As the story unfolds we find Sherlock Holmes in his flat at 221B Baker Street with his good friend Dr. Watson. It begins with a new client arriving. After the client explains the case, Holmes seems to have a sixth sense that allows him to give Watson an impressive evaluation of the case.

Watson is usually at a loss to figure out how Holmes could assess the case so quickly. Later we learn Holmes began his enquiry with the first reports of the event before the client arrived at his door.

What would Holmes say about our current struggle with Islamism (Islamic fundamentalism)? How serious is the case? How diabolical and cunning is the opponent? How much time do we have? And, what is at stake?

He might say it depends my good friend on whether you are from Turkey, Europe, or the United States. He would gather information about the cunningness of the enemy, other weapons at his disposal besides terrorism, and the stakes involved. So let us begin our own evaluation for, as Holmes would say, the game is a foot.

Turkey

If we were from Turkey, Holmes would inform us that the situation is critical. There is very little time to reverse course and that our very identity as a secular country with a future in the West and membership in the European Union is at stake. He would point to key speeches highlighting the recent activity of the opposition.

On October 1, 2006, Turkish President Ahmet Sezer opened the new legislative year with an address to the Turkish Parliament regarding the growing threat to secular Turkey from Islamism [Islamist fundamentalism]. President Sezer spoke about threats to the country’s “integrity, national unity, and political system.”

On the same day, General Yasar Buyukanit, the Turkish Chief of General Staff, opened the new academic year at the Turkish War Academy. His speech was titled: “A Fundamentalist Threat Exists.” General Buyukanit spoke of the threat of religious fundamentalism in Turkey and why everything must be done to protect Turkey as a secular country with a pro-Western vision.

Turkey has elections in May 2007 and there is an expectation that Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, an Islamist, and the AKP party will take complete control of the government and change the core principles of the state. President Sezer expressed concern with the Islamization of national education and other institutions, the appointment of Islamists to government positions, statements by AKP officials questioning the definition of secularism, and the increasing number of religious schools with once-banned Koran courses.

President Sezer, stated:

'Religion cannot be allowed to exceed beyond the individual's spiritual life and influence social order. Restrictions can be imposed […] to protect public order, safety, and public interests.

Europe

If we were from Europe, Holmes would inform us that due to demographics there is an alarming inevitability about the outcome. He would point to the impossibility of assimilating the unwilling and inform us that drastic measures are past due. The enemy is using our traditions, our laws, and our culture to strip away our identity. Their goal is to establish a theocracy under Sharia law and to remove all vestiges of our Age of Enlightenment and Renaissance. He would highlight some of the continuing skirmishes and the gradual escalation of aggressiveness and violence as the opposition grows stronger. Also, he would point to comments by writers such as Oriana Fallaci who saw the enemy in plain view earlier than most.

* Skirmishes and Escalation

There is almost a daily sort of inevitability with “objections to Muslim sensibilities.” There was a race and sexism row when Jack Straw, the former British foreign secretary, admitted he asked female Muslim constituents who visit him to remove their veils and an investigation in London about a Muslim policeman being excused from guarding the Israel embassy due to moral objections.

While these incidents might seem minor by themselves, they are a harbinger of what is to come. The more serious cases:

A. Challenge to an author (e.g., Dante, Voltaire, Marlowe) in any course of study if a particular work of the author is deemed objectionable. (Fallaci, The Force of Reason)

B. Challenges to expression in the arts, e.g., the Barbican Center Theater of London censored a scene from a 1587 drama, Tamburlaine the Great (Id. at 301). Recently in Germany, the theater crew cancelled a production of a Mozart opera when there were objections to a scene in an adaptation of a Mozart Opera in Germany.

C. Reports of Muslims rioting in Sweden and recent reports from France announce an intifada is underway. Unlike the summer of 2005 when Muslim youths turned over cars and set them aflame, youths “now try to kill French police and burn police cars.”

* Oriana Fallaci Warned Her Native Italy And Europe

Oriana Fallaci described immigration as “the bloodless war,” a Trojan horse, and an invasion.

The current invasion … is not carried out only by the ‘terrorists who blow up themselves along with skyscrapers or buses’ but also by ‘the immigrants who settle in our home, and who, with no respect for our laws, impose their ideas, their customs, their God.’

Fallaci argued forcefully that this Trojan horse included twenty-five countries that form the European Union with at least twenty-five million Muslims and probably another fifteen million or more in Europe illegally. She reports:

[G]iven the Muslim…fertility, such figure is expected to double in 2016. To triple or to quadruple if Turkey becomes a European Union member. In fact Bernard Lewis prophesies that within 2100 the whole of Europe will be also numerically dominated by Muslims. And Bassam Tibi (the official deputy of the so-called Moderate Islam in Germany) adds: ‘[t] he problem is not to establish whether within 2100 the greatest majority or the totality of Europeans will be Muslim: one way or another, they will. The problem is whether Islam destined to dominate Europe will be an Euro-Islam or the Islam of Sharia.’ (The Force of Reason) [p.30][Emphasis added.]

On September 15, 2006, the Washington Post wrote, Combative Writer Oriana Fallaci Dies. They reported that …in her final years she challenged Italy and Europe about the loss of European culture and the lack of assimilation underway with immigrants:

….

[She] accused Europe of having sold its soul to … an Islamic invasion. It [She] also took the Catholic Church to task for being what she considers too weak before the Muslim world.

Describing Europe as ‘Eurabia,’ Fallaci said the continent "has sold itself and sells itself to the enemy like a prostitute.’

‘Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam,’ she wrote.

Another writer quoted her:

In a Spenglerian interview for this page last June, she told me: ‘The moment you give up your principles, and your values . . . the moment you laugh at those principles, and those values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period.’ [Emphasis added.]

United States

If we were from the United States, Holmes would inform us that if we have the will there is time to prepare. The stakes are very high. You must aid your friends so that you are not isolated. There is a reason you are called “the Great Satan.” As with Europe you will experience the same daily skirmishes about “Muslim sensibilities.” You must stay true to bedrock principles as written in your constitution. Be mindful of future demographics; listen to people with the best knowledge of how the enemy works, like former terrorist, and above all “beware the foot soldiers of Islamic fundamentalism.”

In the United States there are reports of: a U.S. publisher in New York who cancelled the publication of a book due to concerns over the staffs safety and the refusal of Islamic taxi drivers at the Minneapolis-St Paul International airport to accept customers carrying alcohol from airport duty free shops. (Recent updates call the objection into question.)

The United States population is about to pass the 300 million barrier. Future projections are for around 400 million by mid-century. To the extent that followers of Islamism increase as a percentage of the population in the US (through conversions, higher Muslim birth rates (e.g., in Europe, the European rate is less than the replacement rate of 2 children per family while the Muslim birth rate is greater than 4.0 per family), and immigration, we could see challenges such as those facing Europe today.

In a recent interview with three former Muslim terrorists (plus video link), Ibrahim Abdullah from Dearborn, Michigan (agreed with Walid Shoebat (from the Middle East) that indoctrination of children begins as early as 6 in school. Shoebat said when he went to school at 6 years of age we sing Arabs are beloved and Jews are dogs.

Ibrahim Abdullah says (or words to the effect):

A. I was born in Dearborne, Michigan but Dearborn …is one of the largest Muslim populations in the country and it’s just like having a village in the West Bank in Israel today. It is very similar.

Q. [Is there an] effort [in Dearborn] to cultivate young Arabs in U.S. to join Al Queda or to form own splinter cells like what happened in London?

A. No question. We have seen government rounding up terrorist orgainzations and funding operations and usually … find they have start in Dearborn, Michigan.

A. As for cultivating the mentality of the children, just like throughout the Middle East.

A. … part of the culture; you are born and raised with this hatred in your mind and heart for America and Israel, primarily the Jew and the Christian; that is what the target is…and you are born and bred to believe this.

As Holmes might say: the game is a foot. He might even say something similar to what Jean-Paul Sartre said: “We cannot withdraw our cards from the game. Were we as silent and as mute as stones, our very passivity would be an act.”

What about Holmes warning to “beware the foot soldiers of Islamic fundamentalism” you ask? Patience, he says, more about that shortly in another meeting.

Timeless Truths

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice. - A Defense of Humilities, The Defendant, 1901

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October Is Chesterton Month For Daily Quotes: G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) is a three-story intellect* whose “…best illuminations come from above through the skylight.”

* Who are three story thinkers? Oliver Wendell Holmes provided the idea for this series of daily blogs in a quote believed to be from a short story called: “The Three Story House.”

“There are one-story intellects, two story intellects, and three story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine and predict. Their best illuminations come from above through the skylight.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, writer, physician

On this day in 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, defeated England’s Howard II and established Norman rule in England. (Chesterton Day by Day) [p. 96]

Gored on the Norman gonfalon
The Golden Dragon died,
We shall not wake with ballad strings
The good time of the smaller things,
We shall not see the holy kings
Ride down the Severn side.
-- Ballad of Alfred [“Dedication,” the Ballad of the White Horse]


The Norman conquest of England was the invasion of the Kingdom of England by William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy), in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings and the subsequent Norman control of England. It is an important watershed in English history for a number of reasons. The conquest linked England more closely with Continental Europe and lessened Scandinavian influence, created one of the most powerful monarchies in Europe, created the most sophisticated governmental system in Western Europe, changed the English language and culture, and set the stage for English-French conflict that would last into the 19th century. It remains the last successful military conquest of England.

Professor J. Rufus Fears (University of Oklahoma) in a Teaching Company lecture titled: Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life talks about the Book of Job. It got me to thinking about the recent murders of five young Amish girls. I wondered where the strength came from for the Amish to collect money for the window and children of the murderer who killed five young Amish girls. Many townspeople announced their forgiveness of Roberts directly to his wife and children. Does this strength exist outside of a deeply held religious belief?

Acts of forgiveness like this are so uncommon these days. Rod Dreher noted that: “[w] hat sets hearts apart is how they deal with sins and tragedies.” We see that today with how different families handle grief during 9/11 or the loss of loved ones during the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The Iliad is only great because all life is a battle, the Odyssey because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle. (The Defendant)

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October Is Chesterton Month For Daily Quotes: G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) is a three-story intellect* whose “…best illuminations come from above through the skylight.”

* Who are three story thinkers? Oliver Wendell Holmes provided the idea for this series of daily blogs in a quote believed to be from a short story called: “The Three Story House.”

“There are one-story intellects, two story intellects, and three story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine and predict. Their best illuminations come from above through the skylight.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, writer, physician

In an earlier era, we had a “sense of place.” Our mere presence at cathedrals, war memorials, and universities, dictated a certain conduct in these places of special significance. The great cathedrals with their art and stained glass generated a sense of awe and wonderment of the “glory of God.” National memorials, such as the one at the top of Mt. Soledad overlooking San Diego, were a place of respect and appreciation for those who had made the ultimate sacrifice. Also, the hallowed halls of a university, an institution of higher learning, were considered a place of civil discourse, a place for the free and full discussion of ideas.

For at least left-wing students today, the idea that certain conduct is appropriate due to a “sense of place” is deemed a quaint and thoroughly anachronistic idea. Ironically, the significance of a university setting is unappreciated by some Columbia students who with the determination of a religious fervor approaching a sacramental obligation went to great lengths to deny invited guests an opportunity to speak.

On October 4, 2006, anarchy ensued at Columbia when a group of protesters booed and shouted down two guest speakers from the Minuteman Project. Protesters rushed the stage, turned over furniture, a student was injured (per a report in the student newspaper), and the guests were driven from the auditorium.

There are a number of reports setting out the details of that evening (at the NY Sun and blogs by Power Line (with video), Michelle Malkin, and Martin Peretz at “ The Spine”).

After the incident, a spokesman for the student protesters exhibited a triumphal display of absolute certitude in the rightness of their mission. He argued that the representatives of the Minuteman Project: “… had no right to be able to speak here.” Action and comments by the students included: a banner in both Arabic and English that read, “No one is ever illegal.” They posted a self-serving justification for their action at a web site: “delete the borders” “towards a global network of movements against borders.”

The illiberal conduct by the student protesters demonstrated a lack of understanding for western tradition and the role of reason in discussion. Their inflexible position and action differ, if at all, by only a small degree from that of Islamic fundamentalists that protests speech and the existence of books that offend their sensibility. Despite efforts to vindicate themselves as “liberal” and “open-minded,” their conduct was illiberal and a rejection of secularism.

Oriana Fallaci, an avowed atheist with an early respect for the Left, identified that the Left of her parents was no more. In an introspective look at what has happened in Europe, she questioned how she missed the change in the Left? At first, when the Left spoke of the Khomeini Revolution she wondered how it could possibly identify with such a world? Wasn’t the Left secular?

She had been reviewing the on-going loss of identity, culture, tradition, and values in her native Italy and Europe due to increasing Islamism (Islamic Fundamentalism). It was during this introspection, she realized that the Left was not secular:

“[I]t [my interrogative] was wrong because the reasonings or rather the premises on which I based my interrogative were wrong. First premise, my illusion the Left would be laic. I mean secular. Though the daughter of secularism, (besides a secularism begotten by liberalism and consequently not consonant with dogmatism), the Left is not laic. Whether it dresses in red or black or pink or green or white or in all the colours of the rainbow, the Left is confessional. Ecclesiastic. Because it derives from an ideology of religious character. That is, because it appeals to an ideology which claims to possess the Truth. On one side, the Good. On the other, the Evil. On one side, the Sun of the Future. On the other, the Darkness. On one side, the comrades. The blessed ones, the faithful. On the other, the infidels or rather the infidel-dogs. The Left is a Church. And not a Church similar to the Church which came out of Christianity, thus open to free will. A Church similar to Islam. Like Islam it considers itself sanctified by a God who is the custodian of the Truth. Like Islam it never acknowledges its faults and its errors, it considers itself infallible and never apologizes. Like Islam it demands a world at its own image, a society built on the verses of its Prophet…. Like Islam it does not accept different opinions and if you think differently it despises you.” (The Force of Reason) [p. 215]

Although an atheist, Oriana Fallaci, realized that: “…without Christianity there would not have been the Renaissance, there would not have been the Enlightenment…. (Oriana Fallaci, The Force of Reason) [p. 190] [Emphasis added.]

Rowdy protesters, an hour before the scheduled event, in a chilling echo from the past chanted outside the auditorium, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, the Minutemen have got to go!” A chant eerily reminiscent of an earlier ballyhoo, “Hey hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.” For anyone concerned about protecting borders that respect sovereignty, enforcement of laws that retain values, culture, and tradition, i.e., the identity of their country, it is clear the Left will not defend America against the gathering storm of increasing Islamic Fundamentalism.

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." - A Short History of England, Ch.10

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October Is Chesterton Month For Daily Quotes: G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) is a three-story intellect* whose “…best illuminations come from above through the skylight.”

* Who are three story thinkers? Oliver Wendell Holmes provided the idea for this series of daily blogs in a quote believed to be from a short story called: “The Three Story House.”

“There are one-story intellects, two story intellects, and three story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine and predict. Their best illuminations come from above through the skylight.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, writer, physician

The anecdotes about him have a certain biographical quality of which the most familiar example is Dr. Johnston; … Before the thing is said or done it cannot even be conjectured; but after it is said or done it is felt to be merely characteristic. It is surprisingly and yet inevitably individual. This quality of abrupt fitness and bewildering consistency belongs to St. Francis in a way that marks him out from most men of his time. Men are learning more and more of the solid social virtues of medieval civilization; but those impressions are still social rather than individual. The medieval world was far ahead of the modern world in its sense of the things in which all men are at one: Death and the daylight of reason and the common conscience that holds communities together. The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, (p. 79) ________________________________________________________

October Is Chesterton Month For Daily Quotes: G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) is a three-story intellect* whose “…best illuminations come from above through the skylight.”

* Who are three story thinkers? Oliver Wendell Holmes provided the idea for this series of daily blogs in a quote believed to be from a short story called: “The Three Story House.”

“There are one-story intellects, two story intellects, and three story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine and predict. Their best illuminations come from above through the skylight.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, writer, physician

Democrats need to stand for more than just attacking George Bush if they hope to capture critical swing voters. We have now seen “phase 2” of the Democrats campaign for leadership of Congress in the 2006 election.

When Congress adjourned on September 29, 2006, following large Democratic votes against three significant Resolutions on National Security legislation dealing with the War Against Terrorism, we were given news of the Mark Foley story. The story of this Republican Congressman’s conduct dominated the news cycle for days. Now, after more than a week of “Foley Follies,” we know that “phase 2” of the Democratic election strategy is “Change the Subject.”

There is almost no discussion about terrorism, despite the large number of Democrats who voted at the end of the session against three national security resolutions. One resolution was for a Terror Detainee Bill. Democrats insisted on broad restrictions per the Geneva Convention even for techniques that were less than torture, but more than the minimum name, rank and what would you like for dinner. Sorry, dinner could be a coercive technique if used to get a prisoner to talk against his will. We better cancel our plans to fly the terrorist equivalent of Wolfgang Puck to Gitmo. The other two resolutions were for a terrorism surveillance program (where the House voted 232-191) and military commissions to authorize military tribunals to prosecute terrorists.

Phase 2 does not tell us what Democrats stand for anymore than “phase 1” did. Looking at phases 1 and 2, how do the Democrats plan to persuade swing voters? Attacking the President and controlling the news cycle with a story line about Mark Foley, isn’t going to gain new allies. Just scaring the fly over folks about nasty text messages and the “Devil” (as Hugo Chavez calls him) won’t persuade undecided or swing voters they have something to offer. Democrats need to remember what happened to Hannibal; he learned that to get allies (voters) you have to offer something.

Hannibal sought Rome’s destruction. He is reported at a young age to have told his father, "I swear so soon as age will permit...I will use fire and steel to arrest the destiny of Rome." In pursuit of that goal he displayed a singleness of purpose, perseverance, and commitment seldom witnessed in future generations. It was this focused hatred for Rome and dedication to carry out his pledge to his father, Hamilcar Barca, that gave Hannibal the vigor to cross the Alps, defeat the Romans at the Battles of the river Trebia (218 BC), Lake Trasimene (217 BC) and Cannae (216 BC) and continue to fight the Romans for many years with no support from his homeland Carthage and little from Rome’s allies in Italy.

So why did Hannibal, a military leader recognized as one of the best residing alongside Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, lose? Despite Hannibal's certainty that Roman allies would join him, the allies remained faithful to Rome. Allies of Rome might have had problems with Rome, but Hannibal only sought their help to defeat Rome. He offered nothing in place of Rome. Absent a positive plan for a future after Rome, Rome’s allies refused to join him. In the end, it was Hannibal’s inability to gather allies to replace his losses that left him with too small a force to defeat Rome.

So how do Democrats plan to win the undecided and swing voters, our parallel to the Roman allies? What alternatives, for example, do they offer to President Bush’s plans for: A.) Defeating the radical extremists abroad rather than at home while introducing consensual governments into the Middle East; B.) An ownership society that includes ownership of a small portion of your Social Security account; or C.) Expanding energy production, e.g., by drilling in the tundra deceptively known as ANWR, building more refineries, and nuclear power plants. Democrats are silent, vague, or all over the board on these and other cutting-edge issues.

Prosecuting the War Against Islamic Extremists

Democrats offer no discernible plan for success in Iraq or in the global war against radical Islamic extremists. Some remain mute while others continue an attack: "Bush lied, thousands died." They have promoted Cindy Sheehan' message demanding an immediate pullout from Iraq and Congressman Jack Murtha’s call for an exit strategy and to redeploy (a euphemism for retreat) the troops now. They attack the President about prewar intelligence, the number of troops in Iraq (it is not large enough or it is too large), and the handling of the transition to a consensual Iraqi government. Democrats even talk of impeachment if they gain control of the Congress in the 2006 election.

Social security reform

Democrat’s oppose any kind of social security reform. They even resisted a House proposal (HR3304, known as GROW for Growing Real Ownership for Workers) that would create modest personal accounts earmarked for individuals and restrict limited investments to Treasuries. Investments in these personal accounts were severely restricted compared to the President’s plan. Further, these accounts would serve as a real and not imagined lockbox that would prevent spending the social security surplus. Will kicking the can down the road demonstrate leadership or improve the choices that must be faced? On October 4, 2006, the Fed Chairman warned that the problem needed to be addressed quickly.

Energy Policy is a National Security Matter

Our lack of an effective energy policy has resulted in massive wealth transfers to unstable or anti-American regimes. The recent appearances of President Hugo Chavez and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations in September were exhibit A; oil revenues are funding international problems around the world. During the Israeli war with Hizballah the news repeatedly reported the significant financial support by Iran to Hizballah in Lebanon over the preceding years. Iranian support purchased training, equipment, and a “state within a state.” Analyst repeated that Hizballah military and equipment represented what you get for about $100 million a year.

Iranian expansion continues. There are reports that terrorists in the Palestine region want to adopt Hizballah tactics and Iran is involved. Also, that Iran is busy trying to create bases in Venezuela, Cuba, and also in E. Africa, favoring Sudan and Somalia. Meanwhile, President Chavez of Venezuela is reportedly providing the Castro regime large quantities of fuel to prop of the Cuban dictator. The lesson is clear, high-energy prices are fueling antagonistic foreign efforts to expand influence. Terrorist activity is often directly related to the revenues available to train, fund, and equip fighters. Also, this doesn’t begin to address the problems created by the Saudi government exporting Wahabi clerics to convert people to the new hardline Islamism.

Democrats offer little in the way of a coherent plan for independence from Middle Eastern oil. The recent announcement of a large discovery in the Gulf in a new area just opened to exploration highlights that we could be doing more. When oil is in the $60 to $75 dollar per barrel price range, options that were not viable at $15 per barrel become available. For example, technology increases reserves from Canadian oil sands, but little is said about further exploration in Western States with similar opportunities. Off shore drilling and nuclear production are blocked by governmental hurdles. There is no discussion of a “Manhattan Project” to roll out immediately energy alternatives in soy, ethanol, wind, and sun in various locations around the country.

Democrats Offer Swing Voters No Vision

Oriana Fallaci (at page 205) said: “Who is not there does not rule.” A paraphrase might be: Who is not in the arena of ideas cannot win. For Democrats all their focus is either on opposition to President Bush irrespective of the merits or to change the subject to something less important than pending issues.

Just as Hannibal offered Rome’s allies no alternatives for the future, the Democrats offer only their singleness of purpose to destroy the current Administration. Democrat strategist James Carville and pollster Stanley Greenberg, in June 2005, announced the results of a poll and concluded that Democrats lost strength in the poll because there was a perception that Democrats have "no core set of convictions or point of view." During the following fifteen months Democrats have done little to change that impression. They should learn from Hannibal: destruction, hate, and attack, may win a battle or two, but without allies--swing voters--you won’t prevail. Republicans will retain both the House and the Senate this fall.

I read that your Ambassador to the United Nations suggested congratulations were in order. Let me be one of the early ones to say, “Congratulations on your nuclear test.” This is to also advise that you have won a gift in recognition of your accomplishment.

You have also sure figured out how to wake up the “ole” neighborhood. Japan is so impressed they may amend their constitution and join the nuclear club. South Korea may finally tax its energy enough to rise from their torpor and take meaningful action to stop propping up your regime.

In light of the desire of the United Nations to move to new facilities, we have advised the UN that we will no longer be pouring US taxpayer dollars down their ineffective, inefficient and inexpedient, “rat hole.” The United Nations is also being given a prize in view of its’ many accomplishments such as: oil for food; unwillingness to meaningfully enforce multiple resolutions; and assigning peacekeepers who rape and plunder those they are assigned to protect without any punishment for the offenders or sanctions against the member country for refusing to prosecute.

Consequently, the UN has earned the right to leave New York. Pyongyang would be an ideal city to host such a wonderful collection of brethren. Also, in light of the pending move, we have joined together with other democratic nations to form a new alliance where only “democratically” elected officials will be represented. Regrettably, we will not be able to join you.

In light of the recent vote in the UN, (by approximately 108 nations who contribute an astonishing 13% towards running the organization), to reject reform, we believe you have the makings of an effective organization. I understand that President Hugo Chavez and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stand ready to take over the funding burden and would enjoy watching your James Bond collection of films.

We trust the smaller group at your new location will engender much debate on an appropriate name. I hear that Hugo likes the idea of calling it “the Good Guys.”

Best Wishes.

Your pal,

Buster Foghorn

Dateline: Saturday, October 7, 2006, the Mark Foley story dominates the news cycle. Meanwhile, the “urgent and important” news is virtually ignored: North Korea prepares for a nuclear weapons test, the Iranians continue to stone-wall the UN over their nuclear weapons program, Afghanistan and Iraq continue to challenge, and the UNIFIL forces in Lebanon fail to enforce another resolution.

I just can’t help believing that this current over-kill with the Foley story will rank right up there with the 24/7 wall-to-wall coverage previously accorded the John Mark Carr return from Thailand and the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson investigation. Faulkner seems particularly apt as a description for the dominant news cycle stories: “tales full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”

Oh, for just one channel that says:

And now for the news, but first this caveat: We don’t think the Mark Foley story warrants your time and we will not be covering it. If you want to know more about it go to our web site or try another channel that isn’t serious about giving you the important topics of the day.

But, “[a] las, poor Yorick!” all is madness. Ophelia is just the first to go. I look in vain for the “serious” reporting; I wonder where is the sense of urgency and importance required for these serious times? Most of the legacy and cable networks, the radio, and the legacy media, seem to be acting just as they might if in a time warp enjoying the run-up to WWII during “the phony war” while cavorting at a French chateau.

Urgency And Importance

Today, October 7, 2006, marked the christening of the USS George H.W. Bush. Carriers are like a small city - first responders, medical, legal and supply departments, aviation repair shops open 24/7 to keep the planes in the air, on-going education classes, a weapons boss, a maintenance shop, a brig, etc. You get the idea - any time of the day or night, there is action.

During wartime, the up-tempo environment is a constant go-go-go. There is a buzz on board as the huge elevators bring the bombs up to the carrier deck from the bowels of the ship. As the weapons are loaded onto their planes loving messages are appended. During Gulf War I we sent Saddam some thoughtful notes.

And in this city at sea, there is a “Top Dog” whose word rules “the city” – he is the Captain of the ship, the Commanding Officer (CO). When the ships’ company is on board the crew can number about 3,500 personnel and when the Air Wing embarks with the pilots and their crews, the number can go over 5,000.

During this “silly news cycle” covering the Foley case, I remembered how the tempo changed on my carrier when a new CO reported after our ship returned from the Gulf. Carriers go through repair and work-up cycles and the tempo can slow. The new CO would have none of this reduced speed. Department Heads were told: when you move around the ship wherever you go and whatever you do, demonstrate a sense of “urgency and importance.” Quickly, the pace clicked up appreciable and folks began to step lively and get things done. The message was contagious and others followed the lead.

Cultural Confusions

Daniel Henniker struck a similar theme yesterday about the Foley follies with his recognition that “we live now in an era awash in cultural confusions.”

[I] t is hard not to see in retrospect the inexorable dominance over time of the cultural frivolousness that emerged in those years. Politics is especially vulnerable. A political culture--the politicians and their attendant media--that would allow itself to set aside everything else to spend a week with the Mark Foley ‘scandal’ is frivolous. They look like dupes.

The Pending Indictment

What will it take for someone to lead by example? Where is the reporting that gives us the essential and not the unimportant, trivial trifles? Anyone please, help me, before I act like the Peter Finch character in “Network.”

The Right Not To Know

Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises, on Thursday, June 8, 1978, gave a memorable speech. One of the virtues of a memorable speech is that it continues to have a message for us years later. Solzhenitsyn directed a devastating charge to the media in the west with a portion of his remarks:

The Direction of the Press

The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media). But what sort of use does it make of this freedom?

Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist have to his readers, or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No, it does not happen, because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance.

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.

Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the communist East a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has granted Western journalists their power, for how long a time and with what prerogatives?

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the East where the press is rigorously unified: one gradually discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole. It is a fashion; there are generally accepted patterns of judgment and there may be common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspapers mostly give enough stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend. [Emphasis added.]

Verdict: Guilty of Wasting Our Time and Theirs

There is little sense of “ urgency and importance” in media reports. The unimportant dominates. Solzhenitsyn’s sage advice continues to be ignored; no one seems concerned they are wasting their goodwill and exclusive franchise. The media deserves to be in the dock. The guilty finding will be much like the one for Papillon, where the charge was for a wasted life:

Papillon was condemned to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. His meaningless existence was further frustrated by a recurring nightmare. Repeatedly, he would see himself standing before a harsh tribunal.

"You are charged," the leader would shout, "with wasting your life. How do you plead?"

"Guilty," was the only right answer. "I must plead guilty."

From “Lepanto” – by a poem commemorating the Battle of Lepanto, on October 7, 1571

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless
prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half-
attained stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from
the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the
bird has sung...

For the rest of the following entry, see the Catholic Analysis blog here.

G.K. Chesterton has a large fan base and rightly so. Ignatius Press published a book earlier this year focusing on Chesterton's poem Lepanto. Lepanto is the famous battle that occurred on October 7, 1571, between Christian naval forces and the Islamic fleet of the Ottoman Empire. The Christians won decisively. The Christian coalition was a Catholic coalition of Spanish, Venetian, Genoese, Portuguese, and papal forces assembled at the urging of Pope St. Pius V to fend off the Islamic menace to Rome and Italy (p. 59). The fleet was led by Don John of Austria (1545-1578), a Habsburg noble and illegitimate son of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (also known as King Charles I of Spain). Another famous Christian leader in the battle was the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria.

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A more secular footnote is that Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), later to become the author of Don Quixote, served in the Christian fleet and was wounded in the battle.

Kudos to editor Dale Ahlquist and the American Chesterton Society for lovingly producing a new edition of Lepanto, G. K. Chesterton's martial masterpiece of a poem about that seventh day of October 1571, when Don Juan of Austria and his ships destroyed a superior fleet sent by Turkish Sultan Selim II to the Gulf of Lepanto (now Naupaktos), an armada equipped and manned to conquer Venice and Rome.

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Lepanto contains not only the poem, first published in 1911, but two essays by Chesterton, copious notes demonstrating the remarkable literary and historical grasp the author had, and new essays commenting on the text and contexts including a particularly illuminating piece by historian William Cinfici. Putting the poem and the times it illustrates squarely in our era, Cinfici says:

Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Muslims have focused upon trying to eliminate the state of Israel and upon fighting around the periphery of the Islamic world, as is currently the case from Chechnya to Kashmir, from Ivory Coast to Indonesia. However, the question is whether we have reached the point that Hilaire Belloc predicted would come when Muslims rise again to challenge the West.

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October Is Chesterton Month For Daily Quotes: G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) is a three-story intellect* whose “…best illuminations come from above through the skylight.”

* Who are three story thinkers? Oliver Wendell Holmes provided the idea for this series of daily blogs in a quote believed to be from a short story called: “The Three Story House.”

“There are one-story intellects, two story intellects, and three story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine and predict. Their best illuminations come from above through the skylight.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, writer, physician

‘Christianity is the greatest revolution humanity has ever accomplished. By comparison all others seem limited’….without Christianity there would not have been the Renaissance, there would not have been the Enlightenment….[Emphasis added.] (Oriana Fallaci, The Force of Reason, p. 190)

It was only after 9/11 during our “War Against Terror” that I became aware of the remarkable Oriana Fallaci (who joined the underground resistance during WWII in her teens, and was a journalist, novelist, and political interviewer). At some point, I read about her writings warning Europe about the pending decline and fall. Before I could read more she passed away.

Shortly before her death, however, on September 12, 2006, Pope Benedict gave his remarkable lecture at Regensburg and there was the subsequent brouhaha over his call for “faith and reason” and not “faith and violence.” As I read more about the Pope’s lecture over the next few days, the news reported that Mrs. Fallaci had died. And as I read about her in the tributes, the remembrances, and the past interviews, I became more intrigued about her comments about the decline of Europe, her appreciation for Cardinal Ratzinger, and Christianity, as a “hymn to reason.” There was a striking similarity, in fact, to some of the same ideas raised by Pope Benedict in Regensburg.

I never appreciated fully, however, the import of her work until I found The My Hero Project - Oriana Fallaci, with a section devoted to Writer Heroes and this quote on Oriana Fallaci.

From the book, Immortality, author, Milan Kundera writes,

‘...[W] ho is the pioneer of modern journalism? Not Hemingway who wrote of his experiences in the trenches, not Orwell who spent a year of his life with the Parisian poor, not Egon Erwin Kisch the expert on Prague prostitutes, but Oriana Fallaci who in the years 1969 to 1972 published a series of interviews with the most famous politicians of the time. Those interviews were more than mere conversations; they were duels. Before the powerful politicians realized that they were fighting under unequal conditions--for she was allowed to ask questions but they were not--they were already on the floor of the ring, KO'ed.' [Emphasis added.]

In, Combative Writer Oriana Fallaci Dies, the Washington Post on September 15, 2006, reported that she died overnight. In her final years through her books and essays the Post notes that she challenged Italy and Europe about the loss of European culture and the lack of assimilation underway with immigrants:

….

Her next essay, ‘The Strength of Reason,’ accused Europe of having sold its soul to what Fallaci described as an Islamic invasion. It also took the Catholic Church to task for being what she considers too weak before the Muslim world.

Describing Europe as ‘Eurabia,’ Fallaci said the continent "has sold itself and sells itself to the enemy like a prostitute.’

‘Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam,’ she wrote.

The current invasion, Fallaci went on to say, is not carried out only by the ‘terrorists who blow up themselves along with skyscrapers or buses’ but also by ‘the immigrants who settle in our home, and who, with no respect for our laws, impose their ideas, their customs, their God.’ [Emphasis added.]

Tunku Varadarajan recounted reminiscences of time he spent working with Oriana Fallaci in: La Fallaci A prophet of decline passes from the scene. In her later years, he notes, she was focused on “Eurabia,” the willingness of European leaders to give up principles and values as a result of demands by a wave of immigrants unwilling to assimilate. She wrote vigorously about the pending decline of Europe.

‘La Fallaci,’ as she liked to call herself--yes, immodestly; but Italian divas don't do self-deprecation--became in her last years a fierce, even apocalyptic, critic of Islam. She feared the unassimilated--and, she believed, unassimilable--Muslim immigrants in the West, and she feared them to distraction. Above all, she despised Europe's political and cultural elites who were responsible--in her view--for turning Europe into "a colony of Islam." In a Spenglerian interview for this page last June, she told me: "The moment you give up your principles, and your values . . . the moment you laugh at those principles, and those values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period." [Emphasis added.]

Varadarajan did an earlier interview where she expressed her respect for Pope Benedict. In Prophet of Decline, An Interview with Oriana Fallaci she had this to say about Pope Benedict (Cardinal Ratzinger):

‘I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger.’ I had asked Ms. Fallaci whether there was any contemporary leader she admired, and Pope Benedict XVI was evidently a man in whom she reposed some trust. ‘I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion.’ [Emphasis added.]

In her book, The Force of Reason, she explains that although an atheist there is much she respects in the message of Christianity:

… I like the discourse which stays at the roots of Christianity. Because it convinces me. It seduces me to such an extent that in it I do not find any contradiction with my atheism and my secularism. I mean the discourse conceived by Jesus of Nazareth….The discourse which transcending metaphysics, climbing over it, concentrates on Man. Which admitting free-will, claiming Man’s conscience, makes us responsible for our actions. Masters of our destiny. I see a hymn to Reason, a revival of clear thinking in that discourse. And given the fact that where there is clear thinking there is choice, where there is choice there is freedom, I see in it the rediscovery of freedom. The redemption of liberty…. [Emphasis added.] (pp. 186-187.)

Here is an understanding of Pope Benedict’s future lecture at Regensburg. A recognition that in the Christian message there can be found: “[a] hymn to reason” or as the Pope might say “faith and reason” not “violence and reason.” Also, she has an early warning, a critical message like a dagger for the secular West: “without Christianity there would not have been the Renaissance, there would not have been the Enlightenment.” And then there is that final reminder for the Regensburg skeptics to ponder: when “an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true.”

In Schall on Chesterton, Timely Essays on Timeless Paradoxes, James V. Schall presents a series of essays that illustrates that Chesterton is as timely today as he was 100 years ago. This quote and the discussion about the media insistence on avoiding the moral issue and refusal to refer to right and wrong seems as appropriate today:

Chesterton next stated the long-range consequences involved when we do not call a thing by its exact moral character, but refer to the action as merely mad, or bestial, or vulgar, or idiotic. None of these adjectives imply that the act of killing the grandmother in Battersea Park was wrong. Each avoids the moral issue.

If the modern world will not insist on having some sharp and definite moral law, capable of resisting the counter-attraction of art and humour, the modern world will simply be given over as a spoil to anybody who can manage to do a nasty thing in a nice way. Every murderer who can murder entertainingly will be allowed to murder. Every burglar who burgles in really humourous attitudes will burgle as much as he likes.

This passage was written in 1906, at the beginning of this century….

Chesterton, to make his point clearer, added another quaint phrase-why do we call a political assassination a “dastardly outrage”? ….

What is wrong with his action is not that it is dastardly or cowardly, which it is not, but that it is a killing. ‘The man who does [the assassination] is very infamous and very brave. But, again the explanation is that our modern Press would rather appeal to physical arrogance, or to anything, rather that appeal to right and wrong.’ (Emphasis added. Schall on Chesterton, quoted in part from pp 91 and 92)

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October Is Chesterton Month For Daily Quotes: G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) is a three-story intellect* whose “…best illuminations come from above through the skylight.”

* Who are three story thinkers? Oliver Wendell Holmes provided the idea for this series of daily blogs in a quote believed to be from a short story called: “The Three Story House.”

“There are one-story intellects, two story intellects, and three story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine and predict. Their best illuminations come from above through the skylight.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, writer, physician

Something Pope Benedict might have said at Regensburg:

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried." - What’s Wrong with the World (Quoted from Chesterton, Day by Day, Edited by Michael W. Perry

* Who are three story thinkers? Oliver Wendell Holmes provided the idea for this series of daily blogs in a quote believed to be from a short story called: “The Three Story House.”

“There are one-story intellects, two story intellects, and three story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine and predict. Their best illuminations come from above through the skylight.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, writer, physician

At the beginning of the interview, Chris Wallace explained the ground rules:

“FOX News Sunday” CHRIS WALLACE: This week [President William Jefferson Clinton] hosted his second annual Global Initiative forum in New York. More than $7 billion was pledged to tackle some of the worst problems in developing countries, such as poverty, disease and climate change.

As part of the conference, Mr. Clinton agreed to his first one-on-one interview ever on "FOX News Sunday." The ground rules were simple: 15 minutes for our sit-down, split evenly between the Global Initiative and anything else we wanted to ask. But as you'll see now in the full, unedited interview, that's not how it turned out.

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(Link is to the Fox News transcript of the interview.)

Now to the interview and the question that elicited the response that everyone was talking about:

WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on "Fox News Sunday," I got a lot of e-mail from viewers. And I've got to say, I was surprised. Most of them wanted me to ask you this question: Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and Al Qaeda out of business when you were president?

There's a new book out, I suspect you've already read, called "The Looming Tower." And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, bin Laden said, "I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S. troops." Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the Cole.

…

What the former President said and his demeanor during the rest of the interview has been the subject of a great deal of speculation and debate. The question on many minds was whether we were watching Bill Clinton unhinged or Bill Clinton the shrewd master politician setting an example for his party and rallying the base? There is however, another possibility and that is the answer to the question: “What was missing?” First, what was observed?

Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, posted at his blog, The Spine, about the one subject that probably drew near unanimous agreement. Mr. Peretz wrote briefly regarding the Clinton performance on Fox with this entry, Clinton Fashion. He rightfully filed this objection:

There, facing Wallace on the tube, was Clinton with the two most vulnerable inches of exposed flesh, the inches between his ankles and his pants. Hadn't anyone told him that, in the circles in which he travels, one wears socks that reach above the calf?

Mr. Morris, a former Clinton political adviser, says former President Clinton lost control. The real Clinton emerges was his opinion in an article for The Hill on September 26, 2006. Mr. Morris stated in part:

There he was on live television, the man those who have worked for him have come to know – the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch. The truer the accusation, the greater the feigned indignation. Clinton jabbed his finger in Wallace’s face, poking his knee, and invading the commentator’s space.

On the other hand, others, like Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, opined in a column titled: Why Clinton "Lost His Temper, " that the former president knew what he was doing. Basically Mr. Kristol was arguing that it was a staged performance, planned in advance and a lesson in theater 101. He begins:

LET'S DO A THOUGHT experiment: Perhaps Bill Clinton, an experienced and sophisticated politician, knew what he was doing when he made big news by "losing his temper" in his interview with Chris Wallace. Perhaps Clinton's aides knew what they were doing when they publicized the interview by providing their own transcript to a left-wing website as soon as possible Friday evening, and then pre-spun reporters late Friday and Saturday. Maybe it was just damage control. Or maybe Clinton did what he wanted to do when he indignantly defended himself, blasted the Bush administration, and attacked Fox News. What could Clinton have been seeking to accomplish? Three things.

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In Clinton's Intimidation Tactics Were Way Out of Line, Mark Davis writes in part:

I don't mean to spoil an entire week of multilayered analysis, but the Bill Clinton spectacle over the weekend on Fox News Sunday comes down to one simple thing: once a bully, always a bully.

…

By the time the Clinton tantrum was over, it was clear he had two goals - to defend his record and to energize Democrats by giving a dreaded Fox personality the old what-for.

In, Bill Clinton: Play It as It Lies, Ron Cass addresses what he feels are the many misstatements and inaccuracies. While numerous blogs by supporters and the faithful argued that the question was rude and former President Clinton was correct to respond with righteous indignation to that obnoxious Fox News interrogator.

John Brummett of Arkansas News Bureau, in a piece titled: Catching up with Clintonian calculations, stated that over his years observing them, the Clintons were always 72 hours ahead of him, but he learned not to under-estimate their advanced planning for political purposes.

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Did Bill and Hillary calculate all this from the beginning? Or did they get together afterward to concoct a way to spin their way out of the mad fit he'd thrown on national TV?

Beats me. I just know that, either way, a delicate political balance teeters.

So you ask, “What was missing?” We had fireworks, theater, in your face give and take and tantalizing trivia to speculate about all week—in short, just like Bogie and Bacall, We Had It All!

My objection is that it was a missed opportunity for a touch of class. Arriving from his second annual Global Initiative forum in New York where more than $7 billion was pledged to tackle some of the worst problems in developing countries, such as poverty, disease and climate change, the Sunday News Forum begged for a touch of class or a grace note and true statesmanship.

A classy answer, perhaps rephrasing the question if deemed to overly loaded, to one such as, “What more could I have done?” And then perhaps a reply along these lines:

You know Chris, if you are asking, “What more could I have done?” it is a question I have thought about many times. Looking back, despite the Country being attacked by terrorists during three prior administrations and all of my efforts, I wish I had tried harder to persuade the country that we really were at war and it was time to take significant military action. Just as President Lincoln led the country during an unpopular war, it was a missed opportunity on my part to lead by trying to influence and persuade. If I had done that, even if we weren’t ready for war yet, I might have reset the landscape sooner for President Bush. I wish I had just begun a dialogue with the American public explaining that we had to move to a war footing.

No histrionics, no theater, just a humble reply by someone who demonstrates in a classy way that after being “the man in the arena” he has matured. He is a statesman now and although the record shows he tried numerous options he understands there was one more thing he could have done even if all indications were that the Country wasn’t ready for it.

Now consider, or as Mr. Kristol would say, LET'S DO A THOUGHT experiment: Which Bill Clinton would you prefer to see in the White House in 2008 with his wife as President, “ the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch” described by Mr. Morris or the elder Statesman who upon leaving a major fund raising event demonstrates a touch of class and accepts responsibility for what happened on his watch?