Coffee, Croissants and Christianity

Ad Orientem reminds us of September 11, 1683 when the Ottoman Empire's first assault, and best chance, to take Vienna failed. [The odd title to this is a backhanded reference to the tradition that the European taste for coffee is ascribed to the vast quantities of coffee left behind by the departing Turkish armies, and that croissants were initially baked to commemorate this victory of the Cross over the Islamic crescent.]

"A little coldness at sunrise tomorrow."

Peggy Noonan offers her view on the day after September 11, 2002.

The New Jerusalem

Rich Galen looks for the meaning in the last year:

A year ago our enemies tried to darken liberty's torch. Yet that torch continues as a powerful lighthouse; Guiding those who are searching for even the most fragile pathways to liberty in even the most distant land.
And our Constitution still sets the metes and bounds of delegated authority. Not just in America, but as a marker wherever people pray - and fight - for freedom.
And we strive, every day, to make our national soul worthy of being his "memory's mansion."
And so was made, as Genesis promised, "a great nation."
God HAS blessed America.
The new Jerusalem

War and Remembrance

James Lileks reflects on the last year.

The Rest of the Story.

[Via Penner] Here's more on the story about the guy who cut down the tree bearing the purported apparition of Mary. Apparently, he didn't own the tree; it was on property owned by the Alta Irrigation District, which decided not to press charges. Further, it appears that his distaste isn't really directed against Catholics; it's directed against non-whites and Jews. According to this Fresno Bee article:

It's an area where neighbors know one another well, and everyone knows Bill Gaede. He owns cattle, shoes horses and isn't quiet about the fact that he doesn't like Jews or nonwhites.
An atheist, he particularly didn't like the road clogged with Mexican people looking at a vision of the Virgin Mary when he drove by in his pickup with the swastika flag.
Gaedes' wife, Dianne, said the flag just flies the symbol they use as a cattle brand, and they don't think of it as the Nazi symbol.
"It's just defiant. It's an Indian fertility sign around for thousands of years, and no law in the world says we can't have it for a brand."

This guy uses a swastika to brand cattle?

Ok. That's different. Arrest him.

Just joking. Clearly, the Irrigation District could have had him arrested for trespass. [And can sue him for treble damages for injuring timber under the Civil Code section 3346.] Mr. Gaede is clearly a kook, but while trespass and property destruction are crimes, being a kook isn't.

From the "Never-ending quest to show that George W. Bush is the most inarticulate person to ever gargle in the English language" File.

Heres a Washington Post article entitled, "Crawfishing from a Unique Vernacular." The article is a meandering stewpot. The purpose of its disjointed paragraphs is really not susceptible to logical parsing, albeit it does seem commited to creating a tone that President Bush is really inarticulate, even though he's not. For example, the article initially spends a paragraph "quoting" Bush's observation that if people are left their own money, they will demand "gooder services." A reader's initial reaction would probably be to groan at Bush's inability to comprehend points of English usage that the average second-grader has mastered. But the article then points out that "gooder service" is actually a transcription error and that Bush had said "good or service."

The reader then should ask something like "does the author of this article have any intent to ever connect to the alleged topic of the article?" How is a transcription error an example of anyon'e "vernacular?" Sure, quoting the unscripted speech of conservative polticians is always good for a cheap thrill, but any attorney knows that transcription errors are a dime a dozen and are usually the fault of the transcriber, not the speaker. [Also, transcription errors are frequently unintentionally amusing. I remember asking about "alzheimer's disease" in a deposition, only to have my question transcribed as asking about "old timer's disease," which almost works. I guess that is an example of a "Central California vernacular."]

Anyhow, the article then observes that "the phrase, which Bush uses, regularly, has posed some difficulty for him." So, maybe it really is Bush's fault after all.

Then, the article moves into the "they hate things, we love things" quote that Eugene Volokh has debunked by the simple expedient of quoting the phrase in context. [Ah, context, what a concept.]

The article than moves on to the great "crawfish" controversy of 2002, which the press presumably lept onto to show Bush's mangling of language. The problem is that the word "crawfish" actually is recognized by dictionaries, and connotes the sense of a hasty and undignified backtracking from a previously intransigent position accompanied by bluster and bluffing. For example, the common English phrase "Well, maybe Bill Clinton did commit perjury, but so what? He was defending the Constitution, and he was being hectored by mean-spirited religious hypocrites" would be an example of crawfishing. Although, the author of this article may not have heard of this use of the word "crawfish" in J-school, I knew it, and I have never lived anywhere near the deep South.

The article neatly seques from the only thing near the topic of "vernacular" usages to accuse Bush of "crawfishing:"

Bush has also found a clever way of dismissing administration leaks. Rather than confirm or deny the leaks, Bush crawfishes: He belittles the leaker's rank in the government. Asked about finger-pointing between the FBI and the CIA this spring, Bush dismissed it as "the level-three staffers trying to protect their hide." Asked about an attack on Iraq at a July 8 press conference, Bush scoffed at "somebody down there at level five flexing some know-how muscle." He did not explain why this leaker was two levels below the other.

What the heck does this paragraph have to do with the initial premise of the article. The initial premise appeared to be that Bush misused the language by his resort to some unique regional "vernacular" usage, although apparently he's not using vernacular English, he's simply the victim of garden-variety transcription errors. It then moved on to interesting regional lexical usages which had been previously unknown to the Post, but which, in fact, would have been known to anyone who read material broader than the New Yorker or George.
Apparently, not content to violate only the generally accepted rules of essay writing - define a topic and stick with the topic, the article elects to lapse into a state of existential logical fugue by first defining "crawfish," and then misusing the recently defined word in the next paragraph. Nothing in the relevant comments about leaks constitutes "backtracking." Bush is "poisoning the well," but really how does that subtle rhetorical technique have anything to do with Bush's employment of an odd regional "vernacular?"

The article ultimately leaves gives up the ghost with respect to every reconnecting with its topic with this concluding paragraph:

An agitated Vice President Cheney, in a tête-à-tête with NBC's Tim Russert on Sunday, said it was "reprehensible" that people would think the administration had "saved" its ammunition on Iraq to bring it out now, 60 days before an election. "So the suggestion that somehow, you know, we husbanded this and we waited is just not true," Cheney said.

Now where would people get such a cockamamie idea? Well, maybe from White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and Bush political adviser Karl Rove, who made the case to the New York Times's Elisabeth Bumiller last week that they pretty much did what Cheney said they didn't do -- waited patiently and deliberately to launch a long-planned rollout. "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," Card said. Added Rove: "The thought was that in August the president is sort of on vacation."

Again, what does this have to do with Bush's vernacular usage of the English language? Where is the Bushism in this passage dealing with Cheney's appearance on Sunday morning news shows.

And, finally, exhausted by following that last capricious leap from topic to topic, the article ends.

Swimming against the tide

Korean Pentacolist church joins the Episcopalian denomination.

Dave Barry on September 11

In case you missed it, here is the link to Dave Barry's column, On hallowed ground. Reflecting on Lincoln's dedication of the Gettysburg military cemetary, Barry writes movingly on what should be the true focus of the anniversary of last year's treacherous and cowardly attack on unarmed civilians:

In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln was essentially trying to answer a question. The question was: How do you honor your heroes? Lincoln's answer was: You can't. No speech you give, no monument you erect, will be worthy of them, of their sacrifice. The best you can do is remember the cause they died for, finish the job they started.

Amen. Next Wednesday is no occasion to celebrate - we haven't won. It is not an occasion for public reflection on how America has changed - this is real life, not some encounter group. It is not an occasion for speeches that talk about "we" or "I" - they - Flight 93 - sacrificed themselves to protect their country, we didn't do anything. Wednesday is a day for a brief private reflection on where one was exactly a year ago, a time to remember what it felt like to be an American that day, and how it felt to see the celebrations on the West Bank as American children were vaporized. It is a day to join James Lileks in thinking about Christine Hanson who didn't get to see her third birthday because a score of sick, twisted cowards wanted to hasten the dawn of the glorious Tenth Century:

Tonight I was googling around looking for a picture of Christine Hanson, the daughter of Kim Ji-Soo and Peter Hanson. She was two. The family was flying to Disneyland when the terrorists slaughtered the flight attendants, stabbed the pilots to death, and drove the plane into the building. (Yes yes, we know what happened; don’t be so dramatic, and Disneyland? Please. You’re getting bathetic.) My wife came up with Gnat to say goodnight while I was searching; I gave the little tot a peck on the lips and told her daddy loved her, and went back to work. As I heard the crib rail go up I heard a particularly deafening jet pass overhead - one of the old unhushed cargo planes that makes the china rattle at Jasperwood - and I remembered something from last night.

Later he writes:

Little Christine was Gnat’s age, give or take a month; bin Laden’s lackeys killed her - and did so to ensure that other fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters died as well, preferably by the tens of thousands. This little girl’s death wasn’t even a comma in the manifesto they hoped to write. They made sure that her last moments alive were filled with horror and blood, screams and fear; they made sure that the last thing she saw was the desperate faces of her parents, insisting that everything was okay, we’re going to see Mickey, holding out a favorite toy with numb hands, making up a happy lie. And then she was fire and then she was ash.

I feel the same anger I did on 9/11; I feel the same overwhelming grief. Nothing in my heart has changed, and God forbid it ever does.

Lincoln's speech lasted twenty minutes. That should be the limit of our public ceremonies. Privately, we should all remember the events of one year ago, remember that even innocent children were vaporized for a Holy Cause, and demand that the job of protecting the nation which started on Flight 93 be finished.

Hometown News

Man cuts down tree allegedly bearing likeness of Virgin Mary. I hadn't heard about this "apparition" until I read the article via Amy Welborn's sit. In any event, read these facts:

But the Fresno County Sheriff's Department didn't charge Bill Gaede, who cut down the tree Thursday morning and allegedly screamed, "You Catholics! There's your virgin," because they have no victim. And with no victim, they have no crime, they said.
Detectives on Friday asked a circle of people praying around the felled trunk if someone would press hate-crime charges. All said no.

Now, let's think about this. The tree's owner chops down his own tree and he gives voice to his personal opinions about Catholics and/or the Virgin Mary. Where's the crime? Last time I checked, being a jerk is not against the law. Frankly, the scary thing is that the police asked the onlookers if they wanted to press "hate-crime" charges aginst this man's lawful exercise of his voice and his axe. The scary thing is that there are such things as "hate-crimes" in the first place.

Discriminations lays out another case of historical malpractice, the alleged slave conspiracy engineered by Denmark Vesey. Apparently, modern scholars have embraced the case of an African-American freeman who was found guilty of purportedly engineering a massive race revolt by a racist legal system that ran a kangaroo trial. Historian Michael Johnson has determined that Vesey was probably innocent of the great conspiracy, which, when you think about it, adds to the horrific indictment of slavery. John Rosenberg at Discriminations writes:

Finally, however, the scandal Johnson has unearthed is not so much the "unrelenting carelessness" of so many historians re the documentary evidence that he discovered. It is that, in practice if not in theory, many historians have succumbed to the post-modernist claptrap of Fishian "metahistorian" Hayden White, cited by Johnson, who argues "that historians who go to the archives engage in meaningless ritual since what they find there only fits their preconceptions and what they write is, in any case personal invention." (p. 200).

I am going to hazard a guess that modern historians wanted the image of a powerful African-American freeman as a kind of wish-fulfillment. It's not surprising that they went off the tracks, but one has to be skeptical when historical finds match political motives. Tonight the Discovery Channel had an hour long show on the purported finding of evidence of female gladiator. There may have been women gladiators, but given the wish-fulfillment theme among the avant-garde about women breaking out of gender roles, I would want more evidence about the extent or reality of this phenomenon.

Via Kate Tushnett comes this neat site - Dark Room - which focuses on film noire.

Kevin Holtsberry is pleased to see the 49ers win the opening game since he picks them to win the whole thing. I like that; it may give me a reason to pay attention to the NFL this year.

New Blog

JURIST - Tillers on Evidence

Steve Ray takes on Sola Scriptura.

No enemy to the left?

One of the reasons that the modern conservative movement owes a large debt to William F. Buckley, Jr. was his unwillingness to accept the liberal dogma that there is "no enemy to the left." Moderate leftists have rarely resisted the temptation to radicalize their position by disassociating themselves from extremist allies. The history of the Russian Revolution and the silly Sixties provide examples of moderate leftists being caused to adopt bizarre and unhealthy positions because they seem unable to deny the moral highground to the radical minority.

Buckley, in contrast, on several occasions has excommunicated former allies from conservativism, generally over the issue of anti-Semitism. For example, in the 1950's, Buckley exiled the John Birch party to the fever swamp of the radical right, and in the early 1990's, Buckley publicly excommunicated Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran for the implicit anti-semitism of their writings. Conservativism was strengthened by its refusal to adopt the pestilential attitudes that these former fellow travelers brought with them.

Mark Shea seems to be playing a similar positive role in Catholic circles. Go to Shea's site and track the posts to Catholic Apologist Robert Sungenis' posts on the conversion of the Jews. Sungenis has elected to go beyond legitimate arguments about why the conversion of the Jews is a theologically legitimate objective. Instead, Sungenis has chosen to recycle the worst slurs and slanders in the anti-Semitic repertoire. Shea is right this is poison, and it poisons all Catholics who do not immediately repudiate Sungenis. Sungenis gives aid and comfort to all enemies of Catholicism and poisons the relationship beween Christians and Jews.

Beacon of Light Redux

Professor Reynolds surrebuts Eric Alterman on the Sweden vs. Mississippi debate. Reynolds concedes that Mississippi may not be wealthier than Sweden, but accepts Alterman's concession on the other points of Swedish non-exceptionalism. For me, though, the real point is at the end of Reynolds post where he points out that for many, including Alterman, Sweden does remain a beacon of light.

Which raises the question, why would anyone have a vested emotional interest in proving that his country is inferior to another country? Certainly, we all do not have to be hyper-chauvinist, and objectivity is a good thing, but it seems perverse or pathological for someone to have an emotional stake in proving the inadequacy of one's own country.

The OmbudsGod has this link to a Washington Times article about a Harvard professor whose mission is to "abolish the white race." By this, Noel Ignatiev means that the corporate cultural consciousness of "whiteness" needs to be eradicated from the minds of whites. There are really only two problems with this agenda. First, insofar as I know from personal experience, there is no such "white" corporate mind. People tend to divide their personal map of the social world in ways that are important to them. Some people divide the world up by religion or ethnicity or sexual orientation or membership in clubs. The only people who can be counted up consistently to divide the world up racially are either lunatic white supremacists and some not insignificant percentage of the African-American population for whom the racial division may in fact be significant. [In fact the best way to break down racial divisions is to accentuate the importance of trans-racial identities such as religion or service clubs.]

The second problem is the diversion of resources. It seems to me that the quickest way to ensure that a culture or people not get out of its historical box is to obsess on the past. There should be a real concern that every talented mind drawn into some cloud-cookoo land project like this one, means that there is one less talented person making a contribution to the community, be it through business or science or the construction of community infrastructure.

Irony Alert

Remember the Wiccans? A ritual candle used by that "ancient" religion of nature worshippers, is being blamed in starting the Angeles forest fire. Or maybe it was the Satan worshippers. Whatever. It certainly wasn't any of the real religions that keep their candles inside churches. [Via Rand Simberg]

Never say niggardly, Nigeria, niggle, or for heaven's sake, Niger

Via Mark Shea is this Wilmington Star article on a school teacher who was reprimanded by her principal for describing a literary character as, gasp, niggardly. Once upon a time, sexual ephitets were verboten in polite company and pants were painted on nude artwork. That kind of Victorianism was laughable, wasn't it? We're ever so much more enlightened in our modern progressive age.

Litmus Tests Again

I observed several posts down that one generally applicable litmus tests between conservatives and liberals is their basic attitude toward the United States. Conservatives, like Rich Galen,for example, think the world is lucky that America is the only superpower in existence. Given America's documented history of providing foreign aid and establishing democracies in countries that it has conquered in war, this seems like an obvious empirical fact. Many liberals seem to believe that on balance the world is worse off for the existence of the United States. They usually have to rely on fanciful hidden conspiracy theories that would make stories of the Illuminati look pale; for example, America's intervention into Afghanistan and Somalia were due to oil.

That makes this counterpoint between Eric Alterman and Glenn Reynolds touching. Alterman opened with the observation that America could take lessons from Sweden. Glenn Reynolds countered with the observation that Sweden is no beacon of light since it is poorer than Mississippi and has a higher crime rate. Alterman then resorted to this plea for factual support for his worldview

Glenn Reynolds says I’m wrong to admire Sweden — though he seems to give Denmark a pass — owing to their crime rate which is allegedly worse than ours and their poverty rate which is worse than Mississippi’s.

I find the first part hard to believe and the second part, for now, impossible. Some sound evidence on this question please. This sounds like a job for Maxspeak, who is already on probation linkwise, or else an intern at Tapped.

Which neatly proves my point about litmus tests. Alterman just knew that Sweden had to be superior to the United States because, well, the United States really can't be superior to the ethically superior Swedes because America has so many things wrong with it. But Reynolds citation to the 2000 Crime Victim Survey points out that Sweden falls into a group of countries where over 24% of the population is victimized by crime. It also contains this observation:

Women in Sweden, Finland, Australia and England and Wales were most at risk of sexual assault. Women in Japan, Northern Ireland, Poland and Portugal were least at risk. Many of the differences in sexual assault risks across country were small. Generally, the relative level of sexual assault in different countries accorded with relative levels of offensive sexual behaviour - though there were a few differences

Recently, several posts have noted the recently emerging phenomena of gang rapes in Sweden and Australia.

I don't know about Sweden's per capita income compared to Mississippi, but a brief google search unearthed this United Nations Statistics Division report which shows that Sweden has a per capita income of $26,968, while the United States per capita income was $32,778, or the United States per capita income is 20% higher than Sweden's, with a much lower tax rate that supports a much larger military commitment that kept Sweden from becoming a pimple on the tail of the Soviet Union. this Mississippi state document shows that Mississippi claims a per capita income of $20,688 in 1999, with a sharp decline for 2000. So, Professor Reynolds may have been overstating the Mississippi comparison as it relates to income, but on balance Sweden does not come off as superior to America, which was Alterman's point.

These statistics are somewhat surprising, but only because it is customary to be skeptical of claims of American exceptionalism.