More about crony capitalism...

Some insight into economics can even be published in Rolling Stone:

'In essence, Paulson and his cronies turned the federal government into one gigantic, half-opaque holding company, one whose balance sheet includes the world's most appallingly large and risky hedge fund, a controlling stake in a dying insurance giant, huge investments in a group of teetering megabanks, and shares here and there in various auto-finance companies, student loans, and other failing businesses. Like AIG, this new federal holding company is a firm that has no mechanism for auditing itself and is run by leaders who have very little grasp of the daily operations of its disparate subsidiary operations.'

If this global economy depends on a few big firms, or for that matter, if it depends completely on the ongoing intervention of the Federal Reserve System, the U.S. Treasury, and the U.S. Congress, it is a house of cards, and we might as well start stockpiling arms and ammunition.

Being that I am not planning my escape to the mountains and the logistics of survival, I hope I'm not a fool and that my faith in the Invisible Hand is vindicated. I must say that I have more faith in the Invisible Hand than I have in any U.S. official or institution.


Check out these T-shirts: Here and
here.

Macroeconomics and humility

If you presided as a central banker for a decade of prosperity, wouldn't you think you'd get pretty cocky about your wisdom? I think I would, and I grew up during the 1970s and nobody knew what was going on.

Hubris, not bad luck, is what turns a recession into a depression.

Wisdom from the Cure de Ars

All our religion is but a false religion, and all our virtues are mere illusions and we ourselves are only hypocrites in the sight of God, if we have not that universal charity for everyone - for the good, and for the bad, for the poor and for the rich, and for all those who do us harm as much as those who do us good.

-- Saint John Vianney

Is Google going to control every author's rights?

I won't state an opinion about a field about which I know little, but the gist of this story is that Google is trying to settle some class action litigation, and the settlement would rewrite copyright law. I'd appreciate my lawyer readers chiming in about it.

Lyn Chu's article is called: "Google's Book Settlement Is a Ripoff for Authors: Why allow a single publisher to throw out a functioning copyright system?"

A story about the Titanic...

That has meaning today.

If you are looking for a solution and closure, think again...

Michael Totten gets to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

'Far too many Westerners make the mistake of projecting their own views onto Palestinians without really understanding the Palestinian narrative. The “occupation” doesn’t refer to the West Bank and Gaza, and it never has. The “occupation” refers to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. A kibbutz in the center of Israel is “occupied Palestine” according to most. “It makes no sense to a Palestinian to think about a Palestinian state alongside Israel,” Martin Kramer from the Shalem Center in Jerusalem said to me a few days ago. “From the Palestinian perspective, Israel will always exist inside Palestine.”

'“Making peace with the Palestinians is harder than making peace with other Arabs,” said Asher Susser, Senior Research Fellow at Tel Aviv University. “With the Palestinians we have a 1948 file as well as a 1967 file. With other Arabs we only have a 1967 file. The 1967 file relates to our size, but the 1948 file relates to our very being. It is nearly impossible to resolve because we cannot compromise on our being.”'

Michael Yon updates from Afghanistan on President Obama's speech

From his short piece:

'If there were not people like Gates and Petraeus up there, my gut would say to pull out. It is only my faith in the military, and what I saw them accomplish against heavy odds in Iraq, that gives me hope.'

I am posting this just because it is written by the most distinctive American free-lance journalist/blogger/war correspondent of this young century. One day people will look to Michael Yon's work, not to the "newspaper of record," to learn what really happened in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 to the present.

"Why Doesn't Communism Have as Bad a Name as Nazism?"

I discussed with a colleague yesterday the Che Guevara T-shirt. Only in America.
Dennis Prager elaborates.

UPDATE: There have been some good works of political science which state correctly that fascists never looked at themselves as "right-wing" but as "left-wing." They saw themselves as the rightful heirs of the best anarchists and revolutionaries and saw communism as a dangerous heresy. Fascists look at communists as Trinitarians look at Arians, not as Christians look at atheists.

"Franz Jägerstätter: Martyr and Model"

I just visited the blog of Mark in Spokane, and he introduced me to Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian Catholic who refused induction to the German Army in 1943. He was arrested, transported to Berlin, tried for sedition, and executed.

Here is a nice piece on him by William Doino, Jr. in First Things. He was killed for saying what few would say. Doino writes:

'After Hitler’s forces annexed Austria, completing the Anschluss, Jägerstätter was the lone voice in his village to oppose it and was appalled by the willingness of his many countrymen, including high-level prelates, to acquiesce.

'“I believe there could scarcely be a sadder hour for the true Christian faith in our country,” he wrote, “than this hour when one watches in silence while this error spreads its ever-widening influence.” Commenting on the Austrian plebiscite, which gave approval to the Anschluss, he lamented: “I believe that what took place in the spring of 1938 was not much different from what happened that Holy Thursday 1,900 years ago when the crowd was given a free choice between the innocent Savior and the criminal Barabbas.”

His language, as recalled by Doino, has a candor almost unknown in Nazi-controlled Europe:

'Similarly, Jägerstätter’s resolute Catholicism shines through his statements about the Eucharist and the scandal of distributing it to certain notorious communicants:

'“In Germany, before Hitler came to power, it was once a matter of policy to refuse Holy Communion to Nazis. And what is the situation today in this Greater German Reich? Many approach the Communion rail with apparently no spiritual misgivings even though they are members of the Nazi Party and, in addition, permit their children to join the Party or even turn them over to Nazi educators for formation. . . . If one gives a little thought to this, there are times when he will want to cry out.”'

Here is Pope Pius XI's encyclical rebuking National Socialism, Mit Brennender Sorge. He says at paragraph 23:

'You will need to watch carefully, Venerable Brethren, that religious fundamental concepts be not emptied of their content and distorted to profane use. "Revelation" in its Christian sense, means the word of God addressed to man. The use of this word for the "suggestions" of race and blood, for the irradiations of a people's history, is mere equivocation. False coins of this sort do not deserve Christian currency. "Faith" consists in holding as true what God has revealed and proposes through His Church to man's acceptance. It is "the evidence of things that appear not" (Heb. ii. 1). The joyful and proud confidence in the future of one's people, instinct in every heart, is quite a different thing from faith in a religious sense. To substitute the one for the other, and demand on the strength of this, to be numbered among the faithful followers of Christ, is a senseless play on words, if it does not conceal a confusion of concepts, or worse.'

Martyrs have a way of revealing God's truth; I can blog anonymously, practice law, take care of my family, teach catechism, and do other good things, but my witness for Christ on my best day pales in comparison to any saintly martyr.

A little help from the saint of Geneva...

To be perfect in our vocation is nothing else than to fulfill the duties which our state of life obliges us to perform, and to accomplish them well, and only for the honor and love of God.

-- St. Francis de Sales

Why is Gaza such a mess?

Forget the Israelis. The Arabs have no interest in Gaza being anything but a prison. The United States and Israel have assimilated far more Palestinians than Egypt, Syria, or Jordan.

What if Pope Benedict changed his mind...

And told the world that the following are OK: contraceptive pills, condoms for any use any time, abortion, women priests, cloning, research using human embryos, premarital sex, and communion to those who just want to taste the wafer and feel Catholic for a minute.

Do you think the editors and reporters of the world's press along with thousands of other critics of the Church would all sign up for RCIA?

The criticism is far deeper than social issues. Ultimately, most of the Church's critics (but not all) do not believe the Mysterium Fidei: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. If living a sacramental life involves abstaining from certain behaviors in order to pursue one's purpose and vocation to the fullest, then the Church's teachings are true and good.

Yes, I know that a certain Brazilian philosopher, Giselle Bundchen, has pronounced the Church's teachings on sexual behavior to be "unrealistic," but the Church's teachings have never been realistic, much less easy. Holiness is never easy. Permitting mortal sins so more people can feel OK if not holy is not the Church's mission.

The International Herald Tribune, The Times (London), and TIME (best piece in the mainstream press) are not going to understand the Church's teachings.

"Original sin" of our healthcare failures...

WSJ:

'The reality is that the employer-based tax deduction is the original sin of our health-care system. Particularly indefensible is the coverage gap it creates between those who receive it from their employers and those who pay (or can't afford to pay) for their own policies with after-tax dollars. A universal deduction or credit would restore tax parity -- and gradually stimulate the demand for new, less expensive insurance where consumers, not their bosses, are in charge.

'This relic of the World War II era has also left us with a health-care financing "system" that only a central planner could love, with neither a functional price mechanism nor the capacity to recognize value. The employer-exclusive deduction has created what is essentially a giant money laundering operation, an endless cycle of third parties lacking any direct stake in controlling costs elsewhere -- when they're not profiting from the waste.

'Capping the open-ended tax exclusion is a perfectly sensible idea, which would discipline the excess health insurance that contributes to rising health spending. The problem is that reducing the exclusion means withdrawing a benefit, which is easy to demagogue, as Mr. Obama showed in 2008. It is also unpopular among unions, which have often secured Cadillac health plans in labor contracts. But we suspect the unions will come around if they get the taxpayers to pay for health care instead.

'The deeper problem is that Democrats don't want to create a new private market for individual health insurance. Their goal in reducing the employer tax deduction is to apply the revenue to finance a new "public option," a subsidized program modeled after Medicare and open to the middle class that would crowd out private insurers.'

Pentimento touched a nerve so I had to respond...

Here is her blog post called "Guns, Abortion, and Women's Rights." My comments are below. Before you read it, let me just say that Pentimento is one of my favorite bloggers, a Catholic who is on a journey trying to live her faith just as I am. Our differences of political opinion I think have more to do with the different cultures we grew up in. Her family was progressive in thought and habit. Mine was too, but in a Southern sense. (If you are curious, look up the career of Alabama Governor B.B. Comer.)

So here are my comments to her post:

I respectfully dissent. And before I go further, I acknowledge that you grew up with the "red" diapers of progress if not revolution as I grew up with a grandmother who voted for Alf Landon in 1936.

Our Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms because, dating back to the days of the long bow, English subjects had been armed, and their arming prevented the King from having a monopoly on armed force. In fact, the Hundred Years War gave birth to the English state, but the state's power was dependent not on the armored knight but on the peasant bowman, who could take down the armored knight at 100 yards.

A U.S. citizen has the right to keep and bear arms in order to protect himself from crime and tyrannical government, if necessary, but not to use the weapon to infringe upon the rights of any other citizen.

The U.S. courts (and some legislatures) have given citizens the right to abort the unborn, not to protect the unborn, but to give, as a matter of law, the right of a mother to prevent her child from being born a U.S. citizen.

Second Amendment rights, if used as designed and historically developed since the days of Henry V, allow the individual to protect life, liberty, and property.

Abortion rights, if used as permitted, allow one U.S. citizen to destroy the life of another U.S. citizen before his rights as a citizen become vested under U.S. law.

I believe there are limits to the Second Amendment, just as there are limits to the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments. I don't believe the Second Amendment is obsolete. Indeed, it is as important as ever.

This is America, and the lunatic fringe is always alive, well, loud, and intemperate, whether talking about pop culture or the Constitution. They are civil libertarians right and left. They are not always pretty.

This is America, and we always have a portion of our population incapable of being anything but sociopaths. Though I live 300 yards from the police station, I'm glad potential intruders have reason to fear that I am legally armed. If you break into a house in my state, you know you run reasonable risk of being shot.

I'll add that I am more confident in the deterrence of the Second Amendment than of any statute or law-enforcement agency. Nobody ever tried to shoot into the crowd at a rodeo.

Is Obama a fox or a hedgehog?

A short discourse by Peggy Noonan.

Anglicans who converted to Catholicism in San Antonio...

My wife today discovered Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church in San Antonio, which has a unique history, in which more than a dozen Episcopalians converted to Catholicism together:

'There are those who ask why Our Lady of the Atonement has a liturgical rite which is different from that which is found in other Catholic parishes. As Episcopalians, our liturgy was contained in the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. Much of what it contains is based upon the ancient liturgy of the Catholic Church, and was translated from the Latin into English in the sixteenth century. In the great Catholic ecclesiastical centers of England -- Salisbury, Hereford, York, Bangor and Lincoln -- distinct English liturgical uses existed prior to the Protestant separation. Because of a series of unfortunate historical circumstances, our spiritual forefathers had taken us out of communion with the Catholic Church; however, our way of worshipping and thinking retained much of the Catholic heritage. Now, with the establishment of the Pastoral Provision for an “Anglican Use” Common Identity within the Catholic Church, the historical precedent of a particularly English “Use” is once again a reality.'


In a post about my conversion to Catholicism, I wrote fondly of the beautiful prayers written during the greatest flowering of English literature. I also love the dark carved woods of traditional Anglican churches.

The Vatican allows this parish's English rites, which are based upon the Anglican prayers I learned as a child. I only wish my mother could attend Mass there sometime. I also think of Jim Pinto, a Catholic turned Episcopal priest (and an excellent pastor) who gave up his Anglican collar to become a Catholic layman.

In that great series of coincidences that is surfing the web, my wife found the priest's blog while searching for images of Saint Pius X.

Are Americans the Chosen?

This question has attracted the attention of some of the most thoughtful people in the world. Richard John Neuhaus completed American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile before he died a few weeks ago. It is now published and receives the highest praise from Spengler:

'The working of faith in America's public square is more complex than Americans acknowledge, or foreigners understand, Richard John Neuhaus shows in this study of the heavenly city versus the earthly city of our exile.

'Idolatry attracts both wings of American politics: the right tends to confound the United States of America with the City of God, while the left makes an object of worship out of its utopian imagination. Neuhaus was a pre-eminent social conservative and an advisor to former president George W Bush, but no less an even-handed critic for that. That quality that makes American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile one of the indispensable books of our time, of such importance that one wants to suspend debate of America's character until everyone has had time to read it.'

I have not read the book, but the review is provoking and thoughtfull on its own.

"There is No Pill for this Kind of Depression"

Peggy Noonan explains what really caused the Panic of 2008:

'The sale of antidepressants and antianxiety drugs is widespread. In New York their use became common after 9/11. It continued through and, I hypothesize, may have contributed to, the high-flying, wildly imprudent Wall Street of the '00s. We look for reasons for the crash and there are many, but I wonder if Xanax, Zoloft and Klonopin, when taken by investment bankers, lessened what might have been normal, prudent anxiety, or helped confuse prudent anxiety with baseless, free-floating fear. Maybe Wall Street was high as a kite and didn't notice. Maybe that would explain Bear Stearns, and Merrill, and Citi.'


If all we need is drug rehab, we might be back on our feet fairly quickly.

When global cooling was a certainty...

'Concerning those predictions, the New York Times was — as it is today in a contrary crusade — a megaphone for the alarmed, as when (May 21, 1975) it reported that "a major cooling of the climate" was "widely considered inevitable" because it was "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950." Now the Times, a trumpet that never sounds retreat in today's war against warming, has afforded this column an opportunity to revisit another facet of this subject — meretricious journalism in the service of dubious certitudes.'

George Will remembers, as I do, the hysteria thirty-five years ago. What is apparently important is to agree with the prevailing position, regardless of whether it holds water.

A recent RCIA lesson... "What is Conversion?"

I offered this lesson not long ago. Perhaps it will be of good instruction on the blogosphere:

Opening: The Prayer of St. Francis
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Bishop’s Prayer at Confirmation: All-powerful God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by water and the Holy Spirit you freed your sons and daughters from sin and gave them new life. Send your Holy Spirit upon them to be their helper and guide. Give them the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of right judgment and courage, the spirit of knowledge and reverence. Fill them with the spirit of wonder and awe in your presence. We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Saints of the Week (whose conversion was proven by martyrdom):
Blessed Miguel Pro (1891-1927)
Saint Thomas Kuong (1778-1862)
Saint John Fisher (1469-1535)
[Fr. Miguel Pro, shortly before his execution in 1927]

LESSON FOR THE WEEK:
What is “conversion?” What does it mean to “convert?”
Are Catholics “born again?” How is one converted?

Scriptures:
Acts 9:1-31, Saul’s conversion, Ananias’ and Barnabas’ responses.
Acts 13:16-41, Paul preaches in Antioch.
Acts 16:22-34, Paul brings the gospel to his jailer and baptizes his family.
Acts 20:7-12, Eutychus falls asleep during Paul’s homily.
Acts 22:3-21, Paul tells the story of his conversion.
Acts 23:6-8, “On trial because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead.”
Acts 24:21, “On trial for the resurrection of the dead.”
Acts 26:1-8, Paul defends himself before Agrippa: “Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?”
Acts 26:9-23, Paul tells his story. Personal touch of God.
Acts 26:24, Festus: “Insane.”
Acts 26:28, Agrippa: “Do you think in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?”
John 3:1-5, “Born again.”
Mark 12:28-31, The Greatest Commandment. Conversion of heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Lessons from Paul’s conversion:
Actual Grace (holy shove) v. Sanctifying Grace (holiness lived).
Salvation is part of the plan of God going back before Moses.
Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection are the fulfillment of all the promises of the Old Testament.
Not everyone understands who Jesus is.
“Believe in Jesus, and you shall be saved.”
Salvation is accompanied by sacrament (baptism).
Sleep and distraction are strongest when the Holy Spirit is present.
Your calling will be revealed as you pursue it vigorously, but it won’t necessarily be what you think it to be.
Be careful if you think your faith means you ought to kill someone.
If you speak the truth boldly, you will likely be beaten.
Whether there is a resurrection of the dead is the ultimate question.
Belief in the resurrection is either insane or it’s true.
All conversion stories are personal. None reads like a lab report.
Some like Agrippa understand intellectually, but they do not believe.
“Born again” is more than an altar call at a youth retreat, but a transformation of the soul through the loving embrace of our Incarnate God.

Conversion is the assent of the heart, soul, mind, and strength to the will of God, which is love. Conversion is the process by which we imitate the love of Christ. The sacraments, which are the physical manifestations of God’s grace, are how we touch God in order to learn the life of love.


Closing Prayer: Prayer of Saint Patrick

Christ shield me this day:
Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every person who thinks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me. Amen.

Wisdom from the lady from Milledgeville...

'What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.'

Flannery O'Connor

So where should I go this Lent?

'Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross.'

-- St. John of the Cross


If I can deny myself a few things and touch Christ in His sufferings for a fleeting moment, I have done a little right and good.

'Oh how precious time is! Blessed are those who know how to make good use of it. Who can assure us that we will be alive tommorow? Let us listen to the voice of our conscience, to the voice of the royal prophet: "Today if you hear God's voice, harden not your heart." Let us not put off for one moment to another what we "should" do, because the next moment is not yet ours!'

-- St. Pio of Pietrelcina


I wish I could recover every moment that I wasted wanting to be someplace else, and yet I spent much of today thinking about being in another place doing something else.

Lenten disciplines

"The way to Heaven is straight and narrow: they who wish to arrive at that place of bliss by walking in the paths of pleasure shall be disappointed; and therefore few reach it, because few are willing to use violence to themselves in resisting temptations."

-- St. Alphonsus Liguori


My wife and I have given up chocolate, cut down on sweets and snacks, and unplugged the television set. Not a bad start, but nothing in comparison to the real sufferings of true saints. I'm restless as can be. I'd rather be doing anything than what my daily task is. There is no contentment and no humility.

My Lenten dilemma...

'To desire to be poor but not be inconvenienced by poverty, is to desire the honor of poverty and the convenience of riches.'

-- St. Francis de Sales


I must admit that I really want to live comfortably, give my daughter a superlative education, and be known around town as a generous person, and humble too. I don't even want the trappings of poverty, just the acknowledgment that I am very humble for a vain man who has just about everything.

Predictions of America's economic death...

Spengler responds in his contrarian way.

Deferring judgment on the presidency of George W. Bush

Thomas Fleming, author of Washington: The Indispensible Man, comments on the rush to judge recent presidents:

'James Madison, who officially succeeded Jefferson in 1808, made presidential passivity into an art form. "Little Jemmy," as they called him in New England, watched while 4,500 British troops disembarked from their ships, marched to Washington, D.C., and burned the White House, the Capitol and almost everything else worth torching. You can't do much worse as a war leader than that performance.'

Time does funny things to memory and esteem.

Wisdom from F.A. Hayek

'Not only is the revenue derived from the high rates levied on large incomes, particularly in the highest brackets, so small compared with the total revenue as to make hardly any difference to the burden borne by the rest; but for a long time . . . it was not the poorest who benefited from it but entirely the better-off working class and the lower strata of the middle class who provided the largest number of voters.

'It would probably be true, on the other hand, to say that the illusion that by means of progressive taxation the burden can be shifted substantially onto the shoulders of the wealthy has been the chief reason why taxation has increased as fast as it has done and that, under the influence of this illusion, the masses have come to accept a much heavier load than they would have done otherwise. The only major result of the policy has been the severe limitation of the incomes that could be earned by the most successful and thereby gratification of the envy of the less-well-off.'


Friedrich A. Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty (1960), on the myth that progressive tax rates are necessary to fund large increases in government spending, lest an intolerable burden be placed on the poor.

Is anyone in Washington or NYC going to admit that he screwed up?

Don't hold your breath, Peggy Noonan says.

I have told the story of how General Joe Stilwell, when routed out of Burma in 1942, didn't mince words: "We took a hell of a beating." In the first half of 1942, he might have been the last honest man in an American uniform. We were losing, or too incompetent to engage the enemy, all over the world. Only Stilwell could say so to the press. His honesty became his undoing, however. He lost his command later because he told the Chinese "emperor," Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, that he had no clothes.

Ms. Noonan writes of some Marines who have more open self-criticism and personal responsibility than all 535 members of Congress. So far, the net worth of millions of Americans has dropped 30 to 100%, and nobody has blamed anyone but George Bush and some invisible greedy bankers who by my imagination must look like Sidney Greenstreet. In the words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy, and they are us."

[I rarely miss commenting on a Noonan column, but I missed this one on Obama's speech to the nation. I missed the speech too. My interest in politics is not so keen that I feel much regret from having missed any speech. I am looking forward to the opposition to Barack Obama's Fabian socialism gaining traction. Right now it looks grim, but no president with less than 60 Senate votes is going to shove around the opposition forever. Things are never as good or bad as they seem.]

Jennifer F.'s baby

She blogs about childbirth! That might be harder than being a war correspondent.

Pentimento's view of the singer...

Nice piece here. My blogging friend Pentimento dreamed of being a star but finds herself quietly living out her vocation as a mother, wife, singer, and teacher. But I must say that I too have had moments as a teacher in which I was certain I was doing exactly what God put me on this earth to do. She says:

'I was astonished by T.'s innate feeling for this difficult piece, and we quickly came to the point where I felt like I was serving him badly by accompanying him. I hired a student accompanist, an excellent pianist from Sweden, to come to our lessons, paying her myself. Out from behind the piano, I could work with T. more intensely on his breath and his phrasing.

'This ushered in one of the most thrilling times I've had as a teacher. Working on "Schöne Wiege" in the studio with T. and the accompanist, I felt as if we were riding a cresting wave together as three musicians. T. achieved moments in which there wss a synergy between his line and the equally important piano part, and when not only the melody and the meaning of the text, but even the sounds of the words themselves created multiple layers of meaning in his performance. Especially stunning was the way that he was able to sing each repetition of "Lebewohl!" (farewell!) differently, drawing one out with rubato, clipping another. I would leave these lessons feeling elated, as if I had finally found out what God wanted me to do, and was privileged to know the joy of doing it.'

The Anchoress- a blogging round-up of the Rush Limbaugh business

I am seldom alone in a car in the middle of the day so I can listen to Rush Limbaugh. When the Democrats are in power, he is hilarious. He could imitate Bill Clinton perfectly. He broadcast biting parodies of the great Hillary. He has a tremendous ability to connect with listeners, in particular, our era's "forgotten man," the fellow who works a regular job, pays income taxes, didn't go to a fancy college, never gets a minority set aside, thinks the local public schools are run by politically correct idiots, and grows tired of the condescension of just about everyone on NPR.

Those who believe NPR is objective (and John Kerry an earthy moderate) find Rush to be the number one demagogue, an enemy of the Republic (or they'd probably say, an enemy of democracy). Of course, I guess it's not odd that upscale listeners of public radio despise the biggest star of commercial radio.

I take Rush for what he is: a radio star. If he has 20 million conservative listeners saying "Amen" every day, it is only because he is a breath of fresh air if you are conservative and have to listen to the self-righteous progressives on CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and NPR. As a celebrity made by radio, he is influential but not dangerous. He is no more dangerous than Jay Leno or David Letterman, and he is far more interesting than Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann.

He has to be outrageous to get ratings, and yet his consistent popularity is tied to his commitment to an America in which NASCAR fans, Mets fans, hunters, fishermen, hockey moms, religious conservatives, folks without minority status, and largely apolitical suburbanites have a say about their taxes, government spending, local schools, gay rights, abortion, etc.

Just as war is too important to be left to the generals, public policy is too important to be left to those who went to graduate schools on the coasts. Rush speaks for the millions of people who feel this way.

He has never said anything more outrageous than some of the words of Susan Sontag, Naom Chomsky, Tom Hayden, or Jane Fonda. Let him talk. He's good at it, and it's a free country. The Anchoress has a blogging round-up of Rush in the news recently. My conservatism is a little more heady and Kirkite, but I went to a fancy law school at a university which has forgotten that it produced the Fugitive Poets.

Amy Welborn's gratitude

I have linked to Amy Welborn several times during the three-year life of this blog. I have been so busy this calendar year I have done little blogging or websurfing. Thus, I missed the news of the sudden death of Ms. Welborn's husband a few weeks ago. I can simply pray for her and her family. Here is her word of thanks for support and prayer.

Can the president suspend the 4th amendment?

Kyle Cupp raises some interesting issues. I don't have an easy answer. John Yoo, as much as he is criticized, is a brilliant legal scholar and, from all accounts, a nice guy. (I met him once when he was teaching at Vanderbilt Law School.)

What I find most interesting is that many Americans (but not Kyle Cupp) are critical of presidential prerogatives when the other side is in power but quit worrying about it when their power moves into the White House. I can say as a student of history that civil liberties are safe with neither party. You have to defend them.

But, as almost every lawyer will tell you, there is usually more gray in the law than black and white. Here is John Yoo's latest piece in the WSJ.

"Paul Harvey- Good Day!"

I'll miss him.

"Morals and Money" [Post No. 2600]

Fr. Dwight Longenecker talks about the economy in moral terms.

Lent is here...

'Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross.'

-- St. John of the Cross


I admit I'm not good at suffering. I'm soft as the suburb where I grew up. But I can become more humble and holy in little increments. That's what Lent is for.