Led Zeppelin Finds Its Old Power

Music Review

By BEN RATLIFF
The New York Times
Published: December 10, 2007



Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham -- son of the original drummer John Bonham -- played 16 songs, including classics like "Stairway to Heaven" and "Black Dog."
Photo: Ross Halfin/Getty Images

LONDON, Dec. 10 — Some rock bands accelerate their tempos when they play their old songs decades after the fact. Playing fast is a kind of armor: a refutation of the plain fact of aging, all that unregainable enthusiasm and lost muscle mass, and a hard block against an old band’s lessened cultural importance.

But Led Zeppelin slowed its down a little. At the O2 arena here on Monday night, in its first full concert since 1980 — without John Bonham, who died that year, but with Bonham’s son Jason as a natural substitute — the band found much of its old power in tempos that were more graceful than those on the old live recordings. The speed of the songs ran closer to those on the group’s old studio records, or slower yet. “Good Times Bad Times,” “Misty Mountain Hop,” and “Whole Lotta Love” were confident, easy cruises; “Dazed and Confused” was a glorious doom-crawl.

It all goes back to the blues, in which oozing gracefully is a virtue, and from which Led Zeppelin initially got half its ideas. Its singer, Robert Plant, doesn’t want you to forget that fact: he introduced “Trampled Underfoot” by explaining its connection to Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues,” and mentioned Blind Willie Johnson as the inspiration for “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.” (Beyond that, the band spent 10 luxuriant minutes each in two other blues songs from its back catalog — “Since I Been Loving You” and “In My Time of Dying”).

Ahmet Ertegun, the dedicatee of the concert, would have been satisfied, sure as he was of the centrality of southern black music to American culture. Ertegun, who died last year, signed Led Zeppelin to Atlantic Records; the show was a one-off benefit for the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund, which will offer music students scholarships to universities in the United States, England, and Turkey, his homeland.

By the end of Zeppelin’s two-hour-plus show, it was already hard to remember that anyone else had been on the bill. But the band was preceded by Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings—a good-timey rhythm-and-blues show with revolving singers including Paolo Nutini and Albert Lee, as well as a few songs each by Paul Rodgers (of Free and Bad Company) and Foreigner — all of whom had recorded for Atlantic under Ertegun.

There was a kind of loud serenity about Led Zeppelin’s set. It was well-rehearsed, for one thing: planning and rehearsals have been underway since May. The band wore mostly black clothes, instead of its old candy-colored wardrobe. Unlike Mick Jagger, Mr. Plant — the youngest of the original members, at 59 — doesn’t walk and gesture like an excited woman anymore. Some of the top of his voice has gone, but except for one attempted and failed high note in “Stairway to Heaven” (“there walks a la-dy we all know{hellip}”), he found other melodic routes to suit him. He was authoritative; he was dignified.

As for Mr. Page, his guitar solos weren’t as frenetic and articulated as they used to be, but that only drove home the point that they were always secondary to the riffs, which on Monday were enormous, nasty, glorious. (He did produce a violin bow for his solo on “Dazed and Confused,” during that song’s great, spooky middle section.)

John Paul Jones’s bass lines got a little lost in the hall’s acoustics — like all such places, the 22,000-seat O2 Arena is rough on low frequencies — but he was thoroughly in the pocket with Mr. Bonham; when he sat down to play keyboards on “Kashmir” and “No Quarter” and a few others, he simultaneously operated bass pedals with his feet, keeping to that same far-behind-the-beat groove.

And what of Jason Bonham, the big question mark of what has been — there’s no way to prove this scientifically, but let’s just round it off — the most anticipated rock reunion in an era full of them? He is an expert in his father’s beats, an encyclopedia of all their variations on all the existing recordings. And apart from a few small places where he added a few strokes, he stuck to the sound and feel of the original. The smacks of the snare drum didn’t have exactly the same timbre, that barbarous, reverberant sound. But as the show got into its second hour and a few of the sound problems were gradually corrected, you found yourself not worrying about it anymore. It was all working.

Led Zeppelin has semi-reunited a few times in the past, with not much success: short, problematic sets at Live Aid in 1985, and at Atlantic Records’ 40th Anniversary concert in 1988. But this was a reunion that the band had invested in, despite the fact that there are no plans yet for a future tour; among its 16 songs was one the band had never played live before: “For Your Life,” from the album “Presence.”

The excitement in the hall felt extreme, and genuine; the crowd roars between encores were ravenous. At the end of it all, as the three original members took a bow, Mr. Bonham knelt before them and genuflected.

Book Review: "The History of the Hobbit"

Reviewed by Stephen Hubbard
bookreporter.com



THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT
John D. Rateliff
Houghton Mifflin
Fantasy
ISBN: 9780618964406

Bilbo Baggins just wants to live his quiet, peaceful life in the Shire. And he's doing a mighty fine job of it until the great wizard, Bladorthin, shows up at his door with a gaggle of dwarves. Their leader, Gandalf, tells of the vicious dragon, Pryftan, who overtook their home. Bilbo joins up with them for a grand adventure. Ultimately he saves the day and along the way happens to discover a magical ring.

That is how the story originally took shape.

With THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT, author John D. Rateliff pieces together fragments of history in order to present THE HOBBIT as it was originally drafted by J.R.R. Tolkien. With access to the documents at Marquette University, the project was originally undertaken by Taum Santoski, who passed away following a battle with cancer at an all-too-young age. The torch was then passed to Rateliff with the full blessing of Christopher Tolkien.

Some of Tolkien's original papers have been lost to time. Seventy years is quite a period to have anything stashed away. The opening page, featuring the handwritten line "In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit," is one of those long-lost pages, but for the most part, a rather complete version of the initial draft of this book can be pieced together. In essence, THE HOBBIT is a phenomenal read for a number of reasons.



J. R. R. Tolkien, illustration for The Hobbit

On one level, it gives readers the first look at the origins of legend. This is how Tolkien originally viewed his mythical Middle-earth before it grew into THE LORD OF THE RINGS. These characters bore different names, endured different hardships and took on other roles. Gollum, in the original vision, held to his end of the riddle game and, after losing, shows Bilbo the way out of the mountain. The guardsman Bard, who slays Smaug in the final version, is barely introduced before he is killed.

And this opens up to aspect number two.

As Tolkien begins to make his second pass through the draft, notating and correcting as he goes (in pen over the top of original pencil writings), names begin to change, the story arc and scenes start morphing and readers get to see and understand why those alterations were made. This is a wonderful view for writers to see the mindset of a second draft but also a way for any ordinary reader to understand why things evolved and changed. And in some instances, it gives a greater weight to the final version.

Thirdly, THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT is, as the title says, a history. Not just a mere presenting of the manuscript in its rough form, Rateliff has documented the timeframe of the work, giving us the most precise record as to when it was first conceived and when it was completed. His insights into the reasoning behind changes are culled from Tolkien's own notes and letters, and much of what was once believed is corrected. This historical perspective illuminates the book rather than bury it.



J.R.R. Tolkien - Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-elves. Not used in the original impression of The Hobbit, 1937, which included no coloured illustrations, this painting appeared in the second English impression of the same year. It was the only one of the five submitted that was not used in the first American edition, 1938.

The story of THE HOBBIT evolved because the world around Tolkien evolved, not to mention that the author himself underwent changes over the years this work was in creation. Rateliff does an outstanding job of presenting the original draft and its subsequent transformation, including his own discoveries and commentaries along the way. At no point does this ever become a chore to read.

Equal parts fantasy fiction and biographical fact, THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT is a true gem of a set. For the first time, the timeline of the creation of this premiere novel is ironed out and separated from myth.

Finally, Tolkien's original vision is presented for the world to see, and the extent of the expansive growth of Middle-earth and its characters is opened up to inspection. Rateliff pulls together loose and seemingly disparate threads and weaves them into a profound tapestry and companion that THE HOBBIT, now in its 70th year, richly deserved.

Victory Through Fuel Choice

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The last days of this session of Congress will feature, among other legislative spectacles, an effort to thrash out a bill that purports, at long last, to address what is arguably our nation’s most serious single problem: energy insecurity.

Unfortunately, the product seems certain to be more of a grab-bag promoting favors for special interests and pet-rocks of senior lawmakers (many of which have nothing to do with reducing our consumption of petroleum imported from unfriendly places) than a program for quickly and cost-effectively ending the main source of that insecurity, namely our addiction to oil from dangerous places.

This is all the more astounding – and outrageous – since an option for doing just that is at hand. Call it “fuel choice.”

In a terrific new book called Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil, Robert Zubrin describes how a simple congressional directive requiring that every car sold in America be a “Flexible Fuel Vehicle” could rapidly transform our current, intolerable dependence on oil from unreliable sources. Since there are already six million of these FFVs on America’s highways at the moment, there is no technological impediment to making this happen. Since the Big 3 U.S. auto manufacturers have already pledged to make half their models FFVs by 2012, the question is simply, could we do that – and more – faster?

According to Dr. Zubrin, a renowned engineer and widely published author, the pacing item is official certification of the roughly 150 engines on offer to the car-buying public once they are equipped with sensors that allow them to burn ethanol (from a variety of vegetation, not just corn), methanol (from coal, natural gas, trash or biomass) and/or gasoline. It costs about $1 million to certify each engine. While $150 million sounds like a lot, Dr. Zubrin notes that we pay that much for imported oil in three hours.

If every car sold in America were a Flexible Fuel Vehicle, within three years, 50 million cars here would be able to run on alcohol instead of gasoline. Perhaps another 100-150 million such cars sold elsewhere would have that option. With that sort of potential demand, at current prices for gasoline (nearly $3 per gallon), ethanol (at comparable energy values as much as $2.25 per gallon) and methanol (at comparable energy density, $1.70 per gallon), the free market would provide these (and perhaps other) alternative fuels in large quantities.

Particularly important is the fact that such demand would far exceed the amount of ethanol that could be supplied by American corn farmers. They should, therefore, be willing to allow the importation of ethanol from other sources without the current tariff that amounts to a crippling $29 per barrel surcharge. With roughly 100 countries around the world enjoying climates that could allow them to grow sugar cane or other biomass they could use to power their own vehicles and help power ours, the world would cease to be dependent on oil-exporting nations, most of whom wish us ill.

Energy Victory describes the benefits that would accrue to the United States and other freedom-loving nations were oil to be transformed in this fashion into just another commodity:

* The cartel that has wrought incalculable harm on the world’s economy, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, could be destroyed. As long as some combination of tariffs, subsides or preferential taxes are put into place in the event OPEC responds by sharply dropping the price of oil, its stranglehold will be broken for good.

* OPEC’s de facto leaders, the Saudis, would be unable to continue their dangerous double-game inside America and elsewhere around the world. Dr. Zubrin documents the corrosive, corrupting and ultimately seditious effect of Saudi money and the Wahhabi Islamist ideology it underwrites. There can be no higher national priority than terminating such behavior and the Shariah theo-political-legal code it is trying to impose, both here and abroad.

* Societies, including our own, that grow things and that, therefore, tend to value human life will be empowered at the expense of regimes that simply exploit natural resources and are, by and large, tyrannical in nature. This can have huge implications for balances of trade, foreign aid and quality of life the world over.

* Dr. Zubrin argues that the effect of making the world more dependent on alcohol than oil for its transportation needs will be good for controlling both conventional pollution and reducing the production of greenhouse gases.

My guess is that President Bush could make fuel choice his most lasting, and laudable legacy if he were to mandate Flexible Fuel Vehicles via executive order, rather than wait for Congress to legislate it. He could inspire the country to action by urging Americans to buy a new FFV car as their tangible and practical contribution to our energy security, accelerating the transformation of our national fleet.

Failing that, I hope our countrymen will emulate the recent campaign by proponents of border security, who sent bricks to their elected representatives as a way of urging them to build the needed fence. Buy a copy of Energy Victory for your Congressman and urge them to act on its practical, near-term and highly cost-effective strategy for actually doing something about energy insecurity. Once legislators have gotten their copy – and the message, they can donate the rest to libraries in their districts, thereby allowing other Americans to learn how we can make oil just another commodity, for the benefit of this country and its friends around the world.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is the founder, president, and CEO of The Center for Security Policy. During the Reagan administration, Gaffney was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy, and a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Senator John Tower (R-Texas). He is a columnist for The Washington Times, Jewish World Review, and Townhall.com and has also contributed to The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, and Newsday.

The NIE Fantasy

The intelligence community failed to anticipate the Cuban Missile Crisis.

BY BRET STEPHENS
The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, December 11, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

"The USSR could derive considerable military advantage from the establishment of Soviet medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba, or from the establishment of a submarine base there. . . . Either development, however, would be incompatible with Soviet practice to date and with Soviet policy as we presently estimate it."

--Special National Intelligence Estimate 85-3-62, Sept. 19, 1962

Twenty-five days after this NIE was published, a U-2 spy plane photographed a Soviet ballistic missile site in Cuba, and the Cuban Missile Crisis began. It's possible the latest NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons program will not prove as misjudged or as damaging as the 1962 estimate. But don't bet on it.

At the heart of last week's NIE is the "high confidence" judgment that Tehran "halted its nuclear weapons program" in the fall of 2003, "primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran's previously undeclared nuclear work." Prior to that, however, the NIE states, also with "high confidence," that "Iranian military entities were working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons." Left to a footnote is the explanation that "by 'nuclear weapons program' we mean Iran's nuclear weapon design and weaponization work. . . . we do not mean Iran's declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment."



Let's unpack this.

In August 2002, an Iranian opposition group revealed that Iran had an undeclared uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and an undeclared heavy water facility at Arak--both previously unknown to the pros of the U.S. intelligence community. Since then, the administration has labored to persuade the international community that all these facilities have no conceivable purpose other than a military one. Those efforts paid off in three successive U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding Iran suspend enrichment because it was "concerned by the proliferation risks" it posed.

Along comes the NIE to instantly undo four years of diplomacy, using a semantic sleight-of-hand to suggest some kind of distinction can be drawn between Iran's bid to master the nuclear fuel cycle and its efforts to build nuclear weapons. How credible is this distinction?

**********

In "Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy" (1996), MIT's Owen Cote notes that "The recipe [for designing a weapon] is very simple. . . . Nor are the ingredients, other than plutonium or HEU [highly enriched uranium], hard to obtain. For a gun weapon, the gun barrel could be ordered from any machine shop, as could a tungsten tamper machined to any specifications the customer desired. The high-explosive charge for firing the bullet could also be fashioned by anyone with access to and some experience handling TNT, or other conventional, chemical explosives" (my emphasis).

In other words, Iran didn't abandon its nuclear weapons program. On the contrary, it went public with it. It's certainly plausible Tehran may have suspended one aspect of the program--the aspect that is the least technically challenging and that, if exposed, would offer smoking-gun proof of ill intent. Then again, why does the NIE have next to nothing to say about Iran's efforts to produce plutonium at the Arak facility, which is of the same weapons-producing type as Israel's Dimona and North Korea's Yongbyon reactors? And why the silence on Iran's ongoing and acknowledged testing of ballistic missiles of ever-longer range, the development of which only makes sense as a vehicle to deliver a weapon of mass destruction?

Equally disingenuous is the NIE's assessment that Iran's purported decision to halt its weapons program is an indication that "Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach"--an interesting statement, given that Iran's quest for "peaceful" nuclear energy makes no economic sense. But the NIE's real purpose becomes clear in the next sentence, when it states that Iran's behavior "suggests that some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige and goals for regional influence in other ways, might--if perceived by Iran's leaders as credible--prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program."

This is a policy prescription, not an intelligence assessment. Nonetheless, it is worth recalling that if Iran did have an active weaponization program prior to 2003, as the NIE claims, it means that former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami was lying when he said that "weapons of mass destruction have never been our objective." Mr. Khatami is just the kind of "moderate" that advocates of engagement with Iran see as a credible negotiating partner. If he's not to be trusted, is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Then again, when it comes to the issue of trust, it isn't just Mr. Ahmadinejad we need to worry about. It has been widely pointed out that the conclusions of this NIE flatly contradict those of a 2005 NIE on the same subject, calling the entire process into question. Less discussed is why the administration chose to release a shoddy document that does maximum political damage to it and to key U.S. allies, particularly France, the U.K. and Israel.

**********

The likely answer is that the administration calculated that any effort by them to suppress or tweak the NIE would surely leak, leading to accusations of "politicizing intelligence." But that only means that we now have an "intelligence community" that acts as an authority unto itself, and cannot be trusted to obey its political masters, much less keep a secret. The administration's tacit acquiescence in this state of affairs may prove even more damaging than its wishful thinking on Iran.
For years it has been a staple of fever swamp politics to believe the U.S. government is in the grip of shadowy powers using "intelligence" as a tool of control. With the publication of this NIE, that is no longer a fantasy.

Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.

Vick’s reality hits hard in courtroom

By Terence Moore
Monday, December 10, 2007, 03:32 PM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution



Richmond, Va. — Surely, as I sit here on Monday inside a packed federal courtroom, this is just a fleeting nightmare. Whatever the situation, it is a self-inflicted one. You can attribute this to someone who carelessly went from wearing No. 7 for the Falcons to the black-and-white prison stripes courtesy of becoming Case No. 07CR274 for U.S. prosecutors.

Is this really happening? When does the alarm clock sound?

If this isn’t fantasy, why did that someone continue to lie, even when those normally ruthless prosecutors gave him a second chance? Mostly, why didn’t that someone have the decency to save many of his Atlanta disciples from embarrassing themselves through blind loyalty by just telling the truth months ago?

There is Brenda Boddie, the grieving mother, weeping with her head dropped toward the floor. Now her sobbing and the whispers throughout the place have vanished in a flash. That’s because nobody can breathe. Not only did Michael Vick just enter from a back door with federal marshals, but he is dressed in an outfit normally associated with chain gangs from the 19th century. The only thing missing are leg irons.

Among those gasping is ESPN legal analyst Lester Munson, who says of the scene while recalling his 40 years of watching defendants come and go before benches, “Wow.” It’s a judge’s decision in these situations as to whether those before them wear a suit or dress as the criminal that they are. Even so, Munson says, “I’ve never seen anything like this, with somebody wearing that type of an outfit, and the imagery is striking.”

You have the white judge, Henry E. Hudson, a George W. Bush appointee, who doesn’t necessarily agree that the meek will inherit the earth. You have Vick, the African-American defendant, who has drawn the ire of animal rights folks everywhere for his role in fighting and torturing dogs when he wasn’t the Falcons star quarterback. You also have the sentencing for his role in the matter happening in a building that still proudly boasts through a plaque at its front door that it was the treasury building for the old Confederacy.

Not a good look. Still, if Vick doesn’t spend years financing something called Bad Newz Kennels, run by some of his thuggish pals on his Virginia property, he isn’t sitting over there looking worse than he did under a pile of defenders.

Now Vick’s lawyer, Billy Martin, is sounding un-Johnnie Cochran like, with a somewhat shaky voice and no bloody glove that doesn’t fit. He is telling the judge that Vick was “clinically depressed” when he violated his plea agreement by smoking marijuana afterward. You can tell that Hudson isn’t buying as much, because he is alternating between a little smile and a cold stare. Neither is the judge amused by Martin’s explanation on why Vick told the feds that he didn’t participate in the drowning or hanging of dogs, then was fingered by those thuggish pals for doing just that, and then later announced with tears after five hours of interrogation, “I did it. I did it all.”

Across the way, the grieving mother still has her head bowed, while Marcus Vick, Michael’s younger brother, sits to her left and softly rubs her back. They listen to one of the prosecutors tell the judge of the older Vick, “Unfortunately, he was not forthright in his role in killing these dogs.” Then they hear the judge say, “There were other matters where (Vick) was less than truthful or inconsistent.”

Twenty-three months in prison, says the judge, along with other things, but nothing trumped those 23 months.

Just like that, everybody is losing their breath again, because Vick rises after accepting the judge’s invitation to address the bench. After Vick apologizes to the court and to his family, he says what he also said through the years after all of those other Vick things (water bottle, flipping off the hometown fans, stolen watch, Ron Mexico). He says he “used poor judgment” and that he “made some bad decisions.” He says he “accepts responsibility for his actions,” and that he is “willing to deal with the consequences.”

Later, as spectators file from the room in silence, a sullen Vick stays behind at the defendant’s table. He rests his head against his left hand. That’s when it really hits Vick, along with everybody else.

This is reality.

Dinesh D'Souza: Why Atheists Are So Angry

http://www.townhall.com
Sunday, December 9, 2007

If you haven't seen my “God v. Atheism” debate with philosopher Daniel Dennett, you can view it at Tothesource.org. You should read the comments in response to the debate both on my AOL blog as well as on the atheist site richarddawkins.net. From the atheists you hear statements like this: "D'Souza is a goddamned idiot." "Odious little toad." "D'Souza is full of s**t." "A smug, joyless twit." "Total moron." "Little turd." "Two-faced liar." Etc, etc. Now admittedly the topic of God v. atheism can be an emotional one, but you will find no comparable invective on the Christian side. Why then are so many atheists so angry?



Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., speaks during a Capitol Hill news conference in this March 4, 2003, file photo. Secular groups applauded Rep. Pete Stark for publicly acknowledging he does not believe in a supreme being. The declaration, they said, makes the California Democrat the highest-ranking elected official _ and first congressman _ to publicly claim to be an atheist. The American Humanist Association took out an ad in the Washington Post on Tuesday, March 13, 2007, congratulating Stark's stance. (AP Photo/Terry Ashe, file)

One reason I think is that they are God-haters. Atheists often like to portray themselves as "unbelievers" but this is not strictly accurate. If they were mere unbelievers they would simply live their lives as if God did not exist. I don't believe in unicorns, but then I haven't written any books called The End of Unicorns, Unicorns are Not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion. Clearly the atheists go beyond disbelief; they are on the warpath against God. And you can hear their bitterness not only in their book titles but also in their mean-spirited invective.

Here is a second reason the atheists sound so angry. They are not used to having their sophistries exposed. For the past three years the new atheists have had a virtually free ride. Dawkins and Hitchens make outrageous claims ("religion poisons everything") and media pundits like Lou Dobbs and Tim Russert fawn all over them. But in the past few months I've been meeting the leading atheist spokesmen in open debate, and challenging them on the basis of the same reason and science and evidence that they say vindicates their claims.

After my first debate with Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, several atheists on Dawkins' site said, "Well, D'Souza won that debate, but wait till he meets Hitchens. Hitchens will wipe the floor with him. D'Souza RIP." Then after I debated Hitchens the atheists said, "Oh no, this one didn't go as planned. Hitchens didn't do so well." Another commented that atheists could not afford to lose two in a row. Even so, one atheist hopefully noted that Hitchens was not the right guy to debate me; rather, Daniel Dennett has the scholarly weight to do the job.

Now after my Dennett debate, what's the verdict? Well, the audience was full of Dennett supporters who began with enthusiastic applause for him but, as the debate went on, fell largely silent. Several came up to me afterward and told me that I had won. Dennett himself seemed dispirited after the event. Even so, when I posted the debate on my blog, the atheists went into damage control mode. The debate was instantly posted on atheist sites, and atheists rushed to my AOL blog to vote Dennett the winner. This effort gave atheists an early lead, but when the votes were tallied I was the victor. Interestingly my margin of victory was even bigger than that for the resolution, suggesting that several people voted that "God Is a Man-Made Invention" and still thought I won the debate.

A good way to assess a debate is to see what the partisans on each side say. Among Christians the verdict is unanimous. Here’s a sample comment from a Townhall reader: "My heart went out to Professor Dennett because he was so totally over-matched in this debate You totally demolished him as you have the other atheists you have debated." But all you have to do is to go to atheist sites to see that many atheists also think that I won, although this is sometimes very grudgingly admitted.

Here is a sampling of comments that I've taken from richarddawkins.net. "I was at the debate and thought Dennett did not prove his point." "I'm so tired of these D'Souza debates. The more people we send his way the larger his smile grows." "I feel such debates should stop." "I love Dennett's ideas about atheism but I do think he handled this debate poorly against Dinesh." "Ok, Dennett sucked...Dennett's type of responses just made him look like an ass." "Dinesh is an amazingly talented orator, considering how hopeless a case he is arguing." "Hitchens has had a shot, as has Dennett, and neither has succeeded in demolishing D'Souza. D'Souza has a very effective debating technique. Not only did a lot of atheists get up and fire straw-man arguments at D'Souza that he was easily able to counter and make them look foolish, but Dennett...lost his composure and his train of thought." "Let's face it, this guy has taken our best shots and still come out looking good. Maddening."

So where does this leave the atheists? These guys now seem to be 0-3. Some of the blog posters on Dawkins' site are calling on Sam Harris and Dawkins himself to step into the ring. Harris seems willing, although he has approached me about doing a written rather than an oral debate. Dawkins continues to avoid my invitation to debate on a secular West Coast campus, leading one atheist to dub him Richard the Chickenhearted. I really hope that Dawkins proves he has the courage of his convictions. (How brave is it to beat up on former televangelist Ted Haggard?)

Otherwise the self-styled "brights" are going to face the empirical fact that when it comes to defending their views, atheists are basically losers. Remarkably, the "party of reason" is simply incompetent to vindicate those claims against an advocate of the "party of faith." Now what could be more embarrassing than that?


Bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza's new book What's So Great About Christianity has just been released. D’Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Philip Pullman's neo-Gnostic faith

By Carl E. Olson

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/

Thursday, December 06, 2007

The Globe and Mail reports on differing interpretations of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials:

"You have two characters who set out to kill God - it seems obvious," said Pete Vere, a canon lawyer and co-author of a forthcoming book entitled Pied Piper of Atheism: Philip Pullman and Children's Fantasy.

Mr. Vere's book, which is critical of Mr. Pullman's work and his atheistic views, is being promoted on a website called http://www.atheismforchildren.com. "People say, 'You're trying to censor.' No, I'm not trying to censor, I'm trying to point out to parents what's in here."

[Print Edition - Section Front]

However, other Catholics interpret The Golden Compass and two other books that comprise a trilogy as a denunciation of organized religion dominated by a distant, imposter God, which they say does not condemn modern religion.

"That's his image of religion that he's doing away with and frankly, we can all do away with that image of church and religion because that's not the church in Christianity that we believe in today," said Sister Rose Pacatte, director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies in Culver City, Calif. "That God that he kills off, he's doing us a favour."

This is confusing. Or, better, confused. However well-intentioned Sister Pacatte may be, she doesn't seem to understand or appreciate Pullman's reliance on a Gnostic understanding of the "false God" and the "true God." As Sandra Miesel succinctly puts it in Pied Piper of Atheism:

Gnosticism was a bubbling brew of Christian, Jewish, and pagan ideas that flourished in the early centuries ago. From their confused teachings comes Pullman's rejection of the Biblical God. He specifically identifies his Authority as Yahweh, God's Old Testament name, in The Subtle Knife. Knowledge saves by exposing this God as a finite, created usurper. In some interviews (e.g. Sydney Morning Herald on December 13, 2003), Pullman gives an unconvincing nod to the remote possibility of some ultimate Divine Principle somewhere but has seen no evidence of it himself. In others (BBC "Breakfast with Frost" for January 27, 2002), he's indicated that if a real God somehow exists, he thinks such a Being "deserves to be put down and rebelled against."

In the His Dark Materials trilogy, Pullman clearly identifies the false/imposter God as the Judeo-Christian God, calling him, for example, Yahweh. However he might deviate from ancient Gnosticism, Pullman certainly draws heavily (if not consistently) upon a central mythological tenet of divergent Gnostic systems when his novels depict the God of the Old Testament (and the New Testament) as a false Demiurge-god who falsely claims to be the only true God. Describing this mythology, Yuri Stoyanov, in The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy (Yale, 2000), wrote:

"However divergent, the different Gnostic cosmologies were invariably underlain by a marked anti-cosmic dualism and repeatedly identified the Gnostic Demiurge of the material universe with God the Creator of the Old Testament. In the teachings of Marcion (d.c AD 166), which were largely based on Paul's opposition between Law and Faith in the Epistle to the Galatians, the God of the Old Testament was a just but inferior Demiurge-god, who was neither good nor omniscient, who promulgated the law of vengeance and whose strict judgment is antithetic to the essence of Christ's gospel of love and mercy." (p. 90)

And, a few paragraphs later:

"In the Nag Hammadi treatise On the Origin of the World (100:3-25), the lion-like Demiurge, called Yaldabaoth (probably 'Son of Chaos') and identified with the biblical God-Creator, came into being after a descending series of emanations from the spiritual world that had already caused the emergence of matter. Yaldabaoth established the heavens and their powers and proclaimed after Deuteronomy 32:39: 'I am He and there is no god beside me', but with this 'monotheistic' proclamation he sinned against the 'immortal (imperishable) ones' (103:10-15). .. Among his manifold feats in The Apocryphon of John 24, Yaldabaoth was charged with the seduction of Eve, who begot from him two sons, Elohim and Yahweh..." (p. 91).

Pullman's reliance upon William Blake, for whom he has expressed much admiration, is especially important in this regard since Blake's embrace of this Gnostic cosmology is widely acknowledged, although he is sometimes called a "crypto-Gnostic" (see, for example, "The Modern Relevance of Gnosticism," by Richard Smith, the afterword to The Nag Hammadi Library, edited by James M. Robinson [HarperSanFrancisco, 1978, 1988], pp 532-549). This description of Blake's views, from a Wikipedia entry, captures well the similar ideas held by Pullman:

One of Blake's strongest objections to orthodox Christianity is that he felt it encouraged the suppression of natural desires and discouraged earthly joy. In A Vision of the Last Judgement, Blake says that Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed & govern'd their Passions or have No Passions, but because they have Cultivated their Understandings. The Treasures of Heaven are not Negations of Passion, but Realities of Intellect, from which all the Passions Emanate Uncurbed in their Eternal Glory. Blake believed that the joy of man glorified God and that the religion of this world is actually the worship of Satan. He thought of Satan as Error and the 'State of Death’. Blake believes that orthodox Christians, partly because of their denial of earthly joy, are actually worshipping Satan."

All of this to say, simply, that Pullman—true to his claim, "My books are about killing God"—believes that the God worshiped by orthodox Jews and Christians is false, evil, and deserving of death. His sometimes clear, sometimes hazy comments about being "atheist" or "agnostic" make better sense in the light of his acceptance of certain elements of the Gnostic cosmology, especially as understood through his reading of Blake. In other words, since the true God (in this system of belief), who is beyond all things, is completely Unknown and unknowable, he can say that he is an "atheist," especially since he stands in opposition—a-theistically—to the (in his mind) false God of the Judeo-Christian heritage.

Which brings us to the all-important question: how can someone such as Sister Pacatte state, "That God that he kills off, he's doing us a favour"? My hope is that she is simply ignorant of Pullman's views and the mythology he both embraces and creates (or recreates). Or perhaps she, like "Catholic" theologian Donna Freitas, thinks these neo-Gnostic ideas are actually good for modern-day people, and somehow free them from the confines of a narrow-minded, structured, authoritarian religion and Church. I, of course, cannot answer that question. Yet Freitas, for her part, openly states, "Pullman's work is not anti-Christian, but anti-orthodox." She is partially correct: Pullman's work is definitely anti-orthodox. And, because that is so, it is also anti-Christian since true Christianity is orthodox. Thus, one can only hold to her remark if he believes that Gnosticism is true Christianity. And, if that is the case, it follows logically, again, that Pullman is advocating and presenting a form of belief that is in opposition to Catholic teaching.

Finally, to get back to the article in question. It ends with this:

Gisèle Baxter, a lecturer at the University of British Columbia who has taught the books in a children's literature course, said characterizing their position on religion is difficult and "almost a problem of vocabulary" because "saying that the books are anti-religious ... is not quite accurate." Instead, she said, the trilogy centres on an anti-authoritarian parallel universe where the characters are antagonistic to autocratic religious institutions.

Again, when the institution is give the name "Magisterium" and is described as being essentially Catholic, even though in a "parallel universe," how dense must one be to miss the obvious? Especially when Pullman, in an 2001 interview with BBC radio, has described the Catholic Church as the "villain" of his books? Especially when Pullman has made these sort of remarks in interviews:

In The Amber Spyglass, Mary Malone tells Lyra and Will that the Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake. Is that your opinion?

[Pullman:] I think I’d agree with her, yes.

What do you find powerful and convincing about it?

[Pullman:] It’s a very good story. It gives an account of the world and what we’re doing here that is intellectually coherent and explains a great deal. But then so do other stories. The Gnostic myth, for example, explains a great deal in a very different way. Very different. The Christian story gives us human beings a very important and prominent part. We are the ones who Jesus came to redeem from the consequences of sin, which our parents – you know. It is a very dramatic story and we are right at the heart of it, and a great deal depends on what we decide. This is an exciting position to be in, but unfortunately it doesn’t gel at all with the more convincing account that is given by Darwinian evolution – and the scientific account is far more persuasive intellectually. Far more persuasive. And, as I have said, there is another consequence of any belief in a single god, and that is that it is a very good excuse for people to behave very badly.

Although Philip Pullman has danced and weaved his way through interviews in recent months, his beliefs are fairly clear and obvious, even if they don't always make much sense. What is not as clear is why some Catholics are not only defending Pullman but criticizing those who are pointing out the theological errors and spiritual dangers of his beliefs. Have we now come to the point when the most sacred tenet for some is a form of "tolerance" that recoils most violently at the grave "sin" of criticizing falsehood?

• Read excerpts from Pied Piper of Atheism: Philip Pullman and Children's Fantasy

Related posts:

• Bishop Listecki warns against "The Golden Compass"

• And now this important message from Amy...

• New Line Cinema uses USCCB review to promote "The Golden Compass"

• If I hear one more mindless cliché...

• "[H]ere is the man who killed off God."

• "Question authority. Just not our authority."

• A report on the "very dull and insensible" movie, "The Golden Compass"

• The Pompous Polemics of Pullman's Pretentious Pals

• "You don't need to be a Jesuit scholar..."

• The USCCB's "unfortunate" review of "The Golden Compass"

• Those nitpicking nitwits and their nettlesome facts

• Why is Donna Freitas an unabashedly "Catholic" fan of Philip Pullman?

• Terry Mattingly on the "Pied Piper of Atheism"

• Philip Pullman, Pied Piper of Atheism

• Philip Pullman's hubristic musings

• Philip Pullman's childish atheism

Posted by Carl Olson on Thursday, December 06, 2007 at 02:49 PM Permalink

Cynthia McKinney '08

By Eric Dondero

http://www.frontpagemag.com/

Monday, December 10, 2007

“The time for confrontation has come for me,” Cynthia McKinney told about 60 supporters on December 4. Launching her quest for the Green Party Presidential nomination, McKinney compared her “revolution” to Haiti, Venezuela, and war-torn Cote d’Ivoire.

“Cynthia,” as she prefers to be called, spoke to a crowd of about 60 gathered at the Paige Library Building on the Campus of Texas Southern University, a primarily African-American college in Houston.

Arriving 10 minutes after the 7 p.m. scheduled start time, McKinney sashayed through the crowd smartly dressed in a colorful pants suit and scarf. Personally greeting each attendee, she handed out pastel flyers emblazoned with the words, “Leading a Peace Slate to Reclaim our Nation.” She looked each potential supporter in the eye, with a big smile, and said, “I really need your support.”

McKinney has taken this message on the road through several states, explaining Green Party members had always supported her candidacy, and she had always shared the party’s philosophy. “They [the Green Party] first asked me in 2000 and again in 2004 to become a part of their national drive,” McKinney told an audience in Illinois recently. “With the Democratic Party having left so many of its base supporters behind, the appeal of the Green Party was one that I could hear.”

She brought a similar message to Houston on December 4th. After two brief (and dynamic) left-wing artists – a poet and a gospel singer – Cynthia took the stage. Her speech was short: 20 minutes tops, and rhythmic – no stuttering; she didn't miss a beat.

Announcing her campaign to reach all “51 States including the District of Columbia” explained: “I've belatedly become a member of the Green Party…No other platform speaks to the African American community as acutely as the Green Party platform.”

Asked about Barack Obama, McKinney echoed a theme from a controversial 2002 Black Congressional Caucus speech. She said, “Look at the Colin Powells, the Condeleeza Rices, the Ward Connerlys...We have to be careful with the black people who are put before us by the media.” She went on to speak of “COINTELPRO,” which she described as a 1960s-era covert plan launched by the CIA to replace Dr. Martin Luther King with a more moderate voice.

Apparently, in McKinney’s mind 40 years later, Barack Obama is the CIA’s replacement.
There was virtually no media at McKinney 's speech, save the local Pacifica station, KPFT.

The former six-term Democrat Congresswoman was ousted in 2006 from Georgia’s 4th Congressional district for the second time. In 2002, she spoke to the Black Congressional caucus claiming that President Bush had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. She also openly solicited $10 million from the Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal; New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani rejected the check after the prince suggested U.S. foreign policy had brought on 9/11.

McKinney’s actions resulted in her first electoral defeat in the 2002 Democratic primary, after serving five terms in office. On the night of her 2002 primary defeat, McKinney’s father told media, “Jews have bought everybody...J-E-W-S.” She came back in 2004, and promptly signed a “call for immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur.”

Writing for U.S. News and World Report in 2002, Michael Barone pointed out:

Some three-quarters of McKinney's contributions came from people with Muslim or Arab names, most from outside Georgia. She received contributions from people under federal investigation for links to terrorists and from people who have voiced support for Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Middle East. In response to criticism, McKinney said she would not “racially profile” her contributors.

In the 2008 election season, anti-Semitism marks both left-winger McKinney and right-winger Ron Paul. In the fever swamps of the political extremes, few seem to be bothered by it, just as few on the Left seem to note that Haiti is not a great model of success to be emulated.
Reached at his office in San Francisco, ballot access expert Richard Winger explains:

The Greens are on in 21 states right now. If Cynthia McKinney is the nominee, and if she qualifies for primary season matching funds, and if the FEC pays primary season matching funds quickly, it is possible she could get on in all 51.

Ironically, the one state where she might have the greatest difficulty Winger said, was her home State of Georgia. Other states where she might miss the ballot include Indiana, North Carolina, and Oklahoma, all states with notoriously difficult barriers for third party ballot access.
Winger went on to note that McKinney's ultimate success may depend more on the FEC:

The FEC says the money for the two major party conventions comes first, and so does the money for the two major party general election funds. So the extent to which Cynthia gets matching funds early in 2008 depends on the taxpayers checking the box “yes” and sending in their 1040s early.

McKinney seems to be modeling her effort much along the lines of another African-American female presidential candidate from the 1990s Lenora Fulani. Fulani and her cult-like “New Alliance Party” never got more than a half-a-million votes. But they did qualify for millions in federal campaign matching funds. Given McKinney's high profile and celebrity among the conspiracy-minded Left, her impact on the general election could be greater.

Ralph Nader received roughly three million votes in 2004 running on the Green Party line. McKinney’s Presidential effort could pull more African-American votes than Nader did, particularly if Obama falters. A 3-to-5 million vote margin for the Green nominee is possible. That sort of vote margin coming out of the Democrat column could prove devastating to Hillary Clinton. Just as McKinney’s ideas would prove devastating to the United States.

Eric Dondero is a political consultant and national petition gathering expert from Houston, Texas. He has worked on over 50 petition drives nationwide in 15 different states, supporting small government initiatives. His website is: http://www.mainstreamlibertarian.com/.

In Defense of Free Speech--And Mark Steyn

By David Warren
Ottawa Citizen
December 09, 2007



Mark Steyn

The right to free expression of opinion and belief -- though constrained in its extremes during wartime -- is not something that can be negotiated in a free country. For it is the most fundamental right -- the queen bee in the hive, as it were. Every other freedom depends on this freedom. Take it away, and we no longer have a free country.

A misunderstanding about this is at the root of much conflict between East and West. When cartoonists were invited by a Danish provincial newspaper to present their graphic notions of the Prophet Mohammad, there were riots right across the Muslim world. Danish, or what were believed to be Danish, targets were struck. (The right to riot, with the attendant rights to assault, vandalism, pillage, arson and so forth, are not among our fundamental rights.) Boycotts were placed on Danish products, and diplomats from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Muslim countries pressured both the Danish government and the European Union of which it is a member, to punish the cartoonists. They demanded new legislation across Europe that would criminalize any future blasphemy against Islam.

The Danes, and the few allies who would stand with them in the heat, found themselves hopelessly explaining that in Denmark the government does not tell journalists what to write, or cartoonists what to draw. It is not in the power of a government to do that -- the courts are there to prevent a government from trying -- and the system can't be changed without overthrowing everything. You might not like what is expressed -- and you have the freedom to express your revulsion, even ignorantly -- but you have, and ought to have, no power to silence the people with whom you disagree.

This is an idea quite incomprehensible in Saudi Arabia, and nearly incomprehensible in Egypt. Their representatives were sincerely outraged by the failure of the Danish government to “take decisive action.” In their own countries, decisive action would have been taken.

We, in the West, do not legislate for the Dar al-Islam (the Muslim realm). On the contrary, we endure the fallout from countries in which, because the right to free speech is not secure, opposition to authority must be expressed through violence.

I make this hard point because it is necessary to understand. “Freedom of expression” did not develop in the West from purely idealistic motives. Nor is it necessarily a pretty thing. Like so much in civil society, we put up with it because the alternative is worse, and we'd rather cope with free speech, than with the free intimidation that results from its suppression.



And I make this point in light of the case that has been brought against Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine, before Human Rights Commissions for Canada, British Columbia, and Ontario, by the Canadian Islamic Congress, led by Mohamed Elmasry. The first two commissions have already agreed to hear the case, and thus rule on whether Mark Steyn had the right to express the opinions and beliefs in his bestselling book, America Alone, and specifically in the excerpt entitled, “The Future Belongs to Islam,” which ran in Maclean's last year. According to the complaint, by expressing his opinions and beliefs, Mark Steyn “subjects Canadian Muslims to hatred and Islamophobia.”

That not all Muslims agree, has been made clear by members of the Muslim Canadian Congress, who have entered the fray in defence of Steyn and Maclean's. But that is a tactical side issue.

For more than twenty years, in this column and elsewhere, I have been writing against the human rights commissions, which have quasi-legal powers that should be offensive to the citizens of any free country. They are kangaroo courts, in which the defendant's right to due process is withdrawn. They reach judgements on the basis of no fixed law. Moreover, “the process is the punishment” in these star chambers -- for simply by agreeing to hear a case, they tie up the defendant in bureaucracy and paperwork, and bleed him for the cost of lawyers, while the person who brings the complaint, however frivolous, stands to lose nothing.

My hope is that this case against Mark Steyn and Maclean's will be fruitful. It will be, if it inspires enough people -- especially journalists, of all political persuasions -- to express outrage at what has been done; and inspires Canada's free citizens into the necessary political action to put an end to the human rights commissions themselves. The worst possible result, is if the case fails to produce this response.

otiosus@sympatico.ca
© Ottawa Citizen

George Will: Getting Past 'No Child'

December 09, 2007
Washington Post

Visiting Hamilton High School in Hamilton, Ohio, Jan. 8, 2002, President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act. On hand for the signing are Democratic Rep. George Miller of California (far left), Democratic U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts (center, left), Secretary of Education Rod Paige (center, behind President Bush), Republican Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, and Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire (not pictured). White House photo by Paul Morse.

No Child Left Behind, supposedly an antidote to the "soft bigotry of low expectations," has instead spawned lowered standards. The law will eventually be reauthorized because doubling down on losing bets is what Washington does. But because NCLB contains incentives for perverse behavior, reauthorization should include legislation empowering states to ignore it.

NCLB was passed in 2001 as an extension of the original mistake, President Lyndon Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which became law in the year of liberals living exuberantly -- 1965, when Great Society excesses sowed the seeds of conservatism's subsequent ascendancy. ESEA was the first large Washington intrusion into education K through 12.

NCLB was supported by Republicans reluctant to vastly expand that intrusion but even more reluctant to oppose a new president's signature issue. This expansion of Washington's role in the quintessential state and local responsibility was problematic for three reasons.

First, most new ideas are dubious, so the federalization of policy increases the probability of continentwide mistakes. Second, education is susceptible to pedagogic fads and social engineering fantasies -- schools of education incubate them -- so it is prone to producing continental regrets. Third, America always is more likely to have a few wise state governments than a wise federal government.

With mandated data collections -- particularly tests of "adequate yearly progress" in reading and math -- NCLB was supposed to generate information that would enable schools to be held accountable for cognitive outputs commensurate with federal financial inputs. Bad data would make schools blush and reform.

Fourteen months ago, the president said, "The gap is closing. . . . How do we know? Because we're measuring." But about those measurements . . .

NCLB requires states to identify, by criteria they devise, "persistently dangerous schools." But what state wants that embarrassment? The Post recently reported that last year, of America's approximately 94,000 public schools, the "persistently dangerous" numbered 46. There were none among the 9,000 schools in amazingly tranquil California.

NCLB's crucial provisions concern testing to measure yearly progress toward the goal of "universal proficiency" in math and reading by 2014. This goal is America's version of Soviet grain quotas, solemnly avowed but not seriously constraining. Most states retain the low standards they had before; some have defined proficiency down.

So says "The Proficiency Illusion," a report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which studies education reform. Its findings include:

The rationale for standards-based reform was that expectations would become more rigorous and uniform, but states' proficiency tests vary "wildly" in difficulty, "with 'passing scores' ranging from the 6th percentile to the 77th." Indeed, "half of the reported improvement in reading, and 70 percent of the reported improvement in mathematics, appear idiosyncratic to the state test." In some states, tests have become more demanding; but in twice as many states, the tests in at least two grades have become easier. NCLB encourages schools to concentrate their efforts on the relatively small number of students near the state test's proficiency minimum -- the students who can most help the state meet its "adequate yearly progress" requirements.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Republican who represents western Michigan's culturally cohesive Dutch Calvinist communities, opposed NCLB from the start because he thought it would "tear apart the bond between the schools and the local communities." He believes the reauthorized version of NCLB will "gut" accountability. He is gloomily sanguine about that because he thinks accountability belongs at the local level anyway and because removing meaningful accountability removes NCLB's raison d'etre. He proposes giving states the option of submitting to Washington a "Declaration of Intent" to reclaim full responsibility for K-12 education. Such states would receive their portion of K-12 funds as block grants.

But Rep. Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican, warns that Washington, with its unsleeping hunger for control, steadily attaches multiple strings to block grants. He proposes to allow states to opt out from under NCLB's mandates and regulations and to give residents of those states tax credits equal to the portion of their taxes their state would have received back in federal funds for K-12 education. Garrett thinks that this could be a template for states to escape many entanglements with Washington.

NCLB intensified what Paul Posner of George Mason University calls "coercive federalism." Kenneth Wong and Gail Sunderman of Brown University and the Harvard Civil Rights Project, respectively, say NCLB "signaled the end of 'layer cake' federalism and strengthened the notion of 'marble cake' federalism, where the national and subnational governments share responsibilities in the domestic arena." Hoekstra's and Garrett's proposals would enable states to push Washington toward where it once was and where it belongs regarding K through 12 education: Out.

georgewill@washpost.com

Mark Steyn: Let's have a free market for housing and religion

Saturday, December 8, 2007
Orange County Register

Last week the Bush administration decided to "freeze" for five years the interest rates of certain types of mortgages. You've probably caught the tail end of news stories about "subprime" home loans, lots of foreclosures, etc. Never a happy moment when the bank takes the farm.

So now the government has stepped in and said that, if you fall into a particular category of adjustable-rate mortgage (ARMs, in the biz) and you're worried that it's getting way too adjustable, don't worry: The Nanny State is about to readjust it well inside your comfort zone. By fiat of the Treasury secretary, your adjustable-rate mortgage is henceforth an unadjustable adjustable-rate mortgage. These new UNARMs will spread their healing balm across the land until it's safe enough for the housing "market" to once again be exposed to market forces.

The government has, in effect, nullified the terms of legal contracts mutually agreed by both parties – borrower and lender, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Schmoe and the First National Bank of Pleasantville.

This is a pretty remarkable act by a "conservative" administration. The government's general absolution for imprudence by both borrower and lender doesn't seem a smart move – for the U.S. credit markets, for real estate, for responsible borrowers for future homeowners, or for state and municipal taxpayers whose governments are being encouraged by Washington to bail out home "owners" by issuing tax-free debt.

Democrats bemoan the lack of "affordable housing" while simultaneously demanding government rescue home "owners" with unsustainable mortgages. But saving the latter obstructs the former: the principal benefit of a property-bubble correction is, after all, much more "affordable housing."

One of the great strengths of the United States is that property is not, by comparison with other developed nations, an overspeculative enterprise. Most of us buy a house, and it increases respectably in value but not spectacularly. In Britain, by contrast, you buy a basement flat in a rundown slum for a quarter-million pounds, put a cat flap in the back door and sell it as "extensively remodeled" for a half-million pounds.

I write often about the demographic decline in Europe – the lack of children — but quite a bit of that has to do with the space constraints. If you're living in a small apartment, as many Germans do, do you really want three kids clogging up the joint?

America is one of the cheapest places in the developed world to buy a four-bedroom house on a one-acre lot. A few years back, I noted that a three-bedroom, air-conditioned home in Crawford, Texas, cost $30,000, but, if that sounds a bit steep, you could get a couple of acres and a double-wide for about a fifth of the cost. And a rather sour leftie said, well, what do you expect? Bush moves in, and there goes the neighborhood. Well, if that's the case, you'd think he'd be applying the Crawford Effect and depressing the property market nationwide instead of artificially obstructing its operation.

One shouldn't overstate the administration's actions: in Zimbabwe, the government seizes your property; in the United States, the government seizes your property contract and then hands it back to you all fluffy and painless. But still it's a very curious move.

Yet out on the campaign trail no candidate initially seemed very bothered by it. Musing on various ninnyish programs being mooted by candidates of both parties, Fred Thompson said the other day, "I don't think that it's the primary responsibility of the federal government to tell you what to eat." It's apparently not the primary responsibility of the government to tell you to suck it up (which is what columnist Michelle Malkin proposed as an alternative outreach plan to troubled mortgage holders). "The fact of the matter is we got an awful lot of knowledge," Sen. Thompson continued. "Sometimes we don't have a whole lot of will power, and I don't know of any government program that's going to instill that."

There don't seem to be a lot of takers for small government out on the hustings this season. We were told by plenty of experts that this would be the year in which the Christian right would be rendered politically irrelevant: Nominating Rudy Giuliani (a pro-choice candidate positively Chiracesque in his sexual habits and the taxpayer funding thereof) would leave the religious right out on the fringe. Instead, the evangelicals found a candidate, destabilized the race, and we've spent the past couple of weeks talking about nothing but religion. Mike Huckabee's declaration in his Iowa advertising that he is a "Christian leader" seems a barely coded dig at Mitt Romney's Mormonism, and Mitt's big speech Thursday was his own attempt to put the Mormon question to bed.

As far as Christian conservatives are concerned, Gov. Huckabee is obviously a sincere Christian. But he doesn't seem to be any kind of a conservative – not if you look at his record on domestic policy.

As for Gov. Romney, one of the most interesting passages of his speech was his contrast of America's faith with Europe's: "I'm not sure that we fully appreciate the profound implications of our tradition of religious liberty," he said. "I have visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired ... so grand ... so empty. Raised up over generations, long ago, so many of the cathedrals now stand as the postcard backdrop to societies just too busy or too 'enlightened' to venture inside and kneel in prayer. The establishment of state religions in Europe did no favor to Europe's churches."

That's very true. As America demonstrates, faith thrives in a free market. In Europe, the established church, whether formal (the Church of England) or informal (as in Catholic Italy and Spain), killed religion as surely as state ownership killed the British car industry. When the Episcopal Church degenerates into wimpsville relativist milquetoast mush, Americans go elsewhere. When the Church of England undergoes similar institutional decline, Britons give up on religion entirely.

Instead of a state church, Europe believes in the state as church – the all-powerful beneficent provider of cradle-to-grave welfare.

"Freedom requires religion," said Mitt Romney, and, whether or not one agrees, in Europe big government has led naturally to small religion – a point Gov. Huckabee might want to ponder. I would rather we talked less about religion in America (which can take care of itself) and more about government, which seems to be trending in an alarmingly European direction, Democrats and Republicans disagreeing merely on the speed at which we'll get there. Yet the two are explicitly connected.

Europe's religious decline derives in part from the state's usurpation and annexation of so many of the other supporting structures of society, including the church. I am in favor of a free market in religion and a free market in housing, but right now I'd like a conservative candidate with a clear-headed commitment to both.

Gibbons' admission of hGH use smacks of hypocrisy

Rick Maese
Baltimore Sun
December 7, 2007



Jay Gibbons is congratulated by third base coach Juan Samuel after his three-run home run in the sixth inning gave the Orioles the lead for good at 3-2. Gibbons added a two-run single in the seventh inning. (AP photo / July 17, 2007)


Presumably, any day now George Mitchell will release a scathing report on steroids in baseball that will either eternally restore our faith in the national pastime or shock us all into moving to Ottawa and becoming NHL fans. But there's a slight problem with this premise: As far as shock goes, baseball has successfully waited out our attention span.

Steroids, human growth hormone, amphetamines, the cream, the clear, equine Viagra - it's all pushed to the very back of my mind's medicine cabinet. Mitchell can't possibly produce a guilty name that will generate any surprise or disbelief.

Barry Bonds? Zzzzzzz.

Eddie Gaedel? Perhaps no one needed more help in the growth department.

Elmo? The red fur never struck me as natural.

What's most bothersome now has less to do with cheating the game and so much more with cheating our collective sensibilities. Yesterday's news that Orioles outfielder Jay Gibbons faces a 15-day suspension for violating Major League Baseball's substance-abuse policy was hardly a surprise. But Gibbons' admission that he purchased and used hGH should have stirred deeper feelings for fans.

He's an excellent example of why fans have built up so much distrust, why it's so difficult to look at a man or woman capable of superhuman athleticism and feel that innocent sense of awe bubble inside. Gibbons' actions are disappointing, but his words are much more damaging.



Orioles outfielder Jay Gibbons is greeted by cather Geronimo Gil upon arriving at the team's spring training camp on Monday. (Sun photo by Doug Kapustin / February 21, 2005)

Here's the nickel tour through the Jay Gibbons Lie, as told by Jay Gibbons:

March 2004: Reports surface that Bonds, Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi have received performance-enhancing substances, and Gibbons opined: "It's kind of like people are being convicted before they're even tested. Nobody knows who did what, you know what I mean? And it's really frustrating for a guy who works so hard, just to be accused of something."

August 2005: One day after teammate Rafael Palmeiro is suspended, Gibbons says: "Not one person has come out and said, 'Yeah, I took steroids.' I don't know, is everybody telling the truth? Something's got to give here eventually."

November 2005: After Major League Baseball and the players union announce new, stiffer penalties: "We want to end the problem now and get back to playing ball and not worrying about steroids every day."

October 2006: After the Los Angeles Times reports that former teammate Jason Grimsley has fingered Gibbons, among others, as a steroid user, he says: "I have passed every test administered by Major League Baseball over all the years. I have never taken anabolic steroids. And I am not going to dignify these claims and accusations with any further response."

Yesterday: "I am deeply sorry for the mistakes that I have made. I have no excuses and bear sole responsibility for my decisions. Years ago, I relied on the advice of a doctor, filled a prescription, charged the hGH, which is a medication, to my credit card and had only intended to help speed my recovery from my injuries and surgeries."



Orioles right fielder Jay Gibbons sprints onto the field during opening ceremonies. (Sun photo by John Makely / April 3, 2006)

Perhaps the reaction would have been different if he were among the first busted offenders, but as it is - Gibbons is one of eight players connected to the Orioles to be tied to performance-enhancing drugs - what feels especially repulsive today is his parallel career of lying.

Gibbons walked around the clubhouse with a body that was supposed to be chiseled in the gym, not over the counter. The steroid witch hunt unfairly chased after the game's bulky gym rats, Gibbons said, and he promised us time and time again that his statuesque physique was solely the product of an incredible work ethic.

We wanted to believe him, mostly, I suppose, because Gibbons seems like a decent guy. He was the clubhouse union rep. He attended chapel before Sunday games. He rode an inspiring underdog story into the starting lineup, and both he and his wife constantly gave back to the community. He treated reporters, teammates and fans with respect and appreciation.

Which is exactly why the lying and the hypocrisy are so damaging.

Gibbons was one of the good guys, and if the good guys are cheating and able to look us in the eye and lie, what does that really say about the game? And its athletes?

And what does it really say about the rest of us?

Steroids, hGH, cheating - it's all offensive. The lying, however, that's insulting. It's the way a fraud tells you, "You're too stupid to figure out the truth."

And in retrospect, the game's grifters are right. Anyone today still willing to take a baseball player at his word is, in fact, pretty stupid.

Gibbons' admission yesterday didn't sully his reputation; that disappeared when the accusations, injuries and declining statistics bowled over his career. It might not be fair, but what Gibbons has done is cast doubt on every other ballplayer from this point forward who tries to sell us on his innocence. Sorry, we're done buying it.

More names are coming. Mitchell's report drops any day now. But don't expect any shock. Just disappointment from here on out.

We've all lost some innocence here. But it's the game of baseball that moves forward, and no matter what Mitchell finds, there aren't many innocents left.

rick.maese@baltsun.com

Film Review: "The Other Side of the Mirror"

Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965

The Young Bob Dylan, Charismatic and Electric
By A. O. SCOTT
The New York Times
Published: December 7, 2007



These days, and not for the first time, it seems as if everyone wants to be Bob Dylan. There are the half-dozen impersonators in Todd Haynes’s “I’m Not There,” soon to be followed by John C. Reilly in a few scenes of “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” and behind them there are several generations of guitar strummers and harmonica blowers Dylanizing in the streets and subway tunnels of every major city in the world.

All of which makes the appearance of “The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965” especially welcome. Directed by Murray Lerner, it stars the man himself, with a few of his colleagues and friends: Joan Baez, Johnny Cash and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, members of which played backup for Mr. Dylan at the 1965 festival, when he shocked the folk establishment by “going electric.”

Such is the legend, at any rate. In Mr. Lerner’s film you hear boos after “Like a Rolling Stone.” But that’s a great performance, as is the encore, an acoustic version of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” that seems less penitential than triumphant. Those songs provide a thrilling climax to the film without quite overshadowing the others, which are culled from Mr. Dylan’s Newport appearances in 1963, ’64 and ’65, and presented out of chronological order.

How young he looks! In his early 20s, Mr. Dylan found himself not just at a musical crossroads, edging from folk and protest songs toward rock ’n’ roll and rhythm and blues, but also at a collision point between the diffident folkie ethic and the frenzy of celebrity culture. Mr. Lerner catches glimpses of Mr. Dylan’s transition from a troubadour in a work shirt to something like a rock star. But mostly he shows a skilled, charismatic musician developing beyond the scene where he first established himself.



David Gahr
Bob Dylan, 1963 in "The Other Side Of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963-65."

If you were not at the Newport Folk Festival in the ’60s — or, for that matter, if you were — “The Other Side of the Mirror” places you in perfect seats, out of the sun and wind and without any extraneous contextualization. It’s a remarkably pure and powerful documentary, partly because it’s so simple. The sound mix is crisp, the black-and-white photography is lovely, and the songs, above all, can be heard in all their earnest, enigmatic glory, performed by an artist whose gifts are at once mysterious and self-evident.


The Other Side of the Mirror

Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965

Opens today in Manhattan.

Produced and directed by Murray Lerner; directors of photography, Mr. Lerner, Stanley Meredith, George Pickow and Francis Grumman; edited by Alison Heim, Einar Westerlund, George Panos, Pagan Harlemann, Howard Alk and Mr. Lerner; released by MLF Productions. At the Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. This film is not rated.

Pearl Harbor lives in the hearts of its vets

After 66 years, some survivors wonder if they are the last reminders of the attack that led the U.S. into war.

By H.G. Reza, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 7, 2007

Their ranks thinned by age, Pearl Harbor veterans today are commemorating the 66th anniversary of the Japanese attack and wondering whether Americans will remember one of the most defining moments in history after they die.

"When we're gone, we're gone," said 87-year-old Jack Ray Hammett. "We're already just a paragraph in the history books. Will even that disappear when the last one of us dies?"

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a speech to Congress, immortalized the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other military installations on Oahu, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941, as a "date which will live in infamy." Today, those words are remembered mostly by the generation that lived through World War II.

It is a generation in steady decline. About 16 million Americans served in uniform during the war. The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates 2.7 million are living, but they are dying at the rate of about 1,000 per day.

The exact number of Pearl Harbor survivors, though unknown, is smaller, and they are older than the average WWII veteran. Hammett, a former Costa Mesa mayor, said he liked to think of his buddies as "walking, living history."

Some Pearl Harbor veterans in Southern California are keeping that history alive through Hammett's Freedom Committee of Orange County, a speakers bureau that arranges for survivors to speak before groups about the day that changed their lives and turned a reluctant United States into a superpower.



Jack Ray Hammett, shown in January 1941, was a medical corpsman for 30 years in the Navy and reserves. He was sleeping when the attack on Pearl Harbor began Dec. 7 and he spent the next several days treating the wounded and collecting the dead.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Martin K.A. Morgan, historian in residence at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, said Pearl Harbor was "where the United States rendezvoused with the destiny we are experiencing now as a world power."

"Almost everyone can trace how World War II touched his or her family," Morgan said. "When all of our World War II vets are gone, how much of this interest will continue?"

El Toro Memorial Park cemetery's annual Pearl Harbor Day ceremony today in southern Orange County will feature two speakers: Hammett and Orange resident Robert Thomas, who was awarded the Navy Cross for bravery during the battle. The medal is the service's second-highest award for bravery.

Thomas, 88, retired as a captain in 1964 and went on to become Orange County's first chief administrative officer. The county hall of administration is named in his honor.

The Japanese attack, which killed 2,403 Americans, jarred the country out of its isolationist lull.

"The effect was significant. But compared to the Battle of the Bulge, Okinawa and Iwo Jima, Pearl Harbor was a minor battle," Thomas said. U.S. casualties in those battles ranged as high as 72,000 men.

Thomas, who had graduated from the Naval Academy months earlier, was an ensign aboard the battleship Nevada commanding a 5-inch antiaircraft battery. He suffered shrapnel wounds in his legs and right wrist but remained on deck barking orders until he collapsed.

"I was probably going into shock, because I felt so safe and serene, even while the attack continued," he said.

"I remember thinking, OK, you SOBs. You tried to kill me and you didn't."



Jack Ray Hammett, a Pearl Harbor survivor and former Costa Mesa mayor, runs the Freedom Committee of Orange County, which sends Pearl Harbor veterans to speak at schools and social groups. The 87-year-old is intent on keeping the memory of Pearl Harbor alive for generations.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Thomas recalled watching Japanese planes crisscross the smoke-filled sky, and the sound of explosions from enemy torpedoes and bombs hitting what was left of the Pacific Fleet. The curses of sailors desperately defending the Nevada punctuated the chaos. His father, a Navy captain, died in an aircraft crash during the war.

Hammett and his wife, Mary Jo, now 84, were sleeping when the attack began. He said they were awakened by his landlord, who arrived to collect the rent and told them the Japanese were attacking Pearl Harbor, "12 miles down the hill." He peeked out the door just in time to hear a tremendous explosion from Battleship Row.

Hammett, a medical corpsman who served 30 years in the Navy and reserves, went to the Naval Hospital, where he spent the next three days treating the wounded and "stacking the dead like cordwood in a basement." After going home for a few hours, Hammett said, he returned to bury the dead, who had been laid out on tennis courts behind the hospital.

Mary Jo was 18, and although Hammett was on active duty, "we were on our honeymoon," he said.

Were it not for a sympathetic chief petty officer, Hammett said, he could have been among the dead.

Weeks earlier, he had been ordered to report to the battleship Arizona. Because Hammett was married, the officer sent a different corpsman.

"He's still aboard the Arizona," Hammett said solemnly.

The exploding ship, on which 1,177 crewmen died, is one of the iconic images captured on film that day, and the Arizona Memorial in Oahu has come to symbolize the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Arizona was one of 21 ships, including eight battleships, sunk or damaged in the attack. Almost 350 planes were destroyed or damaged.



Historian Morgan said the World War II generation was unique in that, for a while at least, its members accepted the sacrifices asked of them to achieve victory. When the U.S. was plunged into war, it had the 18th largest military in the world, and Americans were divided over supporting Britain in its war with Germany, which had a pact with Japan.

That changed quickly. Pearl Harbor became a rallying cry, and 16 months later, U.S. Army Air Forces P-38 pilots killed Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, responsible for planning the attack on Pearl Harbor, in an aerial ambush near the Solomon Islands.

"Americans mobilized under one ideological direction and made a great industrial contribution to the war effort," Morgan said.

"It was a breathtaking unity we didn't see after 9/11, but it began to come apart as the war continued and people grew weary of rationing and getting telegrams notifying them about loved one's deaths."

Hammett, who has health problems associated with age, said he literally sees the survivors' ranks depleting within Chapter 14 of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Assn., whose members come mostly from Orange and Los Angeles counties. There are 58 members, but only 10 or 12 are active, he said in an interview this week.

"Everybody wants to make it to the next anniversary. I'll be happy if I make it to Friday," he said.

hgreza@latimes.com