Corporal acts of mercy.

Burying the dead.

Of Fairy Tales and Comic Books and Heroes and Civilization - "The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon."

Ben Domenech has a nice reflection on Batman and Aurora, with side jaunts into The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It's worth reading:

You likely won’t be in a situation in your life where you are confronted by evil as murderous as the villain in Colorado or those on the screen. But you will be confronted by something that demands you set aside your fear to stand for what’s right, to sacrifice self-interest and safety for something more valuable than both. As Chesterton wrote, "The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon."

Remember in that moment: there’s always something you can do. Only you know what that is.

So do it.

Great Marriage Proposal.

Occasionally, you have to love human beings.

"What are you the best in the Country at?"

What a great question when someone tries to put you down for doing something that you love.

Check out this Mark Shea post on the quiet heroism of small things, and in particular the short movie on the "best crossword puzzler" in the nation, who can complete the New York Times crossword puzzle in ten minutes, and has no understanding why it would take anyone all afternoon to do the same thing.

Shea writes:

The cult of celebrity is evil because it teaches ordinary people, possessed of a dignity given to them by God most High, that they are nothing and can only find happiness and fulfillment through identification with those people who typically represent the very worst the world has to offer: namely, people who are famous for being famous. Result: millions of people seriously modeling themselves on vacuities like What Paris Hilton is Wearing Today or striving to emulate the immense pride and narcissism of Madonna or battening on the pathologies of Brangelina or Britney Spears. The cult of celebrity robs everybody involved in it (including, especially, the Celebrity) of their humanity. It creates, not a relationship of love, but of sick co-dependence.


The cult of quiet heroism is different. It allows ordinary people to do something they excel at, to be a hero for somebody else, to admire and wish to imitate excellence in the hero, and then to resume normal lives as fallen sinners and struggling saints. In short, it is ordered toward human dignity.

The woman in Wordplay, for instance, is completely ordinary. That is to say, she is a human being created by God in his image and likeness and possessed of a value greater than that of the whole universe. Moving among her fellow creatures in a way that is not egocentric or full of the flash, dazzle, and glamor of the Kingdom of Noise that the devil presides over, she quietly does something she loves and, in the process, becomes the best in the world at it. The result: the highly Chestertonian phenomenon of a human being who is, in a very particular room, among a very particular group of people, revered as a hero and a role model to be imitated. What a beautiful thing!

Indeed.

A culture of life, a culture of death.

Back when I was a libertarian I was opposed to "paternalism."  That included suicide.  I thought that it was a terrible imposition for one person to decide that another person did not have the power or ability to choose their important life decisions, such as killing themselves.  After all, Robert Heinlein in his libertarian novel "Beyond this Horizon" had coined the idea that the "right to die is the right to be free."

Libertarianism taken to that degree is an awful, inhuman, nihilistic, unloving philosophy.  As bad as that espoused by Peter Singer, whose recent contribution to the treasury of human thought is that we should all die off this generation.

Other people know the truth instinctively.  They know that the human thing is to intervene, to be paternalistic, to impose one's value on other people, particularly if it means saving their lives.

Australian "angel" watches over suicide spot - he's saved over 160 lives.

SYDNEY — In those bleak moments when the lost souls stood atop the cliff, wondering whether to jump, the sound of the wind and the waves was broken by a soft voice. "Why don't you come and have a cup of tea?" the stranger would ask. And when they turned to him, his smile was often their salvation.


For almost 50 years, Don Ritchie has lived across the street from Australia's most notorious suicide spot, a rocky cliff at the entrance to Sydney Harbour called The Gap. And in that time, the man widely regarded as a guardian angel has shepherded countless people away from the edge.

What some consider grim, Ritchie considers a gift. How wonderful, the former life insurance salesman says, to save so many. How wonderful to sell them life.

"You can't just sit there and watch them," says Ritchie, now 84, perched on his beloved green leather chair, from which he keeps a watchful eye on the cliff outside. "You gotta try and save them. It's pretty simple."

Since the 1800s, Australians have flocked to The Gap to end their lives, with little more than a 3-foot (1 meter) fence separating them from the edge. Local officials say around one person a week commits suicide there, and in January, the Woollahra Council applied for 2.1 million Australian dollars ($1.7 million) in federal funding to build a higher fence and overhaul security.

And:

But he remains available to lend an ear, though he never tries to counsel, advise or pry. He just gives them a warm smile, asks if they'd like to talk and invites them back to his house for tea. Sometimes, they join him.


"I'm offering them an alternative, really," Ritchie says. "I always act in a friendly manner. I smile."

A smile cannot, of course, save everyone; the motivations behind suicide are too varied. But simple kindness can be surprisingly effective. Mental health professionals tell the story of a note left behind by a man who jumped off San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way to the bridge, the man wrote, I will not jump.

By offering compassion, Ritchie helps those who are suicidal think beyond the terrible present moment, says psychiatrist Gordon Parker, executive director of the Black Dog Institute, a mood disorder research center that has supported the council's efforts to improve safety at The Gap.

"They often don't want to die, it's more that they want the pain to go away," Parker says. "So anyone that offers kindness or hope has the capacity to help a number of people."

Update:

Mark Shea writes:

It is such hidden heroes who make the world go around. The overwhelming bulk of grace at work in the world is dark matter. It's everywhere, but we almost never see it in the media.

Celebration

Tomorrow, Father Damien of Molokai becomes St. Damien of Molokai.

Here is the Father Damien website.

Got Inspiration?

100 Incredibly Inspiring Christian blogs.

Life with Dignity

John Peyton is dying of Lou Gehrig's Disease.

In the final months of his life, he wants to defeat the Washington Death with Dignity Law.



[Via The Curt Jester]

World doesn't end, minorities and women most affected...

Contrary to warnings on Monday, the world's largest accelerator experiment did not cast off mini-black holes, thereby sucking the world into gravitational limbo.

Well, there's always next time.

More Collateral Damage

What's wrong with the world reports that the McCain-Palin campaign released the fact that 17 year old Bristol Palin is pregnant because of insane speculation by the ugly left, including Andrew Sullivan.

Incidentally, this is heartening:

Bristol Palin, the 17-year-old daughter of Sarah Palin, is pregnant and will keep the baby and marry the father, a senior aide to Sen. John McCain confirmed to CNN Tuesday.

And:

Sarah and Todd Palin issued a statement saying they are "proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents."

"We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us," the statement said. "Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned."

Wow!!! Imagine that - treating pregnancy as something that results from mature conduct and which, therefore, necessitates maturity, rather than as punishment arbitrarily and inexplicably inflicted on children.

As a parent of young daughters, I know that I have in my mind a life plan for my daughters, which doesn't involve them growing up before their time. But I also know that it isn't up to me and that they must embrace maturity by maturely accepting responsibility for their decisions.

In that regard, I find the Palins to be an encouragement and model for parenting.

Tony Snow

Tony Snow passed away yesterday after a valiant fight against cancer.

He seemed like a genuinely decent man. Stories like this one from NRO, among many others, seem to confirm the fct that he was one of the rare indiduals who had the integretation of public and private personnas which makes for a "life well lived."

Back in 2001 - long before he had been diagnosed with cancer - Snow wrote a column on a friend who had died of cancer; it moved me so emotionally that I've had it bookmarked for years.

I think that people project onto others who they really are. Hence, someone who is bitter and sneaky sees in everyone else the characteristics of bitterness and sneakiness. Contrawise, someone who is decent sees the decency in others.

Read the column and decide for yourself who Tony Snow was.

Here is the conclusion from that column:

If there is redemption in pain, Ken was long ago redeemed. If there is glory in the love one inspires, Ken has achieved glory worthy of a king. I find myself in the odd position of mourning less than I ought to because I feel so grateful that I got to know him at all. The world doesn't produce as many nice guys as it should. Ditto for people who possess exemplary courage, strength, decency and faith. Ken got 44 years to show the rest of us how to brighten a life and a world.


And when the day comes that the rest of us make our way to "the other side," Ken will be waiting smiling, ready to give a tour and make an introduction or two. And that reunion happy, hospitable and warm, will make the place seem just like well, heaven.

In that column, it seems that Tony Snow was writing his own eulogy.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord,
And let perpetual Light shine upon him.
May his souls
And the souls of all the faithful departed
Through the mercy of God
Rest in peace.
Amen.

Update: It seems that Tony Snow was a convert to Catholicism.

I didn't suspect that. I would have guessed that he was Evangelical.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one.

Raymond Arroyo on Tony Snow.

Tony Snow's 2007 commencement address at the Catholic University of America.

I appreciate a few thoughts from the speech in a way that I would not have nearly 30 years ago when I was listening to my collegiate commencement speech, which just goes to show how priorities settle down and become rightly ordered.

Here's one:

There is nothing like the pleasure of being a parent. Waking up the next morning to somebody whose breath has become the echo of your heartbeat. Trust me on this, it does not get any better. Commit.

And another:

And finally this: Wherever you are and whatever you do, never forget at this moment, and every moment forward, you have a precious blessing. You’ve got the breath of life. No matter how lousy things may seem, you’ve got the breath of life. And while God doesn’t promise tomorrow, he does promise eternity.

54 years isn't enough time.

Wipe the smile from Osama's face.

Beer with Demos has a plan.

I'm going to run it past my Rotary club.

To "our friends, the Saudis" and to Hugo Chavez aka "Pineapple Face" and to the rest of you Third World despots oppressing your people....

Get bent!

It's going to be nice to see these creeps slide back into international irrelevance.

According to the linked story:

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.

In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated at $20-$40 a barrel.

It was not until 2007, when EOG Resources of Texas started a frenzy when they drilled a single well in Parshal N.D. that is expected to yield 700,000 barrels of oil that real excitement and money started to flow in North Dakota. Marathon Oil is investing $1.5 billion and drilling 300 new wells in what is expected to be one of the greatest booms in Oil discovery since Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938.

The US imported about 14 million barrels of Oil per day in 2007 , which means US consumers sent about $340 Billion Dollars over seas building palaces in Dubai and propping up unfriendly regimes around the World, if 200 billion barrels of oil at $90 a barrel are recovered in the high plains the added wealth to the US economy would be $18 Trillion Dollars which would go a long way in stabilizing the US trade deficit and could cut the cost of oil in half in the long run.

It's hard to believe that anyone could have overlooked so much oil.

It's hard to believe that we still have so much oil lying around untapped. After all, when I was in high school, we were being informed by the same people arguing for Global Warming that we would run out of oil by the year 2000.

Of course, the response back then - maybe the reality now - is that as prices go up, less economic resources become exploitable.

Interesting, if true.

I'm sure that our liberal democrat friends and their environmentalist allies will find a way to keep us dependent on OPEC.

Driving back from Madera.

My first "do you remember where you were" recollection was January 28, 1986.

I was in the Madera Courthouse filing an order for the appointment of a Trustee when the clerk told me that the Challenger space shuttle had "exploded." I said that was nonsense, shuttles didn't explode.

After I drove back from Madera, I went into the office and on the television in the breakroom, I saw endless loops of the Challenger exploding (which taught me something important about never saying never, but - hey - I was 27 and knew everything worth knowing.)

Driving back from Madera today, I listened to Rush Limbaugh talk for a half-hour about his personal relationship with William F. Buckley and Buckley's humanity, intelligence and paradoxical humility. It took a while to grasp that the occasion of the encomium was the passing of William F. Buckley from mortality.

Notice my use of the word "encomium"? What else would you expect from someone who started reading William F. Buckley and National Review in 10th Grade? Buckley made using "big" words, and conservatism, and Catholicism and being an intellectual and, even, self-deprecating humor too cool for words.

Buckley clearly had an ego and a sense of self, but there was something vastly self-confident in a person who replied to the question of what he would do if he improbably won the New York mayoral election with "demand a recount" or who opined that he would prefer to be governed by the first 100 names in the Boston phone book than the professors of Harvard.

It is heartening to hear the praise of Limbaugh and others who knew the real Buckley. Larry Kudlow offers this:

He encouraged me to become a Catholic. He encouraged me to stay sober. He encouraged me to keep writing columns. He encouraged me stick with my new career in broadcasting. Sometimes he would call, out of the blue, and tell me I was making good progress and that he was proud.

Can you imagine? I’m the one who was proud — proud to be his friend and that he would take a moment of his time to call.

I think the greatest thing that Buckley did was in policing the borders of respectable conservatism. To the everlasting credit of his genuine humanity, Buckley would have no truck with kooks and anti-semites, which is something that the respectable left could learn to emulate.

The tributes of his friends speak volumes about how William F. Buckley lived the good life.

2007's Best list of...

"Best of 2007" lists.

Who shaves the barber?

Who writes the obituary for the obituary writer?

A gentle farewell to the London Telegraph's obituary editor.

The bit about his family history - going back to the 15th Century - bizarrely interesting.

Merry Christmas, Part 3.


Christmas Bells

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!


And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!


Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!


Then from each black accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!


It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!


And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"


Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Apparently, this poem had roots in Longfellow's tragic circumstances, including the recent deaths of his wife and his son, the latter of whom was a casualty of the Civil War.

Here is another blogger's insights into the poem.

Give it a read.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas, part 2.


While the Widget, the Wadget and Boff are out with the ex, I've got some time to kill.

I'm thinking of seeing Alien v. Predator II because nothing says "Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward Men" like a movie featuring not one, but two (!!!!), psychopathic, genocidal alien species.

And lots of explosions.

Cool.

In other news, this has to be the best of the Christmas season:

Thousands of Iraqi Christians made their way to church through checkpoints and streets lined with blast walls, many drawing hope from a lull in violence to celebrate Christmas Mass in numbers unthinkable a year ago.

God bless our brave soldiers and all Iraqis of goodwill.

Interesting Historical Document.

I'm reading Ronald Rychlak's "Hitler, the War and the Pope" on Pius XII's involvement with Germany and Nazism.

It's pretty amazing the things I didn't know, such as Pius XII's bravery in dealing with the post-World War I chaos in Germany.

Rychlak points out the significance of the Pius XII's first encyclical Summi Pontificatus. When you reflect that Summi Pontificatus was published in 1939, some of the passages are chilling. Such as:

47. Our immediate predecessor, of holy and venerated memory, applying such norms to a particularly delicate question, took some generous decisions which are a monument to his insight and to the intensity of his apostolic spirit. Nor need We tell you, Venerable Brethren, that We intend to proceed without hesitation along this way. Those who enter the Church, whatever be their origin or their speech, must know that they have equal rights as children in the House of the Lord, where the law of Christ and the peace of Christ prevail.

Pius XII was clearly placing a chit on the proposition that the Catholic Church would not allow Jewish converts to be sacrificed for the good of the rest of the body. That's pretty amazing given the fact that the Nazis would soon demand exactly that.

Likewise, there is this clear slap at Nazi racial theories:

48. In accordance with these principles of equality, the Church devotes her care to forming cultured native clergy and gradually increasing the number of native Bishops. And in order to give external expression to these, Our intentions, We have chosen the forthcoming Feast of Christ the King to raise to the Episcopal dignity at the Tomb of the Apostles twelve representatives of widely different peoples and races. In the midst of the disruptive contrasts which divide the human family, may this solemn act proclaim to all Our sons, scattered over the world, that the spirit, the teaching and the work of the Church can never be other than that which the Apostle of the Gentiles preached: "putting on the new, (man) him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of him that created him. Where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all and in all" (Colossians iii. 10, 11).

Then there is this:

56. It is quite true that power based on such weak and unsteady foundations can attain at times, under chance circumstances, material successes apt to arouse wonder in superficial observers.

I've just finished reading Rychlak's observation that Hitler's ability to reduce unemployment from 6 million Germans to 1 million tended to ameliorate opposition to the Nazi Racial Laws.

57. But the moment comes when the inevitable law triumphs, which strikes down all that has been constructed upon a hidden or open disproportion between the greatness of the material and outward success, and the weakness of the inward value and of its moral foundation. Such disproportion exists whenever public authority disregards or denies the dominion of the Supreme Lawgiver, Who, as He has given rulers power, has also set and marked its bounds.

We know today that Germany's material successes masked a terrible moral corruption, but who else in 1939 was saying that?

Then, there is this statement in favor of limited government and, of all things, free market econonomics:

58. Indeed, as Our great predecessor, Leo XIII, wisely taught in the Encyclical Immortale Dei, it was the Creator's will that civil sovereignty should regulate social life after the dictates of an order changeless in its universal principles; should facilitate the attainment in the temporal order, by individuals, of physical, intellectual and moral perfection; and should aid them to reach their supernatural end.

59. Hence, it is the noble prerogative and function of the State to control, aid and direct the private and individual activities of national life that they converge harmoniously towards the common good. That good can neither be defined according to arbitrary ideas nor can it accept for its standard primarily the material prosperity of society, but rather it should be defined according to the harmonious development and the natural perfection of man. It is for this perfection that society is designed by the Creator as a means.

60. To consider the State as something ultimate to which everything else should be subordinated and directed, cannot fail to harm the true and lasting prosperity of nations. This can happen either when unrestricted dominion comes to be conferred on the State as having a mandate from the nation, people, or even a social order, or when the State arrogates such dominion to itself as absolute master, despotically, without any mandate whatsoever. If, in fact, the State lays claim to and directs private enterprises, these, ruled as they are by delicate and complicated internal principles which guarantee and assure the realization of their special aims, may be damaged to the detriment of the public good, by being wrenched from their natural surroundings, that is, from responsible private action

Again, in 1939, how many people were seeing such a connection between human perfection and private property? "The Road to Serfdom" was still five years away in 1939.

I've never had any particular brief for Pius XII, but the more I learn the more impressed I become.