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.

…

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.

….

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.

_______________________________________________________________________

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)

_______________________________________________________________________

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.

….

(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.

….

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.

….

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?

Jack Murtha is in the news again. Power Line blog is asking the question: “Mad Jack Going Down?” They recognize that it may be a dream with a short quote and then link to a story at Red State blog about Congressman Murtha’s opponent, Diana Irey. The news story suggests her polling numbers are improving and provides a link to contribute to her campaign. Her blog includes her background and qualifications along with the fact that Mrs. Irey served on the boards of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Growth Alliance and Pittsburgh Regional Alliance executive board and she was named one of the top "60 Pittsburghers of the year" by Pittsburgh Magazine in December 1999. (Stay with me please, I will get back to Pittsburgh which is the “big city” near most of the 12^th District voters.)

Then I thought, during one of those inspirational “ah ha” moments when the sky parts and all is clear, that maybe he meant Fort Dix, New Jersey? Fort Dix is one of those late 1960 garden spots that will be forever etched in my memory as a result of my short vacation at Fort Dix for Army boot camp.

Then Mr. Murtha advised that “over the horizon” meant Okinawa. I thought that I actually liked my idea of Fort Dix better. Air miles and travel time were probably about the same and furthermore news reports indicated that we were leaving the island of Okinawa. But still like a bur under the saddle there was that question about where to redeploy with “an exit strategy?” Then in late August I read a Washington Post story: “Service in Iraq: Just How Risky?” The story noted that:

Between March 21, 2003, when the first military death was recorded in Iraq, and March 31, 2006, there were 2,321 deaths among American troops in Iraq. Seventy-nine percent were a result of action by hostile forces. Troops spent a total of 592,002 "person-years" in Iraq during this period. The ratio of deaths to person-years, .00392, or 3.92 deaths per 1,000 person-years, is the death rate of military personnel in Iraq.
…

The death rate for African American men ages 20 to 34 in Philadelphia was 4.37 per 1,000 in 2002, 11 percent higher than among troops in Iraq. Slightly more than half the Philadelphia deaths were homicides.

The greater comparative risk of a young African-American dying in Philadelphia caught my eye and I have been waiting to ask Mr. Murtha about his exit strategy for young males in Philadelphia. And now maybe with my new blog I can get an answer to my question for Mr. Murtha, “what is his exit strategy for Philadelphia”?

Is it possible that with the race tightening Mr. Murtha will travel to Philadelphia?

Will he tell the 18 to 30 year olds that conditions are so bad in Philadelphia that they need an exit strategy?

Will his exit strategy for young Philadelphians be – “Move to Pittsburgh?” Hey, that isn’t a bad idea, Pittsburgh is a great city and the Pitt University basketball team will be in the Top 10 rankings this year. Here’s hoping that Mr. Murtha can redeploy to Pittsburgh.

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

Timeless Truths

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." - Everlasting Man, 1925

____________________________________________________________

* 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

October is Chesterton Month for Daily Quotes: G.K. Chesterton is a three-story intellect* whose “... best illuminations come from above through the skylight.”

The Cult of Progress

"Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision." - Orthodoxy, 1908

________________________________________________________

* Who are three story thinkers? Oliver Wendell Holmes provided the idea for this series of 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

Selection Criteria: A writer, thinker, or public figure (man or woman) whose thoughts still enlighten us spiritually or intellectually will be selected for one month and each day one of his or her quotes will be featured.

Who are three story thinkers? Oliver Wendell Holmes provided the idea for this series of 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

October’s Three-Story Thinker: G.K. Chesterton

Where can I read more about Chesterton? See a companion blog for today for a list of links to more information about Chesterton.

Comments: Comments are encouraged and if you have a favorite quote from my monthly three-story thinker please post.

October’s Third Story Man - G. K. Chesterton

Links:

    * Dale Ahlquist has done yeoman service to introduce Chesterton to a new generation of readers.  Here is an extract from his informative profile: Who is this guy and why haven't I heard of him?

…

This absent-minded, overgrown elf of a man, who laughed at his own jokes and amused children at birthday parties by catching buns in his mouth, this was the man who wrote a book called The Everlasting Man, which led a young atheist named C.S. Lewis to become a Christian. This was the man who wrote a novel called The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which inspired Michael Collins to lead a movement for Irish Independence. This was the man who wrote an essay in the Illustrated London News that inspired Mohandas Gandhi to lead a movement to end British colonial rule in India. This was a man who, when commissioned to write a book on St. Thomas Aquinas, had his secretary check out a stack of books on St. Thomas from the library, opened the top book on the stack, thumbed through it, closed it, and proceeded to dictate a book on St. Thomas. Not just any book. The renowned Thomistic scholar, Ettienne Gilson, had this to say about it:

…                                                                                                                                     

* The American Chesterton Society – is the best place to start for more on Chesterton.

* Best Chesterton WWW Links 

* Gilbert Magazine is published every six weeks by The American Chesterton Society and covers all things Chesterton.

* Chesterton Information and Resources – ambitious site with lots of links to Chesterton.

* Recommended Author/Book on Chesterton: Schall on Chesterton: Timely Essays on Timeless Paradoxes: James V. Schall

* Recommended video dramatization on Chesterton: THE APOSTLE OF
COMMON SENSE - The first three series are available on video. And DVD is coming soon. Coming in 2007 - THE APOSTLE OF COMMON SENSE IV All-new episodes! To order any of the first three series, please visit The American Chesterton Society Merchandise Page.

President Bush delivered a speech on the Global War on Terror to the Reserve Officer’s Association, on Friday, Sept 29, 2006. As he closed he acknowledged the bravery of our troops with an account of the courage of our men and women in uniform and in an inspiring anecdote recognized the wisdom of a military spouse.

We can have confidence in the outcome of the war on terror -- because our nation is determined. We've done this kind of hard work before, and we have succeeded. And we can be confident because we've got incredible men and women who wear our nation's uniform. (Applause.) I am constantly amazed at the incredible courage that our fellow citizens who wear the uniform show on a regular basis.

I think of two Navy SEALs named Matthew Axelson and Danny Deetz. In June of 2005, they were part of a SEAL team operating deep in the mountains of Afghanistan on a mission to kill or capture a Taliban leader. They were discovered, and they were soon surrounded in a mountain ravine by 30 to 40 Taliban fighters. During the firefight that ensued, Axelson urged an injured teammate to escape, and he provided cover before suffering a mortal wound. Fighting nearby, his partner Deetz was also mortally wounded, but he too stood his ground and kept firing until finally, he finally died.

Because of the courage of Petty Officers Axelson and Deetz, their wounded teammate made it out alive. For their heroism, these two Petty Officers were awarded the Navy Cross. But I want you to hear what Petty Officer Deetz's wife said about her husband and his comrades in arms. She said, "Danny and his brothers went toward evil and ran forward and gave their last breath." (Emphasis added)

It is hard to describe my feelings after hearing this story. I wondered why this sad and tragic account of the early deaths’ of Petty Officers Axelson and Deetz moved me. I decided it was in part due to the bravery of the military spouse, Mrs. Deetz. At a time of great personal loss she was able to have the clarity of mind to recognize that “Danny and his brothers” accepted their task with supreme spirit, a fully dutiful conscience, and a clear understanding of the road they must travel.

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 how the Bhagavad Gita belongs on his list of great books. In his telling of the allegory of Krishna, the charioteer of Arjuna, Professors Fears explains that wisdom consists of understanding karma, which means the task that an individual has been assigned as his life work. The choice to accept karma must be made with full realization of the difficulty of performing one’s duty. Krishna teaches Arjuna that his duty is to fight this war. There is then a discussion of the ways one can respond when faced with their own choice. For Hindus how you respond has a large bearing on whether you experience liberation, rise a step or two, or face a future life as a cockroach or worse. The options, however, even for those who are not Hindus present the issue squarely. A person can:

            1. Renounce the assigned task,
            2. Accept the assigned task with fear,
            3. Accept the task with a whole heart, or 
            4. Accept the task with supreme spirit and a fully dutiful conscience and understanding.

Throughout history there are accounts of those who selected choice number 4, to accept the road they must travel with supreme spirit and a fully dutiful conscience and understanding. For example, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor, left New York and returned to Germany to join the resistance against Nazism and Hitler. He was tried and executed on April 9, 1945, as the allies advanced in the final days of WWII. He spent his final time in prison writing his "Letter and Papers From Prison." Another historical figure, Gandhi also understood the choice he had to make and the road he must travel. He was to spend his life gaining independence for India from colonial rule. Throughout history there is something remarkable about those courageous figures that with clarity of action recognize the course they must follow, accept the challenge they face, and rise above the distractions and noise of our everyday existence.

To Petty Officers Axelson and Deetz, "Bravo Zulu" shipmates. Your certainty in knowing your task, your courage to see the task through, and your clarity of purpose will be remembered.