(archive)
May 18, 2005
It was perhaps appropriate that Dan Rather received the prestigious Peabody award in journalism at the same time when Newsweek magazine was finally backing away from its false story about Americans flushing the Koran down the toilet at the Guantanamo prison.
At least Dan Rather's forged documents didn't get anybody killed, as the phony Newsweek story did. What is even more revealing -- and appalling -- about the mainstream media is that they are now circling the wagons around Newsweek, to protect it from criticism, just as they circled the wagons around Dan Rather last year, and now give him an award this year to put the frosting on the cake.
If the forged documents at CBS and the phony story at Newsweek were just isolated mistakes, that would be one thing. But media liberals have made themselves accessories after the fact, by springing to the defense of such indefensible misconduct.
In a sense, that is good. It makes it easier for the public to see that the forged documents and the fake story were not just odd things that happened to a couple of people but were symptomatic of a mindset among many others who sprang to their defense.
Someone referred to the story about George Bush's National Guard service as "too good to check." In other words, it fit their vision so well, and scored a point that they wanted to score against President Bush, that it hardly seemed worthwhile to check out the facts.
That is almost certainly what happened with the story about Americans flushing the Koran down the toilet at the Guantanamo prison. It seems unlikely that Newsweek simply made up the story out of whole cloth. But, once they heard it, it was "too good to check."
All this goes back to a more fundamental problem with the mainstream media. Too many journalists see their work as an opportunity to promote their own pet political notions, rather than a responsibility to inform the public and let their readers and viewers decide for themselves.
It is not a question of being "fair" to this or that side but of being honest with their readers and viewers.
Columnists and editorial writers are expected to offer opinions but reporters are expected to report facts. However, that distinction is increasingly blurred, with the front page of the New York Times often providing classic examples of editorials disguised as news.
What happened to Dan Rather last year and to Newsweek this year is that the disguise fell off when the "news" that they were trying to sell turned out to be fake and all that was left exposed was their animosity toward the Bush administration.
The Peabody award to Dan Rather drives home the point that the mainstream media have learned nothing and are thumbing their noses at their critics -- and ultimately at those readers and viewers who are looking for enlightenment, rather than spin.
Abraham Lincoln said that you can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. The steady erosion of the audience that watches CBS, ABC, and NBC television news, and the declining circulation of the leading newspapers, all indicate that more and more people are unwilling to be fooled.
The swift rise of talk radio, Fox News and the bloggers all reinforce the conclusion of a growing disillusionment with the mainstream media that once had a monopoly and abused it.
A reader recently suggested this formula: Monopoly plus discretion minus accountability equals corruption. That kind of corruption can be found not only in the mainstream media but also in two of our most important institutions, the public schools and the federal courts.
Both the schools and the courts flatter themselves that their job is to change society. So does much of the media. But what qualifies these people to be world-changers? They are usually poorly informed about science, uninformed about history and misinformed about economics.
And who elected them to change the world while pretending to be doing something else and betraying their trust?
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact Thomas Sowell Read Sowell's biography
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Jonah Goldberg: Invasion of the America Snatchers
http://www.townhall.com/
Jonah Goldberg (archive)
May 18, 2005
Huge chunks of the American population have been body-snatched by zomboid creatures from Canada, or possibly - shudder - Europe. That's the only conclusion one can draw from the latest monumental study from the Pew Center for the People and the Press. OK, it's not the only conclusion you can draw, but it's the one I'm going to draw.
I remember being horrified by when I first saw the remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." In the final scene, one of the last remaining normal humans in the city runs up to Donald Sutherland, thinking he's completely normal, too. When she gets close, Sutherland slowly raises his finger to point at her, and begins his alien shriek, sounding like someone had dropped a hungry piranha down the front of his wide-wale corduroys.
Well, if you look very closely and study body language and speech, you may just discover that the liberals screeching at conservatives aren't in fact Americans at all. They are Europeans taking on the form of Americans.
According to the Pew Center, the less you like to fly the American flag, the more likely it is you are Democrat. The more you think hard work and personal initiative aren't the ticket to the good life, the more likely you are to be a Democrat. The more you believe the United Nations is a better steward of international relations, while America is a negative actor on the world stage, the more likely you are to be a Democrat. The more you believe that the government is there to help, the more likely it is you are Democrat. The less seriously you take religion, the more likely you are to be a Democrat. Flip all of these values around and the more likely it is you are a Republican - or that you vote that way.
Of course, I'm speaking in terms of statistical generalities. Obviously, there are a great many flag-waving, God-fearing, government-mistrusting, U.N.-hating Democrats out there. But they are the exceptions to the rule.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this study is what it says about class and ideology in America. And what it says is that they don't have that much to do with each other, which runs contrary to generations of leftish stereotypes. Poor Americans who believe in the American ideal of by-your-bootstraps success are likely to vote Republican. And rich Americans who cringe at the idea of hanging a flag from their porch vote Democrat. Wealth has become a poor predictor of political affiliation. The richest blocs in the GOP and Democratic Parties - Pew calls them "Enterprisers" and "Liberals" - are roughly equally affluent. Forty-one percent of both groups make more than $75,000 per year (though there are nearly twice as many "Liberals" as there are "Enterprisers"). The largest segment of the Republican base - "Social Conservatives" - make less than Liberals.
So what does all of this have to do with body-snatching Europhiles? Well, basically, everything. The ideas, assumptions and prejudices held by the statistically typical Democratic voter, according to the Pew study, are quite simply, European. Europeans believe in a strong social welfare state, for rich and poor alike. Europeans are cynical. They look askance - these days - on patriotic sentiment (hence the rush to form a new European nation). The church pews of Europe would make a great hideout for bank robbers since they're always empty. The United Nations is, in the typical European's worldview, the last best hope for mankind. From the death penalty to gay marriage, the more similar you are to a typical European in your political and social outlook, the more likely you are to be a Democrat.
We've seen this before. At the time of our nation's founding, there were a bunch of Americans who clung to European values. Today we call their descendants "Canadians." Up north, the government isn't something to be distrusted so much as something to be obeyed. For example, when the government told the people to switch to the metric system, they did. Our government told us to do the same thing at about the same time, and America barely even noticed.
For many generations after the American Revolution, the idea of emulating European politics was nigh upon heresy. It wasn't until Woodrow Wilson, who encouraged Americans to see themselves as citizens of the world, that borrowing ideas from the continent became fully politically acceptable. Prior to Wilson, writes Richard Hofstadter, Americans considered the United States to be the "anti-Europe." But it was FDR's New Deal which helped "assimilate the American into the 'European' political experience," in the words of Daniel Boorstin. George Kennan's childhood reminiscence illustrates the typical American frame of mind prior to the New Deal. When "times were hard," he wrote, "as they often were, groans and lamentations went up to God, but never to Washington."
So, if you're worried about the Europeanization of America, let me quote from the original "Body Snatchers": "They're here already! You're next! You're next! You're next.."
Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online, a Townhall.com member group.
©2005 Tribune Media Services
Contact Jonah Goldberg Read Goldberg's biography
Jonah Goldberg (archive)
May 18, 2005
Huge chunks of the American population have been body-snatched by zomboid creatures from Canada, or possibly - shudder - Europe. That's the only conclusion one can draw from the latest monumental study from the Pew Center for the People and the Press. OK, it's not the only conclusion you can draw, but it's the one I'm going to draw.
I remember being horrified by when I first saw the remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." In the final scene, one of the last remaining normal humans in the city runs up to Donald Sutherland, thinking he's completely normal, too. When she gets close, Sutherland slowly raises his finger to point at her, and begins his alien shriek, sounding like someone had dropped a hungry piranha down the front of his wide-wale corduroys.
Well, if you look very closely and study body language and speech, you may just discover that the liberals screeching at conservatives aren't in fact Americans at all. They are Europeans taking on the form of Americans.
According to the Pew Center, the less you like to fly the American flag, the more likely it is you are Democrat. The more you think hard work and personal initiative aren't the ticket to the good life, the more likely you are to be a Democrat. The more you believe the United Nations is a better steward of international relations, while America is a negative actor on the world stage, the more likely you are to be a Democrat. The more you believe that the government is there to help, the more likely it is you are Democrat. The less seriously you take religion, the more likely you are to be a Democrat. Flip all of these values around and the more likely it is you are a Republican - or that you vote that way.
Of course, I'm speaking in terms of statistical generalities. Obviously, there are a great many flag-waving, God-fearing, government-mistrusting, U.N.-hating Democrats out there. But they are the exceptions to the rule.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this study is what it says about class and ideology in America. And what it says is that they don't have that much to do with each other, which runs contrary to generations of leftish stereotypes. Poor Americans who believe in the American ideal of by-your-bootstraps success are likely to vote Republican. And rich Americans who cringe at the idea of hanging a flag from their porch vote Democrat. Wealth has become a poor predictor of political affiliation. The richest blocs in the GOP and Democratic Parties - Pew calls them "Enterprisers" and "Liberals" - are roughly equally affluent. Forty-one percent of both groups make more than $75,000 per year (though there are nearly twice as many "Liberals" as there are "Enterprisers"). The largest segment of the Republican base - "Social Conservatives" - make less than Liberals.
So what does all of this have to do with body-snatching Europhiles? Well, basically, everything. The ideas, assumptions and prejudices held by the statistically typical Democratic voter, according to the Pew study, are quite simply, European. Europeans believe in a strong social welfare state, for rich and poor alike. Europeans are cynical. They look askance - these days - on patriotic sentiment (hence the rush to form a new European nation). The church pews of Europe would make a great hideout for bank robbers since they're always empty. The United Nations is, in the typical European's worldview, the last best hope for mankind. From the death penalty to gay marriage, the more similar you are to a typical European in your political and social outlook, the more likely you are to be a Democrat.
We've seen this before. At the time of our nation's founding, there were a bunch of Americans who clung to European values. Today we call their descendants "Canadians." Up north, the government isn't something to be distrusted so much as something to be obeyed. For example, when the government told the people to switch to the metric system, they did. Our government told us to do the same thing at about the same time, and America barely even noticed.
For many generations after the American Revolution, the idea of emulating European politics was nigh upon heresy. It wasn't until Woodrow Wilson, who encouraged Americans to see themselves as citizens of the world, that borrowing ideas from the continent became fully politically acceptable. Prior to Wilson, writes Richard Hofstadter, Americans considered the United States to be the "anti-Europe." But it was FDR's New Deal which helped "assimilate the American into the 'European' political experience," in the words of Daniel Boorstin. George Kennan's childhood reminiscence illustrates the typical American frame of mind prior to the New Deal. When "times were hard," he wrote, "as they often were, groans and lamentations went up to God, but never to Washington."
So, if you're worried about the Europeanization of America, let me quote from the original "Body Snatchers": "They're here already! You're next! You're next! You're next.."
Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online, a Townhall.com member group.
©2005 Tribune Media Services
Contact Jonah Goldberg Read Goldberg's biography
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Cleveland Plain Dealer: Springsteen Concert Review
MUSIC
Self-sufficient Springsteen sounds super
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
John Soeder
Plain Dealer Pop Music Critic
Who needs the E Street Band?
Bruce Springsteen was a great one-man band Sunday night at Cleveland State University Wolstein Center. His self-sufficient performance enthralled a near-capacity crowd of 7,300-plus fans.
It was the only Ohio stop on a 14-date U.S. tour to promote the chart-topping new album "Devils & Dust."
The Boss played a bit of everything, starting with a pump organ for the opening number, "My Beautiful Reward."
He switched to harmonica for a distorted, blues-drenched update of "Reason to Believe," stomping his boot to keep time.
He then settled into guitar-strumming mode for his latest album's title track, a gritty soul-searcher delivered from the point of view of a soldier in Iraq.
Springsteen, 55, closed his eyes, singing with intense conviction and blowing his harmonica with gale force.
Electric-candle chandeliers hung from the rafters, and gossamer curtains framed the stage, bare except for instruments and an antique lamp on a small table. The intimate setting suited the no-frills music, sparingly fleshed out in spots by a behind-the-scenes keyboardist.
"Youngstown," a highlight about hard times in Ohio's rust belt, was greeted with cheers. "We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam / Now we're wondering what they were dyin' for," Springsteen sang as he coaxed rippling chords from a 12-string guitar. The lyrics hit home today - different war, same sad story.
Between tunes, Springsteen said he looks back on his Vote for Change Tour last year in support of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry with mixed emotions.
"We voted," Springsteen said. "We didn't change."
On a positive note, he added: "Men have lived through dark ages before."
He prefaced "Part Man, Part Monkey" by poking fun at the Bush administration's indecisive views on evolution. Springsteen played the rockabilly-flavored song on electric guitar, making liberal use of the whammy bar.
He had a laugh at his own expense, too. Before launching into "Reno," a controversial new tune about an encounter with a prostitute, Springsteen joked about "Devils & Dust" being available soon in Krispy Kreme doughnut shops. Starbucks recently announced it would not stock the album in its coffeehouses, partly because of "Reno."
Springsteen accompanied himself on piano for several ballads, including "Jesus Was an Only Son," the lump-in-your-throat poignant "Racing in the Street" and "Stolen Car," a rarity in concert.
"Wreck on the Highway" was rendered on electric piano, to gripping effect.
Springsteen dedicated the romantic "Incident on 57th Street" ("Good night, it's all tight, Jane / I'll meet you tomorrow night on Lover's Lane") to Jane Scott, The Plain Dealer's retired rock writer. She lighted up like a schoolgirl in her ninth-row seat.
Among the other VIPs in the house were "Devils & Dust" producer Brendan O'Brien and Springsteen's pal from Pittsburgh, rocker Joe Grushecky.
Springsteen was back on acoustic guitar for soul-stirring renditions of the Sept. 11-inspired anthem "The Rising" and "Matamoros Banks," a Woody Guthrie-style lament about the drowning of an illegal immigrant.
"I'm on Fire" got a four-song encore off to a shaky start, with Springsteen playing banjo and whistling off-key. He quickly rebounded with guitar-driven versions of "Land of Hope and Dreams" and an austerely beautiful reworking of "The Promised Land."
This was one superstar who wasn't content to coast on past glories.
"I'm always looking for something new we can do together," Springsteen told the audience before returning to the pump organ to close the 24-song, 2½-hour concert with a cover of "Dream Baby Dream," an ethereal lullaby by the '70s synth-punk act Suicide.
"I wanna see you smile / I just wanna see you smile," Springsteen sang over and over, like a mantra.
There wasn't a frown in the place.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
jsoeder@plaind.com, 216-999-4562
Self-sufficient Springsteen sounds super
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
John Soeder
Plain Dealer Pop Music Critic
Who needs the E Street Band?
Bruce Springsteen was a great one-man band Sunday night at Cleveland State University Wolstein Center. His self-sufficient performance enthralled a near-capacity crowd of 7,300-plus fans.
It was the only Ohio stop on a 14-date U.S. tour to promote the chart-topping new album "Devils & Dust."
The Boss played a bit of everything, starting with a pump organ for the opening number, "My Beautiful Reward."
He switched to harmonica for a distorted, blues-drenched update of "Reason to Believe," stomping his boot to keep time.
He then settled into guitar-strumming mode for his latest album's title track, a gritty soul-searcher delivered from the point of view of a soldier in Iraq.
Springsteen, 55, closed his eyes, singing with intense conviction and blowing his harmonica with gale force.
Electric-candle chandeliers hung from the rafters, and gossamer curtains framed the stage, bare except for instruments and an antique lamp on a small table. The intimate setting suited the no-frills music, sparingly fleshed out in spots by a behind-the-scenes keyboardist.
"Youngstown," a highlight about hard times in Ohio's rust belt, was greeted with cheers. "We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam / Now we're wondering what they were dyin' for," Springsteen sang as he coaxed rippling chords from a 12-string guitar. The lyrics hit home today - different war, same sad story.
Between tunes, Springsteen said he looks back on his Vote for Change Tour last year in support of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry with mixed emotions.
"We voted," Springsteen said. "We didn't change."
On a positive note, he added: "Men have lived through dark ages before."
He prefaced "Part Man, Part Monkey" by poking fun at the Bush administration's indecisive views on evolution. Springsteen played the rockabilly-flavored song on electric guitar, making liberal use of the whammy bar.
He had a laugh at his own expense, too. Before launching into "Reno," a controversial new tune about an encounter with a prostitute, Springsteen joked about "Devils & Dust" being available soon in Krispy Kreme doughnut shops. Starbucks recently announced it would not stock the album in its coffeehouses, partly because of "Reno."
Springsteen accompanied himself on piano for several ballads, including "Jesus Was an Only Son," the lump-in-your-throat poignant "Racing in the Street" and "Stolen Car," a rarity in concert.
"Wreck on the Highway" was rendered on electric piano, to gripping effect.
Springsteen dedicated the romantic "Incident on 57th Street" ("Good night, it's all tight, Jane / I'll meet you tomorrow night on Lover's Lane") to Jane Scott, The Plain Dealer's retired rock writer. She lighted up like a schoolgirl in her ninth-row seat.
Among the other VIPs in the house were "Devils & Dust" producer Brendan O'Brien and Springsteen's pal from Pittsburgh, rocker Joe Grushecky.
Springsteen was back on acoustic guitar for soul-stirring renditions of the Sept. 11-inspired anthem "The Rising" and "Matamoros Banks," a Woody Guthrie-style lament about the drowning of an illegal immigrant.
"I'm on Fire" got a four-song encore off to a shaky start, with Springsteen playing banjo and whistling off-key. He quickly rebounded with guitar-driven versions of "Land of Hope and Dreams" and an austerely beautiful reworking of "The Promised Land."
This was one superstar who wasn't content to coast on past glories.
"I'm always looking for something new we can do together," Springsteen told the audience before returning to the pump organ to close the 24-song, 2½-hour concert with a cover of "Dream Baby Dream," an ethereal lullaby by the '70s synth-punk act Suicide.
"I wanna see you smile / I just wanna see you smile," Springsteen sang over and over, like a mantra.
There wasn't a frown in the place.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
jsoeder@plaind.com, 216-999-4562
David Gelertner: Bible Illiteracy in America
From the May 23, 2005 issue
The Weekly Standard
Volume 010, Issue 34
A report just issued by the Bible Literacy Project (more on this later) suggests that young Americans know very little about the Bible. The report is important, but first things first: A fair number of Americans don't see why teenagers should know anything at all about the Bible.
Scripture begins with God creating the world, but there is something these verses don't tell you: The Bible has itself created worlds. Wherever you stand on the spectrum from devout to atheist, you must acknowledge that the Bible has been a creative force without parallel in history.
Go to the center of Paris and drop in on the apotheosis of the French Middle Ages--Sainte Chapelle, whose walls are made almost entirely of stained glass. It "has rightly been called," writes the scholar Shalom Spiegel, "the most wonderful of pictured Bibles." The King James Bible, says Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, "has influenced our literature more deeply than any other book--more deeply even than all the writings of Shakespeare--far more deeply." The poet and painter William Blake calls the Old and New Testaments "the Great Codes of Art." America's foremost prophet offers his culminating vision in the second inaugural address--"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right . . . " Lincoln's speech "reads like a supplement to the Bible," writes the historian William Wolf, with its "fourteen references to God, four direct quotations from Genesis, Psalms, and Matthew, and other allusions to scriptural teaching." "The best gift God has given to man," Lincoln called the Bible. "But for it we could not know right from wrong."
Ronald Reagan called America "a great shining city on a hill," three-and-a-half centuries after John Winthrop (sailing for Boston in 1630) anticipated a new community that would be "as a Citty upon a Hill"--invoking the famous verse in Matthew, "Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid" (5:14). Which harks back in turn to the prophets (Isaiah 2:2-3, Micah 4:2) and the book of Proverbs (4:18). John Livingstone Lowe called the King James Bible "the noblest monument of English prose" (1936); George Saintsbury called it "probably the greatest prose work in any language" (1887). Nearly two millennia earlier, the great Pharisee rabbi Hillel described the ideal life: "loving peace and pursuing peace; loving humanity and bringing it close to the Torah."
Here is a basic question about America that ought to be on page 1 of every history book: What made the nation's Founders so sure they were onto something big? America today is the most powerful nation on earth, most powerful in all history--and a model the whole world imitates. What made them so sure?--the settlers and colonists, the Founding Fathers and all the generations that intervened before America emerged as a world power in the 20th century?
What made them so certain that America would become a light of the world, the shining city on a hill? What made John Adams say, in 1765, "I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence"? What made Abraham Lincoln call America (in 1862, in the middle of a ruinous civil war) "the last, best hope of earth"?
We know of people who are certain of their destinies from childhood on. But nations?
Many things made all these Americans and proto-Americans sure; and to some extent they were merely guessing and hoping. But one thing above all made them true prophets. They read the Bible. Winthrop, Adams, Lincoln, and thousands of others found a good destiny in the Bible and made it their own. They read about Israel's covenant with God and took it to heart: They were Israel. ("Wee are entered into Covenant with him for this worke," said Winthrop. "Wee shall finde that the God of Israell is among us.") They read about God's chosen people and took it to heart: They were God's chosen people, or--as Lincoln put it--God's "almost chosen people." The Bible as they interpreted it told them what they could be and would be. Unless we read the Bible, American history is a closed book.
Evidently young Americans don't know much about the Bible (or anything else, come to think of it; that's another story). But let's not kid ourselves--this problem will be hard to attack. It's clear that any public school that teaches about America must teach about the Bible, from outside. But teaching the Bible from inside (reading Scripture, not just about Scripture) is trickier. You don't have to believe in the mythical "wall of separation" between church and state--which the Bill of Rights never mentions and had no intention of erecting--to understand that Americans don't want their public schools teaching Christianity or Judaism.
But can you teach the Bible as mere "literature" without flattening and misrepresenting it? How will you address the differences (which go right down to the ground) between Jews and Christians respecting the Bible? (The question is not so much how to spare Jewish sensibilities--minorities have rights, but so do majorities; the question is how to tell the truth.) What kind of parents leave their children's Bible education to the public schools, anyway? How do we go beyond public schools in attacking a nationwide problem of Bible illiteracy?
Tricky questions.
American history starts with the emergence of Puritanism in 16th-century Britain. The Bible was central to the founding and development of Puritanism. It was central to the emergence of modern Britain in the 16th and 17th centuries--and modern Britain was important in turn to America and to the whole world.
"Puritan" has been an insult for hundreds of years. (Where are the revisionists when you need one?) It suggests rigid, austere, censorious--exactly the kind of religion that secularists love to hate. The Puritans were rigid and censorious to a point; most caricatures are partly true. But mainly they were Christians who hoped to worship God with their whole lives, body and soul; with a dazzling fervor that still lights up their journals, letters, and poetry 300 years later. In the early 18th century the young Jonathan Edwards (eventually one of America's greatest theologians) writes of being "wrapped and swallowed up in God." "The Puritans wanted that fullness of life that made David dance before the ark" (thus J.D. Dow in 1897). America was born in a passionate spiritual explosion. The explosion was created and fueled by the Bible.
The invention of printing in the mid-15th century, and the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th--whose central idea was that Scripture and not human theological doctrine must be decisive for Christianity--created an English Bible-reading craze. The masses were hungry for literature, and religion was the hottest topic on the agenda. Already in Henry VIII's reign (1509-47), the Bible was "disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled in every alehouse and tavern," according to the king himself--who was not happy about it. The Bible was a radical, subversive book.
English Bible translations date back to medieval times. (In fact earlier: The first translation, into Anglo-Saxon rather than English proper, was a word-by-word crib added to the Latin of the circa-700 Lindisfarne Gospel Book--one of history's most sublimely beautiful manuscripts and greatest artworks.) But translating the Bible into English was no mere literary act. It was a controversial theological declaration. Religious reformers saw the English Bible as nothing less than a direct connection between ordinary Christian believers and the Lord. Putting the Scripture into English was sacred work; some were willing to die for it. They were opposed by such Roman Catholic stalwarts as Sir Thomas More, who expressed a widely held view when he proclaimed it "pestilential heresy" to think that "we should believe nothing but plain Scripture."
The English Bible as we know it begins with John Wycliffe's work in the late 14th century. Wycliffe preached the primacy of the Bible and founded the Lollards' movement, which in many ways harks forward to the Protestant Reformation. When he died in 1384, Wycliffe's English Bible was nearly complete. But his translation was banned in 1408, and the Lollards (who had become revolutionaries of a sort) were brutally suppressed. Many were burnt alive with Bibles hung around their necks.
In the early 16th century the next great English translator, William Tyndale, announced to a learned theologian that "ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the scripture than thou dost." Tyndale was inspired by Luther and dedicated to the task of producing an up-to-date English Bible. The English church denounced him; he fled to the continent. He was declared a heretic nonetheless, arrested near Brussels, and executed in 1536.
Henry VIII banned Tyndale's translation for its alleged Protestant tendencies, but promised the nation a religiously acceptable English Bible. Meanwhile he brought Protestantism to England in his own idiosyncratic way. From Henry's time onward, the English Bible was an established fact of English life. In his exhaustive analysis (1941), Charles Butterworth ranks Tyndale's the early version that contributed most to the King James Bible. The Geneva Bible ranks a close second. It was published in 1560, two years into the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
"No greater moral change ever passed over a nation than passed over England during the years which parted the middle of the reign of Elizabeth," writes the historian John Richard Green in a famous passage (1874). "England became the people of a book, and that book was the Bible." Religious reformers, inspired by continental Protestants as well as the Bible itself, became dissatisfied with the Church of England--which was closely associated with the monarchy. They found it too popish, too fancy-shmancy, insufficiently "purified"; too removed from the Bible. They wanted a biblical Christianity.
People called the reformers Puritans. Most were Congregationalist or Presbyterian but some were Baptist, Quaker, or something else; some never left the Church of England. (Denominations weren't as sharply defined as they are today. Nor did they stand for the same theological positions. Early Quakers, for example, weren't necessarily pacifist.)
Elizabeth tolerated the Puritans. But things changed when the Virgin Queen died and the Stuarts came to power. On succeeding Elizabeth, James I announced that he would make the Puritans "conform themselves or I will harry them out of the land." He meant it. Persecuted Puritans set sail in rising numbers for the New World.
The Geneva Bible became and remained the Puritans' favorite. It had marginal notes that Puritans liked--but King James and the Church of England deemed them obnoxious. The notes were anti-monarchy and pro-republic--"untrue, seditious, and savouring too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits," the king said. Under his sponsorship a new Bible was prepared (without interpretive notes) by 47 of the best scholars in the land. The King James version appeared in 1611--intended merely as a modest improvement over previous translations. But it happened to be a literary masterpiece of stupendous proportions. Purely on artistic grounds it ranks with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare--Western literature's greatest achievements. In terms of influence and importance, it flattens the other three.
"The Bible was central to [Britain's] intellectual as well as moral life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries," writes Christopher Hill (1993). "The effect of the continual domestic study" of the Bible, according to the eminent historian G.M. Trevelyan (1926), "was greater than that of any literary movement in our annals"--in fact was greater (he adds) than that of any religious movement since the arrival of Christianity in Britain. "The Bible in English history," he writes, "may be regarded as a 'Renaissance' of Hebrew literature far more widespread and more potent than even the Classical Renaissance."
We aren't discussing a merely "popular" or "influential" book. We are talking revolution. In 16th and 17th-century Britain, the English Bible was capable of affecting the first thoughts people had on waking, their last thoughts before sleeping, their dreams, and their nightmares. British homes were decorated biblically--with Bible quotations or pictures painted or papered on the walls or printed on cloth wall-hangings. British life grew and flourished on a biblical trellis. Centuries later, Quiller-Couch wrote of the Bible in Britain that "it is in everything we see, hear, feel, because it is in us, in our blood."
Archbishop Laud, high church and bitterly anti-Puritan, made life even harder for the Puritans under Charles I, who followed James. James and Charles had picked a fight that would continue in one form or another almost till the end of the 17th century--a period that includes the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the Puritan Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell as "Lord Protector," the restoration of the Stuart kings, and their final booting-out in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. When the smoke cleared, Britain was transformed: Parliament's power had been established forever; absolute monarchy had been permanently rejected.
Friction between Puritans and the Church of England was a major cause of the Civil War (1642-51)--which in turn was a major shaping event of the modern world. Parliament and the Puritans (to strip things down to essentials) rebelled against King Charles I and the Church of England.
The Bible figured heavily on both sides, especially among the Puritans. The Puritan army was famous for chanting psalms. Oliver Cromwell once halted his army during a hot pursuit so they could all chant psalm 117 together. (He was a fine general; 117 is a short psalm.) The biblical passage in which Samuel warns the Israelites of the nightmare dangers of kingship was a natural Puritan favorite. The idea of a "Covenant with God," the whole population swearing loyalty to the Lord, was important too. (But the Bible was crucial across the theological and political spectrum. "Although the Puritans were great Psalm-singers, they were not as prominent in the writing of literary Meditations based on the Psalms as were the moderate Anglicans," for example--thus the critic and historian Harold Fisch, 1964.)
In 2002, Fania Oz-Salzberger published a major paper documenting the Hebrew Bible's influence on such seminal British political thinkers of the period as John Selden, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke. They all agreed, writes Oz-Salzberger, that "the people of Israel had a republic, a nearly perfect republic, from the time of the Exodus until at least the coronation of Saul. . . . And precisely because of its transcendent origin, it was an exemplary state of law and a society dedicated to social justice and republican liberty."
John Locke is often described as the most important philosophical influence on the American revolution. Locke believed in a "social contract" in which citizens swap some freedom for a civilized life: Everyone's freedom is curtailed, and everyone benefits. The results are civil society and the state. Locke relied heavily on the Bible. For Locke, writes Richard Ashcraft (1987), "the Bible was the primary source for any endeavor to supply a 'historical' account of man's existence."
After the 1600s, the Bible declined as a political hot topic in Britain, but all sorts of evidence attests to the nation's continuing tendency to see itself as ancient Israel reborn--with an exalted destiny and special relationship to the Almighty. In 1719, for example, Isaac Watts published a bestselling translation of the Psalms--in which references to "Israel" were replaced by the words "Great Britain." When Georg Friedrich Händel settled in London, he determined (naturally) to do things British-style. Thus a long series of oratorios--Esther, Deborah, Judas Maccabeus, Joshua, Susannah, Jephtha, Israel in Egypt--all presupposing that Britain was the new Israel.
The Bible's influence on British literature was profound. The work of John Milton, peerless semi-Puritan poet and political agitator, would have been inconceivable without the Bible--"that book within whose sacred context all wisdom is enfolded," he wrote in 1642. Wordsworth said of Milton's poetry, "However imbued the surface might be with classical literature, he was a Hebrew in soul; all things tended in him towards the sublime." (The first-century Greek who is now called "Pseudo-Longinus"--real name uncertain--got this ball rolling when he famously associated "sublimity" with the Hebrew bible, especially the start of Genesis.)
The Bible continued as a vital influence on English literature through William Blake and the romantics and (of course) even farther, down to our own day. In the literature of ancient Greece, Samuel Taylor Coleridge announced, "all natural objects were dead, mere hollow statues," whereas "in the Hebrew poets each thing has a life of its own." In the Bible "I have found," he wrote, "words for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterances for my hidden griefs. . . . " In certain of Lord Byron's Hebrew Melodies (poems to be sung to Hebrew tunes), the poet captures not only the mood but the subject matter of the biblical Song of Songs--"She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies; / And all that's best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes. . . . " Examples of the Bible's centrality to English literature are countless.
Meanwhile, Anglican settlers founded Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607; Pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower founded Plymouth in 1620. Boston and Salem, 1630. The goal of the early Puritan settlers, writes the historian Sidney Ahlstrom, was "a Holy Commonwealth standing in a national covenant with its Lord." Ahlstrom mentions also that "an 'Anglicanism' deeply colored by Puritan convictions would shape the early religious life of Virginia"; so it seems fair to describe the first stages of the invention of America as a basically Puritan affair. The early settlers founded a series of colleges to provide them with pastors and theologians, starting with Harvard in 1636. By 1700, a quarter of a million ex-Europeans and their descendants lived in the future United States.
America's earliest settlers came in search of religious freedom, to escape religious persecution--vitally important facts that Americans tend increasingly to forget. A new arrival who joined the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1623 "blessed God for the opportunity of freedom and liberty to enjoy the ordinances of God in purity among His people." America was a haven for devoutly religious dissidents. It is a perfect reflection of the nation's origins that the very first freedom in the Bill of Rights--Article one, part one--should be religious freedom. "Separation of church and state" was a means to an end, not an end in itself. The idea that the Bill of Rights would one day be traduced into a broom to sweep religion out of the public square like so much dried mud off the boots of careless children would have left the Founders of this nation (my guess is) trembling in rage. We owe it to them in simple gratitude to see that the Bill of Rights is not--is never--used as a weapon against religion.
You cannot understand the literature and experience of 17th-century American Puritans unless you know the Bible. The Pilgrim father William Bradford reports in his famous journal, for example, that his people had no choice but to camp near their landing-place on the Massachusetts mainland. There was no reason to think they could do better elsewhere; after all they could not, "as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah to view from this wilderness a more goodly country."
Bradford saw no need to explain that he was referring to Moses gazing at the Promised Land from atop Mount Pisgah before his death (Deuteronomy 34:1). To 17th-century readers, the reference would have been obvious--and so too the implied message: These Pilgrims are like biblical Israelites. They are a chosen people who made a dangerous crossing from the house of (British) bondage to a Promised Land of freedom. Other Puritan settlers expressed themselves in similar terms. There is a fascinating resemblance between these Puritan writings and the Hebrew literary form called "melitzah," in which the author makes his point by stringing together Biblical and rabbinic passages. The Puritans' world, like traditional Jewish society, was permeated and obsessed with the Bible.
Bradford's comparison between Puritans and ancient Israel is central to the American revolution and the emergence of the new nation. Americans saw themselves as Israelites throwing off a tyrant's yoke. Most historians look to the British and Continental philosophers of the Enlightenment, Locke especially, as the major intellectual influence on America's Founding Fathers and revolutionary generation. To rely on Locke is to rely (indirectly) on the Bible. Yet the Bible itself, straight up, was the most important revolutionary text of all. Consider the seal of the United States designed by a committee of the Continental Congress consisting of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. (They don't make congressional committees like they used to!) Their proposed seal shows Israel crossing the Red Sea, with the motto "Rebellion to kings is obedience to God." The pastor Abiel Abbot proclaimed in 1799, "It has been often remarked that the people of the United States come nearer to a parallel with Ancient Israel, than any other nation upon the globe. Hence Our American Israel is a term frequently used; and our common consent allows it apt and proper."
That Britain and America should both have been inclined to see themselves as chosen peoples made a subterranean connection between them that has sometimes--one suspects--been plainer to their enemies than their friends. Down to the war in Iraq, enemies of America and Britain have suspected an Anglo-Saxon conspiracy to rule the world. In part this is paranoia; but it might also have something to do with Britain's and America's Bible-centered cultural histories. The two nations speak of a "special relationship" with each other--besides which, each has a history of believing in its own "special relationship" with the Lord Himself.
The Bible continued to shape American history. Some Americans saw the great push westward as fulfilling the Lord's plan for the United States, modeled on Israel's settlement of the holy land. Meanwhile, many have noticed that the history of modern Israel resembles earlier American experience. Harassed Europeans arrive in a sparsely settled land in search of freedom. They build the place up and make it bloom. They struggle with the indigenous inhabitants, some of whom are friendly and some not. At first they collaborate with the British colonial authorities; each group winds up in a push for independence and a deadly fight with Britain.
But long before Israel resembled America, America resembled Israel. It's true that Manifest Destiny--the idea that America was predestined to push westwards towards the Pacific--was less a Bible-based than a "natural rights" approach to America's place in God's plans. You didn't have to consult the Bible to learn about America's Manifest Destiny; it was just obvious. But America was called back to her biblical faith by no less a man than Abraham Lincoln himself.
As the Civil War approached, both North and South saw their positions in biblical terms. Southern preachers sometimes accused abolitionists of being atheists in disguise. Lincoln rose above this kind of dispute. "In the present civil war it is quite possible," he wrote in 1862, "that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party."
Lincoln was America's most "biblical" president--"no president has ever had the detailed knowledge of the Bible that Lincoln had," writes the historian William Wolf. Lincoln turned to the Bible more and more frequently and fervently as the war progressed. His heterodox but profound Christianity showed him how to understand the war as a fight to redeem America's promise to mankind. Lincoln never joined a church, but said often that he would join one if "the Saviour's summary of the Gospel" were its only creed. He meant the passage in Mark and Luke where Jesus restates God's requirements in terms of two edicts from the Hebrew Bible: to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Lincoln's religion was deeply biblical--and characteristically American.
In modern times the Bible was no less important as a shaper and molder of American destiny. Woodrow Wilson, another intensely biblical president, spoke in biblical terms when he took America into the First World War--on behalf of freedom and democracy for all mankind. Harry Truman's Bible-centered Christianity was important to his decisions to lead America into the Cold War, and make America the first nation to recognize the newborn state of Israel--to the vast disgust of the perpetually benighted State Department. Reagan's presidency revolved around Winthrop's Gospel-inspired image of the sacred city on a hill. George W. Bush's worldwide war on tyranny is the quintessence of a biblical project--one that sees America as an almost chosen people, with the heavy responsibilities that go with the job.
There is no agreement whether God created the world, but the Bible's awe-striking creative powers are undeniable. There is no agreement whether God "is not a man that He should lie" (Numbers 23:19), but the Hebrew Bible's uncanny honesty respecting Israel and its many sins is plain. The faithful ask, in the words of the 139th psalm, "Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?" And answer, "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me." Secularists don't see it that way; but the Bible's penetration into the farthest corners of the known world is simple fact. Most contemporary philosophers and culture critics are barely aware of these things, don't see the pattern behind them, can't tell us what the pattern means, and (for the most part) don't care.
* * *
THE BIBLE LITERACY REPORT: What Do American Teens Need to Know and What Do They Know? was commissioned by a nonprofit organization called the Bible Literacy Project; it was published April 26. Students in the Gallup-conducted survey were mostly in 7th through 9th grades; they were enrolled at 30 public and 4 private schools (one Catholic, one Protestant, and 2 non-sectarian). Forty-one teachers took part--"a diverse sample of high school English teachers in 10 states." All are reputedly "among the best teachers in their subject."
These teachers are convinced that students ought to know the Bible and don't. Forty of forty-one agreed that "Bible knowledge confers a distinct educational advantage." But the majority estimated that fewer than a quarter of their current students are "Bible literate."
Contrary to what a person might guess, the teachers don't necessarily believe that Bible literacy has declined in recent decades. They describe a complex picture; naturally, individuals differ. (One teacher said that "Pentecostal kids or religious Muslim kids" seem better-informed than the others.)
The teachers are strikingly confused about the legal status of Bible-teaching in public schools. The ACLU and kindred organizations are winning the fight to suppress religion in public--to ban it from the public square as religion has traditionally been banned under regimes that tolerate it only marginally; to force it indoors and under wraps, as minority religions have traditionally been treated by powerful majorities that threaten violence. The ACLU and friends are winning by court order and--more important--by confusion and intimidation. "It was not uncommon," says the report, "for educators to hold erroneous beliefs about the legality of using the Bible and Bible literature in public-school classrooms."
Another of the report's sobering aspects has to do with the Bible topics deemed by teachers to be important. Mostly these are people and stories, not ideas. The report lists 72 biblical "items" that the teachers consider essential. The list starts: "Ten Commandments, Cain and Abel, Christ, Genesis, Jesus, Adam and Eve, Bible, Moses, David and Goliath"--and so on. Not what you would call challenging stuff. From the special viewpoint of American history, it seems to me you would rate four biblical "items" essential: Exodus, Covenant, and the related ideas of Promised Land and Chosen People. Two of these appear on the teachers' list; Covenant and Chosen People don't make the cut. This is no criticism of the teachers or the report, merely a sad reflection of the collapse of our educational standards across the board. It used to be that young children learned Bible stories and Bible basics. They didn't need high school teachers to bring them up to speed on the Ten Commandments.
Now let's consider the actual results. What do high school students know?
The good news: If you ask questions that are so simple the average arthropod would find them patronizing, and cast them in multiple choice format to make things even easier . . . American high school students do okay. Almost three-quarters (72 percent) of students in the survey could answer correctly that Moses "led the Israelites out of bondage." Ninety percent could tell you that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman in Genesis. Sixty-nine percent figured out that "the Good Samaritan" was "someone who helps others." Break out the champagne!
On second thought . . . "Significant minorities of American students have not yet achieved even this rudimentary level of Bible knowledge." "Eight percent of American teens," for example, "believe that Moses is one of the twelve Apostles."
Go beyond rudimentary and you find that "very few American students" have the level of Bible knowledge that high-school English teachers regard as "basic to a good education." "Almost two-thirds of teens" couldn't pick the right answer out of four choices when they were asked to identify "a quotation from the Sermon on the Mount" ("Blessed are the poor in spirit"). Two-thirds didn't know that "the Road to Damascus is where St. Paul was blinded by a vision of Christ." Fewer than a third "could correctly identify which statement about David was not true (David tried to kill King Saul)." And so on.
WHAT TO DO? Every school that teaches American history must teach the Bible's central role. Easily said; but experience suggests that many of today's classes in English and U.S. history are stuck somewhere between useless and harmful. High school history and English curricula ought to be rebuilt from scratch right now, on an emergency basis. Those rebuilt curricula should (of course) teach students about the centrality of the Bible.
But students need to read the Bible, not just about the Bible. High school Bible-as-literature electives are rare and controversial. Not long ago Frankenmuth, Michigan, became (briefly) famous when its school board refused to allow such an elective.
There are good reasons to be wary of such courses. There is nothing wrong with them on constitutional grounds, and the Bible Literacy Project has reasonable, serious curricula of its own on offer. But these courses have to keep well clear of teaching the Bible as a sacred text, or promoting religious views of any kind. And it happens that nearly all of the smartest, deepest readers of the Bible through the ages have approached it from a religious direction. No doubt their views can be worked in somehow, but in how natural a way? And won't they be a lot easier just to skip?
And those in favor of such courses should be aware of their bleak history--specifically, the bleak history of Bible teaching that refuses to treat the Bible as sacred scripture. The German "higher critics," starting with Julius Wellhausen in the late 19th century, picked the Bible to pieces like vultures addressing a dead cow. They were always ready to invent a new "source," never quite able to see the point--to understand Scripture as loving readers do. Being in love with a book doesn't guarantee that you will succeed as a critic. But not being in love guarantees that you will fail. (One reason "deconstructionism" is the least successful critical approach in modern history.)
When I was a graduate student in Bible studies during the long-ago late 1970s, this particular fight was raging. (Fights are nearly always raging in Bible studies.) Scholars such as Brevard Childs of Yale were struggling to wrest the Bible from the palsied grip (which looked a lot like a choke-hold) of higher critics who could tell you nearly everything about the Bible, in academic German as charming and graceful as Blutwurst, except what the words actually meant. The new "canonical critics" (such as Childs himself) were struggling to put the Bible back into the religious context out of which it had been untimely ripped by profoundly irritating Germans.
So let's have Bible-as-literature electives in every public high school, by all means. But let's also face facts: These are hard courses to teach at best. Do we have teachers who are up to the job? (With laudable foresight, the Bible Literacy Project is already developing workshops for teachers.) And let's also keep in mind that, for most children, such courses can only be half-way houses. Children studying the Bible should learn their own religious traditions as precious truth, not as one alternative on a multicultural list.
Teaching precious religious truth is not what America's public schools are for. Ultimately there is only one solution to our Bible literacy crisis. Our churches, our synagogues, and all other institutions that revere the Bible must do better. How well are they doing? To judge by the new report, lousy. (Of course some are doing a lot better than others.)
It's impossible to find one global solution to the problem of Bible teaching in America. But it's easy to find one global hope. America is fertile ground for Great Awakenings--mass movements in which large chunks of the population return to their religious roots. We haven't had one for awhile; we are overdue. Great Awakenings are big, dramatic events that take off like rockets and burn out like rockets, after brief but spectacular careers. Even so, many people find in the aftermath that their life-trajectories have been changed forever.
The next Great Awakening will presumably be centered in the Protestant community--but will deal in friendship with America's other religious communities. To have a Great Awakening, you need a great talker. (To change people's ideas about religion and the Bible and God, you have to look them in the eye and speak to them from the heart.)
My guess is that our next Great Awakening will begin among college students. College students today are (spiritually speaking) the driest timber I have ever come across. Mostly they know little or nothing about religion; little or nothing about Americanism. Mostly no one ever speaks to them about truth and beauty, or nobility or honor or greatness. They are empty--spiritually bone dry--because no one has ever bothered to give them anything spiritual that is worth having. Platitudes about diversity and tolerance and multiculturalism are thin gruel for intellectually growing young people.
Let the right person speak to them, and they will turn back to the Bible with an excitement and exhilaration that will shake the country. In reading the Bible they will feel as if they are going home--which is just what they will be doing. Nothing would do America more good than a biblical homecoming.
What has the Bible been to this country? In 1630, John Winthrop repeated Moses' instructions: "Lett us choose life." How to do it? By reading and obeying the Bible, above all "the Counsell of Micah"--"to doe Justly, to love mercy, to walke humbly with our God." Americans (by and large) have done their best to follow Winthrop's instructions. If they haven't always succeeded--if America has managed at times to be a profoundly sinful nation (which is no less than the Bible expects of all nations)--they have also tried hard to be good. They have tried hard to choose life. And the Bible has been as good as its own word (Proverbs 3:18)--"It is a Tree of Life to them that lay hold of it."
David Gelernter is a senior fellow in Jewish Thought at the Shalem Center, Jerusalem, and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.
© Copyright 2005, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
The Weekly Standard
Volume 010, Issue 34
A report just issued by the Bible Literacy Project (more on this later) suggests that young Americans know very little about the Bible. The report is important, but first things first: A fair number of Americans don't see why teenagers should know anything at all about the Bible.
Scripture begins with God creating the world, but there is something these verses don't tell you: The Bible has itself created worlds. Wherever you stand on the spectrum from devout to atheist, you must acknowledge that the Bible has been a creative force without parallel in history.
Go to the center of Paris and drop in on the apotheosis of the French Middle Ages--Sainte Chapelle, whose walls are made almost entirely of stained glass. It "has rightly been called," writes the scholar Shalom Spiegel, "the most wonderful of pictured Bibles." The King James Bible, says Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, "has influenced our literature more deeply than any other book--more deeply even than all the writings of Shakespeare--far more deeply." The poet and painter William Blake calls the Old and New Testaments "the Great Codes of Art." America's foremost prophet offers his culminating vision in the second inaugural address--"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right . . . " Lincoln's speech "reads like a supplement to the Bible," writes the historian William Wolf, with its "fourteen references to God, four direct quotations from Genesis, Psalms, and Matthew, and other allusions to scriptural teaching." "The best gift God has given to man," Lincoln called the Bible. "But for it we could not know right from wrong."
Ronald Reagan called America "a great shining city on a hill," three-and-a-half centuries after John Winthrop (sailing for Boston in 1630) anticipated a new community that would be "as a Citty upon a Hill"--invoking the famous verse in Matthew, "Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid" (5:14). Which harks back in turn to the prophets (Isaiah 2:2-3, Micah 4:2) and the book of Proverbs (4:18). John Livingstone Lowe called the King James Bible "the noblest monument of English prose" (1936); George Saintsbury called it "probably the greatest prose work in any language" (1887). Nearly two millennia earlier, the great Pharisee rabbi Hillel described the ideal life: "loving peace and pursuing peace; loving humanity and bringing it close to the Torah."
Here is a basic question about America that ought to be on page 1 of every history book: What made the nation's Founders so sure they were onto something big? America today is the most powerful nation on earth, most powerful in all history--and a model the whole world imitates. What made them so sure?--the settlers and colonists, the Founding Fathers and all the generations that intervened before America emerged as a world power in the 20th century?
What made them so certain that America would become a light of the world, the shining city on a hill? What made John Adams say, in 1765, "I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence"? What made Abraham Lincoln call America (in 1862, in the middle of a ruinous civil war) "the last, best hope of earth"?
We know of people who are certain of their destinies from childhood on. But nations?
Many things made all these Americans and proto-Americans sure; and to some extent they were merely guessing and hoping. But one thing above all made them true prophets. They read the Bible. Winthrop, Adams, Lincoln, and thousands of others found a good destiny in the Bible and made it their own. They read about Israel's covenant with God and took it to heart: They were Israel. ("Wee are entered into Covenant with him for this worke," said Winthrop. "Wee shall finde that the God of Israell is among us.") They read about God's chosen people and took it to heart: They were God's chosen people, or--as Lincoln put it--God's "almost chosen people." The Bible as they interpreted it told them what they could be and would be. Unless we read the Bible, American history is a closed book.
Evidently young Americans don't know much about the Bible (or anything else, come to think of it; that's another story). But let's not kid ourselves--this problem will be hard to attack. It's clear that any public school that teaches about America must teach about the Bible, from outside. But teaching the Bible from inside (reading Scripture, not just about Scripture) is trickier. You don't have to believe in the mythical "wall of separation" between church and state--which the Bill of Rights never mentions and had no intention of erecting--to understand that Americans don't want their public schools teaching Christianity or Judaism.
But can you teach the Bible as mere "literature" without flattening and misrepresenting it? How will you address the differences (which go right down to the ground) between Jews and Christians respecting the Bible? (The question is not so much how to spare Jewish sensibilities--minorities have rights, but so do majorities; the question is how to tell the truth.) What kind of parents leave their children's Bible education to the public schools, anyway? How do we go beyond public schools in attacking a nationwide problem of Bible illiteracy?
Tricky questions.
American history starts with the emergence of Puritanism in 16th-century Britain. The Bible was central to the founding and development of Puritanism. It was central to the emergence of modern Britain in the 16th and 17th centuries--and modern Britain was important in turn to America and to the whole world.
"Puritan" has been an insult for hundreds of years. (Where are the revisionists when you need one?) It suggests rigid, austere, censorious--exactly the kind of religion that secularists love to hate. The Puritans were rigid and censorious to a point; most caricatures are partly true. But mainly they were Christians who hoped to worship God with their whole lives, body and soul; with a dazzling fervor that still lights up their journals, letters, and poetry 300 years later. In the early 18th century the young Jonathan Edwards (eventually one of America's greatest theologians) writes of being "wrapped and swallowed up in God." "The Puritans wanted that fullness of life that made David dance before the ark" (thus J.D. Dow in 1897). America was born in a passionate spiritual explosion. The explosion was created and fueled by the Bible.
The invention of printing in the mid-15th century, and the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th--whose central idea was that Scripture and not human theological doctrine must be decisive for Christianity--created an English Bible-reading craze. The masses were hungry for literature, and religion was the hottest topic on the agenda. Already in Henry VIII's reign (1509-47), the Bible was "disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled in every alehouse and tavern," according to the king himself--who was not happy about it. The Bible was a radical, subversive book.
English Bible translations date back to medieval times. (In fact earlier: The first translation, into Anglo-Saxon rather than English proper, was a word-by-word crib added to the Latin of the circa-700 Lindisfarne Gospel Book--one of history's most sublimely beautiful manuscripts and greatest artworks.) But translating the Bible into English was no mere literary act. It was a controversial theological declaration. Religious reformers saw the English Bible as nothing less than a direct connection between ordinary Christian believers and the Lord. Putting the Scripture into English was sacred work; some were willing to die for it. They were opposed by such Roman Catholic stalwarts as Sir Thomas More, who expressed a widely held view when he proclaimed it "pestilential heresy" to think that "we should believe nothing but plain Scripture."
The English Bible as we know it begins with John Wycliffe's work in the late 14th century. Wycliffe preached the primacy of the Bible and founded the Lollards' movement, which in many ways harks forward to the Protestant Reformation. When he died in 1384, Wycliffe's English Bible was nearly complete. But his translation was banned in 1408, and the Lollards (who had become revolutionaries of a sort) were brutally suppressed. Many were burnt alive with Bibles hung around their necks.
In the early 16th century the next great English translator, William Tyndale, announced to a learned theologian that "ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the scripture than thou dost." Tyndale was inspired by Luther and dedicated to the task of producing an up-to-date English Bible. The English church denounced him; he fled to the continent. He was declared a heretic nonetheless, arrested near Brussels, and executed in 1536.
Henry VIII banned Tyndale's translation for its alleged Protestant tendencies, but promised the nation a religiously acceptable English Bible. Meanwhile he brought Protestantism to England in his own idiosyncratic way. From Henry's time onward, the English Bible was an established fact of English life. In his exhaustive analysis (1941), Charles Butterworth ranks Tyndale's the early version that contributed most to the King James Bible. The Geneva Bible ranks a close second. It was published in 1560, two years into the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
"No greater moral change ever passed over a nation than passed over England during the years which parted the middle of the reign of Elizabeth," writes the historian John Richard Green in a famous passage (1874). "England became the people of a book, and that book was the Bible." Religious reformers, inspired by continental Protestants as well as the Bible itself, became dissatisfied with the Church of England--which was closely associated with the monarchy. They found it too popish, too fancy-shmancy, insufficiently "purified"; too removed from the Bible. They wanted a biblical Christianity.
People called the reformers Puritans. Most were Congregationalist or Presbyterian but some were Baptist, Quaker, or something else; some never left the Church of England. (Denominations weren't as sharply defined as they are today. Nor did they stand for the same theological positions. Early Quakers, for example, weren't necessarily pacifist.)
Elizabeth tolerated the Puritans. But things changed when the Virgin Queen died and the Stuarts came to power. On succeeding Elizabeth, James I announced that he would make the Puritans "conform themselves or I will harry them out of the land." He meant it. Persecuted Puritans set sail in rising numbers for the New World.
The Geneva Bible became and remained the Puritans' favorite. It had marginal notes that Puritans liked--but King James and the Church of England deemed them obnoxious. The notes were anti-monarchy and pro-republic--"untrue, seditious, and savouring too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits," the king said. Under his sponsorship a new Bible was prepared (without interpretive notes) by 47 of the best scholars in the land. The King James version appeared in 1611--intended merely as a modest improvement over previous translations. But it happened to be a literary masterpiece of stupendous proportions. Purely on artistic grounds it ranks with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare--Western literature's greatest achievements. In terms of influence and importance, it flattens the other three.
"The Bible was central to [Britain's] intellectual as well as moral life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries," writes Christopher Hill (1993). "The effect of the continual domestic study" of the Bible, according to the eminent historian G.M. Trevelyan (1926), "was greater than that of any literary movement in our annals"--in fact was greater (he adds) than that of any religious movement since the arrival of Christianity in Britain. "The Bible in English history," he writes, "may be regarded as a 'Renaissance' of Hebrew literature far more widespread and more potent than even the Classical Renaissance."
We aren't discussing a merely "popular" or "influential" book. We are talking revolution. In 16th and 17th-century Britain, the English Bible was capable of affecting the first thoughts people had on waking, their last thoughts before sleeping, their dreams, and their nightmares. British homes were decorated biblically--with Bible quotations or pictures painted or papered on the walls or printed on cloth wall-hangings. British life grew and flourished on a biblical trellis. Centuries later, Quiller-Couch wrote of the Bible in Britain that "it is in everything we see, hear, feel, because it is in us, in our blood."
Archbishop Laud, high church and bitterly anti-Puritan, made life even harder for the Puritans under Charles I, who followed James. James and Charles had picked a fight that would continue in one form or another almost till the end of the 17th century--a period that includes the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the Puritan Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell as "Lord Protector," the restoration of the Stuart kings, and their final booting-out in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. When the smoke cleared, Britain was transformed: Parliament's power had been established forever; absolute monarchy had been permanently rejected.
Friction between Puritans and the Church of England was a major cause of the Civil War (1642-51)--which in turn was a major shaping event of the modern world. Parliament and the Puritans (to strip things down to essentials) rebelled against King Charles I and the Church of England.
The Bible figured heavily on both sides, especially among the Puritans. The Puritan army was famous for chanting psalms. Oliver Cromwell once halted his army during a hot pursuit so they could all chant psalm 117 together. (He was a fine general; 117 is a short psalm.) The biblical passage in which Samuel warns the Israelites of the nightmare dangers of kingship was a natural Puritan favorite. The idea of a "Covenant with God," the whole population swearing loyalty to the Lord, was important too. (But the Bible was crucial across the theological and political spectrum. "Although the Puritans were great Psalm-singers, they were not as prominent in the writing of literary Meditations based on the Psalms as were the moderate Anglicans," for example--thus the critic and historian Harold Fisch, 1964.)
In 2002, Fania Oz-Salzberger published a major paper documenting the Hebrew Bible's influence on such seminal British political thinkers of the period as John Selden, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke. They all agreed, writes Oz-Salzberger, that "the people of Israel had a republic, a nearly perfect republic, from the time of the Exodus until at least the coronation of Saul. . . . And precisely because of its transcendent origin, it was an exemplary state of law and a society dedicated to social justice and republican liberty."
John Locke is often described as the most important philosophical influence on the American revolution. Locke believed in a "social contract" in which citizens swap some freedom for a civilized life: Everyone's freedom is curtailed, and everyone benefits. The results are civil society and the state. Locke relied heavily on the Bible. For Locke, writes Richard Ashcraft (1987), "the Bible was the primary source for any endeavor to supply a 'historical' account of man's existence."
After the 1600s, the Bible declined as a political hot topic in Britain, but all sorts of evidence attests to the nation's continuing tendency to see itself as ancient Israel reborn--with an exalted destiny and special relationship to the Almighty. In 1719, for example, Isaac Watts published a bestselling translation of the Psalms--in which references to "Israel" were replaced by the words "Great Britain." When Georg Friedrich Händel settled in London, he determined (naturally) to do things British-style. Thus a long series of oratorios--Esther, Deborah, Judas Maccabeus, Joshua, Susannah, Jephtha, Israel in Egypt--all presupposing that Britain was the new Israel.
The Bible's influence on British literature was profound. The work of John Milton, peerless semi-Puritan poet and political agitator, would have been inconceivable without the Bible--"that book within whose sacred context all wisdom is enfolded," he wrote in 1642. Wordsworth said of Milton's poetry, "However imbued the surface might be with classical literature, he was a Hebrew in soul; all things tended in him towards the sublime." (The first-century Greek who is now called "Pseudo-Longinus"--real name uncertain--got this ball rolling when he famously associated "sublimity" with the Hebrew bible, especially the start of Genesis.)
The Bible continued as a vital influence on English literature through William Blake and the romantics and (of course) even farther, down to our own day. In the literature of ancient Greece, Samuel Taylor Coleridge announced, "all natural objects were dead, mere hollow statues," whereas "in the Hebrew poets each thing has a life of its own." In the Bible "I have found," he wrote, "words for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterances for my hidden griefs. . . . " In certain of Lord Byron's Hebrew Melodies (poems to be sung to Hebrew tunes), the poet captures not only the mood but the subject matter of the biblical Song of Songs--"She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies; / And all that's best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes. . . . " Examples of the Bible's centrality to English literature are countless.
Meanwhile, Anglican settlers founded Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607; Pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower founded Plymouth in 1620. Boston and Salem, 1630. The goal of the early Puritan settlers, writes the historian Sidney Ahlstrom, was "a Holy Commonwealth standing in a national covenant with its Lord." Ahlstrom mentions also that "an 'Anglicanism' deeply colored by Puritan convictions would shape the early religious life of Virginia"; so it seems fair to describe the first stages of the invention of America as a basically Puritan affair. The early settlers founded a series of colleges to provide them with pastors and theologians, starting with Harvard in 1636. By 1700, a quarter of a million ex-Europeans and their descendants lived in the future United States.
America's earliest settlers came in search of religious freedom, to escape religious persecution--vitally important facts that Americans tend increasingly to forget. A new arrival who joined the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1623 "blessed God for the opportunity of freedom and liberty to enjoy the ordinances of God in purity among His people." America was a haven for devoutly religious dissidents. It is a perfect reflection of the nation's origins that the very first freedom in the Bill of Rights--Article one, part one--should be religious freedom. "Separation of church and state" was a means to an end, not an end in itself. The idea that the Bill of Rights would one day be traduced into a broom to sweep religion out of the public square like so much dried mud off the boots of careless children would have left the Founders of this nation (my guess is) trembling in rage. We owe it to them in simple gratitude to see that the Bill of Rights is not--is never--used as a weapon against religion.
You cannot understand the literature and experience of 17th-century American Puritans unless you know the Bible. The Pilgrim father William Bradford reports in his famous journal, for example, that his people had no choice but to camp near their landing-place on the Massachusetts mainland. There was no reason to think they could do better elsewhere; after all they could not, "as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah to view from this wilderness a more goodly country."
Bradford saw no need to explain that he was referring to Moses gazing at the Promised Land from atop Mount Pisgah before his death (Deuteronomy 34:1). To 17th-century readers, the reference would have been obvious--and so too the implied message: These Pilgrims are like biblical Israelites. They are a chosen people who made a dangerous crossing from the house of (British) bondage to a Promised Land of freedom. Other Puritan settlers expressed themselves in similar terms. There is a fascinating resemblance between these Puritan writings and the Hebrew literary form called "melitzah," in which the author makes his point by stringing together Biblical and rabbinic passages. The Puritans' world, like traditional Jewish society, was permeated and obsessed with the Bible.
Bradford's comparison between Puritans and ancient Israel is central to the American revolution and the emergence of the new nation. Americans saw themselves as Israelites throwing off a tyrant's yoke. Most historians look to the British and Continental philosophers of the Enlightenment, Locke especially, as the major intellectual influence on America's Founding Fathers and revolutionary generation. To rely on Locke is to rely (indirectly) on the Bible. Yet the Bible itself, straight up, was the most important revolutionary text of all. Consider the seal of the United States designed by a committee of the Continental Congress consisting of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. (They don't make congressional committees like they used to!) Their proposed seal shows Israel crossing the Red Sea, with the motto "Rebellion to kings is obedience to God." The pastor Abiel Abbot proclaimed in 1799, "It has been often remarked that the people of the United States come nearer to a parallel with Ancient Israel, than any other nation upon the globe. Hence Our American Israel is a term frequently used; and our common consent allows it apt and proper."
That Britain and America should both have been inclined to see themselves as chosen peoples made a subterranean connection between them that has sometimes--one suspects--been plainer to their enemies than their friends. Down to the war in Iraq, enemies of America and Britain have suspected an Anglo-Saxon conspiracy to rule the world. In part this is paranoia; but it might also have something to do with Britain's and America's Bible-centered cultural histories. The two nations speak of a "special relationship" with each other--besides which, each has a history of believing in its own "special relationship" with the Lord Himself.
The Bible continued to shape American history. Some Americans saw the great push westward as fulfilling the Lord's plan for the United States, modeled on Israel's settlement of the holy land. Meanwhile, many have noticed that the history of modern Israel resembles earlier American experience. Harassed Europeans arrive in a sparsely settled land in search of freedom. They build the place up and make it bloom. They struggle with the indigenous inhabitants, some of whom are friendly and some not. At first they collaborate with the British colonial authorities; each group winds up in a push for independence and a deadly fight with Britain.
But long before Israel resembled America, America resembled Israel. It's true that Manifest Destiny--the idea that America was predestined to push westwards towards the Pacific--was less a Bible-based than a "natural rights" approach to America's place in God's plans. You didn't have to consult the Bible to learn about America's Manifest Destiny; it was just obvious. But America was called back to her biblical faith by no less a man than Abraham Lincoln himself.
As the Civil War approached, both North and South saw their positions in biblical terms. Southern preachers sometimes accused abolitionists of being atheists in disguise. Lincoln rose above this kind of dispute. "In the present civil war it is quite possible," he wrote in 1862, "that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party."
Lincoln was America's most "biblical" president--"no president has ever had the detailed knowledge of the Bible that Lincoln had," writes the historian William Wolf. Lincoln turned to the Bible more and more frequently and fervently as the war progressed. His heterodox but profound Christianity showed him how to understand the war as a fight to redeem America's promise to mankind. Lincoln never joined a church, but said often that he would join one if "the Saviour's summary of the Gospel" were its only creed. He meant the passage in Mark and Luke where Jesus restates God's requirements in terms of two edicts from the Hebrew Bible: to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Lincoln's religion was deeply biblical--and characteristically American.
In modern times the Bible was no less important as a shaper and molder of American destiny. Woodrow Wilson, another intensely biblical president, spoke in biblical terms when he took America into the First World War--on behalf of freedom and democracy for all mankind. Harry Truman's Bible-centered Christianity was important to his decisions to lead America into the Cold War, and make America the first nation to recognize the newborn state of Israel--to the vast disgust of the perpetually benighted State Department. Reagan's presidency revolved around Winthrop's Gospel-inspired image of the sacred city on a hill. George W. Bush's worldwide war on tyranny is the quintessence of a biblical project--one that sees America as an almost chosen people, with the heavy responsibilities that go with the job.
There is no agreement whether God created the world, but the Bible's awe-striking creative powers are undeniable. There is no agreement whether God "is not a man that He should lie" (Numbers 23:19), but the Hebrew Bible's uncanny honesty respecting Israel and its many sins is plain. The faithful ask, in the words of the 139th psalm, "Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?" And answer, "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me." Secularists don't see it that way; but the Bible's penetration into the farthest corners of the known world is simple fact. Most contemporary philosophers and culture critics are barely aware of these things, don't see the pattern behind them, can't tell us what the pattern means, and (for the most part) don't care.
* * *
THE BIBLE LITERACY REPORT: What Do American Teens Need to Know and What Do They Know? was commissioned by a nonprofit organization called the Bible Literacy Project; it was published April 26. Students in the Gallup-conducted survey were mostly in 7th through 9th grades; they were enrolled at 30 public and 4 private schools (one Catholic, one Protestant, and 2 non-sectarian). Forty-one teachers took part--"a diverse sample of high school English teachers in 10 states." All are reputedly "among the best teachers in their subject."
These teachers are convinced that students ought to know the Bible and don't. Forty of forty-one agreed that "Bible knowledge confers a distinct educational advantage." But the majority estimated that fewer than a quarter of their current students are "Bible literate."
Contrary to what a person might guess, the teachers don't necessarily believe that Bible literacy has declined in recent decades. They describe a complex picture; naturally, individuals differ. (One teacher said that "Pentecostal kids or religious Muslim kids" seem better-informed than the others.)
The teachers are strikingly confused about the legal status of Bible-teaching in public schools. The ACLU and kindred organizations are winning the fight to suppress religion in public--to ban it from the public square as religion has traditionally been banned under regimes that tolerate it only marginally; to force it indoors and under wraps, as minority religions have traditionally been treated by powerful majorities that threaten violence. The ACLU and friends are winning by court order and--more important--by confusion and intimidation. "It was not uncommon," says the report, "for educators to hold erroneous beliefs about the legality of using the Bible and Bible literature in public-school classrooms."
Another of the report's sobering aspects has to do with the Bible topics deemed by teachers to be important. Mostly these are people and stories, not ideas. The report lists 72 biblical "items" that the teachers consider essential. The list starts: "Ten Commandments, Cain and Abel, Christ, Genesis, Jesus, Adam and Eve, Bible, Moses, David and Goliath"--and so on. Not what you would call challenging stuff. From the special viewpoint of American history, it seems to me you would rate four biblical "items" essential: Exodus, Covenant, and the related ideas of Promised Land and Chosen People. Two of these appear on the teachers' list; Covenant and Chosen People don't make the cut. This is no criticism of the teachers or the report, merely a sad reflection of the collapse of our educational standards across the board. It used to be that young children learned Bible stories and Bible basics. They didn't need high school teachers to bring them up to speed on the Ten Commandments.
Now let's consider the actual results. What do high school students know?
The good news: If you ask questions that are so simple the average arthropod would find them patronizing, and cast them in multiple choice format to make things even easier . . . American high school students do okay. Almost three-quarters (72 percent) of students in the survey could answer correctly that Moses "led the Israelites out of bondage." Ninety percent could tell you that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman in Genesis. Sixty-nine percent figured out that "the Good Samaritan" was "someone who helps others." Break out the champagne!
On second thought . . . "Significant minorities of American students have not yet achieved even this rudimentary level of Bible knowledge." "Eight percent of American teens," for example, "believe that Moses is one of the twelve Apostles."
Go beyond rudimentary and you find that "very few American students" have the level of Bible knowledge that high-school English teachers regard as "basic to a good education." "Almost two-thirds of teens" couldn't pick the right answer out of four choices when they were asked to identify "a quotation from the Sermon on the Mount" ("Blessed are the poor in spirit"). Two-thirds didn't know that "the Road to Damascus is where St. Paul was blinded by a vision of Christ." Fewer than a third "could correctly identify which statement about David was not true (David tried to kill King Saul)." And so on.
WHAT TO DO? Every school that teaches American history must teach the Bible's central role. Easily said; but experience suggests that many of today's classes in English and U.S. history are stuck somewhere between useless and harmful. High school history and English curricula ought to be rebuilt from scratch right now, on an emergency basis. Those rebuilt curricula should (of course) teach students about the centrality of the Bible.
But students need to read the Bible, not just about the Bible. High school Bible-as-literature electives are rare and controversial. Not long ago Frankenmuth, Michigan, became (briefly) famous when its school board refused to allow such an elective.
There are good reasons to be wary of such courses. There is nothing wrong with them on constitutional grounds, and the Bible Literacy Project has reasonable, serious curricula of its own on offer. But these courses have to keep well clear of teaching the Bible as a sacred text, or promoting religious views of any kind. And it happens that nearly all of the smartest, deepest readers of the Bible through the ages have approached it from a religious direction. No doubt their views can be worked in somehow, but in how natural a way? And won't they be a lot easier just to skip?
And those in favor of such courses should be aware of their bleak history--specifically, the bleak history of Bible teaching that refuses to treat the Bible as sacred scripture. The German "higher critics," starting with Julius Wellhausen in the late 19th century, picked the Bible to pieces like vultures addressing a dead cow. They were always ready to invent a new "source," never quite able to see the point--to understand Scripture as loving readers do. Being in love with a book doesn't guarantee that you will succeed as a critic. But not being in love guarantees that you will fail. (One reason "deconstructionism" is the least successful critical approach in modern history.)
When I was a graduate student in Bible studies during the long-ago late 1970s, this particular fight was raging. (Fights are nearly always raging in Bible studies.) Scholars such as Brevard Childs of Yale were struggling to wrest the Bible from the palsied grip (which looked a lot like a choke-hold) of higher critics who could tell you nearly everything about the Bible, in academic German as charming and graceful as Blutwurst, except what the words actually meant. The new "canonical critics" (such as Childs himself) were struggling to put the Bible back into the religious context out of which it had been untimely ripped by profoundly irritating Germans.
So let's have Bible-as-literature electives in every public high school, by all means. But let's also face facts: These are hard courses to teach at best. Do we have teachers who are up to the job? (With laudable foresight, the Bible Literacy Project is already developing workshops for teachers.) And let's also keep in mind that, for most children, such courses can only be half-way houses. Children studying the Bible should learn their own religious traditions as precious truth, not as one alternative on a multicultural list.
Teaching precious religious truth is not what America's public schools are for. Ultimately there is only one solution to our Bible literacy crisis. Our churches, our synagogues, and all other institutions that revere the Bible must do better. How well are they doing? To judge by the new report, lousy. (Of course some are doing a lot better than others.)
It's impossible to find one global solution to the problem of Bible teaching in America. But it's easy to find one global hope. America is fertile ground for Great Awakenings--mass movements in which large chunks of the population return to their religious roots. We haven't had one for awhile; we are overdue. Great Awakenings are big, dramatic events that take off like rockets and burn out like rockets, after brief but spectacular careers. Even so, many people find in the aftermath that their life-trajectories have been changed forever.
The next Great Awakening will presumably be centered in the Protestant community--but will deal in friendship with America's other religious communities. To have a Great Awakening, you need a great talker. (To change people's ideas about religion and the Bible and God, you have to look them in the eye and speak to them from the heart.)
My guess is that our next Great Awakening will begin among college students. College students today are (spiritually speaking) the driest timber I have ever come across. Mostly they know little or nothing about religion; little or nothing about Americanism. Mostly no one ever speaks to them about truth and beauty, or nobility or honor or greatness. They are empty--spiritually bone dry--because no one has ever bothered to give them anything spiritual that is worth having. Platitudes about diversity and tolerance and multiculturalism are thin gruel for intellectually growing young people.
Let the right person speak to them, and they will turn back to the Bible with an excitement and exhilaration that will shake the country. In reading the Bible they will feel as if they are going home--which is just what they will be doing. Nothing would do America more good than a biblical homecoming.
What has the Bible been to this country? In 1630, John Winthrop repeated Moses' instructions: "Lett us choose life." How to do it? By reading and obeying the Bible, above all "the Counsell of Micah"--"to doe Justly, to love mercy, to walke humbly with our God." Americans (by and large) have done their best to follow Winthrop's instructions. If they haven't always succeeded--if America has managed at times to be a profoundly sinful nation (which is no less than the Bible expects of all nations)--they have also tried hard to be good. They have tried hard to choose life. And the Bible has been as good as its own word (Proverbs 3:18)--"It is a Tree of Life to them that lay hold of it."
David Gelernter is a senior fellow in Jewish Thought at the Shalem Center, Jerusalem, and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.
© Copyright 2005, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
Al Kaltman- Osama bin Laden: Made in China?
By Al Kaltman
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
May 17, 2005
The great British mathematician Alfred North Whitehead once wrote, "It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious." Some Chinese believe that Osama bin Laden has such a mind. Although bin Laden and his minions are plotting the current terror war against the United States, the Chinese – in their quest to create a multipolar world – may have written the book on terrorism…literally.
From the collapse of the Soviet Union and the U.S. victory in the first Gulf War, political leaders and military strategists drew two obvious conclusions. The United States could not be defeated militarily, and any nation that sought to achieve military parity with the U.S. would, like the former Soviet Union, bankrupt itself in the attempt.
To the leaders of China, France, Germany and Russia, a unipolar world with the United States as the world’s only superpower is an unappealing long-term prospect. Jacques Chirac who believes that France’s mission is to shape "the destiny of the world" has been the most vocal proponent of "a world where political, economic and cultural influence" is shared. He envisions a united Europe led by France and Germany (with Germany the junior partner) as one of the centers of power in a multipolar world. Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao also see multipolarity as the means to eliminating U.S. dominance. However, becoming a "pole" that rivals the United States is easier said than done.
The French and German economies are hobbled by excessive regulation, and in the case of Germany the burden of reintegration with the former East Germany. The Russian economy suffers from governmental interference, bureaucratic bungling and official corruption leftover from the U.S.SR. Only China is growing economically at a faster pace than the United States. But even with its burgeoning economy, overtaking the U.S. is a very long-term proposition.
China has an added incentive for wanting to see U.S. power weakened, the possibility that a declaration of independence by Taiwan could lead to armed conflict. Jiang Zemin, in July 1999, said that he realized that at some point China would have to fight the American wolf, but for now the wolf was too strong, and so the right course for China was to continue to court American business and investment and increase exports to the U.S. China needed to "dance with the wolf" in order to build a strong economy.
In recent years a number of articles and books have been written by Chinese military analysts wrestling with the problem of how to win a war against a seemingly invincible United States.
Only one of these has received attention by the mainstream American press. Chaoxian Zhan (Unrestricted War) proposed a total war approach to defeating the U.S. that was praised by China’s highest ranking officers. In their war fighting methodology, the authors (Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui) included the possible use of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. Western journalists, unable to read Chinese, drew their news reports from an English summary of the book that focused on the weapons of mass destruction and missed the most important point.
Osama bin Laden had analyzed the obvious and concluded that while the United States could not be defeated by a foreign power, Americans could be induced to defeat themselves.
In Unrestricted War, Osama bin Laden is the prototype for the "new terrorist." He has acquired capital, technical expertise and access to weapons by taking advantage of the "loopholes in the free economies of the West." (Bin Laden has boasted that his followers understand Western financial systems as well as they know the backs of their hands.) The ease with which his organization has been able to raise funds coupled with his skillful use of religious organizations and the media to gain recruits to his cause has guaranteed a ready supply of men and weaponry to carry out his attacks.
According to Qiao and Wang, the new terrorists are not restrained by "international law, behavioral norms and ethical principles…Because they operate secretly, are well concealed, and cause widespread damage, their attacks …seem uncommonly cruel. All of which when it is broadcast in real time by the round the clock coverage of the modern media further strengthens the effects of their terrorist acts." Defeating the new terrorists is difficult because a nation "which follows certain rules and will only use limited force to achieve limited goals" is at a distinct disadvantage against organizations "which do not observe any rules and are unafraid to fight an unlimited war using unlimited means." Terrorist groups rely on the fact that even though they are fighting a technologically and numerically superior enemy, the nature of their attacks provides insufficient justification for the enemy to make full use of its superiority. The new terrorists are like rats with very sharp teeth and excellent survival skills. Like rats, they strike quickly and then duck back into their holes. However, whereas rat-infested habitats can be destroyed, terrorists conceal themselves among civilian populations and any massive military retaliation is certain to result in the loss of innocent lives. When you kill innocent civilians you are condemned by the media, human rights groups and the nations most closely allied to you.
Prior to 9/11 the U.S. response to each terrorist attack had been predictable. When the Khobar Towers were bombed in 1996, President Clinton said, "The cowards who committed this murderous act must not go unpunished." He responded to the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, by calling terrorist acts "abhorrent and inhuman" and promising to "use all means at our disposal to bring those responsible to justice." After the U.S.S Cole was attacked in 2000, he warned the terrorists, "You will not find a safe harbor. We will find you, and justice will prevail."
Only after the embassy bombings did he authorize military action, a missile strike against terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in Sudan. The argument has been made that surgical strikes that limit collateral damage are less likely to result in a negative reaction by the American people. Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, U.S.MC, and Major General Robert Scales, U.S.A, believe that one of the lessons of the first Gulf War is that when our nation’s leaders think that the American people are unprepared to deal with the carnage of war, "psychological revulsion" becomes a powerful weapon in the enemy’s arsenal especially when that weapon is unwittingly wielded by our own media.
By the time bin Laden laid the plans for his 9/11 surprise, he could feel fairly certain of two things: The U.S. would continue to view terrorists as criminals rather than as enemy combatants engaged in a war against the United States, and even when military power was brought to bear by launching missiles at suspected terrorist hideouts, the mission would be undertaken in the name of law enforcement, not as an act of war.
The Bush administration’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in response to 9/11 caught bin Laden by surprise, and invalidated his hypothesis about the willingness of the U.S. to use military power to destroy terrorist bases and training camps, and to change the regimes of nations that harbored and supported terrorist organizations. However, bin Laden has reason to believe that our military response will be undermined from the inside.
Many of the people educating America’s children today came of age during the protests against the Vietnam War, and by and large believe that all war is wrong. The Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI), established in 1892, is the oldest professional association of its type in the United States. Its executive director considers the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq "profoundly sad and most unfortunate." ACEI takes the position that "a vital way to prevent war and bring about peace is to raise a generation of children who reject killing as uncivilized and as a barbaric, unproductive way to deal with human conflicts." While ACEI’s bold statement stands in sharp contrast to that of the other associations of American educators, which implicitly sanction antiwar teachings under the mantle of academic freedom of expression, the most widely held view is that "peace education" is the "natural role" for America’s teachers at every level from pre-kindergarten through graduate school.
And peace education seems to be working. The Army and the Marine Corps are failing to meet their recruiting goals. The head of the Army Recruiting Command, referring to enlistment projections as "not a bright picture," calls it "the toughest recruiting climate ever faced by the all-volunteer army." The Army is so desperate to sign up new recruits that it has begun offering 15-month active-duty enlistments. However, such a short enlistment will almost certainly mean reduced training time and lowered unit cohesiveness, which will inevitably result in greater numbers of U.S. casualties.
During the Korean War, Joseph Stalin told Zhou Enlai that the United States had "lost the capability to wage a large-scale war." Mao Zedong also believed that Americans "cannot stand wars." In his declaration of war against the United States, bin Laden cited Reagan’s withdrawal of the Marines from Beirut in 1983 after 241 were killed in a suicide bombing, and Clinton’s withdrawal from Somalia "when tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American pilot was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu" as examples of American "impotence and weakness." Qiao and Wang believe that "CNN’s broadcast of an American soldier’s exposed corpse on the streets of Mogadishu" was all that was needed to "shake American determination."
The Koran teaches that "Allah is with those who patiently persevere." Osama bin Laden believes that if he can just keep killing Americans, the nightly news images of dead and wounded, the rising casualty count and the faces of young soldiers killed in action will take their toll on the American people. The 2004 election was so close that he has every reason to hope that next time the U.S. will elect a president who will end large-scale military operations and return to the practice followed by the Clinton administration of responding to terrorist acts by trying to bring the individuals responsible to justice. When that happens, Osama bin Laden is convinced that we will be forced to withdraw from the Middle East as Clinton did from Somalia, "carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat, and your dead with you."
- Al Kaltman served in the U.S. Air Force as a Chinese linguist. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from George Washington University, and is the author of Cigars, Whiskey and Winning: Leadership Lesson from General Ulysses S. Grant and The Genius of Robert E. Lee.
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
May 17, 2005
The great British mathematician Alfred North Whitehead once wrote, "It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious." Some Chinese believe that Osama bin Laden has such a mind. Although bin Laden and his minions are plotting the current terror war against the United States, the Chinese – in their quest to create a multipolar world – may have written the book on terrorism…literally.
From the collapse of the Soviet Union and the U.S. victory in the first Gulf War, political leaders and military strategists drew two obvious conclusions. The United States could not be defeated militarily, and any nation that sought to achieve military parity with the U.S. would, like the former Soviet Union, bankrupt itself in the attempt.
To the leaders of China, France, Germany and Russia, a unipolar world with the United States as the world’s only superpower is an unappealing long-term prospect. Jacques Chirac who believes that France’s mission is to shape "the destiny of the world" has been the most vocal proponent of "a world where political, economic and cultural influence" is shared. He envisions a united Europe led by France and Germany (with Germany the junior partner) as one of the centers of power in a multipolar world. Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao also see multipolarity as the means to eliminating U.S. dominance. However, becoming a "pole" that rivals the United States is easier said than done.
The French and German economies are hobbled by excessive regulation, and in the case of Germany the burden of reintegration with the former East Germany. The Russian economy suffers from governmental interference, bureaucratic bungling and official corruption leftover from the U.S.SR. Only China is growing economically at a faster pace than the United States. But even with its burgeoning economy, overtaking the U.S. is a very long-term proposition.
China has an added incentive for wanting to see U.S. power weakened, the possibility that a declaration of independence by Taiwan could lead to armed conflict. Jiang Zemin, in July 1999, said that he realized that at some point China would have to fight the American wolf, but for now the wolf was too strong, and so the right course for China was to continue to court American business and investment and increase exports to the U.S. China needed to "dance with the wolf" in order to build a strong economy.
In recent years a number of articles and books have been written by Chinese military analysts wrestling with the problem of how to win a war against a seemingly invincible United States.
Only one of these has received attention by the mainstream American press. Chaoxian Zhan (Unrestricted War) proposed a total war approach to defeating the U.S. that was praised by China’s highest ranking officers. In their war fighting methodology, the authors (Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui) included the possible use of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. Western journalists, unable to read Chinese, drew their news reports from an English summary of the book that focused on the weapons of mass destruction and missed the most important point.
Osama bin Laden had analyzed the obvious and concluded that while the United States could not be defeated by a foreign power, Americans could be induced to defeat themselves.
In Unrestricted War, Osama bin Laden is the prototype for the "new terrorist." He has acquired capital, technical expertise and access to weapons by taking advantage of the "loopholes in the free economies of the West." (Bin Laden has boasted that his followers understand Western financial systems as well as they know the backs of their hands.) The ease with which his organization has been able to raise funds coupled with his skillful use of religious organizations and the media to gain recruits to his cause has guaranteed a ready supply of men and weaponry to carry out his attacks.
According to Qiao and Wang, the new terrorists are not restrained by "international law, behavioral norms and ethical principles…Because they operate secretly, are well concealed, and cause widespread damage, their attacks …seem uncommonly cruel. All of which when it is broadcast in real time by the round the clock coverage of the modern media further strengthens the effects of their terrorist acts." Defeating the new terrorists is difficult because a nation "which follows certain rules and will only use limited force to achieve limited goals" is at a distinct disadvantage against organizations "which do not observe any rules and are unafraid to fight an unlimited war using unlimited means." Terrorist groups rely on the fact that even though they are fighting a technologically and numerically superior enemy, the nature of their attacks provides insufficient justification for the enemy to make full use of its superiority. The new terrorists are like rats with very sharp teeth and excellent survival skills. Like rats, they strike quickly and then duck back into their holes. However, whereas rat-infested habitats can be destroyed, terrorists conceal themselves among civilian populations and any massive military retaliation is certain to result in the loss of innocent lives. When you kill innocent civilians you are condemned by the media, human rights groups and the nations most closely allied to you.
Prior to 9/11 the U.S. response to each terrorist attack had been predictable. When the Khobar Towers were bombed in 1996, President Clinton said, "The cowards who committed this murderous act must not go unpunished." He responded to the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, by calling terrorist acts "abhorrent and inhuman" and promising to "use all means at our disposal to bring those responsible to justice." After the U.S.S Cole was attacked in 2000, he warned the terrorists, "You will not find a safe harbor. We will find you, and justice will prevail."
Only after the embassy bombings did he authorize military action, a missile strike against terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in Sudan. The argument has been made that surgical strikes that limit collateral damage are less likely to result in a negative reaction by the American people. Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, U.S.MC, and Major General Robert Scales, U.S.A, believe that one of the lessons of the first Gulf War is that when our nation’s leaders think that the American people are unprepared to deal with the carnage of war, "psychological revulsion" becomes a powerful weapon in the enemy’s arsenal especially when that weapon is unwittingly wielded by our own media.
By the time bin Laden laid the plans for his 9/11 surprise, he could feel fairly certain of two things: The U.S. would continue to view terrorists as criminals rather than as enemy combatants engaged in a war against the United States, and even when military power was brought to bear by launching missiles at suspected terrorist hideouts, the mission would be undertaken in the name of law enforcement, not as an act of war.
The Bush administration’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in response to 9/11 caught bin Laden by surprise, and invalidated his hypothesis about the willingness of the U.S. to use military power to destroy terrorist bases and training camps, and to change the regimes of nations that harbored and supported terrorist organizations. However, bin Laden has reason to believe that our military response will be undermined from the inside.
Many of the people educating America’s children today came of age during the protests against the Vietnam War, and by and large believe that all war is wrong. The Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI), established in 1892, is the oldest professional association of its type in the United States. Its executive director considers the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq "profoundly sad and most unfortunate." ACEI takes the position that "a vital way to prevent war and bring about peace is to raise a generation of children who reject killing as uncivilized and as a barbaric, unproductive way to deal with human conflicts." While ACEI’s bold statement stands in sharp contrast to that of the other associations of American educators, which implicitly sanction antiwar teachings under the mantle of academic freedom of expression, the most widely held view is that "peace education" is the "natural role" for America’s teachers at every level from pre-kindergarten through graduate school.
And peace education seems to be working. The Army and the Marine Corps are failing to meet their recruiting goals. The head of the Army Recruiting Command, referring to enlistment projections as "not a bright picture," calls it "the toughest recruiting climate ever faced by the all-volunteer army." The Army is so desperate to sign up new recruits that it has begun offering 15-month active-duty enlistments. However, such a short enlistment will almost certainly mean reduced training time and lowered unit cohesiveness, which will inevitably result in greater numbers of U.S. casualties.
During the Korean War, Joseph Stalin told Zhou Enlai that the United States had "lost the capability to wage a large-scale war." Mao Zedong also believed that Americans "cannot stand wars." In his declaration of war against the United States, bin Laden cited Reagan’s withdrawal of the Marines from Beirut in 1983 after 241 were killed in a suicide bombing, and Clinton’s withdrawal from Somalia "when tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American pilot was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu" as examples of American "impotence and weakness." Qiao and Wang believe that "CNN’s broadcast of an American soldier’s exposed corpse on the streets of Mogadishu" was all that was needed to "shake American determination."
The Koran teaches that "Allah is with those who patiently persevere." Osama bin Laden believes that if he can just keep killing Americans, the nightly news images of dead and wounded, the rising casualty count and the faces of young soldiers killed in action will take their toll on the American people. The 2004 election was so close that he has every reason to hope that next time the U.S. will elect a president who will end large-scale military operations and return to the practice followed by the Clinton administration of responding to terrorist acts by trying to bring the individuals responsible to justice. When that happens, Osama bin Laden is convinced that we will be forced to withdraw from the Middle East as Clinton did from Somalia, "carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat, and your dead with you."
- Al Kaltman served in the U.S. Air Force as a Chinese linguist. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from George Washington University, and is the author of Cigars, Whiskey and Winning: Leadership Lesson from General Ulysses S. Grant and The Genius of Robert E. Lee.
Monday, May 16, 2005
Neil Hohlfeld: Clemens Sees Zeros in His Sleep, on Scoreboard
May 14, 2005, 1:38AM
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
Several times during this season of silent bats, Roger Clemens has said he has gone through stretches like this in his career. You could look it up, he said.
Well, the folks at Elias Sports Bureau looked and looked and looked before finding the last time a pitcher made three consecutive starts where the score was 0-0 after nine innings. Clemens did it from April 13-23 this season, and the Astros subsequently lost all three games 1-0 in extra innings.
It turns out that every 95 years, something like this happens. According to Elias, Doc Scanlan made three starts for the Brooklyn Superbas from July 30 through Aug. 13, 1910 that were 0-0 after nine innings. Brooklyn lost all three games in extra innings.
Clemens will make his eighth start of the season tonight against San Francisco. He is 2-1 with a 1.10 ERA, a number that brings to mind the 1.12 mark Bob Gibson posted for the 1968 St. Louis Cardinals. For the record, Gibson was 22-9.
In Clemens' seven starts, the Astros have scored 11 runs, averaging 1.6 runs per game. Clemens, who is hitting .357, drove in two of those runs in a 3-2 victory over Cincinnati on April 8. His only other win was 2-1 over Florida on Monday.
A year ago, everything Clemens touched turned to gold at the start of the season. In seven starts, he was 7-0 with a sparkling 1.99 ERA. But he benefited from 47 runs, an average of 6.7 per game.
There are several factors for this season's lack of run support, one being the absence of outfielder Lance Berkman, who started the season on the disabled list and has played in only one game Clemens has pitched. A year ago, he hit .520 with three homers and nine RBIs in Clemens' first seven starts.
Then again, it isn't as if the Astros are knocking down the fences for other pitchers.
The Astros have been shut out six times and rank last in the National League in batting average, hits, home runs and slugging percentage. Still, they have averaged 4.2 runs in the 28 games not started by Clemens.
Andy Pettitte, Clemens' teammate with the New York Yankees from 1999-2003 and the past two years in Houston, thinks there's another reason for Clemens' lack of support.
"I faced Roger when I first came up, and there's no doubt that you get a little more pumped," Pettitte said. "You know who you're facing and you know that you're not going to get a whole lot of run support that night, so you maybe turn it up a notch yourself."
The last time an Astros pitcher went through something like this was in 1987, when Nolan Ryan led the majors with 270 strikeouts and tied for the ERA title at 2.76. But Ryan's record was 8-16, and he endured an eight-game losing streak in which the club scored a total of 13 runs, getting one run four times and no runs once.
"I remember that after a while, there were a few times when Nolan would get a little uptight in the dugout when we weren't scoring," said former Astros catcher Alan Ashby. "You try so hard because you don't want to waste another great outing, but it almost becomes counterproductive."
Once during the stretch of non-support, teammate Danny Darwin walked behind Ryan's locker while the pitcher was doing an interview and said loudly: "Quit your complaining. Go out and pitch a shutout and hit a home run next time."
Words to the wise, whether in 1910, 1987 or 2005.
neil.hohlfeld@chron.com
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
Several times during this season of silent bats, Roger Clemens has said he has gone through stretches like this in his career. You could look it up, he said.
Well, the folks at Elias Sports Bureau looked and looked and looked before finding the last time a pitcher made three consecutive starts where the score was 0-0 after nine innings. Clemens did it from April 13-23 this season, and the Astros subsequently lost all three games 1-0 in extra innings.
It turns out that every 95 years, something like this happens. According to Elias, Doc Scanlan made three starts for the Brooklyn Superbas from July 30 through Aug. 13, 1910 that were 0-0 after nine innings. Brooklyn lost all three games in extra innings.
Clemens will make his eighth start of the season tonight against San Francisco. He is 2-1 with a 1.10 ERA, a number that brings to mind the 1.12 mark Bob Gibson posted for the 1968 St. Louis Cardinals. For the record, Gibson was 22-9.
In Clemens' seven starts, the Astros have scored 11 runs, averaging 1.6 runs per game. Clemens, who is hitting .357, drove in two of those runs in a 3-2 victory over Cincinnati on April 8. His only other win was 2-1 over Florida on Monday.
A year ago, everything Clemens touched turned to gold at the start of the season. In seven starts, he was 7-0 with a sparkling 1.99 ERA. But he benefited from 47 runs, an average of 6.7 per game.
There are several factors for this season's lack of run support, one being the absence of outfielder Lance Berkman, who started the season on the disabled list and has played in only one game Clemens has pitched. A year ago, he hit .520 with three homers and nine RBIs in Clemens' first seven starts.
Then again, it isn't as if the Astros are knocking down the fences for other pitchers.
The Astros have been shut out six times and rank last in the National League in batting average, hits, home runs and slugging percentage. Still, they have averaged 4.2 runs in the 28 games not started by Clemens.
Andy Pettitte, Clemens' teammate with the New York Yankees from 1999-2003 and the past two years in Houston, thinks there's another reason for Clemens' lack of support.
"I faced Roger when I first came up, and there's no doubt that you get a little more pumped," Pettitte said. "You know who you're facing and you know that you're not going to get a whole lot of run support that night, so you maybe turn it up a notch yourself."
The last time an Astros pitcher went through something like this was in 1987, when Nolan Ryan led the majors with 270 strikeouts and tied for the ERA title at 2.76. But Ryan's record was 8-16, and he endured an eight-game losing streak in which the club scored a total of 13 runs, getting one run four times and no runs once.
"I remember that after a while, there were a few times when Nolan would get a little uptight in the dugout when we weren't scoring," said former Astros catcher Alan Ashby. "You try so hard because you don't want to waste another great outing, but it almost becomes counterproductive."
Once during the stretch of non-support, teammate Danny Darwin walked behind Ryan's locker while the pitcher was doing an interview and said loudly: "Quit your complaining. Go out and pitch a shutout and hit a home run next time."
Words to the wise, whether in 1910, 1987 or 2005.
neil.hohlfeld@chron.com
Raymond J. Keating: Bad Economics, Bad Public Policy, and Bad Theology
Monday, May 16, 2005 - 12:34 PM
Raymond J. Keating
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org
I am a sinner. We all are. Christians find comfort, for example, in what John the Baptist proclaimed as Jesus Christ approached: "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29)
But does my work over the years on a wide range of public policy issues as a free market economist serve as a particular source of sin? It's pretty clear that's what some leaders from various mainline Christian denominations have declared in recent proclamations. To be a good Christian, according to this group, depends upon embracing assorted left-wing political positions.
In February, for example, came "God's Earth is Sacred: An Open Letter to Church and Society in the United States" from the National Council of Churches. This letter was signed by 17 religious folk, including Father John Chryssavgis, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Dr. Barbara Rossing, a New Testament professor at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and Neddy Astudillo, who was identified as a Latina eco-theologian in the Presbyterian Church USA. What exactly a "Latina eco-theologian" is I'm not sure, but I am pretty sure it has little to do with traditional Christianity.
In March came a joint statement from leaders of the Episcopal Church, USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church. It declared opposition to President George W. Bush's proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2006.
These are the most glaring, recent examples of those in the religious realm who long to be political activists. It seems that the salvation proclaimed in Holy Scriptures is too mundane, or perhaps even narrow-minded, for their tastes. So, they preach politics rather than the Good News.
Let's take the "God's Earth is Sacred" letter first, which accepts the doom-and-gloom predictions espoused by the most extreme in the environmental crowd. It is asserted: "To continue to walk the current path of ecological destruct ion is not only folly; it is sin." Now that's notable because left-wing activists dressed up in Christian garb rarely, if ever, talk about "sin." After all, sin can be so black and white, when they prefer to embrace shades of gray. But of course, this is not sin in any traditional Christian sense of the word, but instead a redefining of sin as going against the political wisdom espoused by Left.
So, it is further asserted: "We firmly believe that addressing the degradation of God's sacred Earth is the moral assignment of our time." How bad are things, according to this group? They proclaim mankind's guilt in "jeopardizing Earth's capacity to sustain life as we know and love it."
The atrocities facing us now range from "species extinction and mass poverty to climate change and health-crippling pollution." So, the argument is summed up: "In this most critical moment in Earth's history, we are convinced that the central moral imperative of our time is the care for Earth as God's creation."
Wow, the "central moral imperative of our time"? Do such declarations have any basis in the real world? The simple answer is no.
Move beyond radical environmentalists, and it becomes clear that the state of the environment has been improving in recent years, particularly here in the United States. Consider just a few items reported in the "Index of Leading Environmental Indicators 2005," recently published jointly by the Pacific Research Institute and the American Enterprise Institute.
Based on the EPA's Air Quality Index, air quality in the 10 worst cities in 1990 has improved by 53 percent on average. Regarding emissions since the mid-1970s, ozone has declined by 31 percent, nitrogen dioxide by 42 percent, sulfur dioxides by 72 percent, carbon monoxide by 76 percent, particulates by 31 percent and lead by 98 percent.
For good measure, wetlands on private land expanded by about 26,000 acres per year from 1997 to 2002, and forest area has been stable for nearly a century and expanded slightly in Europe and the U.S. over the past decade. "The Wall Street Journal" noted in a May 5, 2005, story that forest acreage in the Northeastern U.S. expanded from 59.6 million acres in 1907 to 85.5 million in 1997.
In addition, disagreement persists in the scientific community over the existence of global warming, and/or its possible causes. The Index points out that temperatures today at the arctic, while warmer than in 1970, are colder than in 1930, while temperatures in Greenland have fallen over the past decade and a half.
But what about that Bush budget? The March statement noted above on the proposed budget began with the story Jesus tells in Luke 16 about the rich man and Lazarus. The Episcopalian, ELCA, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ and United Methodist leaders declared: "The 2006 Federal Budget that President Bush has sent to Capitol Hill is unjust. It has much for the rich man and little for Lazarus."
The letter goes on to assert that a variety of social programs are being cut, proclaiming: "For even as it reduces aid to those in poverty, this budget showers presents on the rich." In a separate statement, ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson said that "the Administration's proposed federal budget priorities stand in contradiction to Biblical tradition. If enacted, it will be truly devastating for people living in poverty in this country and around the world."
A list of "spending reductions" is highlighted in grave fashion. These chu rch leaders also make clear their distaste for tax relief, particularly for higher income earners.
None of this, though, has any relationship with economic reality and what's actually going on with the federal budget. Contrary to these declarations, President George W. Bush and his fellow Republicans who lead Congress have turned out to rank among the biggest spenders of recent times with expenditure increases running far ahead of inflation. And it's not just about defense spending.
Federal Total Outlays During the Bush Years (outlays in millions of dollars)
Fiscal Year-----------Total Outlays-----------Percent Change
2002 -------------------$2,010,972 ---------------7.9%
2003 -------------------$2,159,917 ---------------7.4%
2004 -------------------$2,292,215 ---------------6.1%
205 (est) ---------------$2,479,404 ---------------8.2%
2006-Bush proposal----$2,567,617 ----------------3.6%
Federal Total Outlays Less National Defense and Net Interest on the Debt
During the Bush Years (outlays in millions of dollars)
Fiscal Year -----------Total Outlays ----------Percent Change
2002 -------------------$1,491,468 ---------------10.3%
2003 -------------------$1,601,924 ----------------7.4%
2004 -------------------$1,676,062 ----------------4.6%
205 (est) ---------------$1,835,585 ----------------9.5%
2006-Bush proposal ----$1,909,143 ----------------4.0%
The second table above gets us to spending on non-defense government programs (that is, total outlays minus net interest and minus national defense). Again, Bush and the Republicans in Congress have spent lavishly when it comes to non-defense outlays. The President's proposed budget would lower the spending increase for 2006 compared to previous years, but still leave it outpacing inflation. Plus, one should not be surprised if Republicans in Congress further jack up those 2006 spending levels.
So, rather than being open to criticisms of not spending enough on non-defense government programs from the religious Left, the Bush White House more legitimately is exposed to criticisms from conservatives and other free market advocates who argue that bigger government does far more harm than good.
Contrary to the claims being made by these churchmen, no one is cutting federal spending.
Meanwhile, liberal church leaders miss the economics and positive effects of tax relief. For example, the 2003 reductions in personal income, capital gains and dividend tax rates boosted incentives for working, investing and entrepreneurship, which are the sources of economic growth and job creation. In fact, private sector investment and economic growth accelerated dramatically after these tax cuts were passed, with job creation picking up as well. This is not unusual, as history has shown that each time income tax rates have been substantively reduced during the past eight-plus decades, the economy has reacted in positive fashion.
So, in both of these cases, on the environment and the federal budget, church liberals have been out of touch with environmental, economic and policy realities. This leads one to wonder about the theology behind such political escapades.
Why the heck is the National Council of Churches making declarations about environmental policies? And should various denominations be weighing in broadly on the federal budget? From the positions taken, a lack of expertise obviously exists, along with a strong political bias to the liberal side of the aisle. But most important, what's the theological basis for such ventures? Where are the imperatives and clear direction, for example, from Holy Scripture?
These political activists point to assorted biblical passages that speak of aiding the poor, the necessity for charity and justice, or other vague generalities, and then simply assert that these quotations support the particulars of their big government philosophy. Of course, this ranks as either ignorant or disingenuous from a theological standpoint.
The ELCA's website, for example, provides a list of "biblical references on justice and advocacy." These 35 passages, however, provide absolutely no basis for churches to be making grand declarations on issues like federal tax cuts, Medicaid spending, the minimum wage, global warming, and assorted other public policy matters. I'm sorry, but the Bible does not offer guidance as to the efficacy of raising the minimum wage, the impact of changes in income tax rates, or the fallout from restraining the growth in Medicaid spending. Meanwhile, the substantive economic arguments over such issues are ignored by these church leaders who have placed an unshakable faith in government action.
Obviously, there are issues where Holy Scripture and traditional Christianity dictate that churches take unequivocal positions. Opposition to abortion and embryonic stem cell research, and the defense of marriage are obvious examples. Interestingly, denominations like the Episcopal Church, the ELCA, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church have sent confusing, to be generous, signals on such fundamental matters.
Unfortunately, this shift in emphasis from the true Gospel to the "social gospel" is not new. According to "God and the Oval Office" by John C. McCollister, for example, President Calvin Coolidge once said: "I wouldn't for a minute be critical of the church and its work, but I think most of the clergy today are preaching socialism."
In the early twenty-first century, too many left-wing Christians appear on the verge of idolatry. They seem far more taken with advancing public policies that they believe will protect Mother Earth, aid the Nanny State or advance some other secular cause, than with the need for all of us as sinners to have faith in the forgiveness, redemption, love, sacrifice and salvation offered through Jesus Christ.
Church proponents of "social justice" or the "social gospel" blatantly manipulate Holy Scripture. The message of faith and salvation has given way to a left-wing political agenda. That's the real sin being committed here.
Raymond J. Keating is a columnist with Newsday, and a regular columnist for OrthodoxyToday.org. He can be reached at rjknewsday@aol.com.
Posted 11-May-05
Raymond J. Keating
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org
I am a sinner. We all are. Christians find comfort, for example, in what John the Baptist proclaimed as Jesus Christ approached: "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29)
But does my work over the years on a wide range of public policy issues as a free market economist serve as a particular source of sin? It's pretty clear that's what some leaders from various mainline Christian denominations have declared in recent proclamations. To be a good Christian, according to this group, depends upon embracing assorted left-wing political positions.
In February, for example, came "God's Earth is Sacred: An Open Letter to Church and Society in the United States" from the National Council of Churches. This letter was signed by 17 religious folk, including Father John Chryssavgis, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Dr. Barbara Rossing, a New Testament professor at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and Neddy Astudillo, who was identified as a Latina eco-theologian in the Presbyterian Church USA. What exactly a "Latina eco-theologian" is I'm not sure, but I am pretty sure it has little to do with traditional Christianity.
In March came a joint statement from leaders of the Episcopal Church, USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church. It declared opposition to President George W. Bush's proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2006.
These are the most glaring, recent examples of those in the religious realm who long to be political activists. It seems that the salvation proclaimed in Holy Scriptures is too mundane, or perhaps even narrow-minded, for their tastes. So, they preach politics rather than the Good News.
Let's take the "God's Earth is Sacred" letter first, which accepts the doom-and-gloom predictions espoused by the most extreme in the environmental crowd. It is asserted: "To continue to walk the current path of ecological destruct ion is not only folly; it is sin." Now that's notable because left-wing activists dressed up in Christian garb rarely, if ever, talk about "sin." After all, sin can be so black and white, when they prefer to embrace shades of gray. But of course, this is not sin in any traditional Christian sense of the word, but instead a redefining of sin as going against the political wisdom espoused by Left.
So, it is further asserted: "We firmly believe that addressing the degradation of God's sacred Earth is the moral assignment of our time." How bad are things, according to this group? They proclaim mankind's guilt in "jeopardizing Earth's capacity to sustain life as we know and love it."
The atrocities facing us now range from "species extinction and mass poverty to climate change and health-crippling pollution." So, the argument is summed up: "In this most critical moment in Earth's history, we are convinced that the central moral imperative of our time is the care for Earth as God's creation."
Wow, the "central moral imperative of our time"? Do such declarations have any basis in the real world? The simple answer is no.
Move beyond radical environmentalists, and it becomes clear that the state of the environment has been improving in recent years, particularly here in the United States. Consider just a few items reported in the "Index of Leading Environmental Indicators 2005," recently published jointly by the Pacific Research Institute and the American Enterprise Institute.
Based on the EPA's Air Quality Index, air quality in the 10 worst cities in 1990 has improved by 53 percent on average. Regarding emissions since the mid-1970s, ozone has declined by 31 percent, nitrogen dioxide by 42 percent, sulfur dioxides by 72 percent, carbon monoxide by 76 percent, particulates by 31 percent and lead by 98 percent.
For good measure, wetlands on private land expanded by about 26,000 acres per year from 1997 to 2002, and forest area has been stable for nearly a century and expanded slightly in Europe and the U.S. over the past decade. "The Wall Street Journal" noted in a May 5, 2005, story that forest acreage in the Northeastern U.S. expanded from 59.6 million acres in 1907 to 85.5 million in 1997.
In addition, disagreement persists in the scientific community over the existence of global warming, and/or its possible causes. The Index points out that temperatures today at the arctic, while warmer than in 1970, are colder than in 1930, while temperatures in Greenland have fallen over the past decade and a half.
But what about that Bush budget? The March statement noted above on the proposed budget began with the story Jesus tells in Luke 16 about the rich man and Lazarus. The Episcopalian, ELCA, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ and United Methodist leaders declared: "The 2006 Federal Budget that President Bush has sent to Capitol Hill is unjust. It has much for the rich man and little for Lazarus."
The letter goes on to assert that a variety of social programs are being cut, proclaiming: "For even as it reduces aid to those in poverty, this budget showers presents on the rich." In a separate statement, ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson said that "the Administration's proposed federal budget priorities stand in contradiction to Biblical tradition. If enacted, it will be truly devastating for people living in poverty in this country and around the world."
A list of "spending reductions" is highlighted in grave fashion. These chu rch leaders also make clear their distaste for tax relief, particularly for higher income earners.
None of this, though, has any relationship with economic reality and what's actually going on with the federal budget. Contrary to these declarations, President George W. Bush and his fellow Republicans who lead Congress have turned out to rank among the biggest spenders of recent times with expenditure increases running far ahead of inflation. And it's not just about defense spending.
Federal Total Outlays During the Bush Years (outlays in millions of dollars)
Fiscal Year-----------Total Outlays-----------Percent Change
2002 -------------------$2,010,972 ---------------7.9%
2003 -------------------$2,159,917 ---------------7.4%
2004 -------------------$2,292,215 ---------------6.1%
205 (est) ---------------$2,479,404 ---------------8.2%
2006-Bush proposal----$2,567,617 ----------------3.6%
Federal Total Outlays Less National Defense and Net Interest on the Debt
During the Bush Years (outlays in millions of dollars)
Fiscal Year -----------Total Outlays ----------Percent Change
2002 -------------------$1,491,468 ---------------10.3%
2003 -------------------$1,601,924 ----------------7.4%
2004 -------------------$1,676,062 ----------------4.6%
205 (est) ---------------$1,835,585 ----------------9.5%
2006-Bush proposal ----$1,909,143 ----------------4.0%
The second table above gets us to spending on non-defense government programs (that is, total outlays minus net interest and minus national defense). Again, Bush and the Republicans in Congress have spent lavishly when it comes to non-defense outlays. The President's proposed budget would lower the spending increase for 2006 compared to previous years, but still leave it outpacing inflation. Plus, one should not be surprised if Republicans in Congress further jack up those 2006 spending levels.
So, rather than being open to criticisms of not spending enough on non-defense government programs from the religious Left, the Bush White House more legitimately is exposed to criticisms from conservatives and other free market advocates who argue that bigger government does far more harm than good.
Contrary to the claims being made by these churchmen, no one is cutting federal spending.
Meanwhile, liberal church leaders miss the economics and positive effects of tax relief. For example, the 2003 reductions in personal income, capital gains and dividend tax rates boosted incentives for working, investing and entrepreneurship, which are the sources of economic growth and job creation. In fact, private sector investment and economic growth accelerated dramatically after these tax cuts were passed, with job creation picking up as well. This is not unusual, as history has shown that each time income tax rates have been substantively reduced during the past eight-plus decades, the economy has reacted in positive fashion.
So, in both of these cases, on the environment and the federal budget, church liberals have been out of touch with environmental, economic and policy realities. This leads one to wonder about the theology behind such political escapades.
Why the heck is the National Council of Churches making declarations about environmental policies? And should various denominations be weighing in broadly on the federal budget? From the positions taken, a lack of expertise obviously exists, along with a strong political bias to the liberal side of the aisle. But most important, what's the theological basis for such ventures? Where are the imperatives and clear direction, for example, from Holy Scripture?
These political activists point to assorted biblical passages that speak of aiding the poor, the necessity for charity and justice, or other vague generalities, and then simply assert that these quotations support the particulars of their big government philosophy. Of course, this ranks as either ignorant or disingenuous from a theological standpoint.
The ELCA's website, for example, provides a list of "biblical references on justice and advocacy." These 35 passages, however, provide absolutely no basis for churches to be making grand declarations on issues like federal tax cuts, Medicaid spending, the minimum wage, global warming, and assorted other public policy matters. I'm sorry, but the Bible does not offer guidance as to the efficacy of raising the minimum wage, the impact of changes in income tax rates, or the fallout from restraining the growth in Medicaid spending. Meanwhile, the substantive economic arguments over such issues are ignored by these church leaders who have placed an unshakable faith in government action.
Obviously, there are issues where Holy Scripture and traditional Christianity dictate that churches take unequivocal positions. Opposition to abortion and embryonic stem cell research, and the defense of marriage are obvious examples. Interestingly, denominations like the Episcopal Church, the ELCA, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church have sent confusing, to be generous, signals on such fundamental matters.
Unfortunately, this shift in emphasis from the true Gospel to the "social gospel" is not new. According to "God and the Oval Office" by John C. McCollister, for example, President Calvin Coolidge once said: "I wouldn't for a minute be critical of the church and its work, but I think most of the clergy today are preaching socialism."
In the early twenty-first century, too many left-wing Christians appear on the verge of idolatry. They seem far more taken with advancing public policies that they believe will protect Mother Earth, aid the Nanny State or advance some other secular cause, than with the need for all of us as sinners to have faith in the forgiveness, redemption, love, sacrifice and salvation offered through Jesus Christ.
Church proponents of "social justice" or the "social gospel" blatantly manipulate Holy Scripture. The message of faith and salvation has given way to a left-wing political agenda. That's the real sin being committed here.
Raymond J. Keating is a columnist with Newsday, and a regular columnist for OrthodoxyToday.org. He can be reached at rjknewsday@aol.com.
Posted 11-May-05
Mark Steyn: Bolton's Sin Is Telling Truth About System
May 15, 2005
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Remember the tsunami? Big story, 300,000 dead; America and other rich countries too "stingy" in their response; government ministers from every capital on earth announcing on CNN every 10 minutes more and more millions and gazillions. It was in all the papers for a week or two, but not a lot of water under the bridge since then, and as a result this interesting statistic may not have caught your eye:
Five hundred containers, representing one-quarter of all aid sent to Sri Lanka since the tsunami hit on Dec. 26, are still sitting on the dock in Colombo, unclaimed or unprocessed.
At the Indonesian port of Medan, 1,500 containers of aid are still sitting on the dock.
Four months ago, did you chip in to the tsunami relief effort? Did your company? A Scottish subsidiary of the Body Shop donated a 40-foot container of "Lemon Squidgit" and other premium soap, which arrived at Medan in January and has languished there ever since because of "incomplete paperwork,'' according to Indonesian customs officials.
Well, those soapy Scots were winging it -- like so many of us, eager to help but too naive to understand that, no matter the scale of devastation visited upon a hapless developing nation, its obstructionist bureaucracy will emerge from the rubble unscathed. Yet, among the exhaustive examples of wasted Western generosity unearthed by the Financial Times, what struck me was not the free-lancers but the permanent floating crap game of international high-rollers who couldn't penetrate the labyrinth of Indonesian paperwork.
Diageo sent eight 20-foot containers of drinking water via the Red Cross. "We sent it directly to the Red Cross in order to get around the red tape," explained its Sydney office. It arrived in Medan in January and it's still there. The Indonesian Red Cross lost the paperwork.
UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency, sent 14 ambulances to Indonesia, and they took two months to clear customs. Terrible as it was in its awesome fury, the tsunami was in the end transnational business as usual.
Which brings me to the John Bolton nomination process, which is taking so long you'd think the U.S. Senate was run by Indonesian customs inspectors. Writing of near-Ambassador Bolton's difficulty getting his paperwork stamped by the Foreign Relations Committee, National Review's Cliff May observed that "the real debate is between those who think the U.N. needs reform -- and those who think the U.S. needs reform.''
Very true. Sen. George Voinovich, one of those "maverick Republicans" the press goes goo-goo over, seems to believe, as Cliff May puts it, "that the problem is more American 'unilateralism' than U.N. corruption, immorality, anti-Americanism and ineptitude."
On the face of it, this shouldn't be a difficult choice, even for as uncurious a squish as Voinovich. Whatever one feels about it, the United States manages to function. The U.N. apparatus doesn't. Indeed, the United States does the U.N.'s job better than the U.N. does. The part of the tsunami aid operation that worked was the first few days, when America, Australia and a handful of other nations improvised instant and effective emergency relief operations that did things like, you know, save lives, rescue people, restore water supply, etc. Then the poseurs of the transnational bureaucracy took over, held press conferences demanding that stingy Westerners needed to give more and more and more, and the usual incompetence and corruption followed.
But none of that matters. As the grotesque charade Voinovich and his Democrat chums have inflicted on us demonstrates, all that the so-called "multilateralists" require is that we be polite and deferential to the transnational establishment regardless of how useless it is. What matters in global diplomacy is that you pledge support rather than give any. Thus, Bolton would have no problem getting nominated as U.N. ambassador if he were more like Paul Martin.
Who? Well, he's prime minister of Canada. And in January, after the tsunami hit, he flew into Sri Lanka to pledge millions and millions and millions in aid. Not like that heartless George W. Bush back at the ranch in Texas. Why, Prime Minister Martin walked along the ravaged coast of Kalumnai and was, reported Canada's CTV network, "visibly shaken." President Bush might well have been shaken, but he wasn't visible, and in the international compassion league, that's what counts. So Martin boldly committed Canada to giving $425 million to tsunami relief. "Mr. Paul Martin Has Set A Great Example For The Rest Of The World Leaders!" raved the LankaWeb news service.
You know how much of that $425 million has been spent so far? Fifty thousand dollars -- Canadian. That's about 40 grand in U.S. dollars. The rest isn't tied up in Indonesian bureaucracy, it's back in Ottawa. But, unlike horrible "unilateralist" America, Canada enjoys a reputation as the perfect global citizen, renowned for its commitment to the U.N. and multilateralism. And on the beaches of Sri Lanka, that and a buck'll get you a strawberry daiquiri. Canada's contribution to tsunami relief is objectively useless and rhetorically fraudulent.
This is the way the transnational jet-set works when the entire world is in complete agreement and acting in perfect harmony. Unlike more "controversial" issues like the mass slaughter in Sudan, no Security Council member is pro-tsunami. And yet even when the entire planet is on the same side, the 24/7 lavishly funded U.N. humanitarian infrastructure can't get its act together.
When rent-a-quote senators claim to be pro-U.N. or multilateralist, the tsunami operation is what they have in mind -- that when something bad happens the United States should commit to working through the approved transnational bureaucracies and throw even more "resources" at them, even though nothing will happen (Sri Lanka), millions will be stolen (Oil for Food), children will get raped (U.N. peacekeeping operations) and hundreds of thousands will die (Sudan).
John Bolton's sin is to have spoken the truth about the international system rather than the myths to which photo-oppers like the Canadian prime minister defer. As a consequence, he's being treated like a container of Western aid being processed by Indonesian customs. Customs Inspector Joe Biden and Junior Clerk Voinovich spent two months trying to come up with reasons why Bolton's paperwork is inadequate and demanding to know why he hasn't filled out his RU1-2. An RU1-2 is the official international bureaucrat's form reassuring the global community that he'll continue to peddle all the polite fictions, no matter how self-evidently risible they are. John Bolton isn't one, too. That's why we need him.
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Remember the tsunami? Big story, 300,000 dead; America and other rich countries too "stingy" in their response; government ministers from every capital on earth announcing on CNN every 10 minutes more and more millions and gazillions. It was in all the papers for a week or two, but not a lot of water under the bridge since then, and as a result this interesting statistic may not have caught your eye:
Five hundred containers, representing one-quarter of all aid sent to Sri Lanka since the tsunami hit on Dec. 26, are still sitting on the dock in Colombo, unclaimed or unprocessed.
At the Indonesian port of Medan, 1,500 containers of aid are still sitting on the dock.
Four months ago, did you chip in to the tsunami relief effort? Did your company? A Scottish subsidiary of the Body Shop donated a 40-foot container of "Lemon Squidgit" and other premium soap, which arrived at Medan in January and has languished there ever since because of "incomplete paperwork,'' according to Indonesian customs officials.
Well, those soapy Scots were winging it -- like so many of us, eager to help but too naive to understand that, no matter the scale of devastation visited upon a hapless developing nation, its obstructionist bureaucracy will emerge from the rubble unscathed. Yet, among the exhaustive examples of wasted Western generosity unearthed by the Financial Times, what struck me was not the free-lancers but the permanent floating crap game of international high-rollers who couldn't penetrate the labyrinth of Indonesian paperwork.
Diageo sent eight 20-foot containers of drinking water via the Red Cross. "We sent it directly to the Red Cross in order to get around the red tape," explained its Sydney office. It arrived in Medan in January and it's still there. The Indonesian Red Cross lost the paperwork.
UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency, sent 14 ambulances to Indonesia, and they took two months to clear customs. Terrible as it was in its awesome fury, the tsunami was in the end transnational business as usual.
Which brings me to the John Bolton nomination process, which is taking so long you'd think the U.S. Senate was run by Indonesian customs inspectors. Writing of near-Ambassador Bolton's difficulty getting his paperwork stamped by the Foreign Relations Committee, National Review's Cliff May observed that "the real debate is between those who think the U.N. needs reform -- and those who think the U.S. needs reform.''
Very true. Sen. George Voinovich, one of those "maverick Republicans" the press goes goo-goo over, seems to believe, as Cliff May puts it, "that the problem is more American 'unilateralism' than U.N. corruption, immorality, anti-Americanism and ineptitude."
On the face of it, this shouldn't be a difficult choice, even for as uncurious a squish as Voinovich. Whatever one feels about it, the United States manages to function. The U.N. apparatus doesn't. Indeed, the United States does the U.N.'s job better than the U.N. does. The part of the tsunami aid operation that worked was the first few days, when America, Australia and a handful of other nations improvised instant and effective emergency relief operations that did things like, you know, save lives, rescue people, restore water supply, etc. Then the poseurs of the transnational bureaucracy took over, held press conferences demanding that stingy Westerners needed to give more and more and more, and the usual incompetence and corruption followed.
But none of that matters. As the grotesque charade Voinovich and his Democrat chums have inflicted on us demonstrates, all that the so-called "multilateralists" require is that we be polite and deferential to the transnational establishment regardless of how useless it is. What matters in global diplomacy is that you pledge support rather than give any. Thus, Bolton would have no problem getting nominated as U.N. ambassador if he were more like Paul Martin.
Who? Well, he's prime minister of Canada. And in January, after the tsunami hit, he flew into Sri Lanka to pledge millions and millions and millions in aid. Not like that heartless George W. Bush back at the ranch in Texas. Why, Prime Minister Martin walked along the ravaged coast of Kalumnai and was, reported Canada's CTV network, "visibly shaken." President Bush might well have been shaken, but he wasn't visible, and in the international compassion league, that's what counts. So Martin boldly committed Canada to giving $425 million to tsunami relief. "Mr. Paul Martin Has Set A Great Example For The Rest Of The World Leaders!" raved the LankaWeb news service.
You know how much of that $425 million has been spent so far? Fifty thousand dollars -- Canadian. That's about 40 grand in U.S. dollars. The rest isn't tied up in Indonesian bureaucracy, it's back in Ottawa. But, unlike horrible "unilateralist" America, Canada enjoys a reputation as the perfect global citizen, renowned for its commitment to the U.N. and multilateralism. And on the beaches of Sri Lanka, that and a buck'll get you a strawberry daiquiri. Canada's contribution to tsunami relief is objectively useless and rhetorically fraudulent.
This is the way the transnational jet-set works when the entire world is in complete agreement and acting in perfect harmony. Unlike more "controversial" issues like the mass slaughter in Sudan, no Security Council member is pro-tsunami. And yet even when the entire planet is on the same side, the 24/7 lavishly funded U.N. humanitarian infrastructure can't get its act together.
When rent-a-quote senators claim to be pro-U.N. or multilateralist, the tsunami operation is what they have in mind -- that when something bad happens the United States should commit to working through the approved transnational bureaucracies and throw even more "resources" at them, even though nothing will happen (Sri Lanka), millions will be stolen (Oil for Food), children will get raped (U.N. peacekeeping operations) and hundreds of thousands will die (Sudan).
John Bolton's sin is to have spoken the truth about the international system rather than the myths to which photo-oppers like the Canadian prime minister defer. As a consequence, he's being treated like a container of Western aid being processed by Indonesian customs. Customs Inspector Joe Biden and Junior Clerk Voinovich spent two months trying to come up with reasons why Bolton's paperwork is inadequate and demanding to know why he hasn't filled out his RU1-2. An RU1-2 is the official international bureaucrat's form reassuring the global community that he'll continue to peddle all the polite fictions, no matter how self-evidently risible they are. John Bolton isn't one, too. That's why we need him.
John Soeder: Springsteen's Solo Tour Gives 'Devils' its Due
MUSIC PREVIEW
Sunday, May 15, 2005
John Soeder
Cleveland Plain Dealer Pop Music Critic
The "BROOOCE!" cheers gave way to BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! when Bruce Springsteen launched his solo tour last month at Detroit's Fox Theatre.
Pounding out a 4/4 beat with his boot, the Boss wailed into a harmonica and howled into a miniature microphone. What sounded at first like a gritty old blues tune turned out to be a Mississippi Delta-style overhaul of "Reason to Believe," a declaration of hard-earned faith originally found on Springsteen's 1982 album "Nebraska."
His new one-man show is full of surprises - and it suits him.
"It's a great night for me," Springsteen said during a recent phone interview. "It's just you, your audience, your ideas, your music."
Accompanying himself on acoustic and electric guitars and even piano at times, the iconic singer-songwriter has been mixing old favorites in concert with a hefty serving of material from his latest solo album.
By turns unsettling and uplifting, "Devils & Dust" is a collection of songs about moral crises, new beginnings and the hopes and fears of everyday people in uncertain times. The music ranges from roots-rock to folk to country.
Springsteen is promoting "Devils & Dust" with a 14-date U.S. tour, including a show tonight at Cleveland State University Wolstein Center.
One of the few props keeping him company onstage is an antique lamp. Sharp-eyed fans might recognize it from a video for his new album's title track.
Springsteen, 55, shed light on the lamp -- and weightier topics ranging from his endorsement of John Kerry for president to the future of the E Street Band -- when we spoke to him before a gig in Oakland, Calif.
OK, first things first: What's the deal with the lamp?
It's the magic lamp! (laugh) All energy emerges from the lamp! We just had it in the video, so I brought it along.
It was in my house. We thought, "Let's bring that lamp and put it onstage." There's no special story behind it.
It went crashing to the floor last night, however. I was stomping really hard. I stomped it right off the table, onto the floor. There's a big dent in it, but we got it back up and running.
You've said the songs on "Devils & Dust" deal with people whose souls are at risk. Did you try to stick to the same theme when choosing compatible songs from your previous albums to perform on this tour?
No. I don't operate from the outside in. I'm usually operating from what feels right. Later on, I'll go back and I may make the connections, and I'll be able to say, "Oh, I ended up doing this."
You have your 30 years of craft and you call on it, and it all works, hopefully, in this very integrated fashion and in a way that is not fundamentally an intellectual exercise. The emotions and your feelings are always leading the way.
I may read something in a book or in a newspaper or see it in a movie. Somebody may say something -- anything that sparks that particular creative light. Then I'll follow that.
That's my approach to songwriting.
As far as putting a record together, once again, you go on what feels right. Regardless of how detailed the lyrics are, you're always being led by what the songs are saying emotionally.
On this particular record, the main thing I was looking for was just the best record I had at that moment.
I had a year off. Patti [Scialfa, Springsteen's wife and mother of their three children] worked on her record ["23rd Street Lullaby"] and went touring. So I spent a lot of time with the kids.
I said, "Gee, I have good music that I was interested in before I started to work again with the E Street Band."
I had all these songs that were holding up well. I was interested in those characters.
All the stuff was recorded in about a take or two.
I've been lucky in that I've had a lot of good material the past eight or nine years.
After my review of "Devils & Dust" ran, I got an e-mail from an angry reader who found it "outrageous" for you to deliver the title track from the perspective of a soldier in Iraq. The reader wrote, "You have to be in the soldiers' shoes to express [their] point of view . . . and the Boss sure doesn't speak for them." How would you respond?
As a writer and as a citizen, you take in the world around you, and you take your shot at interpreting it.
That was a song where I was basically trying to get at . . . some of the confusion that being young and being put in that position have to bring you. The confirmation of it is in the newspapers every day.
You're put in a situation of making difficult and impossible choices that I believe even the best training can prepare you for only so much, which is why when our soldiers came home from all the wars that have been fought as long as I've been alive, there was an enormous period of attempting to readjust and to sort through the things they were asked to do. That's what I was trying to get at.
From fresh starts to surprise endings
To the delight of fans, Springsteen is back in full storyteller mode on the road, prefacing songs with personal anecdotes and rambling off-the-cuff commentaries.
Before he bashed out "Part Man, Part Monkey" in Detroit, he couldn't resist a poke at the Bush administration:
"Evolution is in doubt in the White House. We're just not sure about it. We're sure about contribution . . . retribution . . . execution. Evolution? Very iffy."
By way of introducing "For You," an ivory-tickling valentine dating to his 1973 debut, "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.," Springsteen recalled a hilarious lecture by his father:
"My dad was explaining to me . . . that love songs are actually a government conspiracy, each and every one of 'em, a government conspiracy to get you married and force you to pay taxes."
Before the rousing "Long Time Comin'," one of several "Devils & Dust" tunes about making a fresh start, Springsteen talked about his relationship with his own children:
"I always meet people and they go, Oh, man, your kids must think you're cool.' Nope. They don't think I'm cool at all. And they shouldn't. It's the parents' job to be uncool."
You've written about family ties before, but you really hone in on bonds between mothers and sons on the new album. What got you thinking along those lines?
I don't really know. Maybe it's because I hadn't written much about it in the past.
Mothers, they're the soul protectors, y'know?
I had a friend of mine [Fiona Chappel, to whom the ballad "Silver Palomino" is dedicated] who passed away and left two young sons. It was very difficult. That might've had something to do with it.
The mother-child connection is so intense. It's so deep.
On the songs I've written on this particular record, it's severed -- in "Silver Palomino," "Black Cowboys," "Jesus Was an Only Son" and "The Hitter." Those songs are [about] how people try to regain their footing -- or don't.
On "Matamoros Banks" and the version of "The Promised Land" you're performing on this tour, you do this high-pitched keening, expressing a lot of emotion without any words. How did you come to develop that coyote croon, for lack of a better description?
I started in the early '90s. On the "Tom Joad" tour, I would end the night with it, as I do on this tour.
It removes even the lyrics from the evening, and it just becomes purely musical. There's something in it that sums up what you've sung.
I don't know exactly what that is. But it's an unusual sound for a man to make. (laugh)
You would have to go back to the doo-wop singers who sang in those beautiful falsettos. Those have gotten lost in the past 10 or 20 years. You forget all the unbelievable and beautiful falsetto singing by men that was occurring in the '50s and '60s. These were just amazing voices. They communicated an integration of men and women that was unique. Also, it's a very sensual sound.
So it's something I've tried to develop. On this record, I got up my nerve to sing a whole song in it ["All I'm Thinkin' About"].
I was lucky, 'cause I didn't have it before my mid-40s. Through the '70s and the '80s, I never had it.
It's very unusual to sustain that if you do a lot of hard singing. The first thing that goes usually is your top. But it was just something I came upon.
"Reno" continues to receive a lot of attention. The last line -- "It wasn't the best I ever had, not even close" -- got a laugh from the audience in Detroit, although I didn't take it as a punch line when I first heard the song.
What I took that for was surprise. The cool thing about the first three shows [including two warm-up gigs in New Jersey] was people hadn't heard the record.
They didn't know what was coming. So it was sort of neat.
I enjoyed it myself, those first few nights where I was playing a lot of this music. I knew for the most part people had heard none of it.
I remember when I first played ["Reno"] for Steve [Van Zandt, E Street Band guitarist]. He expected a different ending. It was a line that caught him by surprise, too.
The funny thing is, since people have heard it, the surprise is kind of gone. It's a different experience. But it was interesting the first few nights.
Paying the cost to be the Boss
Starbucks, a growing force in the music-retail industry, opted not to stock "Devils & Dust" after the coffeehouse chain's executives deemed "Reno" too hot to handle. The song's graphic depiction of an encounter with a prostitute leaves little to the imagination, although the tone is more sad than salacious.
"If you brought any young kids with you, it might be a nice time to check out those fine T-shirts we have on sale," Springsteen said before he sang "Reno" on opening night.
He flaunted his seldom-seen prowess on the piano during the epic "Racing in the Street," raised the roof with a dramatically backlit rendition of the Sept. 11-inspired anthem "The Rising" and struck a poignant chord to the tune of "Matamoros Banks," a "Devils & Dust" standout about the dreams and death of an illegal immigrant.
Nearly 2½ hours and several standing ovations after the transcendent concert began, a sweat-soaked Springsteen tapped a heartbeat rhythm on the body of his acoustic guitar as he brought it all home with a no-frills, all-thrills reworking of "The Promised Land."
Are these solo shows more or less exhausting than a typical gig with the E Street Band?
They're mentally very intense, because if there's any noise coming off the stage, you're making it. (laugh) There's not a sax solo.
On the other hand, they're somewhat less physically taxing, because obviously there isn't the physical show that's involved [with the band]. High-volume rock 'n' roll music extracts a different type of physical toll.
They're just different. I enjoy them both very much, and I look forward to playing with the band again in the not-too-distant future.
But this is something I also enjoy very, very, very deeply.
You performed here in Cleveland last year not only on the Vote for Change Tour, but also at the John Kerry rally on the eve of Election Day. Since then, you've been asked a lot about the repercussions of sticking your neck out politically. Given the fact the new album debuted at No. 1 and given the success of the solo tour so far -- 7,000 tickets for the Cleveland show were snatched up in three minutes! -- I have to wonder: Backlash? What backlash?
I never went into it expecting that. I have a long relationship with my audience that over the years has had ups and downs.
Every time you make a new record, you'll get some letters: "Why didn't you make a record like the last one?" (laugh)
Or "I liked it when you were writing just about the cars and the girls."
You're always in the process of an ongoing dialogue with your audience. Whatever we did during the election ends up being a part of that conversation. You get letters back that are harsh or nasty. And that's part of the conversation.
Whether I lost some fans or not, I don't know. Whether I picked up any fans or not, I don't know. But I think all in all, after 30 years, your relationship with the audience you've been playing for and singing for is greater than any single act.
You're constantly in the process of doing a wide variety of different things that move you in this direction, move you in that direction.
I met some Republican fans who just said they stayed away from those shows or they didn't agree. It was part of the dialogue.
I have a lot of pride in my audience. I think I've built up a very close relationship, one that has bred, hopefully, a good deal of mutual respect.
The audiences I've had on this tour so far are some of the best I've ever had, just amazing.
The E Street Band expanded into a small orchestra on recent recordings and tours, with more personnel than ever. Do you foresee going back to a leaner, meaner E Street Band at some point?
No, because everyone took many roads, and we all arrived at this particular location. The guys and girls who are there now, that's the E Street Band.
I just recently heard some of us when we were a five-piece unit. It was quite a smaller sound. It was interesting, back in '73 and '74. If I went to play the piano, there was no guitar! (laugh)
That was a great little band. But it was very different.
It was an organic growth, in that it just moved in its own direction.
I can't ever imagine -- I mean, would I ever play in a smaller band unit at some point, in some other type of project? I might, depending on what music I wrote.
Some of the band things on this record aren't quite E Street Band material. It's a slightly different sound, a smaller, roots-rock sound.
I leave all the doors open. I listen to the music, and I try to go where it takes me.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
jsoeder@plaind.com, 216-999-4562
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