John Feinstein: The Little Guy Wins One for The Ages

Appalachian State head football coach Jerry Moore gestures while answering a question at a news conference held at the ASU field house Sunday afternoon Sept. 2, 2007, in Boone, N.C. On Saturday, Appalachian State upset No. 5 Michigan 34-32. Seated with Moore are players, from left, Armanti Edwards, Corey Lynch and Dexter Jackson.

Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, September 3, 2007; 4:32 PM

Because of the absolute glut of media outlets now in existence, especially in the realm of sports, there is a tendency to get carried away (to put it mildly) by what is happening in the here-and-now.

Tiger Woods must be the greatest golfer of all time. Roger Federer must be the greatest tennis player of all time. Bill Belichick must be the greatest NFL coach of all time. Charlie Weis must be the greatest college football coach of all time. (Oh wait, that's just Weis's opinion).

And, of course, Appalachian State over Michigan must be the greatest upset in the history of college football.

With apologies to Woods, Federer and Belichick, all of whom may someday go down as the absolute best at what they do, Saturday's game in Ann Arbor is, in fact, the greatest upset in the history of college football.

It is more stunning than Carlisle over Army in 1912; more shocking than Carnegie Tech over Notre Dame in 1926 and more amazing than Columbia over an Army team that was unbeaten in 32 straight games in 1947. It is even more remarkable than Duke over anyone in 2007.

Why? Because there are few things in the world more imbalanced than today's college football world. The BCS schools have every possible advantage when playing non-BCS schools that are division 1-A, much less when they play schools from 1-AA. (Note to the NCAA: you can try changing the names of your divisions all you want, some of us just aren't going to pay attention). To begin with, 1-A schools are allowed 22 more scholarships than 1-AA schools. They have more money than they can possibly know what to do with (spend it on weight rooms is usually the answer); they have vastly superior facilities; their players are treated like kings every day of their lives and they never would be caught dead playing a 1-AA school on the road.

When Carnegie Tech beat Notre Dame, 19-0, 81 years ago the game was at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Granted, Knute Rockne (the real one, not the current Irish coach who just thinks he's Rockne) took the game so lightly that he didn't bother to show up (seriously), and went to scout Army-Navy instead.

Lloyd Carr showed up to coach his team on Saturday, although the case can be made that he didn't do a very good job of it. Appalachian State won the game because it came into Michigan Stadium in an emotional frenzy, understanding that the game was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Michigan showed up wondering when it would be time to start looking at tape of Oregon.

Of course this happens frequently when little guy faces big guy. (Someone please hit me in the forehead with a rock if I bring up David and Goliath). Appalachian State is a well-coached, talented team that knows how to win, having won back-to-back division 1-AA national titles. Remember also, these are real national titles, where you have to play actual playoff games (three of them) to reach the championship game. The players and coaches know about pressure and they know how to win games.

When Michigan got its act together long enough on Saturday to rally and take the lead, and then get the ball back with the lead, the Mountaineers didn't panic. They got a stop, marched down the field to kick a field goal and then blocked a field goal on the game's final play. They made plays. This was no fluke. If the teams played again next week Michigan would probably win, but it wouldn't be easy. What's more, it doesn't matter. The game was played last Saturday and the better team on that day won.

There's only one bad thing about Appalachian State's victory: It will now give powerhouse schools an excuse to continue scheduling 1-AA teams. In truth, these games shouldn't be allowed because the kids from the 1-AA schools really don't have more than a once-in-a-lifetime chance to win the game or even compete in them. What's even worse is that the two football polls won't allow 1-AA teams to receive votes in their polls. If they're allowed to compete against 1-A teams, why in the world can't they be ranked if they're deserving? You think anyone in this week's top 25 would want to play the Mountaineers right about now? Think they'd want to play them at a neutral site after seeing them beat Michigan in front of 109,000 -- most in maize and blue -- last Saturday?

Duke, which last beat a Division 1-A team in 2004 (seriously) can receive a vote in the preseason coaches poll from Steve Spurrier, but Appalachian State, which would beat Duke by at least 40, can't receive a vote? Let's see how many voters in either poll continue to give Michigan a vote this week. You can bet there will be some who will do so, which is utterly ridiculous.

Really though, none of that matters. Saturday's game was one that will be brought up 50, 60, 70 years from now when extraordinary upsets occur. A little school from the mountains of North Carolina, located in a town with a population that is 96,000 people fewer than the capacity of Michigan Stadium, walked into one of college football's most hallowed venues and won.

One of the Michigan kids said after the game it wasn't really that big a deal? Really? Tell that to people 50 years from now when you're still being asked about it. Lloyd Carr, who is an outstanding coach by any definition, is officially a dead man walking. Unless he figures out a way to win every game for the rest of this season, he can't survive this. Beat Oregon? So what. Beat Notre Dame (which doesn't look quite as good these days with most of Tyrone Willingham's players gone, does it)? fine. Maybe if he beats Ohio State, he might survive.

But neither he nor his players will ever completely get past Appalachian State. Carr will always be remembered as the coach of the 1997 national championship team. He will also be remembered as the coach who lost to Appalachian State in 2007.

Chaminade over Virginia comes to mind on the list of all-time upsets, but at least that game was at Chaminade. The U.S. hockey team over the Soviets at Lake Placid also comes to mind but what would the score of that game have been if the game had been played in Moscow? Frances Ouimet over Walter Hagan at The Country Club in 1913? Remarkable, but again it was an American over a foreigner on American soil.

No, this might very well be the all-timer. You almost hesitate to say it because there will be three books (no, none written by me. wise-guys); four ESPN specials and a Sports Illustrated commemorative issue on sale by this time next week.

But this was as mind-bending an upset as any of us will ever see in our lifetimes. Unless you were a Michigan player, coach or fan, it was just pure fun to see a little guy knock off a true giant.

Appalachian State didn't have a rock. Just a lot of huge hearts. That was enough to create a memory likely to last just about as long as the story about the little guy, the giant and the rock.

Crown of the Continent

Winter sunrise shares its pale luster with the rough-cut facets of 9,638-foot-high (2,937 meters) Vulture Peak in Montana’s Glacier National Park.

By Douglas H. Chadwick
National Geographic Magazine
September 2007

By 2030, Glacier National Park may have lost all its glaciers. But with turquoise lakes, bighorn sheep, and two-mile-high peaks, Glacier-Waterton will always be a wonderland.

Glacier National Park is where everything bright and strong and never tamed comes together on high: wolves, white-tailed ptarmigan, storms that hit the Great Divide like tsunamis with golden eagles surfing the wind waves, twisted trees 200 years old but scarcely tall enough to hide a bighorn sheep, impatient wildflowers shoving through snow to unfurl their colors, alpenglow on ancient ice, and great silver-tipped bears. To roam among these summitscapes is to open a conversation between your soul and a living planet on the move.

Leave bushwhacking to the elk and cliff-climbing to the mountain goats. The best way to get up these mountainsides is by bear elevator: avalanche chutes where winter slides have cleared paths down through brush fields and forests, which grow back at first as open meadows. No matter how hot or long the summer, it will still be springtime at some elevation in the chutes as plants sprout from meltwater-soaked soil in the wake of retreating snows. Flush with nutrients, the succulent new growth draws grazing grizzlies upward through the warm months, from valley floors all the way to the peaks.

Head on view of Ipasha Peak (9450'), with Ahern Glacier (L), and Mount Merritt (R).

A stretch of the Rocky Mountains runs virtually unbroken for 250 miles (400 kilometers) from central Montana into southern Canada with a skyline that exalts all the land within eyeshot. Many call this the Crown of the Continent. Glacier National Park, connected to wildernesses on the south and in both Alberta and British Columbia on the north, is the centerpiece. Up to two miles (three kilometers) high, Glacier's peaks embrace a million Montana acres (405,000 hectares) and 762 lakes to reflect them in hues from milky turquoise strewn with ice floes to so diamond clear you can see bottom stones 50 feet (15 meters) deep. One of the largest lakes has its head in Glacier and its azure body in a 125,000-acre (50,585 hectares) sister reserve, Waterton Lakes National Park, just across the border in Alberta. The adjoining protected areas were proclaimed the world's first international peace park in 1932. Both were designated international biosphere reserves during the 1970s, and in 1995 Waterton–Glacier International Peace Park was further distinguished as a World Heritage site.

Although 95 percent of Glacier is managed as wilderness, more than 700 miles (1,126 kilometers) of interconnecting trails invite foot traffic into the farthest contours. Coming off a three-day trek through the northern reaches, I stuck out a thumb to get back to my car on Going-to-the-Sun Road. The sole highway across the park's interior, it feels like another winding trail, hewn across cliff walls here and there, with rockwork shoring up the outer edges. A nice family in a van picked me up. Barely a minute later, the mother was calling out: "Look, three waterfalls! Who has the camera?"

Uh-oh. Flatlanders.

"I see a taller one!" That was the daughter a hundred yards later. We pulled out for pictures again. Then we motored on for half a minute before little brother said, "Waterfall up on the right!"

Crews with plows had only recently opened the pass. Drifts still lay a hundred feet (30 meters) deep in the lee of some crests. Yet it was June. The air was warm and green. As usual with the onset of summer, the high country was in vertical flood. There were waterfalls pouring off every headwall, ledge, and hanging valley—staircases of falls; concatenated mare's tails of them; sheets, fans, flues, and dazzling braids; plumes bursting from shadowed cliffs like jets of pure light; drum ensembles and cannonades of them shaking the ground underfoot. "Dad. Dad! Pull over!"

This rather unusual look taken during descent from Rising Wolf. Flinsch Peak is on the far left, then (with the seemingly flat top), Mount Stimson, with Mount Morgan rising above the lake on the right. The two lakes are Young Man Lake (L), and Oldman Lake (R).


It was the slowest trip I ever took. But I felt as though I was seeing Glacier's runoff for the first time, too, watching through their eyes as the park, my Montana backyard, softened into the long-light days, liquefying more than half a year's hoard of crystals to swell rivers bound across North America for the Pacific, the Gulf of Mexico, and Hudson Bay.

This is where, around 75 million years ago, tectonic forces buckling Earth's crust sent a slab of rock miles thick sliding eastward on top of the strata next door. The overthrust block is a layer cake of cream-colored limestone and red and green mudstones formed between 1.5 billion and 800 million years ago in a shallow inland sea. Many rocks reveal patterns of ripples, mud cracks, and even raindrops, as if raised from the shores only yesterday. A few preserve mats and mounds of cyanobacteria mixed with silt, all turned to stone. As fossils go, these microbe colonies, termed stromatolites, aren't especially striking—they look like smooshed cabbage heads—but they represent some of the oldest organisms on record. More important, they may have been the first to practice photosynthesis, manufacturing sugar for food with the help of energy captured from the sun.

The waste product given off by this invention was oxygen. As it got pumped into early skies rank with carbon dioxide and methane, photosynthesis began to change the atmosphere. That in turn transformed the course of life. Ultimately, the humble clumps of cyanobacteria and their successors made inhaling sweet air possible—made you and me possible, and the mountain-goat nannies with young single-filing along a blade-thin ridge, and the hoary marmots eyeing my trail snacks from nearby boulders. It's the sort of thing you think about at 9,000 feet (2,700 meters) with your rump on an overhang built from primeval ocean bottom and nothing around the rest of your body but blue, blue breathable sky.

Eon after eon, weather scuffed the uptilted stone layers and poked at their weak spots. Then came the ice ages, and erosion bent to its work. Over the past two million years, glaciers as much as a mile thick flowed over all but the highest points, reaching tentacles of frost into the smallest crevices of rock formations and pulling hefty chunks away as the white juggernauts growled and oozed relentlessly on. The Rockies meanwhile kept rising; not much, maybe the thickness of a snow bunting's wing each year, but ceaselessly. And when the tide of ice finally withdrew, the Crown of the Continent emerged spectacularly cut and polished, its peaks taller than ever and their sides far steeper, soaring above valleys rasped into broad U shapes with open vistas where narrow canyons had been.

This is part of Glacier National Park's Garden Wall, a knife-edge ridge on the Continental Divide and which leads to Mount Gould. From this vantage point, as you can see, there are excellent views of Upper Grinnell Lake, Grinnell Glacier, Salamander Glacier, and Gem Glacier. And what looks like fog below and right of the ridge is actually a smoke inversion caused by the 2003 fires.

Small alpine glaciers persisted on summit shoulders. Others lay cupped in cirque basins or stretched beneath headwalls too high and sheer for the sun to climb over even in midsummer. About 150 glaciers existed when the park was established in 1910. Today, with human activities spewing carbon dioxide and methane as if we were intent on re-creating Earth's ancient atmosphere, a warming climate has reduced the number of moving glaciers to fewer than 30. Dan Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist working in the reserve, says, "The last one will probably disappear by the year 2030, tops." How does Glacierless National Park sound?

Fagre has more pressing questions as he documents decreasing snowpacks, earlier spring runoffs, longer growing seasons, and tree lines marching uphill into former subalpine and alpine habitats. For example: What's in store for the wildlife communities this reserve is supposed to protect? What happens downstream to farmers and ranchers dependent on irrigation, to communities needing drinking water, to fishermen—not to mention the fish—even to distant barge operators, once the glaciers and permanent snowfields that reliably provided water through late summer are gone?

Let's hope the taxpaying public and policymakers understand that national parks are for more than scenery and recreation," Fagre says. "They perform valuable ecosystem services. They are also important listening posts for us—among the very few places where we can tease out signals of environmental change in settings otherwise undisturbed by modern development."

I'm part of a band of volunteers with a wolverine research project in Glacier. We help pack bait into box traps built of logs, tag captured animals with transmitters, and roam the backcountry to track their movements with radio receivers. We do this because wolverines, the largest land-dwelling members of the weasel family, have become alarmingly scarce in the lower 48 states. Glacier, an all-too-rare stronghold, offers the opportunity to gather sorely needed information about reproduction and survival. We also do this because we think the wolverine is cool—the toughest 25-to-30-pound (11 to 14 kilograms) blur of constant motion to ever drive a grizzly off a carcass. Above all, we do this to be in the park.

A view of Bearhat Mountain with Fireweed in the foreground. Photo taken on the trail down to Hidden Lake from the overlook.

The frozen surface of Lake Josephine, encircled by looming peaks, makes for a beautiful glide on skis. But at night, which is when a wolverine is most likely to enter the trap at the lake's head, it's not the same journey. Not with temperatures sinking toward 0°F (-18°C). Not after avalanches off Grinnell Point have spilled across the ice. And especially not when the winds that howl from the divide across Glacier's eastern half for days on end have whipped up a stinging ground blizzard. I'm solo, so I'll take the longer route across the base of Allen Mountain.

After about two miles (three kilometers), the trail descends into a stand of big, old-growth spruce. Intercepted by curtains of boughs, the gusts fade to a breeze at ground level. High overhead, the treetops continue to rock. Branches thrash. Leaning snags rub against the limbs that blocked their fall. They fill the grove with moans, mews, wheezes, and whispers. Each sound has my full attention, if only because I usually cross fresh moose tracks here and, once in a while, those of a mountain lion. Skiing alone through a talking forest in tatters of moonlight on my way to meet a feisty carnivore no longer feels like a suspension of ordinary reality. It's just a night out.

A lot of backcountry mixes the sense of a world freshly shaped by natural forces together with a timeless quality. Floods move the courses of rivers. Raw talus slopes turn into forests, and lightning-sparked blazes recycle the forests into pink swaths of fireweed. Yet in Glacier, the alterations go on alongside cliff faces that were standing in the dinosaurs' day. Backcountry also has a knack for interspersing moments of perfect tranquility with clenches of fear. Glacier's wildlands can generate more of both moods in a day than tame lands could muster in a month.

Hidden Lake tries to live up to its name in this dramatic photo taken from the summit of Reynolds Mountain. This view is looking west toward Mount Brown. Mount Edwards is on the left, and the south ridge of Bearhat Mountain is on the right. Dragontail Peak is in the foreground.

Lean out through a notch in the rimrock, and a huge view only keeps expanding; lean a fingertip farther, and you could join the rubble below. Lean back to nap against a sun-warmed boulder; awaken to a family of black bears digging for glacier lily bulbs on the other side. Maybe you were determined to walk around one more bend because every one before was lovelier than the last. But from that new vantage point, you can see thick-bellied clouds starting to pile in from the west, and the slant of light on the mountains so alluring a moment ago becomes a reminder of how soon the sun is going to sink behind them. You'll be lucky to get back before darkness, rain, and cramping muscles start to seriously break you down.

Then again, I recall times when all Glacier demanded of me was to jump in a lake on a hot summer afternoon. One day last fall, preparing to hike the park's east side to where I could perhaps spot a grizzly, I counted seven eating kinnikinnick berries up on a grassy slope before I'd left the parking lot and two more ambling across high ledges within the first half hour of strolling an easy trail through gold-leafed aspens.

Glacier's founders left it for each visitor to discover the best way to experience the park. I couldn't say which is best; there are so many still to be tried. But here's my advice for now: Light packs make for light spirits. Don't feed the bears. Save the wolverines. Let it snow.

Book Review: "God is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens

Lord Have Mercy

A review of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens

By Ross Douthat

Posted July 9, 2007

This article appeared in the Summer 2007 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.

Click here to send a comment.

Every talented writer is entitled to be a bore on at least one subject, but where religion is concerned Christopher Hitchens abuses the privilege. For years now, he has supplemented his prolific punditry and criticism with a stream of anti-theistic diatribes, and now these rivers of vituperation have pooled into a single volume, an omnium gatherum of God-bashing (although he insists on using the lower-case "g" throughout) that exceeds most of its predecessors in the felicity of its prose, but matches them in the tedium of its arguments. "I have been writing this book all my life," Hitchens declares in the conclusion to God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, "and intend to keep on writing it." One hopes that someone near and dear to him will have the courage to firmly suggest that he stop.

The book has been written with two main purposes in mind: to show that all religions are false, and to prove that their effects are near-universally pernicious. In each case, Hitchens's argument proceeds principally by anecdote, and at his best he is as convincing as that particular style allows, which is to say not terribly. He succeeds in demonstrating that many faiths are frauds and many prophets have been fakers, that believers commit all sorts of terrible crimes and that Buddhists are no more pacific than Southern Baptists, and that the Bible is neither a work of academic history nor a biology textbook. Then again, I was convinced of these points already, and hoped that Hitchens would pick a fight on more contested territory, such as the origin and nature of spiritual experience, which seems a more likely source for man's persistent religiosity than, say, the fear of thunderstorms or the stubborn refusal to crack open The Origin of Species. But like most apologists for atheism, he evinces little interest in the topic of religion as it is actually lived, preferring to stick to the safer ground of putting the godly in the dock and cataloguing their crimes against humanity.

In this vein, he is exhaustive but largely unpersuasive. I remain unconvinced, for instance, that religious practice has no significant effect on moral character, though all I have to support my intuition is a heap of academic studies suggesting that churchgoing boosts marital happiness, private generosity, and various other indicators of a life well lived, while Hitchens has the devastating rebuttal that Robert Ingersoll, the noted freethinker, was a better husband and father than the Catholic Evelyn Waugh. Similarly, I'm unpersuaded that the Catholic Church's stance on birth control has been a major factor in the spread of AIDS around the world, though again I'm merely relying on statistics—African infection rates, for instance, are highest in heavily Protestant countries; most studies suggest that serious religious practice correlates with lower rates of risky sexual behavior, even among people already infected with HIV—while Hitchens has the irrefutable power of anecdote on his side, specifically a few dumb statements about condoms from Third World churchmen.

I'm also unconvinced that male circumcision is quite the species of totalitarianism that God Is Not Great makes it out to be, though I am perhaps suffering from what Hitchens, in his Marxist phase, would have described as "false consciousness." Nor do I believe that the doctrine of hell has wrecked quite so many millions of childhoods as he claims (though he does have citations from James Joyce and Mary McCarthy on his side); or that religion has likewise ruined the act of coitus (a difficult thing to do, one might hazard) for untold numbers of believers; or that the difference between the Spanish Inquisition and the U.S. military chaplaincy is a matter of degree and not of kind. Although Hitchens may be entirely correct that an atheist need "never again confront the impressive faith of an Aquinas or a Maimonides," because faith of "the sort that can stand up at least for a while in a confrontation with reason" no longer exists, I wish he had risked the confrontation, instead of writing an entire book about religion that includes exactly two quotations from religious intellectuals born since 1800, both taken from the same C.S. Lewis pamphlet.

* * *

It might be argued that the brevity of the book and the amount of ground it covers should excuse the less-than-rigorous fashion in which it advances its more controversial arguments. But the demands of brevity should clarify and hone, whereas Hitchens manages to be both short and sloppy. To dispense with both the Old and New Testament in 25 pages is a difficult task, but if he was limited by considerations of length he might have found better evidence for the fraudulence of the Christian witness than, say, the less-than-earthshattering revelation that non-canonical gospels circulated in the centuries after Christ; or the news that the well-known passage in the Gospel of John dealing with the woman taken in adultery was not part of the original Johannine text; or the self-evidently specious observation that the New Testament authors "cannot agree on anything of importance." Hitchens might also have better disguised the fact that he seems to have consulted no New Testament authorities more distinguished than the latest publications from Elaine Pagels, the doyenne of the "lost gospels" industry, and Bart Ehrman, the ex-fundamentalist who abandoned Christianity once it became clear to him that there might have been actual human beings involved in the composition of its sacred texts.

Perhaps one should be grateful when Hitchens cites any authority at all, since his artful prose is forever rushing on to the insult and skipping the argument, and sometimes the facts as well. He claims that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ stars a "lead actor who was apparently born in Iceland or Minnesota," a jibe calculated to amuse anyone who's never set eyes on Jim Caviezel, the lead actor in question, who looks exactly like the dark-haired, dark-skinned Italian-Slovak-Irish mongrel he is. Of the Gospels themselves, Hitchens notes that "the book on which all four may possibly have been based, known speculatively to scholars as ‘Q,' has been lost forever, which seems distinctly careless on the part of the god who is claimed to have ‘inspired' it"—a good line that reveals at best a passing acquaintance with biblical scholarship, since the hypothetical Q is only envisioned as a source for Matthew and Luke, not Mark and certainly not John.

* * *

Every book has its errors, of course, but few are quite so tendentious in their interpretation of the facts they manage to get right. Like an overzealous Christian searching pagan texts for anything that could be construed as foreshadowing Christ's coming, Hitchens scours the record of man's inhumanities to man for any hint that they might have been motivated by piety, prophecy, or dogma. No atrocity has been committed and no tyranny established, if you believe his theocentric history of violence, that did not have religion at its root somehow.

This would seem a rather difficult case to make, since a cursory reading of history suggests that loyalty to one's kin, one's tribe, and one's nation—not to mention sundry political ideologies—has sparked at least as much violence as any theological controversy. But fortunately for Hitchens's polemic, religion is so woven into human affairs that nearly every war contains some religious element for his monomania to batten on. And perhaps some readers will even be persuaded by, for instance, his peculiar suggestion that the Hutu-on-Tutsi carnage in Rwanda had less to do with ethnic grievances and the pernicious legacy of Victorian Europe's racial theories than with some minor Marian visionaries, whose prophecies, which included dire and all-too-accurate predictions of imminent mass murder, were briefly co-opted by Hutu thugs.

More likely, though, the reader will come away unpersuaded of anything save the self-evident truth of the matter, which is that human beings, being a clannish and quarrelsome lot, tend to find all sorts of things to fight over, and that nearly every aspect of human affairs can serve as a powerful spur to actions both heroic and deplorable. So religion produces both Torquemada and Dorothy Day; philosophy spurs Socrates to die for truth and Heidegger to prostitute himself for Hitler; science cures polio and speeds our missiles on their way; the bonds of family provide the foundation for innumerable happy childhoods, but also for the Wars of the Roses. None of this is to excuse the crimes of religious believers; it's merely to suggest that the line between good and evil runs through every aspect of human affairs, and denouncing belief in God for poisoning the world is as absurd as denouncing "democracy" because it has empowered tyrants from Hitler down to Hugo Chavez, or "equality" because its partisans have included the Jacobins, the Khmer Rouge, and the KGB.
Of this last objection, at least, Hitchens seems well aware, and he devotes an entire chapter to arguing strenuously that both the Nazis and the Communists were effectively religious and effectively theocratic, their secular experiments poisoned by religion. But with this move he begins sawing off the very branch he occupies, since if faith tends to infect even secular politics, then what separates Hitchens from his religious enemies?

* * *

The absence of ideology, he would doubtless claim, and the commitment to skepticism and humanism, "free thought" and above all Science. But Science is not a moral teacher, and Hitchens is nothing if not a moralist, passionately invested in such notions as universal human rights, the wastefulness of violence, the particular inviolability of children, and so forth. Where he finds these principles, I am uncertain, but then he seems to be perplexed as well, given how quickly his attempt to apply evolutionary theory to the thorny problem of abortion collapses into unfortunate-sounding appeals to "creative destruction" and "the pitilessness of nature."

This detour into Social Darwinism is mercifully brief, and for the most part Hitchens hews faithfully to Thomas Jefferson's famous attempt to carve all the miracles out of the Gospels and leave the ethical teaching intact. I do not mean to give offense in calling Hitchens a quasi-Christian moralist, but in his better moments that is what he plainly is—a true believer in the branch of the Enlightenment tradition that is epistemologically materialist but otherwise takes its cues from Christianity. The trouble is that this two-step contains a certain contradiction, which is why liberalism has tended to lurch in one direction or another ever since—toward a spineless relativism on the one hand or a scientistic utopianism on the other, with New Testament morality the first thing to be jettisoned in either case.

* * *

Hitchens's own temptations lie in the latter direction. Though he casts himself as a chastened ex-Marxist, he slips all too easily into a boasting utopianism. There is the dream of near-immortality, thanks to "stupendous advances in medicine and life extension, derived from work on our elementary stem cells." There is the usual atheistic claptrap about how the "undreamed of vistas inside our own evolving cortex, in the farthest reaches of the known universe, and in the proteins and acids which constitute our nature" are a suitable replacement for the inspiration and consolation associated with religion. And inevitably, there is the fantasy of a sexual utopia, since "the divorce between the sexual life and fear, the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse." (This last bit is the kind of nonsense that only an intellectual could believe—that religion, rather than biology and human nature, is responsible for making sex physically and emotionally perilous, or linking promiscuity with disease, or intertwining the personal and the political.)

At one point, summoning his readers to the salons and barricades of a new Age of Reason, Hitchens adds the caveat that "only the most naive utopian can believe that this new humane civilization will develop, like some dream of ‘progress,' in a straight line." This sounds admirably humble, until you read the next sentence—"we have to first transcend our prehistory, and escape the gnarled hands which reach out to drag us back to the catacombs and the reeking altars"—and realize that the only people standing between us and this "new humane civilization" are the unenlightened types who don't agree with Christopher Hitchens about the ultimate purpose of human affairs.

We've heard this kind of talk before—transcending the past, building a new humane civilization, escaping the outworn moralities and metaphysics of yore—and its results have tended to be unhappy for those unfortunate enough to be identified with the "prehistory" that needs to be transcended. Perhaps a more modest utopianism will be less pernicious than its predecessors; perhaps Hitchens really means it when he protests, in between the insults, that he only dislikes religion because it won't leave him well enough alone. But there's nothing, either in recent history or in the pages of this smug, incurious book, to give one any confidence of that.

Ross Douthat is an associate editor at The Atlantic Monthly and the author of Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class (Hyperion, 2005). He is also a writer of the weblog, The American Scene.

Srdja Trifkovic: Half a Billion "Americans"?

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/

August 31, 2007

The latest report from the Center for Immigration Studies on how immigration may impact the future size of America’s population has been released. Their findings are based on the Census Bureau projections, and show that if immigration continues at current levels, the U.S. population will increase from 301 million today to 468 million in 2060—a 167 million (or 56 percent) increase. New immigrants and their descendants will account for 105 million (or 63 percent) of that increase.

The report says that, at the moment, approximately 1.6 million legal and illegal immigrants settle in the United States each year and 350,000 leave, resulting in net immigration of 1.25 million. The total projected growth of 167 million would exceed the current total population of Central America (41 million), the Caribbean (37 million) and Egypt (79 million). The 105 million from immigration by itself is equal to the present population of Mexico.

Even those staggering figures are based on the assumption that immigration levels will remain static. Net immigration has been increasing for the past half-century, however, and there are no signs that the trend is changing. If it continues, the increase caused by immigration may well be higher than the projected 105 million—taking us easily to an America of half a billion people five decades from now.

On the other hand, if the annual level of net immigration was reduced to 300,000—which can be done if the political will is present—future immigration would add 25 million people to the population by 2060. That would be some 80 million fewer than the current level would add.
One of the most interesting findings of the report is that immigration does not have an impact on the overall aging of this country’s population—which is a key argument used by the proponents of open-door policy. In reality,

At the current level of net immigration (1.25 million a year), 61 percent of the nation’s population will be of working age (15 to 66) in 2060, compared to 60 percent if net immigration were reduced to 300,000 a year. If net immigration was doubled to 2.5 million a year it would raise the working-age share of the population by one additional percentage point, to 62 percent, by 2060. But that level of immigration would create a U.S. population of 573 million, double its size in the 2000 Census.

The report does not tackle the national security aspect of the problem. The number of Muslim immigrants in the united States is growing more than twice as fast as the already rampant total. Growth of overall immigration since 1970 has been 300 percent, but growth of immigration from the Middle East over the same period has been 700 percent—from under 200,000 in 1970 to 1.5 million in 2000. In 2005, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent U.S. residents—almost 100,000—than in any year in the previous two decades. More than 40,000 of them were admitted legally in 2005, the highest annual number since the terrorist attacks, according to data on 22 countries provided by the Department of Homeland Security.

On current form, in 2010 the expected number of immigrants from the Middle East alone will exceed 2,500,000. Lavishly financed by Saudi and other Middle Eastern oil money, an intricate jihadist infrastructure has come into being to cater to this large and growing community. The number of mosques and Islamic centers stands at around two thousand and keeps growing. The total number of mosques increased 42 percent between 1990 and 2000, compared with a 12 percent average increase for the evangelical Protestant denominations, and a two percent average increase among old-line Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox groups.

The figures for immigration from the Middle East are already matched, and are likely to be exceeded, by the number of Muslim immigrants from the Indian Sub-Continent (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh). Currently Muslims account for one-tenth of all naturalizations, and their birth rates exceed those of any other significant immigrant group.

Far from enhancing America’s “diversity,” the coming deluge threatens to impose a numbing Thirld-World sameness, to eradicate the remnants of this country’s identity, and to demolish what survives of her special character. On current form, not only will English-speaking Americans of European origin become a minority in their own country half a century from now, but they will share an increasingly overpopulated, polluted, lumpenproleterized, culturally unrecognizable country with tens of millions of actual or potential jihadists and their accomplices, aiders and abettors.

Whether this colossally criminal idiocy can be stopped, and how, is open to doubt. The cultural-Marxist ruling class sees self-annihilation of peoples with a historical memory and a cultural identity as the key to its revolutionary project. The founders of the United States rebelled against King George for sins far lighter than those of which our rulers are culpable.

Srdja Trifkovic :: Aug.31.2007 :: News & Views :: 111 Comments »

Union on Film

http://www.nationalreview.com/
Author Archive

August 31, 2007 5:00 AM

Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront"

Union on Film

Putting Labor Day in your Netflix queue.

By Bret Jacobson

You’ve got the extra day off. You might as well use it to appreciate the “labor” in Labor Day. Here’s one way: Click over to Netflix and order up some union classics. One warning: There’s only a remote chance you’ll like what you see.

Since people don’t talk as much about unions as they used to, here are some recommendations: On the Waterfront, Norma Rae, and the Academy Award–winning documentary American Dream. Between them there’s corruption, violence, strikes, shady organizing tactics, and Marlon Brando before he swelled to the size of the labor movement.

First up is the defining moment for labor in film, On the Waterfront. It’s not a spoiler to remind you that this flick featured the young Brando who “coulda been a contender.” The movie has it all, including a corrupt union boss up to his neck in organized crime, and violence toward those who don’t go along with the program.

How times (and the docks) haven’t changed.

Off-screen, the federal government is currently pursuing racketeering charges against the union that inspired the movie. Unfortunately, progress hit a speed bump when a key witness turned up dead in a car trunk. The International Longshoremen’s Association had a $10 million operating shortfall last year, and union assets were down 34 percent from 2005 to 2006. Lawyers’ bills will do that. Meanwhile, the union’s president managed to pay himself more than $580,000, and his son grabbed another $292,000 last year.

Fast forward to Norma Rae. The heroine, played by Sally Field, inspired her co-workers to rise up against a nasty employer. In this case, the process involved employees organizing themselves, with the help of a well-meaning union.

Unfortunately, times have changed. UNITE HERE is the real-life successor of the union depicted in the movie. Its old style of organizing — focusing on employees’ needs — has pretty much dried up along with Sally Field.

The union is now the perfect picture of modern union organizing, warts and all. It relies on a “top-down” model, which is little more than attacking a company until it helps deliver its own employees up for union membership. No vote — just mandatory dues.

The change in tactics hasn’t been good for working Americans. In the last couple of years, UNITE HERE officials have been found guilty of invading employees’ privacy by illegally running their license plates through the DMV so they could find where they live and make unannounced visits. And a jury ordered them to pay $17 million for defaming medical professionals after union officials falsely told expectant mothers their babies could be in danger at a hospital caught in the middle of a labor dispute. To top it all off, UNITE HERE may be liable for $75 million after union officials tried to steal life insurance benefits from their own retired staff. The staff sued the union when they saw their key retirement benefits cut by 95 percent.

Maybe the union’s secretaries need their own Norma Rae.

Time to pop in American Dream, a documentary highlighting a disastrous strike by food-plant employees and a key split in Big Labor’s playbook. It’s arguably the most relevant union movie in decades.

The film follows two factions within the United Food and Commercial Workers during a contract showdown. On the one side is the grizzled leadership at the top of the union who want their members to take pay cuts to meet the demands of a changing industry. On the other side was a group of local union leaders and their hired gun, Ray Rogers, who is the godfather of the “corporate campaign.”

Movie Spoiler Alert: The community is torn apart, everyone looks terrible, and the union’s bosses are exposed as failures.

Real-World Spoiler Alert: The UFCW didn’t seem to learn anything from the story. The union has failed in its traditional organizing, losing 75,000 members in the last five years. It led its own members on another disastrous strike in 2003, leading to 4.5 million days of lost work, lost homes, broken marriages, and even a few suicides.

Since then, UFCW has turned into the largest abuser of the “corporate campaign” model, with a p.r. smear machine currently targeting the nation’s largest meatpacker and largest retailer. They have chosen to ignore the words of their union’s former meatpacking-division chief, who warned, “They are not going to win if they continue the way they're going. They're going to become bigger losers than what they are right now. It is going to cost them their jobs.”

It turns out he was right. Yet given UFCW’s continued reliance on the shady tactic, it’s clear that the movie hasn’t made its way up the Netflix queue for today’s union leaders. This Labor Day it’s worth unwinding, rewinding, and remembering some of Big Labor’s most famous movie moments. When it comes to their worst scenes, it’s good to know there’s always an “eject” button.

— Bret Jacobson is a founding staff member and senior research analyst for the Center for Union Facts.

Paul Jacob: Stop the bus, my kid is getting off

http://www.townhall.com/

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty (right) took full control over his city's long suffering public schools earlier this summer. But he sends his own twin girls to a private school.

Does that make him a hypocrite? Does it make him a bad mayor?

Or, perhaps, just a good father?

Fenty is not alone. Politicians and other erstwhile members of the public school establishment demonstrate their preferences every time they choose to educate their own children outside public schools. Mayor Bloomberg of New York City sent his kids to elite private schools. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa currently enrolls his children in private institutions. A 2003 survey of members of Congress by The Heritage Foundation found that 41 percent of U.S. representatives and 46 percent of U.S. senators now send or have sent at least one of their children to a private school.

This isn't just a matter of the upper crust. A far greater percentage of public school teachers around the country — especially in urban areas such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. — send their own kids to private schools than does the general public.

Meanwhile, only 12 percent of U.S. school children are educated privately.
The first public/private schooling decision to receive national hype occured back in 1993, when President Bill and First Lady Hillary Clinton chose the exclusive Sidwell Friends School rather than a D.C. public school for their then 12-year old daughter Chelsea. They were roundly criticized. Yet, to me, their decision was reassuring, indicating for the first time that Bill and Hillary might actually place something ahead of their own political advantage.

One of the reasons Bill offered was that the private school would allow Chelsea "more control over her destiny." For once, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton and I saw eye to eye — as parents.

Granted, there is rampant hypocrisy at work. These people stump for public schooling, opposing systems of school choice. And yet, they choose to opt out of the system they allegedly shore up . . . from competition. The kind they themselves rely upon.

Years ago, during a campaign for public office, Fenty indeed pledged to send his kids to public schools. So, if voters want to hold that against him, they have every right to do so. But my point is only that had Fenty — or any of these politicians and educators — made the alternative decision, wouldn't that be even worse?

Mayor Fenty's choice boils down to this: Should he put the public schools ahead of his own children? Or should he put his children ahead of the public schools?

Which would you put first?

Shouldn't we seek a world in which education is made to fit the child and not the other way around? Computers and blue jeans and TV programs and fruit smoothies fit the customer. Why not schooling?

We certainly shouldn't force everyone to suffer an equally poor education! And certainly no politician should make his child suffer to benefit his political position.

How did we get to a point where the institution of public schooling could possibly come before the actual education of our kids?

Short answer: We have given up our roles as customers. Oh, sure, we pay the bills. But we don't direct any of the money. That responsibility landed in the laps of self-interested politicians.

Worse yet, politicians have themselves passed the buck, allowing the school biz to be monopolized by the hired hands. The teachers and school workers unions are organized and politically powerful. Parents are not. So the decisions that govern and drive the schools are made by politicians scared of union bosses, not parents.

The impact drives down deep. Apple, Inc. CEO Steve Jobs was on to something earlier this year when he asked

What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good? . . . I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy. . . .

Mayor Fenty is facing this music. His Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee (who sends her child to a bilingual public D.C. school) wants to fire a number of unionized employees in the school system's notoriously inefficient central office. But that would mean suspending some of the provisions in the union contracts protecting these workers from actually having to perform to keep their jobs.

To me, and I think to Mayor Fenty, it is a question of cleaning up the mess in the D.C. public schools so that kids might get some benefit out of the billions being spent on their education.

Not so to Joslyn Williams, president of the Metropolitan Washington Council of the AFL-CIO. She quickly signaled that of course the union will fight for its members over non-dues-paying schoolchildren. She told reporters, "This is a question of political will and political power."

Paul Jacob is a Senior Advisor at The Sam Adams Alliance, a Townhall.com member group. His daily Common Sense commentary appears on the Web, via e-mail, and on radio stations across America.

APPALLING! Wolverines suffer worst upset in their history

Appalachian State coach Jerry Moore is carried off the field at Michigan Stadium by Tony Robertson and teammates after upsetting No. 5 Michigan 34-32 in a college football game Saturday, Sept. 1, 2007 in Ann Arbor, Mich.

APPALACHIAN STATE 34, NO. 5 MICHIGAN 32

September 2, 2007

BY MICHAEL ROSENBERG

DETROIT FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

Is it me, or is Appalachian State, like, REALLY good?

What? It is me?

Michigan players, fans and alumni all face the same "dastardly fate," as announcer Bob Ufer used to say. Wherever they go, whatever they do, people will say:

You lost to Appalachian State!

Michigan will not get over this for a long, long time. College football, more than any other sport, is a perception game. The championship-game matchup is decided, at least in part, by public opinion. People argue about the relative strength of their conferences long after the bartender asks them to leave.

And the perception is that Michigan just lost to the Washington Generals. There is no response to that. If you're Michigan, you simply cannot lose to Appalachian State.

The Wolverines woke up Saturday morning with dreams of a national championship. Well, dream on. As U-M running back Mike Hart said after the stunning 34-32 finish: "When you lose to a team like that, a Division I-AA team, how can you win the national championship in Division I?"

You can't. Never mind that Michigan was one play from escaping. Never mind that Appalachian State, which has won two straight Division I-AA championships, has the talent to compete in Division I-A, or whatever the NCAA is calling its divisions these days.



Appalachian State quarterback Armanti Edwards dives over Michigan linebacker John Thompson (49) and cornerback Brandon Harrison to score their fourth touchdown of the game during the second quarter.

Never mind that this was a good matchup for the Mountaineers, who have speed on offense and a talented, shifty, quarterback, Armanti Edwards, to pick apart Michigan's inexperienced defense. (And Appalachian State knew it! As the Winston-Salem Journal reported last week, the Mountaineers practically begged U-M athletic director Bill Martin for the matchup.)

Never mind that Michigan was foolish to schedule Appalachian State. When you want a cupcake, eat a cupcake. Don't chew on glass and tell yourself it's a cupcake.

Never mind all that because ... hold on. I've got someone from East Lansing on the other line.

It's for you, Lloyd Carr.

You lost to Appalachian State!

This is a disaster for the Wolverines, and you know what? They are stuck. They can't shut people up by beating Oregon this Saturday, because it's not a great Oregon team. They can't change it by beating Notre Dame, because people will just use that as more evidence that Notre Dame is overrated for the 15th consecutive year.

And Michigan can't even change the perception by winning the Big Ten, because ... wait a second ... I think I hear somebody in Tuscaloosa:

Y'all call that a major conference? Your favorite lost to Appalach'n State!

The Wolverines can't do anything about the perception unless they win a BCS game against an elite team. Right now, they have to get over the humiliation of losing to Appalachian State and deal with why they lost.

Michigan's senior quarterback, Chad Henne, did not look like a senior quarterback. He overthrew a few receivers. On one fourth-and-five in the fourth quarter, he forced a pass to tight end Mike Massey instead of hitting an open Adrian Arrington underneath for a first down.

Then there was Henne's biggest mistake: one of those across-the-body passes into coverage with a twist and two lutzes that nobody has completed since John Elway retired. It was intercepted.

I don't know what went wrong for Henne, because he skipped postgame interviews. Quarterbacks coach Scot Loeffler insisted, "He wasn't rattled at all."

What happened to Michigan's vaunted offensive talent? The right side of the offensive line, shaky to begin with, is now injury-ravaged, too. Mike Hart, who ran for 188 yards and what appeared to be a game-winning touchdown, missed a chunk of the game with a thigh injury.

Then there is Carr. He had two talk-radio decisions in this game -- the kind that people will debate for days. Both of his choices were defensible, but neither worked.

The first was when he went for two when his team pulled within 31-26 in the third quarter. The Wolverines blew the conversion on a bad snap. That forced them to try for two when they scored again, and they blew that when Brandon Minor stumbled.

With two more extra points, the Wolverines would have led, 34-31, in the final minutes, and maybe the game ends differently.

The other decision came late in the fourth quarter. Michigan led, 32-31, and faced fourth and six on the Appalachian State 26. Carr went for a 44-yard field goal instead of trying to seal the win with a first down. The kick was blocked.

You can blame Carr for making the wrong choices. Personally, I think that's silly. Instead, blame him for a team that blew critical snaps, missed blocking assignments, asked linebackers and safeties to cover speedy receivers and failed to adjust to Appalachian State's attack until the Mountaineers had scored 28 points.

"Losing -- that's bad enough," Carr said. "But to play the way we did, that's an even greater disappointment."

How disappointing?

Disappointing enough to bring Carr back in 2008?

It has been widely speculated -- by fans, media, and privately by some people at Michigan -- that this will be Carr's final season. The speculation has been repeated so often that some people take it as fact. But remember: the speculation is predicated on the fact that Carr has senior offensive talent, especially at quarterback, and faces Notre Dame and Ohio State at home.

People figured he would ride this team into the sunset. Well, if the sun is setting on the Wolverines in Orlando or Tampa or (gasp!) San Antonio at the end of the year, will Carr really retire?

(And no, he won't get fired. He was not in danger of getting fired Saturday morning, after three BCS berths in four years, and Michigan doesn't change its tune based on one loss, even one as humiliating as this.)

That is a question for another day. In the meantime, Michigan is now 0-1 with Oregon , Notre Dame and Penn State looming. The Wolverines can win all those games, and they can still go to the Rose Bowl, but ...

Hang on. Appalachian State linebacker Pierre Banks has something to say.

"We should go to the Rose Bowl!" Banks yelled.

Banks added, "I'm just kidding," which was classy but entirely unnecessary. The Mountaineers should crow about this forever.

Everybody else will.

Contact MICHAEL ROSENBERG at 313-222-6052 or mrosenberg@freepress.com.

Mark Steyn: There were two creeps in the men's room

Orange County Register
September 2, 2007

The catchphrase of America's famous cowboy humorist Will Rogers was "Never met a man I didn't like." Judging from the activities at the men's room of the Will Rogers Memorial Park in Beverly Hills, many of the patrons of said facility evidently feel the same way. George Michael, the stubbly boy rocker of the Eighties, was arrested therein for attempting to play footsie with an undercover cop. "Guilty feet have got no rhythm," as George famously observed on his hit song "Careless Whisper." After pleading no contest, he subsequently made a rock video mocking the arresting officer, with George prancing around in police uniform twirling his night stick.

It's not clear if such an option is open to Sen. Larry Craig who found himself in a similar situation in the men's room at Minneapolis International Airport. True, the Idaho Republican was a member of the Singing Senators, the Congressional barbershop quartet that also included John Ashcroft, Trent Lott and Jim Jeffords, and he could, in theory, make a barbershop video mocking the arresting officer with, say, Sen. Lott prancing around in police uniform twirling his night stick. But, absent that, Sen. Craig has been reduced to the usual grim rituals of political career self-detonation, from the public statement with the tight-lipped wife standing loyally by her husband to the risible explanation (Craig's foot brushed the Minneapolis officer's shoe but only because, when using a bathroom stall, the senator has a "wide stance"). "I am not gay," says Sen. Craig over and over, as somberly and emphatically as President Nixon's famous insistence that he was not a crook. Any day now, the senator will announce OJ-like that he's redoubling his efforts to track down the real homosexual.

The human comedy is not to be disdained. Nonetheless, after listening to the post-arrest audio tape of Craig's interview with police Sgt. Dave Karsnia, I find myself inclining toward Henry Kissinger's pronouncement on the Iran/Iraq war: It's a shame they both can't lose. As it happens, I passed by the very same men's room at the Lindbergh Terminal only a couple of months ago. I didn't go in, however. My general philosophy on public restrooms was summed up by the late Derek Jackson, the Oxford professor and jockey, in his advice to a Frenchman about to visit Britain. "Never go to a public lavatory in London," warned Professor Jackson. "I always pee in the street. You may be fined a few pounds for committing a nuisance, but in a public lavatory you risk two years in prison because a policeman in plain clothes says you smiled at him."

Just so. Sgt. Karsnia is paid by the police Department to sit in a stall in the men's room all day, like a spider waiting for the flies. The Baron von Richthoven of the Minneapolis Bathroom Patrol has notched up a phenomenal number of kills and knows what to look for – the tapping foot in the adjoining stall, a hand signal under the divider. Did you know that tapping your foot in a bathroom was a recognized indicator that a criminal act is about to occur? Don't take your iPod in with you! Or, if you do, make sure you're listening to the Singing Senators: Hard to tap your foot to "Sweet Adeline," and if you do it's unlikely to be in a manner sufficiently frenzied to attract the attention of the adjoining constables.

What else is a giveaway that you're a creep and a pervert seeking loveless anonymous sex? Well, according to Sgt. Karsnia, when the senator entered the stall, he placed his wheelie bag against the door, which (according to the official complaint) "Sgt. Karsnia's experience has indicated is used to attempt to conceal sexual conduct by blocking the view from the front of the stall."

No doubt. But, if you use the men's room at the airport, where are you meant to put your carry-on? There's not many other places in a bathroom stall other than against the door, unless Minneapolis is planning on mandating overhead bins in every cubicle. In happier times, one would have offered some cheery urchin sixpence to keep an eye on one's bags. But today if you go to the airport bathroom and say to some lad, "Would you like to take care of my wheelie for five minutes?" you'll be looking at 30 years in the slammer.

I've no doubt Sen. Craig went to that bathroom looking for sex. Listen to the tape of his encounter with Sgt. Karsnia and then imagine, as National Review's Jonah Goldberg suggested, how the conversation would go if Sens. McCain or Webb had been in that stall and were accused of brushing shoes with the flatfoot. Not being privy to the codes of the privy, it would take 'em 15 minutes even to figure out what Sarge was accusing 'em of and, when it became clear, the conversation would erupt in a blizzard of asterisks and, shortly thereafter, fists.

Instead, Sen. Craig copped a plea. Because of that, he should disappear from public life as swiftly as possible and embrace full time the anonymity he cherishes in his sexual encounters. Not, as the left urges, on grounds of "hypocrisy" – because he's a "family values" politician who opposes "gay marriage" yet trawls for rough trade in men's rooms. A measure of hypocrisy is necessary to a functioning society. It's quite possible, on the one hand, to be opposed to the legalization of prostitution yet, on the other, to pull your hat down over your brow every other Tuesday and sneak off to the cat house on the other side of town. Your inability to live up to your own standards does not, in and of itself, nullify them. The left gives the impression that a Republican senator caught in a whorehouse ought immediately to say, "You're right. I should have supported earmarks for hookers in the 2005 appropriations bill." That's the reason why sex scandals take down Republicans but not Democrats: Sex-wise, the left's standards are that whatever's your bag is cool – which is the equivalent of no standards. Thus, Monica Lewinsky was a "grown woman" free to make her own decisions on the carpet of the Oval Office. Without agreed "moral standards," all you have is the law. When it's no longer clear something is wrong, all you can do is make it illegal.

And so we have the bizarre situation of a United States senator convicted of the crime of brushing his foot and placing his carry-on luggage in the only available space of a men's room stall. Larry Craig feebly accused Sgt. Karsnia of "entrapping" him but, in fact, the officer didn't even need to entrap him into anything other than an allegedly intrusive shoe movement. That's a crime? On the tape, Craig sounds sad and pathetic, a prominent man cornered in a sordid transaction. Yet Karsnia sounds just as weird and creepy: a guy who's paid to sit in a bathroom stall for hours on end observing adjoining ankles. I'd rather hand out traffic tickets.

Record Lovers' Loss

On the Beat: David Menconi on music

Thursday, August 30, 2007

For absent record-geek friends: John Swain

From our pal Tony Madejczyk, here's a true blast from the past -- video footage of the late John Swain holding forth at a record show in 1987. Swain ran my favorite store in town, the Record Hole, in which capacity he could've passed for a character in "High Fidelity" years before Nick Hornby wrote the book. The local music-retail landscape has never been the same since Swain died in 1991, and watching this makes me feel a pang for the long hours I spent record-geekin' at his store.

Click through for the tribute I wrote when Swain died, which has a lead I now find embarrassingly overwrought (mostly because I can almost hear Swain in ghost form sneering, "Whitney Houston?!"). But I felt it at the time, so what the heck.

Record lovers' loss

By David Menconi, News & Observer

July 12, 1991

I'm not sure why, but I always get the urge to listen to Marvin Gaye whenever an acquaintance dies. Maybe it's because "What's Going On" was one of the earliest songs I vividly remember from childhood. Or maybe because Mr. Gaye was such a twisted, psychotic genius. Or maybe just that he died young.

Whatever the reason, his music has always been synonymous with mortality for me. I was pondering this Sunday night at Walnut Creek while listening to Whitney Houston's backup band perform a Marvin Gaye medley during one of the star's costume changes.

As the band swung into "What's Going On," I was thinking about John E. Swain III, who was found dead in his Raleigh apartment last Friday. He was only 45 -- a year older than the age at which Mr. Gaye died. At press time, the cause of death was still pending the results of laboratory tests.

John was proprietor of the Record Hole, across Hillsborough Street from the Brewery. Record stores are like libraries for music critics. They're where we go to do our research, and also where we turn when we're feeling bored with whatever's fashionable at the moment. With John's death, I've lost my favorite librarian in town.

He was an odd character with a manner that ranged from gruff on a good day to incredibly irascible on a bad one. His small store was a disorganized shambles, and he kept unpredictable hours -- closed until he was open, open until he was closed.

But the Record Hole had some priceless treasures for anyone willing to take the time to look. And when it came to old records, John was one of the most knowledgeable people I've ever met. The Record Hole was like a magnet for the many DJs and collectors who were regular customers.

In the few months that I frequented the Record Hole, John turned me on to an unbelievable amount of good music. It did take him awhile to warm up to me. But he seemed to decide I was OK the day he overheard me answer another customer's question about rockabilly guitarist Robert Gordon's former group (the Tuff Darts).

After that, he was never less than generous with his knowledge or his inventory. Once he noticed that I was always snapping up old blues and soul compilations, John started setting aside records he thought I would like: Lightnin' Hopkins, Lavern Baker, Duke Ellington.

When he went to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in May, he even brought me back a dog-eared copy of a fabulous old album by blues pianist Champion Jack Dupree. It was a typical gesture for him.

"He loved music, and he loved passing it on to people," said the Rev. Billy C. Wirtz, John's next-door neighbor.

Unfortunately, the Record Hole was a one-man show. John's death leaves the store's future up in the air, although record collectors already are making inquiries about taking it over. There has also been talk about Mr. Wirtz doing a benefit show with the proceeds going toward the Mississippi Blues Museum.

Whatever happens with the store, John's death leaves a void. I'll miss him, and so will everyone else around here who loves music.

Posted at 11:22 am by davidmenconi in music

2 comments

http://blogs.newsobserver.com/htsrv/trackback.php?tb_id=12022

Comment from: Phil Melton [Visitor]
08/30/07 at 16:55

Thanks for posting this, David. I was looking for my copy of the column not long ago. Every time I pass that part of Hillsborough Street it brings back memories of time spent in the Record Hole. Not only did John know about all kinds of music, he knew someone that would buy almost anything. I was managing the Crabtree Record Bar in 91 and used to take him boxes of record promos that my employees and I didn't want. There was always some place in Brooklyn, or Virginia, or somebody he knew from his rounds that would want what we had picked over. When he passed away, it was like every Record Bar manager in town took a pay cut. He was a great character, and is still missed.

Comment from: davidmenconi [Member]

08/30/07 at 17:57

A comment from Peter Bent:

That is me (the tall one) standing next to Swain in the picture you posted and my sister Melissa (Tony's wife) shot the video. There was never anything before or since like the Record Hole. I think I made my bones when I first started going there by buying a Joe Ely record that he respected. I went on some of those New Orleans trips with him, too. I remember dropping him off in some nasty looking projects and he showed up hours later with a stash of uber-cool vinyl, maybe even that Champion Jack Dupree thing.

I bought one hell of a lot of records in Mr. Swain's store...he is still missed. - jtf

Patrick J. Buchanan: The Friends of Larry Craig

Patrick J. Buchanan Archive

August 30, 2007

http://www.vdare.com/

"When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state," wrote Shakespeare. Sen. Larry Craig knows today whereof the bard spoke.

Rarely has a United States senator fallen so fast from grace or been so completely abandoned.

As the nation now knows, Craig was arrested in June in an airport men's room in Minneapolis, charged with propositioning an undercover cop, who was on duty there because the place had become notorious.

According to the officer, Craig, in the next stall, flashed known signals of a man seeking anonymous and immediate sex.

Rather than fight the charge, Craig pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct misdemeanor. This week, the story exploded and Craig is fighting what appears a losing battle for his career and reputation.

In a statement carried nationally, he declared his innocence of any allegation of immoral conduct. I did nothing wrong, I am not gay, he said again and again.

Yet it requires a suspension of disbelief to accept the complete innocence of Sen. Craig. After all, he pleaded guilty, and for years similar rumors have swirled about him. The Idaho Statesman has produced a tape of a man who claims to have had a recent sexual encounter with Craig in a men's room at Union Station in Washington, D.C. [Men's room arrest reopens questions about Sen. Larry Craig, By Dan Poskey, August 28, 2007]

Craig denies all and calls the Statesman investigation of his private life, going all the way back to college days, a witch hunt. In his favor, after 300 interviews, the Statesman came up with nothing solid save the Union Station allegation and the airport incident.

As ever, such episodes reveal almost as much about the accusers as about the accused.

Reveling in Craig's disgrace, the liberal media not only cast the first stone, but most of them. They are mocking Craig as a family-values hypocrite who indulges privately in conduct he publicly condemns. But even assuming Craig has led a second and secret life, would that automatically make him a hypocrite, a fraud, an Elmer Gantry?

Is there no possibility a man can believe in traditional morality, yet find himself tempted to behavior that morally disgusts him? Is it impossible Craig is driven by impulses, the biblical "thorn in the flesh," of which Paul wrote, to behavior he almost cannot control?

Why else would a United States senator take the incredible risk of disgracing himself and humiliating his family, and ending his career, for a few minutes of anonymous sex in an airport men's room?

Is every alcoholic who falls off the wagon a hypocrite if he has tried to warn kids of the evil of alcohol? Many men have tried to live good lives and fallen again and again. They are called sinners.

Yet, if the charges are true, and it appears they are, Larry Craig has worse personal problems than his impending loss of office.

And how have his colleagues responded?

Republicans immediately denounced him, stripped him of all his seniority rights, and ordered an ethics committee investigation and a study of whether more immediate action should be taken.

Sens. John McCain and Norm Coleman called on him to resign. "(W)hen you plead guilty to a crime, you shouldn't serve," said McCain, adding, "That's not a moral stand."

Sorry, but the morality here is far more relevant than the admitted misdemeanor. If Craig had pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct for punching out an obnoxious heckler, he would not be friendless today.

The silence of most Democrats is understandable. If you belong to a party that declares homosexuality a moral lifestyle, that perhaps should be elevated to the level of matrimony, then what would Craig be guilty of, other than being horribly indiscreet?

Up to this week, Craig was one of only two senators to have come out for Mitt Romney. He headed up the Romney campaign in Idaho. He vouched for Mitt in Congress and the country.

And Mitt wasted no time throwing his Idaho chairman under the bus, adding he deserved it: "Once again, we've found people in Washington have not lived up to the level of respect and dignity that we would expect for somebody that gets elected to a position of high influence. Very disappointing. He's no longer associated with my campaign."

Larry Craig's conduct "reminds us," said Mitt, "of Mark Foley and Bill Clinton ... of the fact that people who are elected to public office continue to disappoint, and they somehow think that if they vote the right way on issues of significance or they can speak a good game, that we'll just forgive and forget."

"And frankly, it's disgusting."

That Mitt was decisive, that he was a "good butcher," as a prime minister must be, said Asquith, is undeniable. This speaks well of Mitt's executive intolerance of failures and failing. But one did not hear much here in the way of compassion for Larry Craig or his family.

Some senators, like Chris Dodd, cut Larry Craig some slack and asked that we hear him out before sentence is passed.

Count your friends when you're down, Nixon always advised.

Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com.

Thomas Aquinas: Reasons in Proof of the Existence of God

The Apotheosis of St. Thomas Aquinas, 1631
by Francisco Zurbarán

Medieval Sourcebook:

Thomas Aquinas: Reasons in Proof of the Existence of God, 1270

Summa Theologia

Article II. Whether the existence of God is demonstrable:

Let us proceed to the second point. It is objected (1) that the existence of God is not demonstratable: that God's existence is an article of faith, and that articles of faith are not demonstratable, because the office of demonstration is to prove, but faith pertains (only) to things that are not to be proven, as is evident from the Epistle to the Hebrews, 11. Hence that God's existence is not demonstratable. Again, (2) that the subject matter of demonstration is that something exists, but in the case of God we cannot know what exists, but only what does not, as Damascenus says (Of the Orthodox Faith, I., 4.) Hence that we cannot demonstrate God's existence. Again, (3) that if God's existence is to be proved it must be from what He causes, and that what He effects is not sufficient for His supposed nature, since He is infinite, but the effects finite, and the finite is not proportional to the infinite. Since, therefore, a cause cannot be proved through an effect not proportional to itself, it is said that God's exisence cannot be proved.

But against this argument the apostle says (Rom. I., 20), "The unseen things of God are visible through His manifest works." But this would not be so unless it were possible to demonstrate God's existence through His works. What ought to be understood concerning anything, is first of all, whether it exists. Conclusion. It is possible to demonstrate God's existence, atthough not a priori (by pure reason), yet a posteriori from some work of His more surely known to us.
In answer I must say that the proof is double. One is through the nature of a cause and is called propter quid: this is through the nature of preceding events sirnply. The other is through the nature of the effect, and is called quia, and is through the nature of preceding things as respects us. Since the effect is better known to us than the cause, we proceed from the effect to the knowledge of the cause. From any effect whatsoever it can be proved that a corresponding cause exists, if only the effects of it are sufficiently known to us, for since effects depend on causes, the effect being given, it is necessary that a preceding cause exists. Whence, that God exists, although this is not itself known to us, is provable through effects that are known to us.
To the first objection above, I reply, therefore, that God's existence, and those other things of this nature that can be known through natural reason concerning God, as is said in Rom. I., are not articles of faith, but preambles to these articles. So faith presupposes natural knowledge, so grace nature, and perfection a perfectible thing. Nothing prevents a thing that is in itself demonstratable and knowable, from being accepted as an article of faith by someone that does not accept the proof of it.

To the second objection, I reply that, since the cause is proven from the effect, one must use the effect in the place of a definition of the cause in demonstrating that the cause exists; and that this applies especially in the case of God, because for proving that anything exists, it is necessary to accept in this method what the name signifies, not however that anything exists, because the question what it is is secondary to the question whether it exists at all. The characteristics of God are drawn from His works as shall be shown hereafter, (Question XIII). Whence by proving that God exists through His works as shall be shown hereafter, (Question XIII). Whence by proving that God exists through His works, we are able by this very method to see what the name God signifies.

To the third objection, I reply that, although a perfect knowledge of the cause cannot be had from inadequate effects, yet that from any effect manifest to us it can be shown that a cause does exist, as has been said. And thus from the works of God His existence can be proved, although we cannot in this way know Him perfectly in accordance with His own essence.

Article III. Whether God exists.

Let us proceed to the third article. It is objected (1) that God does not exist, because if one of two contradictory things is infinite, the other will be totally destroyed; that it is implied in the name God that there is a certain infinite goodness: if then God existed, no evil would be found. But evil is found in the world; therefore it is objected that God does not exist. Again, that what can be accomplished through a less number of principles will not be accomplished through more. It is objected that all things that appear on the earth can be accounted for through other principles, without supposing that God exists, since what is natural can be traced to a natural principle, and what proceeds from a proposition can be traced to the human reason or will. Therefore that there is no necessity to suppose that God exists. But as against this note what is said of the person of God (Exod. III., 14) I am that I am. Conclusion. There must be found in the nature of things one first immovable Being, a primary cause, necessarily existing, not created; existing the most widely, good, even the best possible; the first ruler through the intellect, and the ultimate end of all things, which is God.

I answer that it can be proved in five ways that God exists.

The first and plainest is the method that proceeds from the point of view of motion. It is certain and in accord with experience, that things on earth undergo change. Now, everything that is moved is moved by something; nothing, indeed, is changed, except it is changed to something which it is in potentiality. Moreover, anything moves in accordance with something actually existing; change itself, is nothing else than to bring forth something from potentiality into actuality. Now, nothing can be brought from potentiality to actual existence except through something actually existing: thus heat in action, as fire, makes fire-wood, which is hot in potentiality, to be hot actually, and through this process, changes itself. The same thing cannot at the same time be actually and potentially the same thing, but only in regard to different things. What is actually hot cannot be at the same time potentially hot, but it is possible for it at the same time to be potentially cold. It is impossible, then, that anything should be both mover and the thing moved, in regard to the same thing and in the same way, or that it should move itself. Everything, therefore, is moved by something else. If, then, that by which it is moved, is also moved, this must be moved by something still different, and this, again, by something else. But this process cannot go on to infinity because there would not be any first mover, nor, because of this fact, anything else in motion, as the succeeding things would not move except because of what is moved by the first mover, just as a stick is not moved except through what is moved from the hand. Therefore it is necessary to go back to some first mover, which is itself moved by nothing---and this all men know as God.

The second proof is from the nature of the efficient cause. We find in our experience that there is a chain of causes: nor is it found possible for anything to be the efficient cause of itself, since it would have to exist before itself, which is impossible. Nor in the case of efficient causes can the chain go back indefinitely, because in all chains of efficient causes, the first is the cause of the middle, and these of the last, whether they be one or many. If the cause is removed, the effect is removed. Hence if there is not a first cause, there will not be a last, nor a middle. But if the chain were to go back infinitely, there would be no first cause, and thus no ultimate effect, nor middle causes, which is admittedly false. Hence we must presuppose some first efficient cause---which all call God.

The third proof is taken from the natures of the merely possible and necessary. We find that certain things either may or may not exist, since they are found to come into being and be destroyed, and in consequence potentially, either existent or non-existent. But it is impossible for all things that are of this character to exist eternally, because what may not exist, at length will not. If, then, all things were merely possible (mere accidents), eventually nothing among things would exist. If this is true, even now there would be nothing, because what does not exist, does not take its beginning except through something that does exist. If then nothing existed, it would be impossible for anything to begin, and there would now be nothing existing, which is admittedly false. Hence not all things are mere accidents, but there must be one necessarily existing being. Now every necessary thing either has a cause of its necessary existence, or has not. In the case of necessary things that have a cause for their necessary existence, the chain of causes cannot go back infinitely, just as not in the case of efficient causes, as proved. Hence there must be presupposed something necessarily existing through its own nature, not having a cause elsewhere but being itself the cause of the necessary existence of other things---which all call God.

The fourth proof arises from the degrees that are found in things. For there is found a greater and a less degree of goodness, truth, nobility, and the like. But more or less are terms spoken of various things as they approach in diverse ways toward something that is the greatest, just as in the case of hotter (more hot) which approaches nearer the greatest heat. There exists therefore something that is the truest, and best, and most noble, and in consequence, the greatest being. For what are the greatest truths are the greatest beings, as is said in the Metaphysics Bk. II. 2. What moreover is the greatest in its way, in another way is the cause of all things of its own kind (or genus); thus fire, which is the greatest heat, is the cause of all heat, as is said in the same book (cf. Plato and Aristotle). Therefore there exists something that is the cause of the existence of all things and of the goodness and of every perfection whatsoever---and this we call God.

The fifth proof arises from the ordering of things for we see that some things which lack reason, such as natural bodies, are operated in accordance with a plan. It appears from this that they are operated always or the more frequently in this same way the closer they follow what is the Highest; whence it is clear that they do not arrive at the result by chance but because of a purpose. The things, moreover, that do not have intelligence do not tend toward a result unless directed by some one knowing and intelligent; just as an arrow is sent by an archer. Therefore there is something intelligent by which all natural things are arranged in accordance with a plan---and this we call God.

In response to the first objection, then, I reply what Augustine says; that since God is entirely good, He would permit evil to exist in His works only if He were so good and omnipotent that He might bring forth good even from the evil. It therefore pertains to the infinite goodness of God that he permits evil to exist and from this brings forth good.

My reply to the second objection is that since nature is ordered in accordance with some defined purpose by the direction of some superior agent, those things that spring from nature must be dependent upon God, just as upon a first cause. Likewise, what springs from a proposition must be traceable to some higher cause which is not the human reason or will, because this is changeable and defective and everything changeable and liable to non-existence is dependent upon some unchangeable first principle that is necessarily self-existent as has been shown.

Source:

From: Oliver J. Thatcher, ed., The Library of Original Sources (Milwaukee: University Research Extension Co., 1907), Vol. V: The Early Medieval World, pp. 359-363.

This text is part of the Internet Medieval Source Book. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts related to medieval and Byzantine history.