078&id=1142340120

Day 2:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10567&l=7fb9e&id=1142340120

If you would like more information on Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society, visit their website.

If you'd like more information on ISI, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, an organization I tabled for while at the conference, here's their website.

And here is the link to the global Facebook group for STD Midwest.

What Facebook Status updates tell you

2008-11-05T23:36:00.006-06:00

In my journal I scribble down ideas for future articles. One of them reads "talk about Facebook updates." Well, I was going to wait a while to do that piece, but last night's surfeit of updates prodded me to give others some insight into what my generation is thinking. The 18-24 vote really did make a significant difference but was only one part of a wide coalition that Obama built.

For those of you who don't know, Facebook "updates" give you an opportunity to comment on the moment. It's an impressionistic "tweet" which is continuously updated for everyone you're networked with.

I'm blocking out the name of the person whose update it is and am not commenting at all. I've also "bleeped" words where necessary :-)

Oh, and to give you some context, my 401 facebook friends are:

an average age of 25

of all religious persuasions

mostly middle to upper middle class

college-educated (graduate level or above) or in college (undergraduate)

*****************************************

XXX is really disappointed in a lot of people...
16 minutes ago

XXX is elated and for everyone that fears change, change is good, change is necessary, and change is happening because and for all of us.
33 minutes ago

XXX is SO relieved Obama won! YAY!
44 minutes ago

XXX Has Decided That Somethings Are Better Left Unsaid....
about an hour ago

XXX is Concerned As To What This Country Has Come Too...I Feel Disgraced!
about an hour ago

XXX cried when his faith in America was restored.
3 hours ago

XXX Downtown Kansas City is filled with cheering and cars honking their horns.
3 hours ago

XXX finds it funny that our first black president isn't really black, and the first Catholic VP isn't really Catholic.
5 hours ago

XXX is allll about John McCain's speech.
5 hours ago

XXX is God Bless the U.S.A.
5 hours ago

XXX is well, coulda been worse....it could've been Hilary...just threw up thinking about that one.
6 hours ago

XXX You say it best, when you say nothing at all.
6 hours ago

XXX is YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
6 hours ago

XXX is so excited for the next 4 years, and will pray for continued wisdom and discernment for our nation's leaders. Yes. We. Did.

XXX is zac efron for president!
7 hours ago

XXX is thinking that even I would make a better president than Obama.
7 hours ago

XXX is grinning from ear to ear: si, podemos, motherf*cker.
7 hours ago

XXX is so proud to be an American.
7 hours ago

XXX All the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person's need was met.
7 hours ago

XXX is SAD!
7 hours ago

XXX is oddly inspired that every status she's seen is about the election- regardless of your opinion, I'm glad youre passionate and care (minus the racist bullsh*t).
7 hours ago

XXX is feeling like he needs to join the peace corps or something.
7 hours ago

XXX is trusting America...maybe you see something I don't. {Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave-O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?}
7 hours ago

XXX is tentatively attending the Obama inaugural ball and swearing in ceremony.
7 hours ago

XXX is OBAMA!
7 hours ago

XXX is happy about CHANGE, especially the Obama's new dog!
7 hours ago

XXX is SO AMAZINGLY HAPPY!! THANK GOD FOR OBAMA AND BOSTON RALLYS!!
7 hours ago

XXX is happy for the African American people, and the emotional healing. Hopefully Obama will see the light, that real hope goes further than emotions! I pray.
8 hours ago

XXX IS SO THRILLED. Change is here and it is powerful. Obama '08!
8 hours ago -

XXX is so freaking awesome. this is like the end of Star Wars when the Emperor is finally defeated and the Empire is defeated. ...wait ignore what i just said. this is great, though.
8 hours ago

XXX is Glad that Obama was elected, but not ready to crown him savior of America. Let's see what happens these next four (8?) years.
8 hours ago

XXX is wondering what is next.
8 hours ago

XXX is celebrating Obama's good old fashioned ass kicking over McCain... YES WE DID!!!!!!!!!!!
8 hours ago

XXX is ready for an Obama Presidency.
8 hours ago

XXX ideas are bulletproof.
8 hours ago

XXX is you know what would have been funny... if pres obama would have said, i accept this rose.
8 hours ago

XXX says OBAMANATION!!!! McCain have fun shopping with Palin!!
8 hours ago

XXX is hoping for the best.
8 hours ago

XXX is oh so excited for the future and can not wait till this weekend to see her bffff!
8 hours ago

XXX is woah.
8 hours ago

XXX :"There are no lost causes because there are no gained causes." -Russell Kirk.
8 hours ago

XXX has accepted defeat, is ready to support the new president and hope he lives up to the hype.
8 hours ago

XXX is amazed that for the first time ever she can believe that there actually CAN be change....YES WE CAN!!
8 hours ago

XXX is really excited for the path of our country. God is nonpartisan, just remember that and quit with the "How would Jesus Vote" attitude... OBAMA 08!
8 hours ago

XXX is America is the real winner.
8 hours ago

XXX is go-bama!
8 hours ago -

XXX is proud to be an American again... OBAMA '08.
8 hours ago

XXX "Bush f*cked up so bad that he made it hard for another white guy to get elected"
8 hours ago

XXX says democracy: now ur doin it rite.
8 hours ago

XXX OBAMA WINS!
8 hours ago

XXX is Why do we have to have a Greek prof that doesn't understand that studying cannot get done on election night!!!

XXX damn I am so moved.
8 hours ago

XXX is Yay!!!!!
8 hours ago

XXX loves how i just talked to my sister in Israel about the election... she stayed up all night for it! such a good girl!
9 hours ago

XXX is looking forward.
9 hours ago

XXX is PRESIDENT OBAMA!!!!
9 hours ago

XXX is WAHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
9 hours ago

XXX wants to run and scream and jump up and down but will probably get yelled at for being too loud!!! OBAMA/BIDEN '08!!! :).
9 hours ago

XXX is thinking about where she wants to move to....with her money, so this new gay-vornment wont steal it.
9 hours ago

XXX at 12:12am November 5
XXX you can move to australia with me. i'm living on the beach. and nobody steals your money or wants to bomb australia.

XXX loves falling asleep to gun shots and dreaming about her higher taxes...bummer.
9 hours ago

XXX is OBAMA!!! WOO!!
9 hours ago

XXX hopes everyone knows what their doing.
9 hours ago

XXX is the power of many voices prevails for the change we need.
9 hours ago

XXX is going to miss Tina Fey's Sarah Palin.
9 hours ago

XXXX says... yes we DID.
9 hours ago

XXX is Yay!!!!!:) :)!!!!!!
9 hours ago

XXX says it is time for all conservatives to come together to fight the socialist policies to come! remember the Republican Revolution! Conservative resurgence!
9 hours ago

XXX wishes he was in Chicago right now!!!!
9 hours ago

XXX says it is time for all conservatives to come together to fight the socialist policies to come!
9 hours ago

XXX is praying for the country she loves. May God have mercy on us.
9 hours ago

XXX "If you're afraid of the future, then get out of the way, stand aside. The people of this country are ready to move again." - Ronald Reagan
9 hours ago

XXX has never been so angry in her life. History will prove me right. And if all of you would do me a favor and respect my opinion, that would be nice.
9 hours ago

XXX is OBAMA!!! I can't wait for January!!
9 hours ago

XXX is well the next four years ought to be interesting...
9 hours ago

XXX is disappointed. We're in for a rough four years.
9 hours ago

XXX is HISTORY HAS BEEN MADE!!!
9 hours ago

XXX is screaming and jumping up and down. President Obama...what a nice ring to it!!!
9 hours ago

XXX congratulates Obama and his supporters, especially the African-Americans who have finally received their due.
10 hours ago

XXX is aware that we now have the president we deserve.
10 hours ago

XXX is laughing at the 'election' results, good times and God spare us.
10 hours ago

XXX is astonished that a man with no experience will now be President of the United States.

XXX is sad! :(.
10 hours ago

XXX hold on...its going to be a long bumpy ride down the tubes.
10 hours ago

XXX is taking a shot for Barack!
10 hours ago

XXX is YES!!! OBAMA! OBAMA! OBAMA!
10 hours ago

XXX is sated on electoral deliciousness.
10 hours ago

Reflections on the Election, Part 2

2008-11-05T22:32:00.005-06:00

Okay, so I promised this entry last night. I'm sorry that I was foolish enough to think I would get to type it. I was transfixed by the news all night. I ended the evening asleep on my couch around 1am as my last guest, waiting for North Carolina, Al Franken, and other races probably saw me asleep, got up, turned out the lights, and went home.

I had a great party. It was pretty bipartisan:

Amber - Obama

Jessica - Obama

Brian - McCain

Bridget - McCain

Robin - Obama

Gina - McCain

James - McCain

Michael - Obama

Philip - Obama

Mark - McCain

Diane - McCain

Mike - McCain

Lin - Obama

Chris - McCain

Joe - McCain

Liz - Obama

Karen - Obama

Mike F. - Obama

Matthew - Baldwin

Stephen - Baldwin

So the joke all night was that I voted for "Alec Baldwin" instead of for Chuck Baldwin.

So, McCain squeaked by at my house. Part of the crowd at my house was happy, the other part was, unsurprisingly, fairly subdued.

Some observations:

I'm amazed that they can predict with high accuracy, and with zero percent of precincts reporting, the outcome of the election. Blows my mind. It was also strange, and terribly refreshing, in a decade that has been dominated by Florida and Ohio, that it was California, Oregon, and Washington that pushed Obama over the top. We knew it would happen at the top of the hour, and when the chyron read "Obama elected President" there was silence in the room from supporters of both candidates. We just looked, transfixed.

2 years. Over. Finally. After a few minutes of shock, we wondered when McCain would come on. We pondered what the phone conversations must be like at this moment: "Congratulations Mr. President-Elect. Thank you, Senator. You ran a great race. So did you. I look forward to giving you my support and uniting the country. Thanks for that, John."

That dialogue would have been implausible for me, save for the fact that John McCain gave the speech of his life. A man who I've never found remarkable in speechmaking found his voice, at the verge of tears, above the din of classless booing supporters, and pledged his support behind the new President.

Then the man who got elected for, among other things, making great speeches, our new President-Elect, gave one of his own. In his speech, he alluded to Kennedy's "pay any price" line from the Inaugural. He also alluded to the Gettysburg address, not lost on those of us who realize Obama was not too long ago a state senator from Illinois, as Lincoln once aspired to be. His delivery was crisp as ever, but it finally, I think, carried the real note of gravitas. As we watched him come out, I was the only one to speak, and all I could think to say was: "The burden of the world is upon your shoulders, now." Whatever he thought was going on prior to this - it's the real deal now.

His speech didn't allude to any policy, and I found it interesting, as my friend Brian pointed out this morning, that the only reference to the war was something to the effect of "we should keep in mind those troops who were defending us tonight." A lot of people don't know that Obama wants to escalate the war in Afghanistan. How much stomach does the Democratic wing of the Democratic party really have for more war? We will find out soon.

And if this morning's indication of former Clinton staffer Rahm Emmanuel as perhaps Obama's Chief of Staff shows just how far Obama is willing to implement "change" we might not have to wait long at all to be uninspired.

But for now, the dust has settled. We have a President-Elect in transition. Let's see how his Cabinet shapes up. We won't have to wait long for him to make monumental decisions. And it's fair to say that John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsberg are arguing about who is going to retire first.

We have a nearly 60-seat Democratic majority in the Senate and an even larger plurality in the House. Bob Novak rightly argues that Obama did not receive a mandate, nor does he have the tools and majority with which to enact mandates, but in the context of the last 8 years, he certainly treated the Republicans to their just dessert for 8 years of irresponsible governance: "a thumping," as our outgoing President would call it.

This is the real question that looms above all of Obama's upcoming decisions as he figures out where he will lead this country in the next 4 years: Will he govern from the center, to which he has run throughout most of the General Election, or will he cater to the needs of the ultra-Left that helped to elect him? It's fair to say that whatever position he takes, Senator Clinton will stake out the position best suited to oppose him.

The mantle of governance is now upon the Democrats, the other side of the Janus coin that features the Republicans. Let's see what they can do.

Reflections on the Election, Part I

2008-11-04T13:17:00.007-06:00

So here we are at last.

This morning I woke up at around 7am - those of you who know me know it takes something earth-shattering to get me up before 9am, as I usually don't go to bed until around 1am. I trundled down to my local polling place - a protestant church (an interesting aside - where is "separation of church and state" on election day?) and waited 45 minutes to cast my ballot.

Curiously enough, in Kansas you are asked whether such and such a judge should remain in office. There's like 20 of these. I had to abstain from all of those because I didn't know anything about them.

The elected offices - well, apart from very happily picking a 3rd party candidate, for the 2nd election in a row, I also voted for 2 of 3 people who had robocalled both my office and my cell in the last 4 days. I resent being robocalled, and I realized my Rotary Club must have given my name out because they are one of the few places where both my office and my cell are in one database. I really try to restrict distribution of my cell number. I wish I could have pushed some button during the robocall that asked "Push here if you're already voting for me and want me to shut up."

I had cable installed for my election party tonight. There should be all sorts there - Obama people, McCain people, 3rd party people, even some apolitical people. I'll get the cable uninstalled tomorrow, which should be Senator Obama's first full day as President-Elect.

Five things I'm thinking about between now and 5pm, when my party kicks off and I will abandon school and work to watch a television for 6 hours:

1. I can't believe it's finally over. For all the ballyhooing about how long this election has been running, I'm so glad that a decision will finally be made. Mind you, it's not the best of choices - it might even be the worst of choices - but at least we will start talking about other things again.

2. I was dead wrong about blacks and women. My assistant recently held it over my head that nearly a year ago I said that our country was ready for neither a black man nor a woman (black or otherwise) as president. The legitimate runs of both of those candidates (who I heartily, heartily disagree with on 95% of the issues) proved otherwise.

That being said, there are racist people who are making a decision based on the color of skin solely (I do not have time in this blog post to discuss the very real problems of Jeremiah Wright and his attitude vis-a-vis America and "black America" - but they are problematic and reflect on a long-term parishioner like Obama. I am simply making the point that some people aren't investigating ideology. They are just fearful of a black man ruling the country.).

And there are religious fanatics who think any shade of protestant is acceptable for ruling a country but the idea of a Mormon or a Muslim being in charge is reason enough to stock your pantry and buy ammunition (I had one of my political science professors, who I respect greatly, tell me that he thinks Obama is a Muslim plant of sorts. I was speechless.).

3. I am not "scared" about an Obama election and I can't understand why someone else would be. We've just made it through (arguably) the worst 2 terms a President has ever served. Yes, Obama might be worse, but the American people are stronger than one man. One man, even the US President, does not really, in detail, determine how my daily life runs. And while I know we are a lazy, complacent nation, I have at least a reasonable hope that we will stir when confronted with some socialist scam. Yes, it's likely Obama will hit the very wealthy, and I wish I had something meaningful to say about that other than to regret it. I didn't choose this man, nor did I vote for him. The American people were forced into voting for him because of 8 years of reckless Republican governance that remembered to always cut taxes but NEVER CUT SPENDING. Four years is not forever. And now the mantle of governance will be on his shoulders, and Hope must meet it's long courted companion: Action. We shall see.

4. The youth vote, as I have said for the last year, as someone who is not only a university student but someone who has been teaching teenagers for almost a decade now and has never seen excitement about politics has been seen in the last 10 months, is going to turn out in droves. For once, the over-important, pandered-to votes of seniors will be counterbalanced by votes of some other seniors, of the high-school and college variety. Let's see how the pundits respond. As of this moment, my Facebook ticker reads: 2,429,958. That's the number of Facebookers who have voted so far today. And that's just a slice of my under-30 demographic.

5. If Pennsylvania and Florida go to McCain, it will be a long night. If he loses both, it will be short, and we might relive 1980, where the concession speech occurred before 9pm EST.

More tonight, after the returns.

Why I hate neoconservatives

2008-10-27T20:00:00.003-05:00

Neoconservatives are not really conservatives at all. They are responsible for singlehandedly destroying the Bush presidency and the Republican party. Mind you, left to themselves, both the President and the Republicans could have destroyed themselves (and eventually did) - and we have evidence - the handling of Hurricane Katrina, the $100 trillion unfunded liability that the Prescription Drug Benefit is, et al. - the demonstrate it so.

Neoconservatives are responsible for foreign policy modeled on the Project for a New American Century's American imperialist model. Imperialism should not be the goal of a conservative - not in any century. But that's just the tip of the iceberg (or rather "tip of the spear," as I'm sure they would appreciate a more bellicose metaphor).

Neoconservatives and their spear carriers at National Review and The Weekly (lack of) Standard(s) have been responsible for defending an unjust war against a people who did not attack us on 9/11 and which has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of dead civilians ("collateral damage" in their parlance) and thousands of dead Americans - more than anyone really knows since those who die en route to Ramstein are not included in the "official count."

Neoconservatives are responsible for a nearly eschatological policy on Israel which places the interests of Israel, a bully superpower in the Mideast, above the interests of America. It's not enough for America to arm and finance Israel, but apparently we must care when it rattles its perpetual sabre against countries that have no chance of effectively attacking or defeating it, ever.

Neoconservatives are responsible for cheering on the recent bailout of banks, our government's largest blunder in banking since the treacherous 1913 Federal Reserve Act - which passed because even back then, conservatives (in this case Taft and T. Roosevelt) couldn't decide who was Republican or not, and so the bankers' man, Wilson, won.

What do these principles have in common with conservativism? I would answer the same way Tertullian did when he pondered what Athens had to do with Jerusalem: "Nothing!"

By maintaining even a shadow of alliance with these snakes and vipers, the real conservative movement is impugned. The real reason a lot of us face resistance from people in the world when we begin to talk about conservativism is because for those who haven't yet been introduced to the Permanent Things, conservatism IS the National Review and their water boys at the Fox News Channel.

Let's not let agreement on one or two issues (which, at this moment I can't even name) make us pretend that we have anything in common with "neoconservatives" other than the mendacious title of "conservative" that they arrogate to themselves.

Yes, conserve indeed. Conserve endless war in the Middle East to spread democracy at the point of a gun in homage to Wilsonian foreign policy. Conserve a military presence abroad in over 700 known military bases whose presence is not peacekeeping, but a prop to global hegemony which costs taxpayers trillions. Conserve an imperialist presidency in which the fictions of a simple mind, like the newly-invented phrase "enemy combatant," the "rules" found in the black hole of geography, Guantanamo Bay (a land not ruled by Cuban, American, or international law, apparently), and the policy of wiretapping the private conversations of American citizens, hold sway. Yes, conserve all these things if you please. But don't pretend to hold to the mantle, nay even a corner of the mantle, of Russell Kirk and others like him.

The Lesser of Two Evils is still evil: why I am not voting for John McCain

2008-10-26T20:06:00.008-05:00

There has been much blowing about, here and there, about who is obliged to vote for whom and how it is even a "sin" to vote for someone who doesn't have a reasonable chance of winning. As I was pondering some of these arguments - directed at a pro-lifer like myself - that I was "morally obliged" to vote for John McCain, because he will allegedly appoint pro-life judges, I thought about 2004.

That year voting had been so easy for me. George Bush was taking us down a disastrous path. John Kerry, who was for the war before he opportunistically and cynically opposed it, wasn't a viable choice. I voted for the Constitution Party's 2004 candidate, Michael Peroutka. The man, an actual conservative, inspired me when I would see videos of him speak. I, through lobbying one of our local late-night talk show hosts on KFI AM 640 (I was living in California at the time and KFI is the most-listened to AM station in the country), got him a 5 minute interview on that show, even though I had no previous experience in publicity and had never even met Mr. Peroutka (and still have not).

I experienced those same feelings of resonance and deep-seated agreement as I watched Ron Paul throughout the endless debates of the 2008 Primary season. I couldn't believe it - there he was, on stage, repudiating what Republicans had called "conservative" for the last 8 years. He was antiwar, he talked about the Federal Reserve and the folly of private bankers printing our currency, he talked about "blowback" and how the attacks on 9/11 didn't just develop from a vacuum...it was unbelievable. I wore t-shirts, contributed what I could, and told everyone about him. Of course, he wasn't able to win the nomination, and what then? The famous phrase was trotted out: "...lesser of two evils." Hmmm.

Americans hate to lose. But the truth doesn't always triumph in this vale of tears. Voting for McCain is voting for an evil. Worse, it's lying to myself.

So here are the reasons I will NOT be voting for John McCain in 9 days:

1. Health Care - John McCain wants to give me a tax credit to pay for my health care. This will be paid for by...me! Why, thank you! As if putting $700 Billion of new inflated currency on my back isn't enough, I'll pay for a tax credit - $5,000 per family or $2,500 per individual - for health care. Socialist, anyone?

2. Russia - John McCain doesn't trust Putin, fine. But his (in)famous line "We are all Georgians" some time after the US and Israeli-advised invasion of Russia by Georgia underscores his neoconservative aspirations to fight a country like Russia over a country as insignificant as Georgia. National security at stake? You bet! If Russia were to check Georgian aggression in the region by a takeover, the Pentagon wouldn't be able to sell Georgia weapons. What would Georgia do with all the money it spends on the military now? Maybe spend it on their people! John McCain wants to keep the money in Pentagon coffers.

3. Iran - ignoring the lessons of Mossadeq in 1953, the hostage crisis of 1979, and his own (rightful) opposition to interference in Lebanon in the 1980s (a position sadly vindicated by the death of 220 Marines when their barracks was blown up), John McCain likes to warmonger and ignore the value of diplomacy when it comes to dealing with hostile nations. Hmm, how did they ever get hostile to us anyway? Could it be because we overthrew their democratically elected government in a CIA sponsored coup? I'd be pretty hostile too.

4. Climate change - McCain believes in cap-and-trade - a tax on carbon dioxide, the gas that plants need in order to live and generate oxygen for us. Without getting into the argument about climate change and the veracity (or mendacity) of peak oil, one can certainly say that his desire to "drill baby drill" would be akin to someone saying "typewriters baby typewriters" as the Apple II was premiered. It has become obvious to anyone with half a brain that the future needs to be run on at least one alternative to fossil fuel. Let's focus on developing that, not on retreading old roads paved by Detroit and the automakers.

5. The bailout - blaming "Freddie and Fannie" McCain took the low, easy road and showed zero leadership, played the blame game, and put the burden on American taxpayers to bail out rampant derivative trading, among other things, by investment bankers. Thanks, but no thanks.

6. Taxes - he wants to preserve the Bush tax cuts, but like most Republicans in power, believes he can do this while cutting ZERO in government expenditures. Indeed, he wants to expand government.

Yet after all these utterly terrible policies (I could go on, but why bore you with more depressing policy disagreements?), I'm supposed to believe that I should vote for McCain because of "judges."

This is the same man who, in the last debate of the 2008 Election Season, bragged about voting to confirm notorious NARAL darling Ruth Bader Ginsberg. At least Obama had the courage to vote his ideology, and voted against John Roberts. The maverick from Arizona, with no discernible principles on this issue had the chutzpah to paraphrase Richard Weaver in defending his vote for Ginsberg, saying "Elections have consequences." Please.

This is the same man who helped to create the Gang of 14 in order to blunt apparent Republican desires to confirm more "pro-life judges" through the "nuclear option."

This is the same man who, along with Barack Obama, supports embryonic stem cell research.

The Supreme Court is currently 7-2 in terms of REPUBLICAN nominees. Let's recount this for people who don't know:

Chief Justice John Roberts, nominated by George W. Bush, a REPUBLICAN

Justice Samuel Alito, nominated by George W. Bush, a REPUBLICAN

Justice John Paul Stevens, nominated by Gerald Ford, a REPUBLICAN

Justice Antonin Scalia, nominated by Ronald Reagan, a REPUBLICAN

Justice Anthony Kennedy, nominated by Ronald Reagan, a REPUBLICAN

Justice David Souter, nominated by George H.W. Bush, a REPUBLICAN

Justice Clarence Thomas, nominated by George H.W. Bush, a REPUBLICAN

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, nominated by Bill Clinton

Justice Stephen Breyer, nominated by Bill Clinton

Has anything changed regarding Roe v. Wade in all the years since these Republican appointments? Even in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case? Need I remind you that there is precious little that a Barack Obama or a John McCain will be able to do against the coming Democratic veto-proof super majority in both houses of Congress - the lawmaking body where any sort of legislation (theoretically) to overturn Roe would have to originate? Republicans, through reckless governance in the last 8 years, are about to welcome, potentially, the largest Democratic majority since FDR.

Pro-lifers are led to believe by Republicans and their waterboys that the problem of abortion will be solved in our courts. I think time has proven that this will not be so. Even if tomorrow the Supreme Court were to issue some strange obiter dicta saying that they will torpedo Roe the next opportunity they have, those of us who have lived in California and New York know that there are states where people will actually take to the streets with guns (which they'll have to learn how to use) to defend the "right" to abortion.

Republicans, and apparently some Catholics, have bought into the idea of the Imperial Presidency, and in a way, one can't blame them because it has been so deeply foisted upon them for the last 8 years. But the President can't outlaw abortion in this country. And those who believe in the importance of the pro-life cause should not throw away their vote on a man who would have chosen rabidly pro-choice Senator Joseph Lieberman if he had his druthers, and further, has repeatedly said on numerous occasions: "I have no litmus test for judges."

This is supposed to be secret code to those pro-lifers. It means: "I'm lying to get elected. I really do have a secret test - look, I said the names Scalia and Thomas...read my mind, my friends!"

Sorry, I didn't hear that. That's why I'll be voting for someone who, apart from actually having a litmus test for judges - overturning a bad legal decision called Roe v. Wade - actually believes that American empire is pointless, wants to abolish the Department of Education, and wants to implement other real, thoughtful, actual CHANGE type policies. That someone is Chuck Baldwin.

Beyond all this is the Electoral College. I live in a red, red state: Kansas. If I voted for John McCain, it would not matter. Kansas will go to him. So why waste my vote on someone who doesn't deserve it one bit? That being said, in 2004 I lived in California, a blue, blue state. Would my vote for George Bush have mattered? No, but at least I thought more about that decision since I voted for him in 2000, because I believed him when he said he wanted a "humble foreign policy" with "no nation-building." I'm through thinking about John McCain. He won't be doing the pro-life movement any favors when he's back in the Senate next year, anyway.

Russell Kirk often said that politics is the art of the possible. Republicans have proven that it is not possible to trust anything they tell us they will "do" for the pro-life movement. The hour is late. People have to be won by ideas, not by desperate idealogues who will say anything to get elected. Ideas cannot penetrate when people vitiate their convictions for a "win." The fight against abortion will not be won by trying to channel Reagan by saying "win one for the Gipper - vote McCain." It will not be won by people who two-step when asked about litmus tests and abortion.

I don't know how it will be won. God knows. And He knows that you aren't "obliged" to vote for someone just because he has a chance of winning. Sometimes the truth loses. It's as good a time as any for all of us to learn that lesson. Yes, even lawyers in New Jersey, wasting their vote on John McCain, where Barack Obama will win in a landslide, need to learn that lesson too.

Yet unlike said lawyers, I know that we've just survived arguably the worst Presidency in American history. We'll survive Obama's too.

Latest interview on KCTV - October 2008

2008-10-21T22:20:00.001-05:00

Thoughts from a Founding Father on the Crisis

2008-10-20T21:58:00.001-05:00

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)
(emphases mine)

By the Babe Unborn, by G.K. Chesterton

2008-10-09T23:24:00.000-05:00

If trees were tall and grasses short,
As in some crazy tale,
If here and there a sea were blue
Beyond the breaking pale,

If a fixed fire hung in the air
To warm me one day through,
If deep green hair grew on great hills,
I know what I should do.

In dark I lie; dreaming that there
Are great eyes cold or kind,
And twisted streets and silent doors,
And living men behind.

Let storm clouds come: better an hour,
And leave to weep and fight,
Than all the ages I have ruled
The empires of the night.

I think that if they gave me leave
Within the world to stand,
I would be good through all the day
I spent in fairyland.

They should not hear a word from me
Of selfishness or scorn,
If only I could find the door,
If only I were born.

Radio interview...

2008-10-07T00:17:00.001-05:00

Here is a cross-link to my interview on Walt Bodeen's NPR show a couple weeks back...

Syriana

2008-10-06T23:55:00.004-05:00

Title: Syriana
Studio: Warner Brothers
Director: Stephen Gaghan
MPAA Rating: R
Excellence: 4 Stars
Why: Weaving social and political commentary with believable, real-world scenarios and plots.
Summary in a sentence: Oil - and its long tentacles - and the very human lives it touches - even in the most tangential ways.

One word. Brilliant. I say this firmly because I was prepared for this movie to be horrible. Even my most liberal students found it to be confusing, and duly warned, I paid attention closely.

The director of Traffic, a movie which aside from some disturbing images, is an artistic masterpiece, scores again. Let me try and give an overview.

The entire setting for the movie is the worldwide desire for oil – spanning from America to Saudi Arabia to China. We tie together American foreign policy, Arabic provincialism, Chinese designs, Islam, politics of mergers, and several loosely connected personal stories.

Matt Damon – securities/energy trader/expert living with his wife and 2 sons in Geneva.

George Clooney – an undercover CIA (well, they’re all pretty much undercover, aren’t they? Except for Joe “I ain’t seen no yellowcake in Niger” Wilson’s wife, right?) agent specialized in work in Lebanon.

The eldest son of the Emir of some unknown Arab country. Rather than play the "are they or aren’t they" games the West Wing does by using countries like “Qumar” and Iran interchangeably, Stephen Gaghan just makes it anonymous – because, they’re all the same, right?

There’s plenty more, but I encourage you to see this, so I don’t want to give too much away.

The movie would lead us to believe that Arabs are incredibly myopic people. And they are. As Matt Damon draws a pipeline in the sand to illustrate $100B in losses due to lack of infrastructure in a demonstration to the Emir’s son who has retained Damon’s services in exchange for the accidental death of Damon’s son on a junket of sorts (are you keeping up?) – we see it clearly. Arabia, broadly, controlled by “royal” families of selfish, sensual, small-minded people. Never looking beyond their next hotel stay or evening in Paris.

And all throughout, American diplomacy angling through “legitimate” means – using diplomatic doublespeak through legal channels, at the same time pretending to be concerned about an oil merger between two mega-companies, all the while considering the murder of the aforementioned Emir’s oldest son.

To unravel the plot of this twister would be a crime, like me telling you about Memento before you saw it and figured it out yourself. I urge you to see it, not because George Clooney turns in another, frankly, excellent performance (look, the guy can act), but because the story is an epic tragedy, in the modern sense of both of those words, lest my slavish Literature majors accuse me of Greek heresy.

There’s lawyers and suicide bombers too. A cutting edge mosaic of life on the outer edge of our modern reality.

Not surprisingly, it’s difficult to watch.

Newman's Idea of a University

2008-09-10T01:04:00.003-05:00

“A university…educates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it.”

John Henry Cardinal Newman, Idea of a University, p. 149

The exhortations of Cardinal John Henry Newman in The Idea of a University are not only difficult for the modern reader because of their high rhetorical style, but because they come forth with such clarity and unabashed frankness regarding a subject – university education – that has lately been anything but clear or frank. Indeed, if Newman’s work might be re-titled today in homage to Chesterton, it might be called “What’s Wrong With The University.” In a postmodern era where authority is mocked and the means and ends of education are lost in the sturm und drang of received opinions, perhaps Newman’s work can provide us with a roadmap to rediscover the proper place of university education, and know it again, for the first time.

The “place” that Newman wants to take the university student is the seat of truth. For Newman, truth is not a negotiable, relative thing. It is measurable and real. Newman makes no bones about the relationship of unchanging truth to an unchanging God: “…belief in God is no more than an acknowledgement of existing, sensible powers and phenomena, which none but an idiot can deny” (Newman 76). Surely today Newman would be labeled as a “right-wing religious zealot” simply for professing what he sees to be self-evident – that there is a God who is all Truth – and that we must acknowledge the truth of His existence should we hope to study the existence of truth.

How does the university student arrive at the truth that Newman sees as obvious but which he still wishes us to labor to attain? By seeking knowledge – but not just knowledge as we in the postmodern era know it, often masquerading as a surfeit of information – but knowledge that is not obtained in a few clicks of a mouse, and that is its own good and its own reward. Newman sees knowledge as a refinement of ourselves, as a development of the better angels of our nature: “…Knowledge…has a natural tendency to refine the mind, and to give it an indisposition…towards excesses and enormities of evil…It generates within the mind a fastidiousness…(which) will create an absolute loathing of certain offenses” (199). So, in the first place Newman sees knowledge as its own good, and something that will enlarge the spirit and character of the university student. At first glance, one might argue that university enrollments are at their highest point in the history of man – thus never has man in so many numbers sought knowledge for its own end – but Newman might answer this seeming triumph of postmodern man by attacking the Scylla and Charybdis of our modern university system: specialization and vocational training.

Newman, living in an age before endless numbers of graduate students, wasn’t measuring his words for sentiment when he penned: “I only say that knowledge, in proportion as it tends more and more to be particular, ceases to be knowledge” (138) and further, quoting a Dr. Copleston: “There can be no doubt that every art is improved by confining the professor of it to that single study. But, although the art itself is advanced by this concentration of mind in its service, the individual who is confined to it goes back” (184). Newman would seem to belittle the rampant specialization of all disciplines (there is not a discipline in academia that is free of it) while praising the noble sacrifice of the specialist who furthers the field at the expense of himself. And yet, can we not take solace in Newman’s words, even as they wound our delicate postmodern sensibilities? Because Newman is exhorting a holistic view of education, he necessarily sees specialized education as an enemy of true learning. While we may have lost many things, the idea of a noble sacrifice is still one that beats somewhere in some academic hearts, and in the memories of so many students who have observed a professor who would “gladly learn, and gladly teach.” Some must specialize so that others may generalize.

But the reality is that graduate students – those receivers of specialized knowledge – are but the minority at the modern university. The majority of students are major-obsessed – or rather major-ly confused. When we can observe in the modern university a norm of a 60% graduation rate within a 4-year span, we watch the chaos of vocational-driven education. If the focus is on a major – on a specialization – on how one might make a career – where is education in all of that? Newman’s pen, again in quoting Copleston, in discussion of those who pursue purely economic ends in education, stings: “But, while he (the student) thus contributes more effectually to the accumulation of national wealth, he becomes himself more and more degraded as a rational being” (183). If our universities are only graduating 60% of freshmen who start 4 years earlier, what can be said about the prevailing “wisdom” of allowing majors to dominate academic advising? Yes, there has been a resurgence of “core” programs that require a broader range of academic studies – but in so many of these instances a student may graduate with a college degree while never having taken a single class in philosophy…or theology, for that matter. And that alone would have driven Newman mad.

For Newman, not just as a Catholic, but as a co-founder of the Oxford Movement, education without theology is simply incoherent. For Newman, theology is both a keystone and a cement in the edifice of knowledge: “You will soon break up into fragments the whole circle of secular knowledge if you begin the mutilation with divine” (67). As mentioned earlier, Newman sees the grasping of truth as the entire end of a university education. That truth finds its end in God, and therefore, without that end, which links its beginning, there is no road to tread upon: “When Newton can dispense with the metaphysician, then may you dispense with us (religion)” (89).

Newman saw no point to an unexamined life, but this last quote referencing Newton gives us pause, for it sets up what Newman sees as the end of all of our pursuits, intellectual or economic: God. If, again, God is truth, then the road to Him is paved with knowledge, and the tolls paid on that road cannot be paid in the only currency postmodern man knows – ever mercurial, be it denominated in euros or dollars – money – but rather it must be paid in the unchanging currency of a liberally educated mind. A mind that sees that the end of education is not to “…load the memory of the student with a mass of undigested knowledge” (162) but rather to view “many things at once as one whole, of referring them severally to their true place in the universal system, of understanding their respective values, and determining their mutual dependence” (158).

In the final analysis, as ancient and outdated as Cardinal Newman’s words might seem upon a first read, it is in dwelling upon our postmodern crisis in education – a crisis fraught with purely economic considerations of majors, of specializations in fields where no jobs await the end of the journey, of systems that see truth as relative and core requirements as constraining – that we see that Newman’s words are truly revolutionary. It is only because we have so far drifted to the left that we see the right as almost another shore of a distant country. We must swim towards it – knowing that there is an end. And that end, in seeing education in all its richness, vivified by the knowledge of truth, will guide our journey.

Works Cited

Newman, John Cardinal Henry. The Idea of a University. New York: Image Books, 1959.

Marriage at 30

2008-08-23T22:56:00.004-05:00

from my journal...

I’m getting ever nearer to that momentous 30th birthday. Alone with a few single companions, I have witnessed a parade of weddings in the last five years. Like microwave popcorn that waits until a specified amount of zapping by small invisible waves, so too my friends were infected by the marriage bug – requiring all of them to be married within a short amount of time.

I’m being a bit facetious, of course. Some of those friends had been dating their spouse for years and years. Others met them very recently. But all had decided to take the plunge. Commitment. To one individual. Forever. Oh yes, and kids too.

At 30 (well almost, but it’s nice and round number to refer to :-) I should know everything about dating. I should be a veritable guru, a swami, if you will. People should come to me and say, “Oh, great dating swami, tell me how to date” due to the overwhelming experience which dating has inflicted upon me. Instead, the role is reversed – I end up asking my married friends for consolation and advice, consistently forgetting that married people are the last people to ask for dating advice – for they haven’t dated in forever. They’ve forgotten the dance, the game of chess (like the one played at the end of The Tempest by Ferdinand and Miranda) that dating, courtship, and engagement ultimately is.

Worse still, our parents, unaccustomed to a dating world that includes texting, facebook, email, and match.com, pretend it’s 30 years ago (or even 10 years ago, for that matter) and offer utterly useless platitudes like “Oh, you’ll find her when you’re not looking.” Oh really, Dad? Wasn’t Mom your third different date that week? Time has a way of making married people forget they were once single people.

In fact, married people hate single people. As a business owner I’m in a heavy minority as a single man (the advantage I have found is that I, not my wife, get to run my business, but that’s a discussion to be had another time). I may lunch with these businessmen at my Rotary Club or sit on boards with them or run into them at mixers, but I have never been invited to a dinner party involving a majority of married people. Why? Frankly, we’re unwelcome reminders of so many things.

We are free and unencumbered. We don’t “have” to keep a job at a specific place or “have” to have a mortgage. We don’t have to pick up anyone at school. We have the undaunting task of cooking, cleaning, and shopping and doing errands for one. So, we have few obligations that married people have. In addition, if we possess a modicum of fiscal responsibility, we can travel where we want, with whom we want, and can, in certain cosmically possible circumstances, go on dates with new and exciting people. Youth and the single life, fraught as it is with uncertainty (which married people necessarily, and rightly despise) is similarly fraught with the excitement that uncertainty thankfully brings. Single people remind married people that they were single once, and having them around is horribly awkward.

Nor do I pretend that single people rush to hang out with married people. The few I hang out with are uncommonly cool and don’t douse me with ironic pity for being single, but rather, treat me as an equal and predicate our relationships on the idea that I may indeed never get married. And that would be okay. As for the other married people, well, their parties often resemble gatherings of the dead. One particularly infamous memory among some friends of mine, which occurred last Christmas, is referred to as “the Wake” or “the Funeral.” We arrived to deviled eggs and people engrossed (and engrossed as the very pith of that word was intended to mean, I kid you not) in a game which involved guessing the names of Christmas carols based on charade-like clues provided in 28 neatly cut squares. Brows were furrowed and pencils touched lips in rapt attention, like they were working on some complicated calculus problem or something of meaning. We (the single people) looked at each other in dismay and later, as we rode onto our “single party” (where the married people were the minority, heh) we each pledged that if marriage meant that sort of party, and the attendant tour of the newly-being-redone bedroom and bathroom (oh yes, that happened too), that we would remain forever single.

So what spurred this reflection? Some jolt of “hey, I’m going to be 30 soon”? No, rather it was a nearly two-hour conversation with a really good friend from Southern California. Running our own businesses in different time zones, our friendship has not been the close, talking-everyday one it once was, but we picked up right where we left off and after talking about work and vacation, the conversation inevitably turned towards the chief concern of young single men: the opposite sex.

“So, any new dealbreakers?” I asked. Dealbreakers were things that you were supposed to accrue as you got older, providing the necessary counterbalance to the fact that universally, as you get older, things are just not as a big of a deal as they ever once were in your mind. If you were now more easygoing about things, this had to be counterbalanced by the fact that you would now not countenance certain things.

“No, not really.” “Well, haven’t you been snowboarding exponentially more lately?” I asked innocently, hoping for the “oh, yeah, well…” His answer was the spark that lit this journal entry. “No bro, when I tell a girl I love snowboarding, I’m just hoping that in her reaction to that that she is active, meaning that she doesn’t laze around and just watch TV all the time. She might work out, she might bike, or hike, or walk, or swim, or whatever, but she appreciates an active lifestyle.” So then “activism” is a dealbreaker, I queried. “Well, um…well, yeah, I guess so,” he said tentatively. And in that tentative tone lay the rub.

Despite how well he (and when I say he, I mean me too) knew himself, my friend was unwilling to quickly and irrevocably cross someone out. And that’s because of the contradiction we observe in our own current milieu of too much choice. We think of easy things – things that cement our family and friends with us – similar interests, passion, DNA, and try to relate that to a relationship that will be severely unlike any familial tie or friendship in our life. One that requires day-to-day cohabitation, negotiation, love, nurturing, patience, and at some point, possibly, other little people who don’t know any of the rules of the universe you and your spouse have created in your castle.

I often boast about the fact that my parents have been married for over 30 years and were 12 years apart in age, of different races and family types, and at the time, different religions (my mother converted from Buddhism to Roman Catholicism in the 3rd year of her marriage). According to those who preach compatibility, my parents were stark rebukes – they didn’t share tastes in food, music, movies, or recreation. But they made it work, and what’s more, they were happy! So I grew up thinking my parents were the rule, rather than the exception. Yet, as I’ve encountered the real world, I have come to believe in the compatibility model as the surest guide in the shifting sands of gender expectations and roles vis-à-vis an ever-uncertain new global economy.

Yet, if that is the case, I should be able to (and have) date(d) all sorts. What else is to be done with a tea-drinking, coffee-appreciating, museum going, art-loving, college-football fanatic, who reads more than one book in a given week and runs several businesses while working on a graduate degree, who can cook well but loves fine dining, who insists on buying from Whole Foods but lives for a ballpark hotdog, who loves travel to far-flung locations but who enjoys walking at the park near his house, who has season tickets to the Symphony but who will go see Norah Jones in concert, or the Wizards or Royals, or Chris Rock when he comes to town, who’s chief trade is with 16-18 year-olds but mingles with a fellow member of his Rotary Club that averages 59 in age?

The answer? Lots of dating. Lots. Asking out and being asked out in every possible situation you can imagine. The gym, the post office, the grocery store, the book store, being set up by family, being set up by friends, being set up by clergy, working with online services, hiring a matchmaker, joining “singles” activities, going to bars and clubs with your friends, being auctioned off for charity as an “eligible bachelor” (that was particularly harrowing, I must tell you), et c e t e r a. Being single in today’s day and age, and especially at a time when all of your other friends (and/or your younger sisters) are moving on from marriage to that first child requires not just equanimity of spirit but at the end of the day, a deep and lasting sense of humor. There have been laugh-out-loud recaps with friends. There have also been tearful recriminations with those same friends doing all they can to simply put their hands on your shoulder to let you know that they’ve been there too.

Where does all this leave us? What did my friend spark, and what is the good of these apostolic 12 years of dating? Two things.

One, I have a deep and abiding sense of who I am and what I will NOT put up with in a future spouse – from the simple and superficial – like smoking cigarettes – to the more epistemological – like being an atheist.

Two, that sense of what I do NOT want does not, and continues to not, translate into a clear vision of what I want. Okay, she has to be a good kisser. But beyond that…oh and she has to love learning and culture. Okay, but SERIOUSLY, beyond the definite of what I don’t want, the inchoate “what I want” is a present indictment. It sounds like a whiny friend: “well, what do you want, Stephen?” The answer, after all these words and thoughts, can perhaps best be summarized by my friend John, who at 30 and was newly wed only this last May, responded thusly to my question of “what was that final thing that made you ‘know’ she was the one?”

“For me, buddy, she’s just got to be absolutely crazy about you. Be your biggest fan, your biggest supporter and cheerleader, and be in your corner. When I knew that I knew she would be my wife.”

I would concede that while I find that answer deeply satisfying as a man – because we really are simple creatures at the end of the day, it may not satisfy a woman – our much more complicated counterparts. Ladies, look to your own sex for answers. :-)

And, as my assistant was wont to point out when I mentally sketched the idea for this journal entry to her – all of this is theory, when you fall in love all of it goes out the window. Perhaps. To an extent. But in the inbetweens of love, the heart needs food which my mind is only too ready to supply.

So here’s a raised glass. To love. To hope. To all other worthy sentiments that still live within my dreams. Even after 12 years of jaded cynicism, I can still smile at the hope of finding that person to finally settle down with – not just the person you can live with, but the person you can’t live without.