Let the festivities begin!

Well, this should be interesting:

Alito, 55, is considered a conservative in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia. Alito is sometimes given the nickname "Scalito" -- a comparison to Scalia, who shares his Italian heritage as well as his reputation for conservatism and a strong intellect. He is a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

Conservatives should be starting to bind their wounds and gear up for the coming battle with the Democrats that some of them so deeply desired. Liberals, no doubt, are hopping mad.

Perjury update

Here's an update on the post "Calling all lawyers":

The call has been answered. I consider the following e-mail response from a trusted legal source to be definitive:

There's no question that perjury can be prosecuted if the defendant lied about something that was material to the investigation, even though the investigation did not otherwise result in charges being brought.

As for how often such cases are prosecuted, the reality is that perjury is a relatively rarely prosecuted crime. No doubt the vast majority of people who lie under oath, in trials, let alone grand jury hearings, are not prosecuted. However, Libby certainly should have expected that in this kind of high-profile, no-stones-unturned investigation, any perjury as stark as his allegedly was, would be prosecuted.

In the previous thread, commenter "the Unknown Blogger" offered the following statistics about perjury prosecutions, which dovetail neatly with the above information:

There are relatively few federal perjury prosecutions. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in fiscal year 1999 there were 126 perjury defendants disposed of in U.S. District Courts. One hundred and six of these defendants were convicted and 80 imprisoned. The average sentence was 22.9 months.

And I'm still wondering about the observation of commenter Holmes, who wrote:

In this instance, the original charge wasn't dropped for lack of evidence despite having probable cause as in Stewart's case, but that there was no case to begin with. An element of the CIA law was that Plame be a CIA covert operative who had been overseas in the past 5 years. That was clearly missing. It would be like prosecuting a murder where the victim was alive and had been unharmed. This is the danger in Congress' power to call investigations.

I don't think I can press for any more free advice from my legal source. But I'm wondering about Holmes's point. Were some of the elements of the crime clearly missing from this case in the first place? And, if this were in fact true, would it even matter in regard to the perjury charges? Or does perjury stand alone once it's committed, needing no original valid cause of action?

An apology? Not good enough!

Do you think this public apology thing may have gotten just a wee bit out of hand as redress for every possible error, including those not made by the one asked to do the apologizing? I do.

But Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid doesn't agree with me. Au contraire. In fact, Reid has called on both Bush and Cheney to offer the American people a public apology for the possible perjury of Cheney's aide Lewis Libby:

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said Sunday that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should apologize for the actions of their aides in the CIA leak case...There has not been an apology to the American people for this obvious problem in the White House," Reid said. He said Bush and Cheney "should come clean with the American public."

Well, I think apologies are not going to be good enough--after all, an aide to the Vice-President has been indicted (although not convicted) for perjury in a grand jury hearing based on a case that doesn't seem so far to have any legs. Quelle horreur! (And yes, yes, yes, perjury is a serious offense, but one that resides so far only in the innocent-till-proven-guilty person of one Lewis Libby).

I think the proper course of action, and one that the American people would probably appreciate far more than mere apologies, would be a stint in the stocks for Bush and Cheney. It would be especially apropos for some time around Thanksgiving, recalling one of the more quaint and endearing customs of our Pilgrim forefathers/foremothers.

Harry Reid requires more even more of Rove than of Bush and Cheney. An apology simply won't do in his case:

Reid also said that Karl Rove, the president's closest political adviser, should step down. Rove has not been charged with a crime.

As far as Rove goes, Reid might want to look into pillory in addition to the resignation. Or Reid might perhaps want to "roll out the barrel"--as in barrel pillory (boy, Wikipedia is edifying!), to wit:

There even was a variant (rather of the stocks type, in fact), called barrel pillory, or Spanish mantle, to punish drunks. It fitted over the entire body, with the head sticking out from a hole in the top. The criminal is put in either an enclosed barrel, forcing him to kneel in his own filth, or an open barrel, leaving him to roam about town and be ridiculed and scorned.

Strategic quote-cropping at the NY Times

An especially pernicious example of quote-cropping at the NY Times has been noted in the blogosphere, most prominently by Michelle Malkin, here.

One can't help but conclude that the Times's omission of the most telling parts of Corporal Starr's e-mail was quite purposeful. I suggest you take a look at Malkin's post and write the ombudsman at the Times if you are upset by what they've done.

Henry James missed his calling

I think he should have been a blogger.

Oh, I don't mean he shouldn't have written his novels. I'm referring only to the last year or two of his life, when he became very politically active as a result of WWI.

I had first learned of the fact of James's strong reaction to WWI a while back. But I was reminded of it by some passages in the book Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, which I've recently finished (and may write a separate post about).

I was struck by the fact that James could be roughly classified as a "changer," WWI having been the catalyst for his change, much like 9/11 has been for so many people recently. Previously, he'd been relatively apolitical. But after WWI began James, who was living in England, became consumed with the need to turn his energies to the war:

In the last two years of his life, Henry James was radically transformed by his intense involvement in the First World War. For the first time, he became socially and politically active, a man who all his life had done his best to keep aloof from the actual passions of existence. His critics, like H. G. Wells, blamed him for his mandarin attitude towards life, which prevented him from any involvement with the social and political issues of the day. [James] wrote about his experience of World War I that it "almost killed me. I loathed so having lived on and on into anything so hideous and horrible."

James had lived through the Civil War as a young man, but hadn't served due to a back ailment. According to Ms. Nafisi, James:

wrote in part [during the Civil War] to compensate for his inability to participate in the war. Now, at the end of his life, he complained about the impotence of words in the face of such inhumanity. In an interview on March 21, 1915, with The New York Times, he said: "The war has used up words; they have weakened, they have deteriorated like motor car tires; they have, like millions of other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the happy semblance during the last six months than in all the long ages before, and we are now confronted with a depreciation of all our terms, or, otherwise speaking, with a loss of expression through increase of limpness, that may well make us wonder what ghosts will be left to walk."

Oh, that Jamesian sentence structure!

I think it's interesting that for James the human suffering, which obviously deeply moved him, led to a deep mourning of the loss of the power of language to convey what was happening. For a man like James this was terribly important; as a writer, words were key to him. Clearly, though, he was undergoing a deep crisis which led to a turning point, because despite that despair about the power of words he began using them in an activist way for the first time in his life:

...this time to write not fiction but war pamphlets, appeals to America to join the war and not to remain indifferent to the suffering and atrocities in Europe. He also wrote poignant letters. In some he expressed his horror at events; in others he consoled friends who had lost a son or a husband in the war.

He fell into a round of activities, visiting wounded Belgian soldiers, and later British soldiers, in hospitals, raising money for Belgian refugees and the wounded and writing war propaganda from the fall of 1914 until December 1915...What inner horror and fascination drove this man, who all his life had shied away from public activity, to become so actively involved in the war effort?

One reason for his involvement was the carnage, the death of so many young men, and the dislocation and destruction. While he mourned the mutilation of existence, he had endless admiration for the simple courage he encountered, both in the many young men who went to war and in those they left behind...He lobbied the U.S. ambassador to Britain and other high American officials and reproached them for their neutrality. And he wrote pamphlets in defense of Britain and her allies.

That's the point at which it occurred to me that James, had he lived today, might have become a blogger.

I won't even venture a guess as to whether James would be a hawk or a dove in the present conflict. However, it seems clear that, despite his deep distate for killing, he was a hawk during WWI. But not a bloodthirsty one--au contraire. It seems that he wanted the sacrifice of so many courageous young men and their families to be meaningful and not wasted; he wanted the war to be fought decisively rather than go on and on in a bloody stalemate. I have not been able to find his actual writings about the war online, so I've not read them, but my guess is that he reasoned that the entrance of the US into the war would enable the allies to win and therefore would staunch the bleeding.

James suffered a stroke on Dec. 2, 1915, and died three months later. When James had written that the war had "almost killed" him, perhaps he spoke too soon.

Calling all lawyers: about perjury

It's about perjury.

"Perjury" is a term that's being used in connection with the Libby indictment. It's often loosely defined as "lying under oath."

But it turns out that lying under oath is a necessary, but not sufficient, element of perjury. I remember learning this way back (seems like decades ago, doesn't it?) during Clinton's impeachment. It turns out that the lie involved in perjury must be about a fact material to the case.

Take a look; here's the "material" part:

a) Whoever under oath (or in any declaration, certificate, verification, or statement under penalty of perjury as permitted under section 1746 of title 28, United States Code) in any proceeding before or ancillary to any court or grand jury of the United States knowingly makes any false material declaration or makes or uses any other information, including any book, paper, document, record, recording, or other material, knowing the same to contain any false material declaration, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

"Material" in this context means "relevant to the case at hand."

So my question is actually quite simple (and please don't call me a simpleton for asking it): can someone be indicted for perjury--that is, lying about a material element of a case--when there is no other case? If perjury ends up being the only charge in a long-term investigation, what case is the lie material to?

The answer, of course may be "the one that was suspected, but for which not enough evidence was found to sustain an indictment." Doesn't this seem a bit strange, legally speaking?

Of course, one could argue that, even when there ends up being no primary case, the secondary case--perjury--still needs to be prosecuted to make it clear that lying under oath about a fact that would have been material had the case gone to trial is a serious offense.

But I'm wondering, if that's true: how often are such cases actually prosecuted? And under what circumstances?

All you lawyers out there, please feel free to comment.

Pundits, bloggers, sharks, and feeding frenzi

I've referred to the swirl of criticism around the Miers nomination as a "feeding frenzy" a number of times (for example, here). Like many other metaphors, it's become less colorful through overuse: "feeding frenzy" has come to be a sort of cliche meaning "intense attack by a group."

But, in an attempt to give the phrase back some of its original force, I offer you the following, from Melville's Moby Dick, the best description I've ever read of how a feeding frenzy actually works in nature among its prime practitioners, sharks:

...when, accordingly Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks, by striking the keen steel deep into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other's disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound.

So, that's a feeding frenzy, folks: sharks, excited beyond measure by the smell of blood, bite and bite and bite until they rip each other--and even themselves--to shreds.

A cautionary tale, no? Pundits and bloggers, known for the sharpness of their opinions--and, as with sharks' teeth, such sharpness is often a necessary part of the arsenal of such creatures--need to be careful that, in the group excitement of the fray, they don't end up destroying more than they intended.

First, a caveat (always have to try my best to head the critics off at the pass): when I say the Miers nomination response has resembled a feeding frenzy, I'm not for a moment saying people have no right to criticize her, or that there weren't some very excellent grounds for criticism. They do, and there were. No, I'm talking about the nature of the criticism, which was in many cases more degrading and personal than necessary, amounted virtually to mockery of the intelligence of a woman who had done nothing to deserve it, and had a sort of synergistic quality.

One of the commenters here, John Moulder, wrote the following about blogs:

For every 2 Memogates & Condi Rice photo corrections there will be 1 Miers assassination. Nope, the blogs ain't no panacea, that's for sure,'cause their medicine sometimes causes nausea. And doc, these 2-edged swords are killing my neck.

So, what's going on with bloggers and pundits? To simplify, I'd say the whole thing comes down to ego.

By "ego" I do not mean something mostly bad. Notice that there are multiple definitions of the word: (1) self-importance (an inflated feeling of pride in your superiority to others); (2) your consciousness of your own identity; and (3) a technical Freudian term meaning the part of the personality responsible for reality-testing, defense, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning, and memory.

So yes, bloggers and pundits tend to have ego in all senses of the word--lots of it, plenty to spare. In order to put one's opinions out there as though they matter, a person must have the courage of his/her convictions. But that can sometimes spin out of control due to a number of factors, including but not limited to definition #1.

For example, there's the actual activity of blogging or writing a column. Doing this day after day and week after week tends to sharpen and hone the ability to define and have strong opinions, to express them, and to feel they have value. It's almost like developing a muscle through exercise, and it usually happens whether or not the pundit/blogger/columnist realizes it or not or wants it to happen or not.

Personally, I think that realizing it is half the battle. I'm not saying that pundits or bloggers should be shy and retiring, with an attitude of "well, I don't really know, but maybe perhaps it might possibly be the case that..." But I think they (we) do need to be careful not to get carried away with the sheer brilliance of their (our) rapier wit and trenchant opinions.

Alone in front of the computer (or, increasingly less often, a pad of paper), the pundit/blogger sits. Inspiration strikes, and the need to be wittier, sharper (there's that word again!), more opinionated--to be noticed--rises up in folks who tend to be pretty witty and sharp to begin with. "The pen is mightier than the sword" is a cliche because it has some truth to it--and the sharper the words the mightier they sometimes sound, especially in the solitude of the act of composition. And once put down and published, they can't be recalled.

Then there's the group aspect. Bloggers and pundits write in isolation, but they're not really in isolation at all, except physically. Mentally and emotionally they are part of one huge mass shouting out at each other and at everybody else, the sounds of the exchange echoing and ricocheting and reverberating all over the country--and in some cases the world. As such, we influence each other greatly. It's not even a case of following the herd, it's more a case of being influenced by the opinions of others, a process we are all susceptible to no matter how independent we may think we are. We influence each other directly by our words, and also indirectly by the sense of competition that's inherent in this pundit/blogger game--the need, for some at least, to try to outdo each other.

So what's the result? Sometimes it's wonderful--in fact, since I'm a fan of blogs, I'd say it's often wonderful--a liveliness of writing and thinking and interacting that you just can't get in the staid old MSM. There's an energy here, and part of it is the energy that comes with a bunch of sharp (in several senses of the word) and verbal people mixing it up and trying to say intelligent things in a way that's interesting to read. Sometimes it segues into a group of people trying to say outrageous things, either to amuse or to stir up or out of anger or the desire to call attention to themselves, or some of the above or all of the above.

When is the line crossed and it becomes a feeding frenzy? I don't have the answer; each person has to decide that for him/herself. But when there's a lot of blood in the water and people find that their own entrails, and those of their allies, are hanging out--that could be a sign.

[ADDENDUM: To those of you who may have thought I misspelled the word "frenzy" in the title of this post ("frenzi") in order to show solidarity with Ms. Miers--oh, would that you were right! Actually, my solidarity with her seems to be deeper than just a show; it was a bona fide typo, and one that spellcheck didn't catch because apparently spellcheck doesn't do titles.

That said, I'm leaving it in to demonstrate solidarity with Ms. Miers (actually, in truth, I'm leaving it in because I fear that, were I to change it now, the link wouldn't work). Anyway, the perfect is the enemy of the good, right?]

Changing of the guard

I just may weep; Uma Thurman is the "older woman."

And what does that make Meryl Streep? The old woman?

The 2,000th US military death in Iraq

Back during Vietnam, one of the features of that war was the body count. The US military issued a running estimate of the number of enemy combat deaths, which was considered by some to be bloodthirsty, exaggerated, and a misplaced measurement of the progress of the war. Criticism was so intense that in recent years the military has stopped the practice, although others have taken it up for their own (and often suspect) reasons.

The body count of American dead in the Iraq war goes on, however. It is based on statistics supplied by the US military--apparently it's still okay to count our dead. The recent publicity given to the 2,000 American death can seem to give off an aura of ghoulish celebration clothed in solemn mourning, just in time for Halloween.

I'm not saying the MSM's emphasis on this body count doesn't contain an element of sincere sympathy for the sorrows of the families of the fallen, at least in some instances. But I believe that, all too often, observations such as the following one highlighted approvingly by Dymphna--from a commenter on her blog writing on the death of #2000--are quite correct:

I've been thinking about the cries that he is being victimized by the left--and how ignoble a title "Victim" to bestow upon a warrior. Instead, he is, with his family, a warrior whose service goes beyond merely his life, and includes bearing the weight of fools.

In honor of the 2000th death and all the other US military deaths--and lives--in Iraq and elsewhere, I thought I'd recycle a portion of a post I wrote around Memorial Day on the subject of the liberal attitude towards the military. Here is the excerpt:

It's not my impression that liberals/leftists necessarily even focus on the courage of the military. It's my impression, from talking to liberals/leftists and reading what they write, that many primarily see the military (as I wrote previously) as either bloodthirsty--or, much more commonly and condescendingly, as unintelligent lower- or working-class pawns of a cowardly and exploitative ruling class (thus, the "chickenhawk" accusation against that ruling class, especially towards those who didn't serve, or whose service is deemed inadequate)...

In my experience, liberals don't necessarily even think very often in terms of concepts such as physical courage--it's an old-fashioned word for an old-fashioned value. They think in terms of the values of kindness and/or tolerance and/or intelligence, which they feel that they themselves demonstrate. Or, if they do think of courage and admire it, it is more often the courage to speak out, or to stand up for a cause (to "speak truth to power," for example).

Remember the old slogan, "Better Red than dead?" The people who said it meant it. And they weren't all Communists, not by any means. They were people who believed that almost nothing--no abstraction, anyway, including freedom--was worth fighting for in the physical sense, and especially not worth dying for. Therefore anyone who does believe in fighting for something so abstract must be deluded in some way, or oppressed in some way, or both...

I also think that the template for the liberal/leftist view of the military was set during Vietnam, when the draft was one of the main ways to enter the service...People whose attitudes towards military service were based on that era are sometimes unable to understand the changes that have been wrought by the all-volunteer military. They continue to see those in the service as victims, although now they are not seen as victims of the draft, but as victims of coercion and class via economic incentives for joining the military, and/or as victims of the self-serving lies of politicians. It stands to reason that the class interpretation would be especially common on the left, since it fits in quite nicely with a socialist or Marxist viewpoint. And, if the enlistee is viewed as a pawn of economic circumstances, and his/her motivation is seen as economic, then it's easier to circumvent the whole topic of personal courage.

This idea of the dead soldier as victim, rather than courageous hero, is often cited by the left for propaganda purposes against the administration and those "ruling classes." Here's a recent and very typical example of this type of thinking (found here in comment #80--supposedly it's taken from Michael Moore's website, but I looked and couldn't find it there, so I can't swear it's a proper attribution):

Bush and the Crime Cabal in power sent 26 more soldiers to their graves this week and 26 more families to lives of living hell. 26 more lives and families devastated and destroyed for absolutely nothing. We will see the hypocritical mobsters of the state at their events today and tomorrow spewing filth from their mouths, such as: "Freedom isn't Free," and "We must stay the course in Iraq to honor the sacrifices of the fallen...Then the morons who killed our children will happily go back to their homes and have a nice Memorial Day dinner secure in the fact that their children will never die in a war and their children will have nice, wealthy, long lives because of the incredible riches this misadventure in Iraq has brought their fathers and mothers.

Then there is the idea of those who serve in the military as the "other." Here's an interesting article from the LA Times that discusses the change of heart a father experienced when his son, a Marine, went to Iraq. The father had never served in the military himself, and seemed to have never even considered what might motivate someone to serve. He writes:

Before my son unexpectedly volunteered for the Marines, I was busy writing my novels and raising my family, and giving little thought to the men and women who guard us...

But later, when his son returns from combat, the father writes:

I found myself praying and crying for all the fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands and wives of those who were not coming home. For the first time in my life, I was weeping for strangers.... Before my son went to war I never would have shed tears for them. My son humbled me. My son connected me to my country. He taught me that our men and women in uniform are not the "other."

Prior to his son going to war, this man was almost dissociative in his ability to tune out the military. They simply did not exist for him as people--or, if they did, they were the "other." What he means by that I'm not sure--were they the "other" in his eyes because of perceived class differences, personality differences, or merely a failure of imagination on his part? One might say he seems to lack the ability to put himself in someone else's shoes--and yet it turns out he is an author, and a novelist! Very perplexing indeed.

I can only conclude that people like the author, Frank Schaeffer, are operating with blinders on. The motivations of people in the military are not understood by them, and they are not curious about those motivations. Schaeffer's change of heart occurred for one simple reason: a military man finally became "real" to him, because that man was his son. He could no longer regard this particular Marine as the "other," because he knew him and loved him, and that ended up humanizing all military personnel in his eyes.

Miered no more

I have to say that this news comes a relief.

I was looking forward to the hearings out of curiosity. Honestly, I wanted to see Ms. Miers wow everyone with her vast knowledge of constitutional law and her keen and articulate intelligence. Just as honestly, I wasn't at all sure whether her hearing would be a triumph, a train wreck, or something in between. I cannot imagine her performing to the satisfaction of her critics, even if she did have the requisite intellectual chops--which is still unknown and will remain unknown forever--under such an intense and harsh spotlight.

I'm glad it turned out this way, and that she finally did what seems to be the right thing for all concerned. Now, on with the dog and pony show of the next nomination. Will Bush be a contrarian and make another pick that will have people up in arms? Or will he be a good boy and play ball with the right? And will whatever he does staunch the bleeding and end the feeding frenzy?

Nuclear bunker busters busted; meanwhile, Iran thumps its chest

Remember those nuclear bumper busters from the Kerry-Bush debates of '04? They reminded me a bit of Quemoy and Matsu in the Nixon-Kennedy debates of 1960: a big fuss made at the time, but then virtually forgotten.

Well, it's a mystery as to exactly why, but development of these nuclear bunker busters has been scrapped, at least for now:

The move to remove the funding comes at the request of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which has been the driving force behind the bunker buster. It is unclear why the chief proponent of the funding withdrew its request.

The folks in Utah, where the testing would probably have taken place, are very happy--which is understandable. NIMBY takes on a whole new meaning when it's the testing of nuclear weapons in one's backyard.

I'm wondering about the decision, though, in light of this other news of the day--the announcement by Iran's President that Israel should be "wiped off the map" (via Roger Simon). Wasn't it to combat Iran's development of nuclear weapons, which seems to involve underground storage, that such nuclear bunker busters were being developed? I can only hope that the reversal on the program represents a decision by scientists and strategists that conventional weaponry would work just as well with fewer dangers, rather than a decision that the program doesn't have the political clout to be funded. I would certainly prefer conventional weapons to nuclear ones myself, if the former can be effective.

There are a few other interesting details in the article about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement. Notice, for example, those who have spoken against it. One of them is Ebrahim Yazdi, a former Iranian foreign minister who said that Ahmadinejad's remarks hurt Iran:

"Such comments provoke the international community against us. It's not to Iran's interests at all. It's harmful to Iran to make such a statement," he said.

So, if I get this straight, it's another case of "nothing wrong with the remarks themselves but shhhh!, quiet about it! Let's keep it in the family; no need to get the international community onto us."

Lovely.

As for that international community, there are were other, and better, responses, some from surprising quarters:

In Madrid, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos summoned Iran's ambassador to protest Ahmadinejad's comments. Moratinos said he rejected the remarks in the strongest possible terms.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Baptiste Mattei also condemned the remarks "with the utmost firmness."

Of course, words are cheap. But they're better than nothing. Would that they were followed with meaningful actions.

Lost in translation: the girl from Ipanema

I recently made the acquaintance of yargb, yet another really great blog. That is, Yet Another Really Great Blog.

It's a group blog (which makes me a bit envious, since it means each blogger can take it easy sometimes) composed of some of the most articulate and well-known commenters around the blogosphere.

This post at yargb--about the fate of the real Girl from Ipanema--caught my eye (via Dymphna at Gates of Vienna). Her fifteen minutes of fame were all too brief (the Girl's, that is, not Dymphna's).

But I'm bringing up the song for another reason. A couple of days ago we had a discussion about poetry, and whether its recent incarnation speaks to most people these days. As the back-and-forth in the comments section got going, quite a few people ventured the idea that song lyrics have taken over where poetry left off about fifty years ago.

Well, I happen to know a little bit about the lyrics of "The Girl from Ipanema." Even though I don't speak Portuguese myself, I am close to someone who does, and he once gave me a recitation and translation of the original Portuguese lyrics to the song. And I have to say I was blown away, not only by their loveliness (you could recite the phone book in Portuguese to me and I'd think it was lovely), but by the depth of the Portuguese version compared to the relative shallowness of the English translation-which-is-not-a-
translation (can't resist those water metaphors).

It turns out that the author of the Portuguese words to the song, Vinicius de Moraes, was a man who quite handily bridged the poetry/lyrics gap. He was a well-known poet and popular lyricist, as well as a diplomat (!) who was at one time vice-consul to Los Angeles (no, I kid you not, so if things had worked out differently we might have had "The Girl from Santa Monica").

Here are all the words: first, the familiar English version most of us know; then, the original Portuguese lyrics; and lastly, a literal translation into English of those Portuguese lyrics. I wish the popular English version had followed them more closely--but then, if it had, would it have been as popular?

Tall and tan
and young and lovely
the girl from Ipanema
goes walking
and when she passes
each one she passes
goes ahhh

When she walks
she's like a samba
that swings so cool
and sways so gently
that when she passes
each one she passes
goes ahhh

Oh, but he watches so sadly
How can he tell her he loves her
Yes, he would give his heart gladly
but each day when she walks to the sea
she looks straight ahead not at he

Tall and tan
and young and lovely
the girl from Ipanema
goes walking
and when she passes
he smiles but she doesn't see
she just doesn't see


Olha que coisa mais linda,
mais cheia de graça
É ela menina
que vem que passa
Num doce balanço
caminho do mar

Moça do corpo dourado
do sol de Ipanema
O seu balançado
é mais que um poema
É a coisa mais linda
que eu já vi passar

Ah, porque estou tão sozinho
Ah, porque tudo e tão triste
Ah, a beleza que existe
A beleza que não é só minha
que também passa sozinha

Ah, se ela soubesse
que quando ela passa
O mundo sorrindo
se enche de graça
E fica mais lindo
por causa do amor


Look at this thing, most lovely
most graceful
It's her, the girl
that comes, that passes
with a sweet swinging
walking to the sea

Girl of the golden body
from the sun of Ipanema
Your swaying
is more than a poem
It's a thing more beautiful
than I have ever seen pass by

Ah, why am I so alone
Ah, why is everything so sad
The beauty that exists
The beauty that is not mine alone
that also passes by on its own

Ah, if she only knew
that when she passes
the world smiles
fills itself with grace
and remains more beautiful
because of love

There's more: here's a discussion comparing the legend of the writing of this song to the supposedly true story of its origins (I have no way to evaluate the veracity of any of this).

And here's an interesting comparison of the two versions, along with a link to the Getz/Gilberto rendition.

It depends what the meaning of "friend" is

Yesterday I wrote about the UN being implicated by its own computer.

Now it seems that the reprehensible George Galloway may have slipped up in his Senate testimony last May. Pity.

And in the future I, for one, will pay particular attention whenever Belmont Club asks us to pay particular attention to something. Why? See what the amazingly prescient Wretchard wrote back in May about the questions Coleman and Levin were asking of Galloway during the Senate hearings.

The UN: hoist by its own computers

You gotta love it: a computer error reveals another shabby UN action, this time a coverup of the explosive allegations of a connection between Syrian President Assad's family and associates, and Hariri's assassination in Lebanon:

The United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday. The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.

The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.

Isn't the modern age wonderful?

I know those editing programs. I've done some free-lance editing, and have been required at times to track my changes. It's a nifty little thing where your edits show up in blue or red or whatever color you happen to choose. When you send the document, there's a version that looks normal, and then with one magical click the removed material suddenly appears--usually with a strikeout line though it--and the additions leap into color. Very helpful for the top editor to see what you've done and how you've done it, without having to perform a laborious line-by-line comparison.

But computers are such funny things--one little click of the mouse and you can make the Mother of All Errors. You can send an e-mail to the wrong person--to spouse instead of lover, to boss instead of friend. Or, in this case, the wrong version of an e-mail to the wrong person. Big trouble in either case, private or public.

Or sometimes your computer just takes over, and ups and does it all for you. Mine once went on a rampage and sent copies of what was, thankfully, a fairly innocuous and even boring e-mail of mine out to four or five randomly selected people from my address box, including someone with whom I'd had only business dealings. I apologized for my computer's wild ways, but unfortunately it kept happening over and over every few days, to the point where the business person asked me to stop harassing her, and I had call in some sort of computer doctor to advise me on how to fix the glitch.

So I can feel the UN's pain--not! It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of scoundrels, in my opinion. The UN's long long record of kissing up to tyrants, of anti-Semitism cloaked as anti-Zionism, and of rampant corruption, has made me deeply distrust nearly everything they do. So this coverup of the possible Assad connection is not a surprise, and the computer faux pas gives me no end of satisfaction.

Even Senators get lucky sometimes

Somehow I missed the following tidbit from a couple of days ago, so perhaps you did, too.

New Hampshire's Republican Senator Judd Gregg, known as a staunch fiscal conservative and chair of the Senate Budget Committee, has won a not inconsiderable amount (to the mind of this fiscal moderate, anyway) in the Powerball lottery.

Gregg won $853,492, which is hardly chump change, although far from the $340 million grand prize. And, since he's from New Hampshire, a state without income taxes, he gets to keep 75% of it. Some guys live right:

Gregg already is a millionaire, according to personal financial records that senators are required to file annually.

His latest filing, which documents his financial records for the calendar year of 2004, shows that Gregg has assets between $2,697,000 and $9,430,000, mostly in an extensive stock and real estate portfolio.

After hearing the lottery news, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, quipped the money should be used to pay down the federal deficit.

Senator Conrad beat me to the punch.

How does Gregg actually plan to spend the money? Some will go to charity, and much of the rest to his wife. Sounds about right to me.

I can't recall any other celebrity or public figure winning a substantial lottery prize before. Can anyone help me out on this?

It surprises me a bit that the relatively wealthy, such as Gregg, might play the lottery, too. Although, why not? When you buy a lottery ticket some say you're basically throwing away your money, and they are mathematically correct in terms of probability. But they are ignoring the vagaries of the human heart; for most people, a lottery ticket is a ticket to a dream. And I guess even fiscally conservative Republican Senators can dream.

Testing

I just published a huge post, but it's not showing up on my computer, although it's recorded as having been published. So this is a test, to see whether there's a problem.

[ADDENDUM: It worked! Suddenly they both appeared. A little Blogger trick I once learned when faced with a similar glitch.]

Judging Harriet

Methinks I hear the fat lady singing for Ms. Miers, and it's an ugly sound--a cross between a squawk, a whine, a groan, and a croak.

I don't believe we have any real way of knowing whether Ms. Miers is as competent and meritorious as Bush has alleged, or as incompetent and mediocre as nearly everyone else is saying. But I, for one, am willing to wait to actually hear the lady speak for herself before I make a final judgment (in other words, TTLB: I am neutral on the Miers nomination).

There's certainly much to criticize about this nomination--particularly, IMHO, Miers's closeness to the President (although the argument could also be made that this means he knows her likely judicial philosophy). But I've been surprised at how much of the recent criticism, especially in the blogosphere, has focused on her writing ability as demonstrated in her answers to the Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.

Now, I'm not able to give a learned discourse on just how grievously Miers may have erred in claiming that the Equal Protection clause has a proportional representation requirement (a little? a lot? not at all?), but I'm able to speak with more conviction about her writing ability.

First, there's spelling and grammar: I hadn't been aware until now that Ms. Miers was applying for a job as proofreader. I've done some editing here and there and, believe me, proofreading is a highly overrated (although extremely necessary) skill that doesn't say much one way or the other about intelligence and/or reasoning ability.

Those who state that committing a few typos and grammatical errors is a failure of precision and carefulness are quite correct. But it's a failure of precision and carefulness that's irrelevant and immaterial (to coin a legal phrase), and this heated criticism represents a repellent phenomenon I've never witnessed before and never care to witness again: a grammatical feeding frenzy.

Another criticism of Miers's responses is their brevity--in particular, her answer to the only substantive question, the final one, which deals with her views on judicial activism. For example, James Joyner of Outside the Beltway criticized its shortness.

I decided, just for fun, to compare the length of Ms. Miers's answer to that of John Roberts. As far as I know, I'm the first in the blogosphere to actually do this mindbogglingly difficult piece of research, which involves the arduous task of going to the PDF file of Miers's questionnaire and the PDF file of Roberts's questionnaire and actually counting the pages in each answer. Well, the font's a bit different, so it's hard to compare exactly, but Roberts's answer to the question appears to be shorter than that of Ms. Miers by a full page.

Do I care that it's shorter? Nope, I've never felt that length had much to do with evaluating the worth of a piece of writing. But if people are going to criticize Ms. Miers for not writing a long enough answer, how can they ignore the fact that hers is longer than Roberts's?

Then I read her answer. Not quickly, but slowly. And what did I find when I actually read it? I found it a bit dry, straightforward, relatively uninspired--but it seemed intelligent. Yes, you heard me right--it seemed intelligent (and, by the way, indicative of a constructionist approach, as far as I can see). Was it markedly erudite? Not especially. Was it eloquent? No. Was it clear and intelligible? Perfectly. Was it going to set the world on fire with the extremity of its brilliance? No.

And then I went back to that other questionnaire filled out by someone who actually had set the world on fire (metaphorically speaking, that is) with the extremity of his brilliance in his Senate hearings: John Roberts.

And what did I find? Is his answer to the same question well-written? It's competent enough. The style is more formal and conventionally academic than Ms. Miers's, a bit more ornate. Is it clear? Sure. Does he actually say anything much different than Ms. Miers's does? No. Does the answer demonstrate his genius? No. It was a decent response, nothing more (by the way, I'm not cutting and pasting any examples here because the files are in read-only format. So you'll have to take a look yourself: Miers's answer begins on page 55 of her questionnaire, and Roberts's begins on page 66 of his.)

In fact, I think Miers's essay has more content as well as length. I went through both essays writing down a summary of the major thoughts in each paragraph (I'll spare you a copy of that, dear readers). The Committee's judicial activism question isn't framed in a way that opens itself up to groundbreaking thinking, so you'll pardon me if I say that, IMHO, Roberts's answer wasn't all that different from a regurgitation of the first few days of an undergraduate ConLaw course (the phrase Joyner used to describe Miers's answer).

To those who have criticized Miers's answer so heavily, I'd love to see them compare and contrast it with Roberts's answer, and explain in what ways his is so clearly superior to hers. It's definitely possible that there are some legal niceties I'm missing here. But I haven't even seen a single attempt at a comparison. Why not?

It seems to me that the nature of the question itself, and the need to give an answer sufficiently vague as to not leave oneself open for criticism, dictate that any possible answer will be rather mediocre. In fact, I'd be surprised if the answer of any candidate so far has been especially wonderful .

Let me make it perfectly clear: I don't care. I don't care that Roberts's answer is pretty pedestrian, and rather short. I think he'll make an excellent justice, perhaps even a stellar one. But Ms. Miers's answer to this question--the only "substantive" one in the entire document--actually shows a bit more imagination than that of Roberts. She makes the interesting--to me, at least--point that she has experience in all three branches of government: judicial (in her clerkship to Judge Estes), legislative (in her position on the Dallas City Council), and executive (as President Bush's counsel)--and that therefore she has firsthand personal experience of how the three branches of government interact, and what roles each has in relation to the judiciary and to each other. It's a decent point, and it's an argument from experience.

Oh, and I found a couple of punctuation errors in Mr. Roberts's questionnaire: a comma or two that I see as problems, and one improper use of the dash. And no doubt someone looking at this post of mine can find a couple of similar mistakes too, even though I've tried to proofread it carefully. Do you really care? I don't--although, of course, I'd prefer all these documents to be absolutely perfect.

I don't mean to say that Ms. Miers is smarter or would be a better justice than Mr. Roberts; there's no indication that that's true. I also believe she's far from the best nominee possible for the position. But can we not wait to hear how she thinks and reasons during her Senate hearings? We learned a great deal about Mr. Roberts this way. What's the all-fired hurry to condemn her? Surely there will be enough time to do this after her hearings, if she is indeed the fool so many say she is.

Oh, and another thing. Please read "Remote Control" by Stuart Taylor, Jr., a piece that appeared in the September 2005 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. It's an eloquent plea for appointing a justice with real-world rather than just ivory-tower or academic experience (suggesting, specifically, a person who "has argued big-time commercial lawsuits"). One can almost hear it as a plea for a justice like Ms. Miers, although author Taylor now says he doesn't support her for the job.

Mr. Taylor recently wrote that the closeness of Ms. Miers's relationship to the President, and her position as his advocate, is especially troubling:

Might she shy away from casting votes that could cause Bush political embarrassment? Or even ask herself, "What would the president want me to do?"... A few presidential cronies have, of course, turned out to be notable justices. They include Robert Jackson, Hugo Black and Felix Frankfurter, all appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt. But each of them had been a legal or political giant of independent stature – as attorney general, U.S. senator, and Harvard Law School dean [sic: he was a professor at HLS], respectively – before taking the bench.

Good point. It's the closeness of her relationship with the President coupled with her lack of extraordinary independent stature that should give one pause.

But to give pause is not to reject outright. It seems that Taylor is with me; he's still willing to give Ms. Miers a final chance to prove herself:

The Senate should reject any Supreme Court nominee – especially one close to the president – who has not proven herself to have extraordinary ability and independence of judgment unskewed by loyalty. The woman who once called Bush the most brilliant man she had ever met has not met this burden of proof during her first 60 years. Unless she can do so in the next few weeks, she should be treated with respect, praised for her character and accomplishments, and voted down.

Ms. Miers needs to show her independence and keen intelligence in the hearings. If so, she should be approved; if not, rejected.

And lastly, while waiting to hear what she has to say and how she acquits herself, you might want to read this Washington Post profile of Miers, written before the feeding frenzy really got going.

The poetry you know and the poetry you don't know

Some of you who've read this blog for a while may recall that I like poetry, and that as a child my school assignments included memorizing a lot of poetry.

And so it is that often when I'm thinking about a subject--even a political one--a poem or line of poetry comes to mind. It happened the other day with, of all things, Saddam Hussein's trial and the poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath. And it just happened again with a comment to my nepotism post.

When I was composing that comment, I had to look up Thomas Gray's poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." I hadn't read it in decades, and I was struck by the fact that in this single poem there are at least three famous lines--lines that have become, to a greater or lesser extant, part of the buzzing hum of sayings--cliches, really--that swirl in our heads and have become part of our popular knowledge base whether we're aware of them or not.

Often, we haven't a clue as to where these sayings come from or why we know them. But many come from poetry, even if we don't know the poems any more.

Here are the lines (or, in one case, phrases) from Gray's Elegy that I've tagged as famous. You may not know all of them, but I bet you know some, even if you detest poetry and have never read the poem:

The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,

The same is true for Shakespeare, Robert Burns, countless other poets--their words have seeped into our culture and become so much a part of our language that they are almost indistinguishable from proverbs such as a stitch in time saves nine; waste not, want not.

As I was musing about this, it struck me that this fact is no longer true of recent poetry. Gone are the memorable and quotable phrases that become well-known--unless, of course, you count parodies such as the "who blew up da owl?" jokes at LGF and elsewhere, making fun (and rightly so) of the erstwhile poet laureate of New Jersey, Amiri Baraka.

Who can recall a single line from a poem written in the last fifty years that has become commonly known? And, lest you think the lack is just because it takes time for these things to catch on and percolate, who can nominate a line of recent poetry that you imagine has even a chance of living on for future generations?

One of the last poets who wrote such things may have been Frost, and perhaps Eliot. Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in; I took the one less traveled by; Not with a bang but a whimper; April is the cruelest month--there are quite a few.

But as I rack my brain trying to think of a more recent example of a memorable poetry line that has seeped into the public consciousness, all I can come up with is the first line of Ginsberg's "Howl" (so far I can't find the text online, so there's no link to the full poem itself): I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness... As it serendipitously turns out, the poem was first declaimed by Ginsberg almost precisely fifty years ago: on Oct. 7, 1955, to be exact.

Practically everyone knows the line; almost no one has read the poem (have you? I haven't). Ginsberg was somewhat of a one-trick pony, as far as I know--that line caught fire, but not much of anything else he wrote ever did, although he remained a celebrity for most of his life. It's also odd that the line tends to be misquoted as "I have seen the best minds of my generation..." and, in that misquotation, is often used for the purpose of parody (see this for examples).

So perhaps we can date the death of the poetic quote as household word--and to poetry itself as having any sort of deep importance to most people outside of the narrow range of literary academia or a few stalwart diehards such as myself--to its swan song fifty years ago, Ginsberg's "Howl." If any of you can think of a truly famous line of recent poetry other than outrageous travesties such as Baraka's, I request that you hereby submit them. And by "recent," I mean within the last fifty years.

(And by the way, if anyone has in mind the vaguely famous line from "The Gift Outright" by Frost, recited at John Kennedy's 1961 inaugural--"The land was ours before we were the land's--no dice. The poem was actually written in 1942.)

Dinner party politics and how to avoid them

I think I'm making progress.

A year or two ago, when I would go to a party and the inevitable comments would come up, apropos of nothing--Bush is evil, Michael Moore's movie is the repository of Speaking Truth to Power, those Swift Vets are a pack of Republican lying scum and vicious attack dogs, etc. etc. etc.; I would turn red in the face and have to leave and go cool off.

And now? Now when I go to a party and the inevitable comments come up, apropos of nothing--Bush is evil, we are a pack of murdering marauders in Iraq, Abu Ghraib was the equivalent of the political killings and imprisonments in Iran under the mullahs, etc. etc. etc.; I turn red in the face and have to leave and go cool off.

You don't see the difference, you say? Well, here's the difference:

(a) The comments no longer surprise me.
(b) I no longer get quite as red in the face, and my cooloff period is shorter.
(c) When I return, I don't try to argue with or convince anyone (i.e., I've given up on logic and facts, and have accepted that this is the way it is with certain people).
(d) The intensity of my need to talk about these things is somewhat mitigated by the fact that we're no longer facing the possible election of John Kerry.
(e) The intensity of my need to talk about these things is somewhat mitigated by the fact that I have a blog.

All in all, I consider that progress. You may not. But at least it makes get-togethers a bit easier for me.

One thing it does drive home when it happens again--as it did last night--is that most intelligent liberal people still consider what they read in the MSM to be the simple, unadorned, basic Truth. And not just to Power.

[ADDENDUM: Oops! Sorry I failed to make myself clear. I'd alluded to this before, in my "about me" section, but from responses in the comments section I can see that, obviously, I need to say it again and say it clearly: I'm fully out of the political closet, perhaps even obnoxiously so. At last night's get-together, everyone present knew full well exactly how I feel. I've had it out with all of them many times, and I've given up.

I've also spoken up with strangers, and I find that if there is a certain level of reasonableness to their comments, we can have a conversation. If they're way over the top, I know at the outset--from bitter and repeated experience--it will be fruitless. Sometimes I don't speak up then, and sometimes I just say a sentence of disagreement and move on.

Rest assured though, I'm one of the more vocal people on this issue. It's cost me a lot of grief and I've gotten a lot of flak for it, and I soldier on--just not again and again with the same people.

And please don't tell me to make new friends! Or rather, you can tell me, but my answer is that I like these people and enjoy their presence. They just turn into Jekyl-Hyde dimwits when politics rears its ugly head.]

Nepotism is okay as long as you keep it in the family

Because of the Miers case (no, this isn't about Miers, promise!), the word "cronyism" has been bandied about quite a lot lately. Via Roger Simon, I found this interesting article by Adam Bellow in the National Review on the subject of cronyism and its kissing cousin, nepotism.

Bellow isn't especially interested in distinguishing between cronyism and nepotism; to him they are almost identical, since they both "offend our public creed of meritocracy." According to Bellow, the problem with cronyism/nepotism is a possible conflict with our deeply entrenched idea that getting jobs or promotions or appointments should always be based on merit only. Cronyism/nepotism muddies the waters.

Sounds reasonable, and I agree with Bellow here. I think it's true that appointing friends or family or even former colleagues to an important post can raise the suspicion that the person was chosen solely or at least primarily because of that relationship. As Bellow points out, the phenomenon is not at all unusual; cronyism/nepotism often plays at least some part in the making of a selection from among a bunch of applicants, whether in industry or in politics--perhaps especially in politics. Bellow calls it "a permanent feature of the American political landscape."

One might generalize and say not just American politics--it's probably, to a greater or lesser extent, a prominent and permanent feature of every political landscape, or of any other type of landscape where such choices are made. Unknown quantities are just that--unknowns, and therefore risky. And it is human nature to want to reward family, friends, and acquaintances, and to help them on the road to success. In politics, it's understood that one of the benefits of past service is often an appointment, a sort of quid pro quo. And even if we should want to stamp out this behavior, it would be naive to think we ever really could.

So what, then, is Bush's fatal flaw, according to Bellow? Not nepotism or cronyism itself, but cronyism without regard for the saving grace of merit:

[Bush] has made the common dynastic mistake of confusing loyalty and merit; in his eyes, the merit of people like Michael Brown and Harriet Miers consists in their being his friends. They are loyal to him, and their loyalty must be rewarded...His greatest failing is his inability to hold people accountable for their errors. Because they are his creatures, he seems unable to disown them or even to see their faults.

Putting aside the question of whether Miers lacks objective merit and is just a loyal "creature," (remember, I said this post wasn't going to be about Miers, and I'm sticking to that), I found Bellow's article to be a bit disingenuous, given his own history--for Adam Bellow is the son of Saul Bellow, a fact he fails to mention either in the article or in the short bio that accompanies it.

I'm not saying that Adam Bellow can't write. Or that he's not a fully meretricious fellow himself. I really don't know, since this article is the only work of his I've ever read--although, having heard his name before, I immediately recognized his identity.

So when I read his article, I suspected that at some time in his life his name had probably opened a few doors for him that would have otherwise remained closed. And it's often getting that first foot in the door that matters, because it turns out that the world is not really a strict meritocracy after all, as much as we'd like to think otherwise.

As it turns out, the internet is a wonderful thing. So it is that I was able to find this interview with Adam Bellow on a website devoted to information about family businesses. In it, Bellow talks about the role of nepotism/cronyism in his own life:

I didn't grow up with my father because my parents divorced when I was two. So he served more as a model than someone who was hands-on and personally involved in my learning to write. He did have a powerful influence on me, and I was clearly drawn in his direction at an early age.

He had nothing to do with my getting into publishing, however... at least, not directly. That was more of an accident after I ran out of other options. I was thirty and just married and went to see a friend of my father for advice. He directed me to Erwin Glikes, publisher of The Free Press, who hired me as an editor. Over the course of my career I have not benefited at all as the son of Saul Bellow, even though my entry was definitely facilitated by the connection. I'm a good example of what I refer to in my book as the "new nepotism."...

New nepotism is not the same kind of nepotism that people generally think of. It's not the same as we have defined in years gone by. There are important differences. With the new nepotism, parents no longer pick up the phone and pull strings. Instead, it's the children themselves who decide this on their own and they find their own way to exploit those connections.

I'm not so sure what difference it makes whether a parent makes the call or the child does--in fact, I'm pretty sure it makes almost no difference at all; it's still the relationship that greases the wheels. After all, making one's own phone calls to ask for hiring assistance from a parent's friend is hardly a model of extreme initiative.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not knocking it. I'd do it if I could, and so would most people, and I don't think it's a terrible thing at all. As I said earlier, it's the way of the world, here and everywhere, and I'd be hard-pressed to figure out a benign way to stop it, even if I wanted to.

But this business of Bellow's father having "nothing to do with" his son's getting into publishing may be a case of "I fear the man doth protest too much." Saul Bellow certainly had, as Adam Bellow himself points out, something to do with Adam's entry into the field, and entry is often the most important hurdle. How could Adam Bellow know for sure that over the course of his own career he has "not benefited at all" as the son of Saul Bellow? Would people actually be telling him if his family connections had figured into their promotion of him?

The children of the very famous often encounter something like the old problem the very rich face: does he/she love me for myself, or for my money? Hard to tell. That's why in folk tales the prince or princess sometimes dresses in commoner's rags, just to see how people will treat them if their identity is hidden. Sometimes the results are not very pretty.

[CORRECTION: Ooops! I've been informed by a kind and careful reader that "meretricious" isn't quite what I meant, not by a long shot. The word, of course, should be "meritorious"--having merit. A thousand pardons.]

New blogger?

People sometimes write to me seeking advice on starting up a new blog. Well, they could do worse than to heed the sage advice of Iowahawk (via LGF).

(If I heeded it myself, I'd probably get a lot more traffic.)

Don't make RINOs an endangered species

Lately, there's been a lot of rage going around at RINOs. (For those who aren't familiar with the appellation, it stands for "Republicans in Name Only"--or what used to be known as "Rockefeller Republicans" in a somewhat less acronym-mad era).

Quite a few members of the dread "Gang of 14" are RINOs, assumed to have sabotaged hopes for the real conservative nominee for Supreme Court Justice that Bush could--and would--have chosen, if only the Gang of 14 and the RINOs didn't exist.

So, get rid of 'em, who needs 'em? say many real conservatives in the Republican Party.

It wasn't so very long ago that the Republican Party considered itself a "Big Tent," a party in which moderates were welcome and considered an asset. The phrase was coined in 1988 by Republican National Committee Chairman Lee Atwater (as mentioned in this Time magazine article from 1999, which features an almost cuddly Karl Rove--the times, they have a-changed, haven't they?). Interestingly enough, the Time article cites Rove himself as having transformed Texas from a Democratic to a Republican state by following Big Tent precepts.

So, what's happened? Perhaps certain Republicans have forgotten that they didn't get where they are today by alienating the middle. Of course it's also true that--as Jerry Falwell points out in this article--they didn't get where they are today without the evangelical Christians and other cultural conservatives, either. The problem now is how to keep both under that shrinking tent.

I'm neither a Republican nor a conservative, but I do have an opinion (trust a blogger to always have an opinion). I don't think the answer is to replace RINOs with traditionally conservative Republicans in states where the latter simply have no chance of winning. I happen to know about one of those states, from which two of the most prominent and vilified RINOs of all hail: Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Senators from Maine and RINOs extraordinaire.

Perhaps the fact that Maine has a long Republican history blinds many conservatives to the fact that it is a solidly Democratic state in many ways, and that the only Republicans who have a chance of being elected there are RINOs. Maine is not New Hampshire (another state of which I have more than a passing knowledge), which is fairly evenly divided, and whose two Congressmen and two Senators are all Republicans in more than name, as opposed to Maine's two RINO Senators and two Democratic Congressmen.

Take a look at Maine's results in the 2004 presidential election. A landslide for Kerry, despite the fact that the Bushes have ties to the state. Does this seem like a place where a conservative Republican could win? Don't think so.

To drive the point home further, look at this map of counties in Maine and how they voted in 2004. You would be hard pressed to find a bluer state--and keep in mind that the south is where the people are (same is true of New Hampshire, by the way; and in Vermont there just aren't any people). Those two lone light pink counties in Maine are very sparsely populated.

Compare it to the map of New Hampshire in 2004, a state in which the vote was very close indeed. Not only are the counties far more evenly divided, but some of the areas that voted for Bush are quite populous. This is a state where conservative Republicans have a chance, although it's not easy.

So, please explain. I don't get this failure to look at things pragmatically. Is it that ideological purity thing again? Would very conservatives Republicans rather a candidate be "right" than elected? Would they prefer the election of a clearly liberal Democrat to that of a person who is in fact a centrist? I don't see how that would benefit them--but hey, it's not my issue. Just trust me when I say that throwing Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to the wolves and replacing them with non-RINOs (love those animal metaphors!) will probably lose you two Senate seats, if that's what you're after.

The justice of a trial

In my last post, about Saddam as press hero, I wrote about transmuting the very human desire for personal revenge into the desire for a different sort of justice, the justice of a trial.

No sooner said than done, apparently. I just came across this wonderful post by Mohammed of Iraq the Model, entitled, "Let Justice Be Served." In it, he describes that exact process taking place as he and his friends watch the trial:

“Why do we have to listen to this bull****?” said one of my friends.
“I prefer the trial goes like this:
Q:Are you Saddam Hussein?
A:Yes.
Then take this bullet in the head.”

Everyone could find a reason to immediately execute a criminal who never let his victims say a word to defend themselves “let’s execute him and get over this” sentiments like this were said while we watched the proceedings which were rather boring and sluggish for the first half of the session.

At the beginning we were displeased by the presentation of the prosecution which was more like a piece of poetry in the wrong time and place and this is what encouraged the defense to give us a worn out speech about objectivity and how the court must not go into sideways; the thing which both the prosecution and the defense were doing.

Anyhow, the prosecutor began reading the facts and figures about what happened in Dijail. The defendants went silent but Saddam objected on some details and then prosecutor said “Do you want me to show the film where you said and did that?” Saddam stopped talking and the prosecutor asked the court to allow showing the film, we don’t know if it was played there as transmission was paused for a while.

As the prosecution went deeper into details and facts, the way we viewed the trial began to change and those among us who were demanding a bullet in Saddam’s head now seemed pleased with the proceedings “I don’t think I want to see that bullet now, I want to see justice take place as it should be”. We were watching an example of justice in the new Iraq, a place where no one should be denied his rights, not even Saddam.

We smiled seeing the news anchors lower their voices and nodding down when the prosecution grew stronger and more reasonable and convincing and they also abandoned the previous poetic sentimental tone that couldn’t stand in the face of facts and figures...

We’re drawing the outlines of a change not only for Iraq but also for the entire region and I can feel that today we have presented a unique model of justice because in spite of the cruelty of the criminal tyrant and in spite of the size of the atrocities committed against the Iraqi people, we still want to build a state of law that looks nothing like the one the tyrant wanted to create.

Exactly.

Vietnamization vs. Iraqization

Even though Vietnam and Iraq are far from the same, there are certainly similarities--although they're not necessarily the ones the "quagmire" crowd would cite. We are now engaged in a very intense part of the "Iraqization" phase of the current war, very roughly similar to the "Vietnamization" phase of the Vietnam War (I've written about the latter here).

Seekerblog has an edifying post on the trajectory of the process of Iraqization, and why there's every reason to believe it's building geometrically, and will continue to do so.

Coincidentally, in the newly-released issue of Foreign Affairs, none other than Melvin Laird, Nixon's Secretary of Defense, discusses the topic of Vietnamization, and compares it to the current situation in Iraq. Of course Laird, as the architect of Vietnamization, is defending his own record when he writes that Vietnamization (contrary to MSM spin) was actually going rather well until Congress pulled the funding plug in 1975. But I've read other pieces on much the same theme, (such as this one), and I find their arguments quite persuasive.

Laird notes an important ideological and tactical difference between Vietnamization and Iraqization, and thus has saved me the trouble of writing my own post on the subject, because--astonished though I may be to find myself agreeing with Nixon's Secretary of Defense at this late date--it's a distinction I'd been thinking of pointing out myself:

Those who call the new Iraqi government Washington's "puppet" don't know what a real puppet government is. The Iraqis are as eager to be on their own as we are to have them succeed. In Vietnam, an American, Ambassador Philip Habib, wrote the constitution in 1967. Elections were choreographed by the United States to empower corrupt, selfish men who were no more than dictators in the garb of statesmen.

Little wonder that the passionate nationalists in the North came off as the group with something to offer. I do not personally believe the Saigon government was fated to fall apart someday through lack of integrity, and apparently the Soviet Union didn't think so either or it would not have pursued the war. But it is true that the U.S. administrations at the time severely underestimated the need for a legitimate government in South Vietnam and instead assumed that a shadow government and military force could win the day. In Iraq, a legitimate government, not window-dressing, must be the primary goal. The factious process of writing the Iraqi constitution has been painful to watch, and the varying factions must be kept on track. But the process is healthy and, more important, homegrown.

Funny how the old man has gotten so much smarter over the years. I suggest you read the whole thing.

I said no more Miers, but I just couldn't resist this

Here's a song to brighten your day. Pretty clever, I think.

(And here's the original for comparison).

And, since the author has solicited new stanzas, here are my offerings (the last one is based on the final stanza of the original):

Pundits, oh! they think I'm dumb,
They wish they could carry me home,
Next I'll nominate my mum,
Coming for to carry me home.

The brightest day that I can say,
In front of the Capitol dome,
'09 Inauguration Day,
Then I'm gonna carry me home.

On the couch with Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred

Today I had a heavy session on the couch with Sigmund (Freud), Carl (Jung), and Alfred (Adler). Funny, but none of these three great luminaries of analytic thought were interested in my sex life or my toilet training. All they seemed to want to talk about was politics (and pizza). Go figure.

Reuters gets dizzy over the Iraqi vote

Reuters is spinning so much here, I'm surprised it doesn't get vertigo.

This is the entire text of the article, which originally caught my eye because of its positive headline, "Iraq voters seen approving constitution":

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi voters have probably approved a new U.S.-backed constitution, overcoming fierce Sunni Arab opposition in a vote Washington hopes will boost its beleaguered strategy in Iraq, results showed on Sunday. Early counts from Saturday's referendum indicated the vote split as expected along largely communal lines, reflecting the bitter ethnic and religious tensions that have cost thousands of Iraqi lives since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

These two sentences show an economy of expression that is truly impressive, a remarkable ability to compress a large number of negative thoughts into a relatively small number of words. Check it out:

"U.S.-backed constitution"--Nothing about how hard the Iraqis worked to hammer out a compromise, or how this vote was widely seen even by Sunnis as a way for Iraqis to participate in the formation of their own government. No; just "U.S.-backed," as in "U.S. tools and puppets."

"fierce Sunni Arab opposition"--it will be interesting to see what the actual statistics are. Opposition has indeed been fierce by many Sunnis, to be sure, but when last I checked, the majority Sunni party was backing the constitutional compromise and telling its followers to vote "yes."

"Washington hopes will boost its beleaguered strategy in Iraq"--need I even bother to tackle this one?

"bitter ethnic and religious tensions that have cost thousands of Iraqi lives since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003."--All the Iraqi postwar deaths are chalked up to ethnic and religious differences rather than terrorist attempts to sabotage the Iraqi people's efforts at democracy. Yes, there's ethnic strife, to be sure. But Reuters hasn't a clue how much of the mayhem in Iraq is due to that factor, and how much to terrorists hoping to thwart the US and the Iraqi people as a whole. And of course, Saddam and the deaths he caused (and the ones he would have continued to cause which have now been prevented by that "U.S.-led invasion") are nowhere to be seen. As far as Reuters is concerned, the U.S.seems to have invaded Michael Moore's happy kite-flying land, and caused all the subsequent strife and destruction.

One would think that this referendum news would be cause for celebration. I, for one, plan to savor and enjoy it if the constitution is indeed passed. Would that Reuters could spare a moment to do the same. Or are they suffering from the same sort of depression as the NY Times?

Voting day in Iraq: so far, so good

Fortunately, things have been peaceful. Whether the high turnout in Sunni areas will bode poorly for the fledgling constitution remains to be seen.

Iraq the Model has an interesting reminiscence on elections past:

I am so excited but a flashback from Saddam’s referendum three years ago still hurts; he wanted a 100% as the 99.96% of the previous one shocked the dictator. I was depressed that way and I decided not to go to the voting office and so did the rest of the family but my father was afraid that not going could be dangerous. He said that maybe one member of the family could go alone and cast votes for the rest of us. We looked at each other thinking who’s going to volunteer to do this ugly job to protect the family. At that moment my father said “it was my generation that caused the misery we’re living in so I’m the one who should do this”.

I couldn’t stop him and I couldn’t utter a word but I felt sad for him; his sacrifice was big and I had teary eyes when I watched him taking our papers and heading out.

It is different this time father, no more 100% and a ‘no’ would make me happy just like a ’yes’ would do and no one ever will force us to do something against our will anymore...

God bless you my people and all the freedom lovers who keep sacrificing to make this world a better place.

Well, so, why can't they?

This little teaser at the NY Times tempted me for a moment to become a subscriber to TimesSelect, their pay-for-view columnist service:

Why Righties Can't Teach
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: October 15, 2005

Liberals on campus have become so used to hearing their opinions reinforced that they have a hard time imagining there are intelligent people with different views.

Sounds intriguing, especially for the NY Times. But I managed to resist.

Then again, it's a sentence that actually does quite well standing alone, a succinct explanation for a common phenomenon.

Next year I suppose he'll get the Peace Prize: Pinter wins Nobel for literature

First off, I must confess that I like his early plays--or at least I did when I saw them, many moons ago. "The Birthday Party" was especially fine, as I recall, and I enjoyed the original Broadway production of "The Homecoming" as a teenager.

So, even though Pinter has turned into a raving leftist political hater of formidable intensity and moonbattery, his Nobel prize for literature doesn't seem beyond the pale, although I suspect he wouldn't have gotten it if his politics hadn't dovetailed so very nicely with the Nobel committee's mission of sticking it to Bush, Blair, and Company.

I'm not the only one who suspects that this is the case; Pinter, to his credit, admits as much:

In an interview with Reuters Television yesterday, Pinter wondered whether his increased visibility on the political front may have played a part in the choice: ''I've been writing plays for about 50 years. But I am also very politically engaged and I am not at all sure to what extent that factor had anything to do with this award."

I encountered his politics about a year ago through one of those ubiquitous forwards a relative had approvingly sent. The content was hateful and mindless; I have no interest in reproducing it here or linking to it, but Pinter has a website that's easy enough to locate, if you care to browse there.

Pinter says he's now given up writing plays (quit while you're ahead?):

''I think the world has had enough of my plays." He plans, instead, to concentrate on poetry.

Curious, I took a look at his poetry and found that it is mindbogglingly and stupendously bad; only a moment of reading it and I'd had more than enough of his poetry. Since his unique poetry cannot be adequately described and can only be experienced, I've changed my mind and this time I will provide a link, just to let you see what this Literature Nobel prizewinner and winner of the Wilfred Owen prize for poetry (a sad reflection of the current state of poetry in the world) is up to these days.

But back, mercifully, to his plays. If Pinter can be said to have had a mastery, it certainly was not of plot, but of language and dialogue of a peculiar and haunting kind, with its own strange and mysterious humor. Pinter elevated the pause to a fine art:

I think we all learned the power of the pause from Harold," said Tina Packer, artistic director of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. ''They're almost more important than the words because they focus your attention that you're in a theatrical space."

In ''The Life and Work of Harold Pinter," drama critic Michael Billington relates a story in which he asked Pinter when he first became aware of the power of the pause. ''He told me, with a slight twinkle, that it was from seeing Jack Benny . . . at the London Palladium in 1952."

Ah, Jack Benny! I wish I'd known that when I was attending Pinter's plays all those years ago; I don't think they'll ever seem the same again.

The one bright spot on the Nobel horizon, for me, is contained in the following Nobelian homage to geographic literary diversity. Can you locate it?

Nine of the last dozen winners of the literature prize have been from Europe, and a writer from the Arab or Asian world was expected to win this year. Along with Pamuk and Oz, writers rumored to be under consideration were the Syrian poet Adonis, Algerian writer Assia Djebar, and South Korean poet Ko Un. Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare, Swedish poet Tomhas Transtromer, American novelists Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, and Don DeLillo, Czech novelist Milan Kundera, and Belgian writer Hugh Claus have also been mentioned as possible Nobelists.

Milan Kundera. Now, there would be a Nobelist worthy of the honor. Well, a neocon can dream, can't she?

The varieties of pacifism: (Part IIB)--responses to 9/11

[See previous posts in the series: Part I (Gandhi); and Part IIA (Quaker history).]

For some reason, this post was much harder to write--and far longer!--than I ever expected it to be. So I apologize, especially for the length. I hope I haven't bitten off more than I could comfortably chew, or expect readers to chew. In it, I've tried to summarize the belief system of pacifists as a whole, and then to describe the varied Quaker responses to 9/11 in terms of that belief system.

BACKGROUND

Pacifism sometimes seems illogical and naive to those who don't espouse it. But the key to the logic of pacifism--and it definitely has its own logic--is that it is a belief system. As such, it's based on certain premises which are accepted as articles of faith and that, to pacifists, can stand outside the realm of proof.

Certain broad Quaker pacifist beliefs underlie their responses to 9/11. These beliefs are by no means limited to Quakers, so this essay should be relevant to the reactions of many other types of pacifists as well.

There are two main strains of modern-day Quaker belief about how pacifism would actually work in practice. The first approach (which I'll call the "love" approach) is both individual and transcendent: the pacifist refuses to fight, but understands that others will. The pacifist sees him/herself as serving as an example of another way of being in the world, an alternative and spiritual way. This is the sort of pacifist who might refuse to bear arms but would volunteer to serve as an ambulance driver in the theater of war. This first strain of pacifism also contains the hope that, by meeting hatred with love, and also acting as an example, the pacifist will effect a spiritual and emotional change in the hard heart of the violent person, a turning towards peace (this is also the Gandhian view). Often, as with Gandhi, this pacifist approach assumes that if a large group of individuals could make the decision to meet hatred with love in this manner, the whole enterprise would take on a different aspect and effect a very real change in the conduct of a war, including the possibility of ending that war.

Pacifists of this first variety fervently hope (and believe) that meeting violence with love will cause the tyrannical to have a change of heart. But what if it's tried, and the approach fails to work as planned? Then those who are nonviolent could easily end up being slaughtered by the violent. Most pacifists don't look on that prospect with anything like Gandhi's chilling equanimity.

So, if fighting in a war isn't allowed, what's to prevent a slaughter of the innocents? How can the problem of defending against tyranny be solved? What does the pacifist propose as a replacement for a muscular and violent defense to prevent this slaughter from happening?

As we found in Part IIA, many Quakers would answer that at that point, in a clearly defensive situation, it may be time to fight, even for Quakers. They would say that each person needs to make an individual decision about this after some intensive soul-searching.

But many pacifists have trouble with that approach. Absolute pacifists would say instead, as we saw with Gandhi in Part I, that it would be better to allow oneself to be slaughtered and meet death with exemplary courage than to fight and live another day.

Both alternatives can be problematic for pacifists, of course: the choice is between a bang or a whimper. So there is a second pacifist approach (which I'll call the "law" approach), one that emphasizes prevention and/or alternative resolution of conflict, and can either exist independently of the first approach or complement it. This second approach is both institutional and legalistic: the belief in the structures and rules of international law as the alternative to war. It constitutes a sort of safety net for pacifists: if it works, the pacifist doesn't need to make the hard decisions to either fight or be slaughtered, because the situation for that choice won't arise.


EXAMPLES

If you've read my history of Quaker pacifism in Part IIA, you may recall that the first approach has its roots in the views of Fox and Penington, the second in those of William Penn.

Here's an excellent and representative example of the Quaker "love" approach, a document entitled "Speak Truth to Power," published by the American Friends Service Committee in 1955. It fully captures the flavor of this approach--individual, idealistic, faith-based:

Our truth is an ancient one; that love endures and overcomes; that hatred destroys; that what is obtained by love is retained, but what is obtained by hatred proves a burden. This truth, fundamental to the position which rejects reliance on the method of war, is ultimately a religious perception, a belief that stands outside of history.

As "a belief that stands outside of history," the faith that love conquers all cannot be challenged or disproven by facts. That's what makes it a religious--or quasi-religious--belief rather than a proven approach, although I don't think pacifists would be adverse to proof if it were offered. But such proof is not required.

Here is more in the same vein, in which "reason" is explicitly rejected:

If ever truth reaches power, if ever it speaks to the individual citizen, it will not be the argument that convinces. Rather it will be his own inner sense of integrity that impels him to say, "Here I stand. Regardless of relevance or consequence, I can do no other." This is not "reasonable": the politics of eternity is not ruled by reason alone, but by reason ennobled by right...

The early Friends realized only too clearly that the Kingdom of God had not come, but they had an inward sense that it would never come until somebody believed in its principles enough to try them in actual operation. They resolved to go forward then, and make the experimental trial, and take the consequences. So we believe and so we advise.

So the "love" approach is a leap of faith into the unknown, an experiment based on a belief system. This message is considered to be a timeless one. Although the document was written in 1955 and intended in the fight against Communism, the website on which it appears specifically recommends it as still being relevant and timely in the post-9/11 fight against terrorism.

As for the "law" approach, here's a good post-9/11 example. It was issued by several Quaker groups around the time of the invasion of Afghanistan:

We regret the decision by our nation's leaders to launch military strikes against Afghanistan, and we call upon them to halt the bombing and other military attacks.

We recognize the responsibility of the international community to apprehend and try, under international law, those responsible for the recent terrorist attacks... History teaches us that violence leads to more violence. We expect that these massive military strikes by missiles and bombers against this already devastated, starving country will almost certainly make it easier for the leaders of this terrorist struggle to recruit more people to their cause. We must break the cycle of escalating violence.

The struggle against terrorism will indeed be long. To succeed, it will have to undermine the ability of those who would use terrorism to recruit new people to carry out such attacks. This requires ending, or greatly diminishing, the tremendous anger and hatred toward the United States and its allies felt, in particular, by many in the Muslim and Arab world. This can only be done with prolonged, nonviolent efforts for reconciliation, justice, and long-term economic development. It cannot be done through massive bombing and military attacks.

Here's another Quaker post-9/11 "law" response; this one quite divorced from reality, I'm afraid, since it calls for the UN to settle things in Iraq:

...the troop presence in Iraq has lost the support of the Iraqi people and, by most accounts, the U.S. public. All of these events confirm our long-held belief that violence can only beget further violence. The U.S. must give way, so that the UN and other agencies, working with the Iraqi interim government, can bring peace and stability. The AFSC believes that the United States has lost the moral standing to achieve the necessary healing, but remains responsible to support financially those institutions and agencies which can do so.

Here we have another example of the legalistic point of view, written by a Quaker named Mary Lord after 9/11. It calls for international tribunals, special courts, weapons trade limitations, stopping the financing of terrorists, and a host of other peaceful international cooperative approaches (curiously, Ms. Lord maintains that most of these things have not been done, although in fact many have been performed in tandem with the military approaches).

Here is Ms. Lord explaining the pacifist belief system:

Pacifism has been called naïve and unpatriotic. But I ask you, which is the greater naiveté—to believe that the frustrating but productive path of using and strengthening international law is the path of safety, or to believe that a never-ending worldwide war against loosely defined terrorism fought with weapons of mass destruction will make us safe and secure in our gated communities?

The path of war is always, as history proves, the more naïve. War almost never works. Even when it seems to, for a short time, or after a long struggle, it is with a horrific cost of life, and property, and treasure, and the fouling of the earth, and the killing if its creatures. Almost always, similar ends could have been achieved through negotiation or international law and peacekeeping, with far less cost.

This last sentence, which I've taken the liberty of highlighting in bold, I find extraordinary in its assertion of facts without any even an attempt to marshall evidence. But, as with the "love" approach, facts are not the issue here; belief is, including the oft-stated belief that war "doesn't work."

What is meant by this statement that war doesn't work--or, as sometimes put, that it never solves anything? On reflection, I've come to the conclusion that what is really meant is that war doesn't solve everything. In other words, no war eliminates all problems, or even eliminates every aspect of a single problem. For example, the Civil War eliminated slavery, but was followed by the anguish of Reconstruction and inequality. But the fact that a war hasn't solved all problems, or hasn't even solved a single problem (discrimination against blacks, for example) in its entirety, does not mean that the war didn't solve some problems, at least partially or in whole. Slavery is no longer with us. The concentration camps are gone. The pacifist belief that war doesn't solve things not only ignores evidence that it sometimes does (at least partially), but it also fails to take into account how much worse things might be if appeasement had been the order of the day.

As I've said, though, pacifism is a belief system, not requiring proof in the eyes of its adherents. But not all Quakers are uninterested in facts or proof. Some pursue them, no matter how upsetting the results. For example, Swarthmore Quaker historian J. William Frost undertook a lengthy study a few years ago:

aimed at finding an answer to the question, "has religion ever prevented or stopped a war?" Or as he put it more pointedly, "is there historical evidence that religious leaders have stopped wars from beginning or shortened their duration?" His sobering answer, in sum, is: No. There is very little such evidence.

The record of western history, as Frost reviewed it, shows that a church "cannot prevent war, because it has neither theology, mission, nor the leverage in society to do so." Even the largest, most "established" denominations have lacked real leverage, he found....

I could find no similar studies of whether international law had ever stopped a war. Perhaps the answer would be too depressing for pacifists to even contemplate. The results of Frost's study certainly must have been.

But pacifism has other benefits beyond the practical, at least to its believers. There is the wonderful feeling that comes from a sense of oneself as being spiritual, moral, kind, and loving; and of being part of a group of like-minded individuals engaged in working for a worthy and noble cause (see this previous post for a further explanation of this feeling of "circle dancing," especially the Milan Kundera quote on the subject.)

Here's a good example of this genre, in which the feelings of the pacifist about him/herself within the small group of loving Quakers, and the exaltation of the mission, give the author (who became a Quaker post-9/11) hope that such peacefulness is a possibility for all humankind:

I don't know how it happened. It could have been the anthrax that closed the Princeton Post Office that fall that made each mail day seem like our last. Or maybe it was simply that I liked the architecture of the Meetinghouse. It could have been how Irene, the woman who led the Young Friends Meeting, spoke in a quiet voice and the children listened. Whatever it was, I took to this place. I liked meditating in the creaky-benched silence of the meetinghouse, and how the people I met seemed to have light in their faces, despite the building's lack of wattage.

By spring, I felt that I'd found a spiritual home. I was so moved by a feeling of at-oneness, that on Easter Sunday, I peeled myself off my bench to stand up and thank everyone for being there..."Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me," is a song I probably sang too much as a child. I feel it happening, though, as I participate in Meeting. This spring, as with the Gulf War, I am writing letters to the government and joining protests. But it's different. This time around, it's not just my voice and that of a few friends. It's a whole community I've chosen to be part of. This time around, I actually feel the peace I want for the world, and because I feel it, I actually believe it can be possible for others.

Of course, the world is not composed of a circle of peaceful Quakers, a fact of which many Quakers are well aware. And of course, as we've learned, not even all Quakers are dancing in the same circle; Quaker belief and tradition allows for an individual response.

So I close with the words of another post-9/11 Quaker statement, this one by a Quaker who challenges pacifism and casts his lot on the other side of it for this conflict. NPR broadcaster Scott Simon says:

One of the unforeseen effects of being in journalism is that your first-hand exposure to the issues of the world sometimes has the consequence of shaking your deepest personal convictions. I happen to be a Quaker; this is known, I have written about this...I covered conflicts in Central America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and Africa. None of them shook my belief that pacifism offers the world a way to foment change without the violence that has pained and poisoned our history...

And then, in the 1990's, I covered the Balkans. And I had to confront, in flesh and blood, the real life flaw—I am inclined to say literally fatal flaw—of pacifism: all the best people could be killed by all the worst ones...

So I speak as a Quaker of not particularly good standing. I am still willing to give first consideration to peaceful alternatives. But I am not willing to lose lives for the sake of ideological consistency. As Mahatma Gandhi himself once said—and, like Lincoln, the Mahatma is wonderful for providing quotations that permit you to prove almost any point you choose—"I would rather be inconsistent than wrong." It seems to me that in confronting the forces that attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States has no sane alternative but to wage war; and wage it with unflinching resolution...

We are living in a time when we must remind ourselves of the imperfections of analogies. But let me press ahead with one that has recently been on my mind.

In 1933, the Oxford Student Union conducted a famous debate over whether it was moral for Britons to fight for king and country. The leading objective minds of that university reviewed the many ways in which British colonialism exploited and oppressed the world. They cited the ways in which vengeful demands made of Germany in the wake of the end of World War I had helped encourage the kind of nationalism that may have kindled the rise of fascism. They saw no moral difference between western colonialism and world fascism. The Oxford Union ended that debate with this famous proclamation: "Resolved, that we will in no circumstances fight for king and country."

Von Ribbentrop sent back the good news to Germany's new chancellor, Adolph Hitler: the West will not fight for its own survival. Its finest minds will justify a silent surrender.

The most intelligent young people of their time could not tell the difference between the deficiencies of their own nation, in which liberty and democracy occupied cornerstones, and dictatorship founded on racism, tyranny, and fear...

When George Orwell returned to England after fighting against Fascism in the Spanish civil war, he felt uneasy over finding his country so comfortable—so close to Fascism. His country, he said, with its fat Sunday newspapers and thick orange jam.

"…All sleeping the deep, deep sleep," he wrote, "from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs."

"The deep, deep sleep." Sometimes, in sleep, we dream beautiful dreams of peace. And then we wake.