That, according to Andrew Ferguson, is what Newsweek might as well have done in its recent coverage of Christian holidays:

He (Jon Meacham, Newsweek’s editor) ignored the truth that the old newsmagazine editors lived by: journalists who write to satisfy people like themselves will soon run out of readers. The magazine that lies dying in Don Graham’s arms violated this rule week by week.

To cite one obvious example: newsweeklies annually marked Christian holidays with a cover story on a religious theme, always respectful and sometimes celebratory in tone. I’m sure it was a strain, an exercise in self-denial; few journalists are religious in any conventional sense. The new Newsweek, by contrast, published holiday issues that any good secular journalist would like to read. One issue near Christmas offered a long and fallacious cover story on “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage.” Easter came and the magazine feted “The End of Christian America.” Pieces like this weren’t so much a challenge to traditionally religious readers as a declaration of war. Why not just put a bullet in the Easter Bunny while you’re at it?

What Newsweek and other magazines of the genre have been doing is putting a bullet in themselves.

Note: Jon Meacham is a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I live.  Based on what I’ve read in Ferguson’s piece, it only reinforces my conviction that there’s no more insufferable than a white Southern liberal.

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This gem of wisdom, from Engineering Tips:

I would like to offer a suggestion that in your dealings with your co-workers, colleagues, fellow industry professionals, bosses, underlings, secretaries and the general public, put on your happy face and be polite.  Your rewards may be few or none for doing the right thing, but YOU WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN FOR BEING A JERK.

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Back when I was growing up, we’d descend from Palm Beach and venture to the Florida Keys for vacation, navigating waters such as shown at the right.  One of the more memorable side trips we took was a visit to a museum where artefacts from sunken Spanish galleons were on display.  The Spanish were most interested in precious metals in the New World; they systematically enslaved the Aztecs, Toltecs, Mayas, Incas and other people whom they conquered to dig gold and silver out of the mines for shipment back to Spain, in conditions one shudders to even think about.  The Straits of Florida were the main route from Mexico to the Old World, and since the reefs that parallel the Keys were there, some of those galleons never finished the voyage, depositing ship, crew and cargo on the bottom.  Some of these had been salvaged and I found the gold and silver coinage on display to be especially fascinating.

A little later in life I was introduced to another story of subaqueous gold: Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, his epic opera in four parts.  In this case it was a less inviting body of water (the Rhine River) where gold was guarded by Rhine maidens and available only to the one who would forsake love.  Sure enough, there’s always someone who will do anything for money, in this case dwarf Alberich, who got the gold and forged a ring of power.

In the meanwhile the Teutonic gods decided they needed a new home, so they contracted with the giants Fasolt and Fafner to build their new magnificent Valhalla.  Through a long ruse they managed to beat the payment for this out of Alberich, ring included.  Alberich curses his lost ring (as if that were necessary,) Wotan and the gods got clear title, and Froh, the god of spring, created a rainbow bridge for the gods to cross into their new home.  But the effort was doomed from the start by the way they were forced to pay for it.

Fast forward to the year where the left made its last attempt to defeat George W. Bush electorally.  (There’s a political angle to the “rainbow bridge” but I’ll skip it.)  My own church, which was my employer, had been engaged in a massive expansion of its central offices (with expense following,) and the process was complete.   Amidst one of the sappiest responsorial readings I had ever been a part of, the buildings, which surround an expansive prayer garden, were dedicated, and we crossed our own rainbow bridge.

There were prophets amongst us.  One of my colleagues proclaimed that Jesus had turned his back on us.  We peered out of the lobby of the building where our new office was (and is, for the moment) and saw truth in his words.  And there was the matter of payment.

The expanse of Wagner’s musical productions were only matched by the controversy they generated.  Their creator had a high view of his operas, but in his time he had detractors.  Instead of applause, there were many times when the audience was simply clasping its hands above their heads.  Such was also the case with our new Valhalla.

With life faithfully imitating art, it was time for the hero to appear.  Somewhere in my preppy education the idea that heroes didn’t come from warm climates bubbled to the top, that only cold, harsh climates could produce such.  As a South Floridian, this doesn’t sit well, and my response is here.  For once I was right.  Not so far from the sunken Spanish gold, where the animals are tame and the people run wild, a hero appeared that would doom Valhalla and many of its inhabitants.  It’s taken some time and the process has generated more heat than light, but earlier this year our reorganisation began, I announced that I was taking my leave, and we began the painful process of downsizing that has continued unabated to the present day.

Unfortunately, as was the case in the Ring, the hero’s appearance wasn’t an automatic solution to every problem.  The bottom line to our hero’s crusade was that less of the denomination’s cash flow would flow to the centre and more would remain in the field.  But, unlike mythology, there are many Valhallas out there, products of a generation whose penchant for grandiosity combined with availability of credit produced a proliferation of economically unsustainable physical plants.  (That’s what happens when the church follows the culture rather than the other way around!)

But someone needs to take a lesson from this.  It is my prayer that the gold will find its way once again to the bottom, the descendants of those who mined it (and others on the wrong side of slavery and colonialism) will take their rightful place in the church, and that I will never, ever again cross the rainbow bridge.

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One of the downsides to getting older is that your contemporaries die off with increasing frequency (unless you’re one of the earlier ones out yourself!)  You start spending more time in the obituaries (if you’re quick enough to catch them on the net.)  It’s a sorry and morbid practice, but it’s part of life while waiting for eternity.

It was in this vein that I noticed the passing of someone who wasn’t quite a Texas A&M classmate but I counted as a friend: Roy F. Moore, a Houston mechanical engineer who worked for an oil company, as do many Aggies.  (If we don’t get this BP spill fixed, Ags, we’ll have quite a muster on the deck of whatever barge is on site!)  His passing last December brings to mind one of the strangest incidents I ever experienced in my academic career.

Roy and I were in the student chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers together, shared some classes and went on some field trips together.  There are several types of engineers out there (mechanical, civil, electrical, nuclear, etc.) and each has its own organisation, along with groups such as the Society of Women Engineers.  At A&M, all of these were represented on the Student Engineers Council, an umbrella organisation which put together some activities of interest.  Each club’s president was ex officio, and each could elect a senior and junior representative.  Roy was our club president.

The leading candidate for the junior representative was someone who was headed to become the undisputed Big Man On Campus: Robert Harvey.  Before he received his diploma he was both Student Body President and Commander of the Corps of Cadets (A&M has a long military tradition and a very large ROTC program.)  He’s “back in the saddle” as he’s on the board of directors of the Association of Former Students, A&M’s alumni organisation.  And I liked him, he’s a very nice guy.  But, when the chapter gathered to vote, Bob wasn’t there.  Texas A&M has the largest physical campus in the country, and when you’re BMOC, you’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

Evidently Roy was piqued at this state of affairs.  I think he asked me first if I’d be willing to serve, which I was.  When the junior representative vote came, my name and Bob’s were placed in nomination.  From the results the chapter agreed with Roy, because I actually won this election, much to my shock.  Losing this may not have shortened Bob’s resumé much, but it was the one and only election to a student group position I won the whole time I was at Texas A&M.

It’s been a long time since this vote took place, but the lesson is clear: no matter who you are or what your name recognition is, if you want to win an election, you’ve got to show up first!

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In Israel, at least:

But Ben-David said the government has relied too heavily on a quick fix. With heavy lobbying from ultra-Orthodox parties that often prove crucial in forming government coalitions, Israel has increased welfare payments fivefold since 1970, while the standard of living has doubled, he said.

Nearly a decade ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then finance minister, won praise for slashing welfare payments, including monthly per-child allowances. But last year Netanyahu, in a nod to his right-wing coalition partners, agreed to nearly double some child allowances.

Reasons differ for the non-employment of Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Over the last 30 years, the percentage of working ultra-Orthodox men has decreased because of government programs that subsidize their religious study, experts say.

Such programs are now facing a backlash from Israel’s secular and non-Orthodox citizens. A radio talk-show host recently described ultra-Orthodox Jews as “parasites.” Tel Aviv’s mayor said the fast-growing ultra-Orthodox community was “endangering” the economic strength of the “silent majority.”

But defenders of the ultra-Orthodox credit them with preserving Israel’s Jewish identity, saying that without the high birth rates of ultra-Orthodox families, Israel could see an Arab majority in future generations.

The Evangelicals should try this in the US, if they really want to bring their left-wing opponents to heel in a hurry.  OTOH, the threat of millions of “religious right fanatics” going on the dole en masse just might make the left think twice before expanding the welfare state.

It’s not good for Israel (the Israeli Arabs are in the same boat, for a different reason) but the possibility for mischief vis-à-vis our secularist masters is endless.

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“Classical” music is widely perceived to be boring, but if one composer succeeded in changing that (if we ignore the sheer length of his operas) was Richard Wagner.  Controversial in life and death, he changed the face of Western music in ways that few have, even (in some ways) paving the way for cinematic music of the following century.

With initial success in Germany, Wagner brought his opera Tannhäuser to Paris, which opened 13 March 1861.  The style was completely new to the Parisians.  Things didn’t go smoothly, as described by Adolphe Jullien in his book Richard Wagner: His Life and Works:

The first tableau, although it was written quite in Wagner’s latest style, passed without opposition, but when after the change of scene, the strains of the little shepherd were heard, playing upon his pipe, the first murmur of discontent arose.  Wagner, who sat in the director’s box, as yet quite innocent of the meaning of this demonstration, leaned forward in order to command a better view of the audience-room, and remarked to his collaborator who sat beside him: “It is the arrival of the emperor (Napoleon III).”  Alas no! It was the first sign of rebellion from the leaders of the opposition.

In the entr’acte a bright idea for amusing themselves crossed the minds of these individuals; most of the subscribers, members of the Jockey-Club or of the Cercle Impérial, went out and bought up all of the hunting-whistles they could find in a certain gunsmith’s shop in the passage de l’Opera, and the disturbance recommenced with the second act, increasing to the very end of the performance, save during the march with the chorus, when the whistlers had to subside.  It must be said that in this uproar, the chevaliers of the corps de ballet had been sustained by the personal enemies of the master (Wagner)–he always excelled in creating them–while the impartial spectators, indignant at such pre-conceived hostility, and at such as scandalous outrage, joined their bravos, often very warm ones, to those of Wagner’s friends.

For an instant it seemed as if the victory would remain to the defenders; but the finale to the second act, encumbered with harps and troubadours, brought irrevocable defeat; of the third, nothing could be distinguished, and the recitative of the pilgrimage to Rome, in particular, the real climax to the whole work, was drowned from beginning to end in furious yells.  The interpreters, however, did not give way before these hostile demonstrations, and at least two distinguished people in the room bravely defended the author: Mme. won Metternich, who seemed to wish to be revenged upon Solferino; and the emperor, who on several occasions gave the signal for applause.

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Ben Macintyre at the Times wants to know, and so do we:

On the Cameron plane in Scotland: prosciutto, mozzarella and peach salad, followed by rare roast lamb on a bed of lentils, with chocolate mousse for dessert. On the Brown bus, in Scotland: a bottle of Irn-Bru and a curly sandwich. George W. Bush served barbecued ribs to the press, whereas Al Gore provided, at most, a packet of M&M’s. Campaigning with Jacques Chirac was a sort of rolling banquet, with every stop involving a minimum of three courses. Lionel Jospin’s campaign served dry brie baguettes. Why is right-wing campaign food consistently better than left-wing campaign food?

If the left can’t deliver something basic as decent grub on their own, what makes you think they can run your country?

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It’s that time of year when schools of all levels put their paperwork in order, produce large numbers of high quality pieces of paper (PETA hates it when we say this, but they’re called sheepskins) and hands them to those who have endured to the end.  This is otherwise referred to as graduation.

It used to be that graduation speeches were a pretty stock business.  The school knew it.  The valedictorians and salutatorians knew it.  And everyone went along with the program.  Most still do.

But now we have school districts which take no chances.  They insist in reviewing these speeches and, if the speaker dares to vary from it, can get the microphone cut off.  Christians normally (and justifiably) associate this practice with referrering to God in their speech (which makes the New Atheists pass out, truly disruptive during graduation.)  But there are other ways of getting in trouble, as this Florida valedictorian found out the hard way.

So what to do if you have an original thought and want to say it at the important moment?  It’s not hard these days:

1. Put it together, either write it up or do it in video.
2. Post it to your favourite online perch (blog, Facebook, YouTube, etc.)  Longer videos will require something like Vimeo, but most people won’t want to watch it.  Unless you’re very pithy, Twitter is probably too short.  With a blog like this, you can even time the post so no one sees it until you’re ready for them to.
3. When the time comes, get up and simply announce that, due to content restrictions, the speech you wanted to give isn’t possible and that they can find it on _________ (fill in the blank.)  Then sit down.  In addition to getting around the content restrictions, everyone in the house will be punching on their iPhones, Droids or Blackberries to see what’s up, which will be more disruptive than the New Atheists passing out at your reference to God.

I know, it will “spoil the moment.”  But here’s a message from someone who put his school’s tush in a wad by not going to the Ivy League and waited until his last semester in college to take emigration off of the agenda: it doesn’t matter.  On our journey in life to an eternal destination, whether you meet everyone’s expectations in one speech isn’t a big deal.

Like the Hebrew National commercials used to say, you have a higher authority to answer to…

And you can have fun doing it.

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I’m not sure how to react to all of these liberals (like Joe Klein at Time) who call their conservative bêtes noires traitors or seditionists.  But since they’re going to call us names like that, it’s time for this conservative (?) to come clean and talk about some of the subversive material that he’s come across over the years.  In this case, I’m going to discuss a particular book that, read in the context of both sides of the debate in the US, has had a subversive impact on me.

The title speaks of the “second most subersive book.”  Subversive Book #1 is sans doute The Bible.  The Bible’s whole concept–that there is a higher power than the state who deserves a higher claim on loyalty and life than the state–is very subsersive to modern statist liberalism, which is why they hate it so much.  But I discuss that in other places on this blog.

Subversive Book #2 came my way in an odd fashion.  It was a happy coincidence that I began learning French around the same time my parents started going to Europe on business trips to visit our Belgian business associates.  On one trip my father brought back a series of three history books, published in Switzerland and intended for secondary schools in Francophone countries.  All of them proved fascinating, but the last one–Histoire generale de 1789 a nos jours, by Georges-André Chevallaz–was especially interesting.

Textbooks are a very specific genre of book (I am the co-author of one) but few are authored by people who are really participants in their subject.  This one is an exception: Chevallaz was a long-term fixture in Swiss politics.  As Mayor of Lausanne (where the book was published,) member of the Swiss Federal Council, holder of two different departments, and finally President of the Confederation in 1980, he had a chance to make some history in addition to writing it.

This book is obviously more centred in Europe than what we see over here.  It’s also focused (unsurprisingly) on Swiss history, which is interesting in and of itself.  Switzerland has a lot in common with the US, namely a federal system and a relatively light hand of the state on the economy, so there are lessons to be learned.  But the whole concept of a world where all of the light doesn’t come from these shores will come as a shock to many Americans.

But the biggest eye opener came with all of the forms of government described in the book.  Chevallaz took great pains to lay out to the student the various forms of government that nations went through.  He backed this up with all of these interesting diagrams of who went where.  With the French–the poster children of changing forms of government–this means several of these through the French Revolution and more afterwards.  He featured his own country too, complicated as it is by its federal system (pesky things, federal systems, aren’t they?)  At the end of the book he features what amounts to an “international civics” lesson, where he reviews several forms of government (including ours) and the various functions of the state in a general way.

The overarching lesson from this is simple: forms of government come, and forms of government go, and they can go either through an electoral process or the hard way.

In an American context, and especially considering how Americans are conditioned to think of themselves and their country, this is not only subsersive, it’s explosive.

For the conservative, the Constitution of 1787 is a sacred document, to be adhered to the letter.  This is why it’s passed out by Tea Party people and mentioned so often in their rhetoric.  To suggest a change in constitution is unthinkable.

For the liberal, the same constitution is good also, especially if people of their idea dominate the judiciary.  In that case the constitution is whatever they say it is, which empowers them and insures their jobs.  To suggest a change in constitution is dangerous because it also suggests rearranging the paychecks and grant money.

But it was not always so in these United States.  Our Founding Fathers understood this and made this statement part of the Declaration of Independence:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Although we are not as prodigious as the French in changing our governmental form (Chevallaz points out that our revolution was inspiration for theirs,) our current constitution is, in reality, our second.  The Articles of Confederation did not work out as planned; they simply weren’t robust enough for a “more perfect Union.”  Our current form of government is revered because it works, and has worked for more than two centuries.

That working, however, isn’t only because of the document itself.  Our Founding Fathers recognised that it could only be maintained by a people who were disciplined, self-reliant and independent enough to maintain a system that allowed so much freedom to its people.  It was on this account that John Jay, the desendant of French Huguenots, pulled a volte-face on the Continental Congress and negotiated the final settlement of independence with Britain:

Nevertheless, between the two great European powers, Jay had already made his choice and committed his country, though it was the opposite of Congress’s choice. America had fought a war with a French ally against a British enemy, but in the peace negotiations and for the rest of his public career, Jay, often on his own initiative and against much resistance from his colleagues and countrymen, led the way in building the foundation of future U.S. foreign policy, the special relationship between the two English-speaking peoples. And why? “Not being of British Descent,” Jay explained years later, “I cannot be influenced by . . . that Partiality . . . , which might otherwise be supposed not to be unnatural.” But in Europe, he came to loathe arbitrary governments, which “debase and corrupt their Subjects,” even subjects as talented and accomplished as the French (as his Huguenot ancestors had found, he well knew). Very different is Britain’s political culture and therefore its national character. “It certainly is chiefly owing to Institutions Laws and Principles of Policy & Government originally derived to us as British colonists, that with the favor of Heaven the People of this Country are what they are.” Hence his “sentiments of esteem” for the British nation.

Jay expressed what he felt, in practical terms, that debasement and corruption did to people in his description of Spain, where he had resided earlier:

No doubt, he wrote, Aranjuez “is a charming Place,” with the king’s parks, meadows, and woods. But “it is not America. A genius of a different Character . . . reigns over these. Soldiers with fixed bayonets present themselves at various Stations in these peaceful Retreats; and tho’ none but inoffensive Citizens are near, yet Horsmen with drawn swords guarding one or other of the royal family . . . , renew and impress Ideas of Subjection. Power unlimited and Distrust misplaced, thus exacting Homage & imposing awe, occasion uneasy Reflections. . . . Were I a Spaniard, these decorated Seats would appear to me like the temporary Enchantments of some despotic magician, who by re-extending his wand, could at pleasure command them to vanish, and be succeeded by Presidios, Galleys and Prisons.” All human relations in Spain catch a tinge of the same spirit. “This is a kind of Prudence which naturally grows out of a jealous and absolute Government, under which the People have, for many Generations been habituated to that kind of Dependence, which constrains every Class to watch and respect the opinions and Inclinations of their superiors in Power.” No European splendor can equal “the free air, the free conversation, the equal Liberty, . . . which God & Nature and Laws of our making, have given and secured to our happier Country.”

At this stage, I think we need to consider a new arrangement in this part of North America for two reasons.

The first is that our capability to sustain a government of free and independent people is waning.  I’ve discussed this problem elsewhere but it’s one that Obama and the Democrats are hoping will give them a “permanent majority.”  That’s the conservatives’ problem.

The second is that our form of government, with its elaborate system of checks and balances (to say nothing of its federalism) is too cumbersome to become an all-encompassing social service organisation to its people without degenerating into an expensive, unworkable kludge (think of the health care bill we just passed.)  That’s the liberals’ problem.

The nice way to do this is to sit down and cut a deal amongst ourselves, even if that deal is to have a parting of the ways.  But, as the history of other places reminds us, if we don’t do something the easy way, the hard way is what is left to us.  And with our growing fiscal woes (which proved the undoing of our French allies in 1789) the hard way looks like it’s inevitable.

There is no “constitutional” way out of this mess.   The best solution is to go back to the principles that animated this place to start with and make some reconstruction.  But the preferred alternative of our elitist snobs is for the magician in Washington to wave his magic wand and turn this nation effectively into a statist summer camp.  The reaction to that, no matter how it comes out, will put an end to freedom and constitution alike.

But such observations are what happens when you read subsersive books, both the second most subersive one and the first.

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The terrible plane crash which has killed much of Poland’s leadership leaves one speechless.

The Poles have taken much: partition of their country at the end of the 18th Century (the “Enlightenment” no less!), a battlefield in World War I, re-emerging after that only to be dismembered (and much of the population, Jew and Gentile, killed) during World War II, and then forty years of Soviet occupation.  To have this happen–especially in connection with the Katyn massacre–is very painful.

But the Poles have come back with courage and endurance, and they will again.  One evidence of this–and this site’s “tribute” to their ongoing stamina–is Czerwono-Czarni: Msza Beatowa–Pan Przyjacielem Moim, a “rock Mass” from the Communist era that is one of the best of its kind in the “Jesus music” era.  You can click here to visit its page and download the album, in parts or in its entirety.

If they used this for the funeral of one or more of their fallen leaders, it would be a “New Orleans” style funeral: a solemn event celebrated in an upbeat way.

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