Fouad Ajami on the reasons for European spinelessness in the face of Islamic terror and the reason why appeasement won't work:
Europe's leaders know Europe's dilemmas. In ways both intended and subliminal, the escape into anti-Americanism is an attempt at false bonding with the peoples of Islam. Give the Arabs--and the Muslim communities implanted in Europe--anti-Americanism, give them an identification with the Palestinians, and you shall be spared their wrath. Beat the drums of opposition to America's war in Iraq, and the furies of this radical Islamism will pass you by. This is seen as a way around the troubles. But there is no exit that way. It is true that Spain supported the American campaign in Iraq, but that aside, Spain's identification with Arab aims has a long history. Of all the larger countries of the EU, Spain has been most sympathetic to Palestinian claims. It was only in 1986 that Spain recognized Israel and established diplomatic ties. With the sole exception of Greece, Spain has shown the deepest reserve toward Israel. Yet this history offered no shelter from the bombers of March 11.
A fascinating little story from a Hungarian village where wives have been "murdering their menfolk since time immemorial".
I'm sorry but I find it really hard to take Jack Layton seriously. Though he is infinitely more adept than his two spiritless predecessors at getting his elfish features on the evening news, he still doesn't have anything important to say. Proof of this, and of the poverty-stricken level of policy emerging from the Left, is his recent stunt: to rat out Paul Martin to Bono.
In a six-page open letter to the former rock-singer-turned-conscience-of-the-western-world Layton tattles on the Prime Minister. Oooh, look Bono, he squeals, Martin said he was going to give to the global fund to fight African disease and he didn't even mention it in his throne speech! Matters got worse when one of Layton's minions asked Martin a question in the House and prefaced it with the warning "we are sending his answer to Bono, so I hope he thinks about his reply."
Now Martin deserves this, and worse, because of his toadying to Bono at the Liberal convention but Canada deserves better. If Jack Layton wants to hold the Prime Minister accountable to someone it should be the nation's electorate.
Let us end this post with a word about good manners. The nation's stubbiest socialist signs off his letter to Bono thusly: "Sincerely and with thanks, Jack Layton, Ph.D." Like most holders of a doctorate of philosophy, Dexter knows that the title is only properly used in matters pertaining to one's academic discipline. One does not employ it in letters to one's tailor or to add a specious credibility to a public relations ploy.
Among the many occasions for oratory that human experience gives rise to, my favourite has been the moment where one tells one's adversary to go to Hell.
This has been done with irreducible brevity, as when General Anthony McAuliffe, commander of the besieged American defenders of Bastogne, replied to a German demand to surrender with the single word: "Nuts!"
It has been done with Elizabethan elegance, as in this reply of the messenger of the Countess of Shrewsbury to Sir Thomas Stanhope:
My lady hath commanded me to say this much to you. That though you be more wretched, vile and miserable than any creature living; and for your wickedness become more ugly in shape than the vilest toad in the world; and one to whom none of reputation would vouchsafe to send any message; yet she hath thought good to send thus much to you: that she be contented you should live (and doth noways wish your death) but to this end - that all the plagues and miseries that may befall any man may light upon such a caitiff as you are; and that you should live to have all your friends forsake you; and, without your great repentance (which she looketh not for, because your life hath been so bad) you be damned perpetually in Hell Fire.
It would be hard, however, to improve upon the simple righteousness of Archbishop Livingstone Mpalanyi Nkoyoyo on behalf of the Anglican Church of Uganda. Writing to the leader of the American Episcopalians who had just consecrated an openly gay bishop, he reiterated that the Ugandan church had broken off relations with their counterparts in the United States:
Considering those things, we were shocked to receive a letter from you informing us of your decision to send a delegation to the enthronement of our new Archbishop in January, and your intention for the delegation to bring aid and assistance for the people who live in desperate conditions in the camps in Gulu that you have ignored for years. Recent comments by your staff suggesting that your proposed visit demonstrates that normal relations with the Church of Uganda continue have made your message clear: If we fall silent about what you have done -- promoting unbiblical sexual immorality -- and we overturn or ignore the decision to declare a severing of relationship with ECUSA, poor displaced persons will receive aid.
Here is our response: The gospel of Jesus Christ is not for sale, even among the poorest of us who have no money. Eternal life, obedience to Jesus Christ, and conforming to his Word are more important. The Word of God is clear that you have chosen a course of separation that leads to spiritual destruction. Because we love you, we cannot let that go unanswered. If your hearts remain hardened to what the Bible clearly teaches, and your ears remain deaf to the cries of other Christians, genuine love demands that we do not pretend that everything is normal. As a result any delegation you send cannot be welcomed, received, or seated. Neither can we share fellowship nor even receive desperately needed resources. If, however, you repent and return to the Lord, it would be an occasion of great joy.
Odds on that God exists, says scientist.
In an announcement that may see sinners, skeptics and lapsed believers dusting off the family Bible, Dr Stephen Unwin, a risk assessor, stated that his computations indicate a 67% chance that God exists. His new book The Probability of God: A Simple Calculation considers the arguments for and against the likelihood of a benevolent, powerful deity and comes down on the side of theism.
Bookies in London are currently taking bets on the Second Coming at odds of 1000-1 and require the confirmation of the Archbishop of Canterbury before a payoff.
Yet another reason why I plan to homeschool.
An American couple was arrested after a fight about a finer point of Christian theology. The husband and wife were in disagreement as to the precise nature of the Trinity. While it is of course shameful for a married couple to come to blows, I find it almost comforting that there are still people who take the underlying theology so seriously. Perhaps we should schedule a fistfight to settle the issue of whether Christ's humanity co-existed with his divinity, or whether his humanity was simply as a drop in the ocean of his divinity. It's been far too long since people worried about that.
Noted Palestinian film critic Yasser Arafat yesterday gave his seal of approval to Mel Gibson's MovieThe Passion of the Christ. An aide to the Nobel Prize winner and humanitarian said: "The Palestinians are still daily being exposed to the kind of pain Jesus was exposed to during his crucifixion."
When asked what aspect of the film had particularly moved him, Arafat replied that he really liked the scene where Jesus strapped nail-filled explosives to his body and detonated himself in a bus full of Roman school children.
From the archives of The American Enterprise magazine, a synopsis of the social benefits of religiousity. I have some sympathy with Zinsmeister's assertion of offense at those who recommend religion to solve social ills; this does seem excessively prosaic. Given the level of civilization that hangs in the balance, though, my inclination is to press on with proselytism even if the new converts initially are simply going through the motions.
The traditional rabbinical advice to those who don't believe echoes the joke about what the Pope tells an atheist priest: Fake it. This reflects not a lack of respect for true faith and belief, but rather the recognition that leading a pious lifestyle is more likely to result in a heartfelt conversion than simply navel-gazing and waiting for an epiphany while behaving badly. The deeper explanation is that following the elaborate prescriptions of the Law actually orients the adherent toward belief, piety and faith. In a religion that emphasizes deed over creed, as it were, this is an especially pragmatic approach to the issue. In Christianity, where belief and thought occupy a much more pivotal position, this may well not be feasible. Still, I'd far rather live in a society of people who behave like Christians without quite knowing why than one of people who act like atheists and justify their behaviour accordingly.
Charles Murray considers Aristotelian logic to be a mixed blessing. He makes the interesting connection between the origination of logic, the ability to think in a meaningful manner about what is and isn't true, and the eventual triumph of theory over empiricism. Anybody who has spent time in the humanities faculty of a university will know immediately what he means by this. Such cognitive leaps of faith are the only way to reconcile American feminists growing ever angrier about patriarchy as women's live grow more free, fulfilling and prosperious, or the curious spectacle of the academic left having kittens over the alleged atrocities of Guantanamo Bay while remaining curiously cavalier about Saddam's rape rooms and children's wings on prisons. Worst of all in terms of embracing theory over empiricism, though, are economics and psychology, which have virtually no predictive value (as empirically based knowledge frequently does) but claim for themselves the intellectual rigours of hard science. The late, great Neil Postman saw great value in the social sciences, but only if they were seen for what they were: stories about people and how they behave, rather than immutable sciences. Would that there were more humanities professors like him.
An excellent essay on why appeasement doesn't work. Also some interesting points about Islam, imperialism and Wahabism in general.
In an earlier blog I was forced to expose readers to Christopher Hitchens in one of his sillier moments. Hitchens, however, is capable of some very intelligent writing and here is a fine example. One would have to go far to find Hitchens in better form than in this article -- well-read, balanced and perceptive -- on Edmund Burke and the French Revolution.
Note, dear reader, that this is the third posting I have made in the past few days that refers to Don Quixote, "the metaphysic knight of the sorrowful countenance". Surely a record.
Note also the elegance of Burke and his opponents. Even when they are uttering stuff and nonsense there is an undeniable charm that has long since abandoned English prose. Speaking of insults made to the French queen Marie Antoinette Burke mourns:
Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.
Who will leap to such a courtly defence of the much-maligned Queen of Canada, John Ralston Saul, in these debased times?
The French Prime Minister receives a terror threat vowing attacks in revenge for banning the veil in schools. Surely years of subverting American efforts should count for something!
Both of the preceding poems are full of imagery that no longer has much currency in North American culture but which at one time was part of the fabric of Western Civilization itself. I publish them here as both lament and monument.
Turner's 2004 poem self-consciously evokes many of the same themes and characters as Chesterton's 1915 work but where Chesterton evoked Spain's ancient greatness and crusading zeal with gratitude Turner uses Spain's past to shame present-day Spaniards. He is absolutely correct to do so. The cowardly behaviour of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's new Socialist government has placed every Western nation in peril and, needless to say, their pusillanimity will not protect Spain from the designs of those who see that country as al Andalus, former Muslim territory that needs to be returned by force to the faith of the Prophet.
The Battle of Lepanto in 1571 was an epic clash between the forces of Christendom -- the fleets of Spain, Venice and the Papal States, commanded by the legendary bastard son of Charles V, Don John of Austria -- and the Turkish navy, off the coast of Greece. The result was a victory for the West that had more symbolic value than strategic importance, but as both our poets have pointed out, it also meant the liberation of thousands of Christian galley slaves. Though a politically-correct amnesia is now fashionable, it is dangerous today to forget that North African Muslims waged a cruel centuries-long campaign of slave-taking against Christian Europe. A recent book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 claims that between 1,000,000 and 1,250,000 prisoners were enslaved by Islamic corsairs.
How was this slave trade ended? Not by the French who lent naval bases to Islamic fleets so that they might make war on France's Christian enemies. Not by craven European states who paid protection money to the slavers. It was fought by the unilateralism of the American navy and marines under the slogan of "Millions for defence; not one penny for tribute!" and by the British Royal Navy which spent decades suppressing the world-wide traffic in human flesh. Glory and honour to them. Shame on Spain. Long live the memory of Lepanto and Don John, Tripoli and Stephen Decatur. A perpetual burning rectal itch for Senor Zapatero.
Lepanto
by G.K. Chesterton
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
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 attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young.
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain -- hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees;
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be,
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done.
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth."
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still -- hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.
St. Michaels on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes,
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee, --
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.
King Philip's in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John's hunting, and his hounds have bayed --
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.
The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign --
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
On Hearing that Spain Has Capitulated to the Terrorists
by Frederick Turner
From Burgos to Valencia
in the bright Spanish air
The spirit of the Campeador
has journeyed in despair,
The great sword that Alfonso gave
he breaks upon the shore.
El Cid has risen from his tomb,
he's parted with Ximene,
His people, whose bright honor still
has never suffered stain,
Now run from battle, hide their heads:
he is ashamed of Spain.
AOI.
And now he's passing over sea,
toward the lands of dawn;
A falcon in the falling dusk,
he hears a distant horn;
Another spirit travels there
Roland, the Frankish-born.
High in the snow-swept Pyrenees
where he had thought to lie
Until the last great horn-blast calls
those whose fate is to die,
He's cast the shards of Durandal
into the starry sky,
And in the shades of Roncesvalles
where he kept his last stand
He has renounced his captaincy
and given up command;
For who is there to stand with him
who loves his native land?
AOI.
And in the night they pass above
the isle of Ithaca,
And over white Naupaktos fades
the rising morning star;
And here the third of the great shades
has met them from afar:
It is the spirit of Don John,
Lepanto's admiral,
Who freed ten thousand galley-slaves
from the grand Turk's long thrall;
He has arisen from his grave
in the Escorial.
Where once the great guns of the fleets
crashed out in victory
Three spirits come in grief to seek
reburial at sea,
For Spain has turned her back upon
their antique chivalry.
AOI.
And who will speak their requiem?
A poet who bore a gun:
Miguel Cervantes, who was there
in fifteen seventy-one
And boarded the great galley when
the fight was not yet won.
"My masters, on the golden hills
of Leon and Castile
The windmills now unchallenged turn,
the Don in fear will kneel
Before a wooden giant who
is nothing but a wheel;
"But you have kept your honor bright,
and though it was in vain
To guard the walls of Europe then
that would fall down again,
In exile and forgetfulness,
where you are, there is Spain."
AOI.
Frederick Turner is Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities, University of Texas at Dallas
In a refreshing break with past corrupt Liberal practices Treasury Board president Reg Alcock said Monday that Ottawa will use a new, merit-based system of appointing senior executives of Crown corporations. Mr Alcock, who earlier stated in the House that he was pleased to be a cabin-boy on the ship of state when Paul Martin was the captain, said the purpose of the new regulations was to "bring more professionalism and transparency" into the process.
Thanks to mutinous crew members aboard the good ship "Liberal Cabinet" (registered in the Bahamas; 24 guns, all cracked) Dexter has been provided with the new guidelines and presents them here:
01. Language Skills
Is the candidate a fluently bilingual Quebecer?
If YES, award 25 points; if NO, throw away application.
02. Entrepreneurial Skills
Has the candidate bought shares in Canadian Steamship Lines or Shawinigan hotels?
If YES, award 25 points; if NO, offer him opportunity to purchase. If, after offer, answer is still NO, throw away application.
03. Political Skills
Has the candidate ever been a member of a Liberal cabinet?
If YES, award 25 points; if NO, ask why he bothered applying.
04. Moral Rectitude
Has the candidate ever been forced to resign from cabinet because of charges of corruption?
If YES, award 20 points; if NO, get name of his lawyer.
05. Knowledge of Health-Care System
Has candidate ever been found guilty of forging mistress's husband's signature on application for mistress's abortion?
If YES, candidate is Francis Fox and is already Prime Minster Martin's principal secretary. If NO, refer him to Mr Fox for career tips.
For those many Castorblog readers who continue to ask, "Dexter, why don't you include more news from the Antipodes?" we are pleased to highlight the following spat from New Zealand.
It seems that opposition leader Don Brash has decided to get personal in his political struggle with Prime Minister Helen Clark. Hearing that the prime minister was to deliver a policy speech at the Anglican Cathedral in Christchurch, Dr Brash grew vexed and turned down an invitation to also speak there. He wrote to the Dean of the cathedral saying:
"You will be aware of my views that it is not appropriate for a cathedral to be used for such purposes, even leaving aside the Prime Minister's atheism, her abandonment of grace at state function and her indifference to the institution of marriage."
Them's fightin' words in the South Pacific and the prime minister shot back to make it clear that she was NOT an atheist, she was an agnostic, and furthermore she had only been married once, unlike someone she could name. (Mind you, her affirmation of the importance of marriage was a bit watery, rather like that of our own dear Governor-General John Ralston Saul and his charming-wife-whom-he-married-only-because-of-the-job Adrienne Clarkson. Quoth Mrs Hunt: "I think legal marriage is unnecessary, and I would not have formalised the relationship except for going into Parliament.")
It turns out that Dr Brash, son of the former head of the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand, wasn't all that much a devout theist himself. When asked if believed in a god he replied: "If you mean, 'Do I believe there is a supernatural being with whom I can talk', then no."
Furthermore it appears that his own belief in the sanctity of the married state had been flexible, having admitted to committing adultery during the first of his two marriages. (He did go on to make an honest woman of his mistress, a former Kiwfruit Authority colleague.)
So, says Dexter, bad cess to both philandering, agnostic politicoes. But really, abolishing grace at state dinners, that's just going too far.
Here is a very bleak look at marriage, of both gay and commonplace varieties. The author is right in many of his particulars but his overall conclusion is unnecessarily pessimistic.
Nowhere does the Sensing support the assertion implied in the headline that the Pill led inevitably to gay marriage. Generally reliable and widely available contraception may have been a necessary condition for the sexual revolution, but it was hardly sufficient; far more important were such changes as the new view of marriage as oppressive, patriarchal and/or bourgeouis, the acceptance as quasi-marriage of cohabitation, and the removal of stigma from non-marital births. By itself the Pill does not need to cause promiscuity any more than widely available firearms need cause shooting sprees.
The key to changing things is suggested by this sentence in the essay: ... [T]alk in 2004 of "saving marriage" is pretty specious. There's little there left to save. Men and women today who have successful, enduring marriages till death do them part do so in spite of society, not because of it.
We can start by recognizing the great contribution made by longlasting marriages. By paying more taxes, consuming fewer services and producing citizens who need less remedial parenting via psychiatry and the prison system, husbands and wives in life-long marriages do their community a fiscal favour. More importantly, though, they serve as an example that statistics and pop culture notwithstanding, marriage is still a viable concern. Lost in the 1960s storm of consciousness-raising was the truth that at its best marriage is a partnership that allows both spouses to become better people than they originally were, and it is increasingly hard to think of a good reason why a young couple of no particular religious fervour should marry instead of cohabit. The religious significance of marriage is by no means minimal, but there are a multitude of other reasons to marry that have been widely forgotten, in part because so few adults are in lifelong marriages as compared to in earlier times.
The flipside of this is that we must recognize that cohabitation is not the equivalent of marriage, and it does nobody any favours to pretend that it is. The respect, tax deductions and other privileges of marriage traditionally afforded to those who make a lifelong commitment should not be extended toward those who adopt the trappings of a marriage without its substance. Marking a line between marriage and other living arrangements will perhaps make it clear to couples that they can't be sort-of married, or as-good-as married; either they are or they aren't. With luck this will encourage some of them to make an actual marriage; if it encourages the less suitable pairings not only not to marry but also not to cohabit that will also be to the good.
The stigmatization of illegitimacy is a trickier issue. It may well be that this is, for the next generation or two at least, a bell that can't be unrung, since at this stage any return of this stigma would penalize children, those least culpable in the affair, and not their parents. And the children of unmarried parents already have the deck stacked against them: unmarried parents are far, far more likely to live apart by the child's fifth birthday than those married at the time of the child's birth. The presence of a full-time father, in turn, has recently been found to be of more significance in predicting a child's academic success than race, social status, or any other advantage or disadvantage.
It does indeed seem unfair from a certain perspective to allow the Britneys of the world their 48 hour marriages, or the Elizabeth Taylors their serial marriages, while forbidding gay couples from marrying. If everyone else can make a travesty of the institution, well, why not them? But this is not the solution. I am not yet ready to surrender entirely. The answer is not to trivialize all relationships but to elevate marriage once again, and to remember that marriage and the nuclear family have always been the essential molecule of civilization. A concerted campaign in favour of marriage may not have the odds on its side, but the stakes are too high not to make the effort.
It appears that Islamic terrorists have successfully, and quite easily, influenced the election of an appeasement-friendly government in Spain. We will now get a preview of how effective the leftist response to terror can be as we watch Spain try to shift heat away from itself by adapting to the demands of Wahabists everywhere. The likelihood of a terrorist attack in the USA on the eve of the next election also seems much greater than it did a week ago.
The sad thing is how futile this appeasement really is. If all of the West were to abandon Israel, if all of the West were to keep out of Arabia so as not to soil the holy land with their infidel presence, if headscarves were allowed throughout France and liquor stores closed throughout the USA, this would still not be enough to buy peace from Islamist terror. Historically Moslems have loathed Christians far more than they have Jews, and their contempt for secularism, and communism is also well documented. I normally loathe the formulation "first they came for the Jews" ... etc, when used for rhetorical purposes. In this case it seems amply justified.
In an indispensable article in The Spectator Mark Steyn compares the mighty and religious US with the weak and secular European Union and concludes that the European flight from religion has undermined the continent in important ways. He also points out that had Quebec remained seriously Catholic it would now be a separate republic. Hearken to his words (I would link to it but the magazine requires a registration):
What happens when you opt for the ‘post-Christian future’? Take my beloved Quebec. As recently as 1960, the birth rate in the province was an average of four children per couple. (Jean Chrétien, the recently retired Canadian prime minister, was the 18th of 19 children of a Quebec mill worker.) But then came the so-called ‘Quiet Revolution’, determined to free the people not just from the House of Windsor but from the Church of Rome, too. There’s a fine scene in Denys Arcand’s Barbarian Invasions in which a sad Catholic priest in Montreal explains to an art appraiser from London that one month in the Sixties the churches simply emptied out and the people never came back.
Fast forward to 1995, and Quebec’s referendum on ‘sovereignty’. Lucien Bouchard, the separatist leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition, wanders off-message in one speech and urges the women of the province to have more children because they have one of the lowest fertility rates of any ‘white race’ on the planet. Immediately, all the bien pensant types berate him for his faux pas. But the thing is, he wasn’t wrong. A couple of weeks later, his side narrowly lost the referendum, by a few thousand votes. Given that young Francophones tend to be separatist, had Quebec Catholics of the mid-Seventies had children at the same rate as their parents, M. Bouchard would now have his glorious république. Now he never will. Quebec couples have an average of 1.4 children, and their shrivelled fertility rate has cost them their country.
In the space of a generation, a Catholic backwater became the most militantly secularist jurisdiction in North America. Marriage is a dying institution: Quebec has the highest rate of common-law relationships on the continent. Families are a dying institution: Quebec has the highest rate of abortion in Canada. And more to the point, as far as the separatists are concerned, the dream of an independent country is dead. Andre Langevin, the enterprising mayor of Coaticook, a small town on my commute from New Hampshire to Montreal, offers his citizens $75 for their first child, $150 for the second, and $750 for every child thereafter, plus various other incentives. M. Langevin understands the basic arithmetic of the Euro-Canadian welfare state: without population growth, it’s insolvent. Unfortunately, the paradox of a welfarist society is that it weans people away from the familial impulse necessary to sustain it.
But some of us are certainly trying. Joseph Epstein writes about the culture of perpetual youth in modern America. He may not be right about Friends deriving its popularity from the eternal adolescence of its characters; after all, what would really be the point in watching a sitcom about an average, functional marriage with commonplace, somewhat achieving children? The wider trend, though, is undeniable and Epstein sums it up well.
It's often pointed out that Generation X is shaping up to be the first generation in a very long time that will fail to outdo the previous one, in terms of wealth, achievement or personal fulfillment (although not in terms of Masters degrees in Women's Studies, Post-Colonial Theory, or Queer Studies, areas of which Gen X has achieved undisputed mastery.) This cohort's insistence on clinging to the habits and trappings of youth is responsible for a large share of this failure. Other symptoms of this deferment of adulthood can be seen in the astonishment of women in their 40s upon learning that they cannot effortlessly have children, as well as in the rise of "no collar workers", who work chiefly in the computer field, and who can get away with wearing T-shirts to offices previously occupied only by people in suits.
This isn't all bad. Formality for its own sake can lead to stagnation, and the creation of entertainment, like the Simpsons, that can appeal to many generations is a wonderful thing. Apart from their failure to accrue real estate and build pensions, though, the perpetual youth of Generation X may well become a more significant problem in the near future. The next Depression may not be imminent, but the next World War is already underway, and we will need many grown-ups on our side to come out of it in good shape. You'd never know it from today's popular culture, though; these may be the times that try men's souls, but they don't seem to bother the kids much.
An essay on NRO explains the issue with Passion critics that's been nagging at me for some time. Gorin articulates it far better than I could. The key paragraph:
If Jews spent less time worrying about ancient hatreds and more time worrying about the glaring contemporary ones, we wouldn't have come to a point where the legitimacy of Israel's very existence is regularly questioned and where the Jews get blamed when Muslims bomb America. While Jews worry about things like intermarriage, a sleepy KKK, an Austrian named Haider, a second president named Bush, and now a movie about Christ, the real threats spiral out of control.
The greatest coup enjoyed by the homosexual lobby in the USA is its unchallenged claim to be the heirs to the civil rights struggles of the recent past. This is absurd, but incredibly powerful; the moment conservatives and family advocates allow themselves to be cast as opposing civil rights is the moment the battle is over. Since same-sex marriage has come under the umbrella of civil rights, though, the fact that gays have precisely the same rights as everybody else has been obscured.
All Americans, regardless of their orientation, have the right to marry an adult, umarried, unrelated member of the opposite sex. No Americans have the right to marry a blood relative, a person who is already married, a person in an institution, a person under 18 without parental permission, or a person under 16 in any circumstances. For the time being, as well, no American has the right to marry a person of the same sex.
It is undeniable that there are people who wish they could marry people of the same sex. It is equally obvious that there are people who wish they could marry a person who is already married. Judging from the long and sordid annals of Jerry Springer, there are also people who wish they could marry blood relatives, people under 18, and people in institutions, sometimes who want to marry people who fit in all three categories at once. This is unfortunate to the extent that any unfulfillable dream is unfortunate; when someone believes this obstacle is the only impediment to their happiness it can be tragic. But the solution is not to redefine marriage. Rather than turning cartwheels to allow marriage to include same sex unions, which would then necessitate either allowing, or coming up with entirely arbitrary reasons for prohibiting, other heretofore forbidden marriages, we should turn our energies toward strengthening marriage as it currently exists.
An affront to civil rights occurs when one group of people is denied a right enjoyed by others on an arbitrary basis. (Prisoners are denied rights enjoyed by others all the time, for instance. Children are denied the right to marry. Neither of these is widely considered a civil rights violation.) So the notion of gay marriage being a civil right is refutable on at least two grounds: first, that it is not an attempt to extend a basic right to all people but rather to fabricate from thin air a completely new right; and second, that society frequently denies some rights to some people when the greater interests of society are served by this denial.
The kind of teachers' strike that I could support.