Eric Johnson: January 2005 Archives

Catholic Light reader David B. says there is no reference to abortion in the Constitution. I don't think he's looking closely enough. You see...

...the Third Amendment to the Constitution forbids the quartering of soldiers in private homes...

...that right was used to legalize contraception in Griswold vs. Connecticut...

...and Griswold was a major precedent for finding the right to an abortion.

From no quartering soldiers, to allowing baby repellants, to killing eight-months-gestated babies while they're still in the birth canal. What part about that can't you follow, David? Don't tell me you're not getting it. Maybe you could read this class summary and it will make it clearer.

The Iraqi elections are over, and by all accounts they have been successful: fewer murders than expected, and millions of people showed up, including many Sunnis (though personally I don't care if ex-oppressors get all pouty and decide not to play.) The winners will then build a new Iraqi constitution, which will pave the way for a permanent government later this year.

Meanwhile, I look forward to hearing from the Democrats who asserted that "the security situation" precluded Iraq from having a fair election. They were to see an additional "miserable failure" they could hang around the Bush administration's neck. They should rehearse a few phrases for the news shows tomorrow morning, such as, "I'm glad I'm wrong," "Boy, those dark-skinned people can really surprise ya sometimes!" or "Maybe the president is onto something with this 'democracy' thing."

The left-wing blogs, usually a leading indicator of the next crackpot party line the leading Dems are about to take, have already started moving the goalpost: "This Election is simply, in my estimation, an exercise in pretty pictures" (Daily Kos). Or this choice quote from the Democratic Underground: "I can't believe the Iraqis are buying into this 'democracy' bulls---."

Given the intelligence, wit, and sensitivity of Catholic Light readers, I don't need to point out the high irony of people calling themselves "Democrats" yet dumping all over democracy itself. To them, the Constitution is a sacred document when it refers to free speech and press freedoms, but infinitely malleable when it comes to gun rights, property ownership, religious expression, states' rights, or commercial activity. Democracy is good as long as Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy are elected by left-wing constituencies, but bad if it means George Bush and Tom Delay. In fact, any political phenomenon can be evaluated not in terms of justice or goodness, but whether it advances your ideology.

To the Iraqi people: may God bless you and your country, and may you defeat the enemies of your freedom and well-being. Ignore those who would rather you live under someone else's boot — a situation they would never accept for themselves or their families. Millions more are cheering for you.

Reuters, which for anti-American bias is in a class of its own, has this lead on its main Iraqi voting story: "Millions of Iraqis turned out to vote Sunday, defying anti-U.S. insurgents determined to drown the historic poll in blood."

The U.S. has lost hundreds of men in Iraq, but Iraqis have lost thousands more. There haven't been many large-scale attacks against American forces in the last several weeks, as the thugs have been attacking policemen and innocent civilians. The thugs are trying to seize control over Iraq, or at least a big part of it, so they can continue to oppress the majority of the population, ruling through intimidation and violence. The U.S. is simply an impediment, not the main enemy. I like the acronym the military uses for the thugs: AIF, for "Anti-Iraqi Forces."

To be fair, the article itself has a jubilant tone, as Iraqis celebrate the opportunity to determine their own future. I've said before that the insurgency will end the Irish way. (No, that doesn't mean they'll fight and drink themselves to death.) After the Irish Republic gained its independence, there was a full-scale civil war, with many deaths on both sides. Finally, weary of war, the Irish public permitted its government to root out and kill the warriors. The republic has been relatively peaceful ever since.

• Perennial moron Robert Fisk calls the election a "fantasy" and a "charade." Fisk is, you'll recall, the British reporter who was beaten by an Afghan mob, then blamed the U.S. and U.K.'s attack on the peace-loving Taliban, saying if he were from Afghanistan, he would have attacked the first Westerner he saw, too. The unregenerate side of me hopes he'll have a similar encounter with Iraqi thugs. Happy reporting, Bobby! His piece is worth reading, if only to snicker at his babbling hysteria.

• Balloon Juice has a "accentuate the negative, eliminate the positive" roundup of news from Iraq.

• ScrappleFace has a feature, "Iraqi Voting Disrupts News Reports of Bombings," that sums up media coverage in four paragraphs. The opening: "News reports of terrorist bombings in Iraq were marred Sunday by shocking graphic images of Iraqi 'insurgents' voting by the millions in their first free democratic election."

BONUS SCRAPPLEFACE LINK: "Kennedy: U.S. Troops Restrict Al Qaeda Civil Rights." It brings to mind a good point: pseudo-Catholic Senators such as Ted Kennedy and John Kerry get upset when terrorists have to sit in uncomfortably cool rooms, yet they have no problem with a doctor stabbing a baby's skull and sucking out his brains.

No, that's actually not a joke, although it's more of a "gathering" than a convention. Next month, I'm going on Nameless Entity business to Ottawa. Naturally, I am going to meet with Pete Vere (we've never met in person.) He has invited fellow Catholic Light readers John Pacheco and Tim Ferguson as well. Are there any other Canadian readers who want to have dinner with us? My trip is tentatively scheduled for the week of Feb. 14, though I'm 90% sure it'll happen then.

Nobody has posted anything for days. So I'm posting this. Anyone have anything substantive to say?

I was 20 years old when Johnny Carson left the "Tonight Show," and I felt like the world was ending. To be specific, it was after he left, and Jay Leno took over. Instead of the big-band intro and the curtain parting for Johnny, it was a nebulous, tuneless modern jazz composition and about 500 computer-animated curtains before Mr. Big Face came out. The universe had shifted out of balance.

Until then, I hadn't realized how good Carson was. Truth be told, he was an average stand-up comic, and many of his jokes were downright lame. When it came to interviews, though, he was peerless. He had a way of reassuring nervous guests, even if it was their first time in front of a national audience. He never was nasty, or attempted to put himself front and center. Instead, he coaxed them into presenting themselves as well as they could. You always came away with a sense of the subject's personality, instead of Carson's.

The same year that Carson left, Governor Bill Clinton was elected president. Although I considered him a dishonest braggart, it didn't surprise me when he won. The Baby Boomers, having burned and pillaged their way through American society, were bound to have one of their own in the White House. But there was something about the "Tonight Show" transition that was unexpectedly jarring.

In retrospect, my discomfort probably sprang from a real generational shift. When I was growing up, I blamed the Boomers for screwing up a lot of things, but I comforted myself by thinking of the previous generation, which was still very much with us. Presidents Reagan and Bush were from that generation, as were my grandparents, all four of whom were alive then. Being young, I thought the Boomer takeover was always someday in the future. But when Johnny disappeared behind the curtain, that day had arrived, at least to me.

In my experience, U.S. Army soldiers are a mixed bag: there are lots of good ones, several crappy ones, and some completely outstanding ones. First Lieutenant Prakash of the 1st Infantry Division is one of the latter group. He was awarded a Silver Star for fearlessly leading his tank platoon in the face of fierce, and ultimately futile, enemy resistance. His tank suffered significant damage, but after getting it fixed, he led his men right back into the thick of the fight.

The only soldiers in the news recently have been that freaky West Virginia slut and her slack-jawed, perverted love-master. Men like this deserve some publicity, too. Lt. Prakash is the child of Indian immigrants and planned to become a doctor before he found his calling in the Army. According to the article, his platoon eliminated over 50 human obstacles to world peace during that battle alone. He has the gratitude of his country and the Silver Star bestowed by the Army, but I submit he qualifies for yet another honor: the Catholic Light Total Badass Award for January 2005.

It must have been a slow news day for the Washington Post to use this article as its Military Outrage Story du jure:

Imaad said they were startled by a loud banging at the door. He went quickly to open it. When he did, Imaad said, there were about a dozen U.S. soldiers standing with their guns pointed at his head.

Imaad and his mother said the soldiers rushed in, ordering them to sit together while they searched the house. "You look poor," Imaad recalled one of the soldiers saying. "Why?"

Imaad answered in English: "I have not been able to find a job, although I'm a graduate of the College of Arts." His heart was pounding, Imaad said. His mother, a chatty widow who adores her son, sat next to him, shaking.

The soldiers went to search his bedroom. He heard laughing, and then they called for him, he said. Imaad went to his room and saw that the soldiers had found several magazines he kept hidden from his mother. They had pictures of girls in swimsuits and erotic poses. Imaad said the soldiers spread the magazines on his bed and put his Koran in the middle.

"This is a good match," Imaad said one of the soldiers told him.

"It was a nightmare," he said. "I will never forget those bad soldiers when they put the Koran among the magazines."

Within 20 minutes, the soldiers left without arresting him or his mother. While the soldiers went next door to search his neighbor's house, Imaad began to slap his mother, he said. "The American people are devils," Um Imaad recalled her son repeating.

I dunno about this. In high school, when Mom discovered the cigars in my suitcase when I was about to leave on a beach trip, my first instinct wasn't to give her the back of my hand. (Instead, I launched on an impassioned, adolescent rant about her invading my privacy, as if minor children have privacy rights.) Has any major liberal news outlet ever so blithely reported on physical abuse of women, without so much as a single word to condemn it?

More than that, the only sources for this story are a mother-smacking jobless homebody, and the target of his violence. No one else corroborated any details of the story, other than there were U.S. troops in the neighborhood that night.

It's also curious that the Post — which ran article after article repeating condemnations of "The Passion of the Christ" as anti-Semitic — would also repeat laughably anti-Jewish statements without comment.

Um Imaad brought Imaad pills from the doctor to try to calm him. He looked at the yellow ones, then the red ones and refused to take them. "All these belong to Jewish people," he said, pushing one set aside. "And these others are from bad or foreign people."

This guy sounds like Pat Buchanan at the pharmacy!

More seriously, there are a few things to know about Arab communication if you have not dealt with Arabs before. WARNING: the following paragraphs contain generalizations, which are sometimes mischaracterized as "stereotyping." However, just about anyone who has communicated with Arabs for a significant llength of time will agree with these generalizations.

1. Arabs exaggerate. Most people can embellish, but Arabs have a knack for inventing or magnifying details. Case in point: why would 12 men all point their weapons at one guy in a doorway? Why would they bunch up, unless they wanted to present an appealing target for a bad guy with an AK-47 or hand grenade? Most likely, there were two or three guys at the door, and others providing perimeter security.

2. In part because they exaggerate, Arabs do not expect their words to be taken at face value. You, the listener, are expected to read between the lines. If you don't, it's your fault, not the speaker's.

3. Arabs will make up events in order to save their personal honor. Thus, it is very unlikely that the soldiers would have arranged the naughty pictures around a Koran; it's more likely that Imaad made that up. You see, looking at provocative photos of sluttish infidels is bad, but juxtaposing them with the words of Allah as dictated to the Prophet? Incomparably worse! So the real crime wasn't Imaad's lack of chastity, it was the blasphemy of the Crusaders!

That's why Imaad says later in the article, "I asked God to forgive me...because I could not prevent American sins" (emphasis mine). Not forgiveness for his sins, but other people's.

(Thanks to Australian blogger Tim Blair for the original link to the article. Read his take, which is a lot funnier than mine.)

Check out "Manolo for the Men," a men's fashion blog that somehow I came across last week. I would have thought a fashion blog might bore me to death (I am usually well-dressed, but never fashionable), but this proves again that compelling writing makes just about anything readable, even if it's written in (probably fake) broken English. To wit:

...The Vivienne Westwood, she has long specialized in the fashion for the adolescent who cries out for the attention. The perfect look for the angst-ridden, rebellious teenager, but not the look for the serious adult. The grown up peoples they require the grown up clothes.

Do not denigrate the importance of looking "normal". Fashion it is about looking good, not seeking out the look of the abnormal, or the outre, or the purposely ridiculous.

Manolo says, the true radical in the serious well-cut, well-tailored clothes is the one whose thoughts, talents, and actions will change the world. The attention-seeking adolescent in the motley clothes of the fool, this person is merely the comedic sideshow.

Those words apply to many areas of human life: in theology, politics, the arts, and family life, the challenge isn't to make something new, but rather to guide that which exists to something higher.

In this, the Manolo he has expressed the truth!

Showing their customary tolerance for different ways of life, "protestors" forced two Army recruiters to leave a Seattle community college, but not before destroying recruiting materials.

I thought the Left was against suppressing speech, destroying "hateful" literature, and intimidating one's opponents. Maybe they should adopt a new slogan: "We're offering yesterday's ideas in a new, fascist-style package!"

You may recall that a CL reader in Switzerland, found a statue of St. Lawrence for our home. It costs roughly $400. I'm trying to find a good way to get the money to Jeff, as the shopkeeper selling the statue does not take credit cards. I can wire the money to Jeff via Western Union, but it costs $42.

If that's the only option, so be it, I'll pay the fee. Before I do that, I wanted to prevail upon you smart Catholic Light readers to see if you could think of a way to save me a few bucks (or Swiss francs, in this case.)

After the new Italian state stripped the Papal States from the Vatican, the Holy See forbade faithful Catholics from participating in Italy's government. This included voting in democratic elections. Something like a third of the Italian population dutifully obeyed, and the result: Benito Mussolini. The Fascists and Communists, who began with small percentages of the population, did not face any electoral competition from serious Christians, and thus the playing field was left to various monsters large and small.

A mirror-image situation is about to happen in Iraq. The Sunni Muslims look like they are going to boycott the January 30 elections for the interim government. That means the new government will be dominated by the minority Kurds and the majority Shiites. The Sunnis will thus have little say in Iraq's rebirth, and that may well spell trouble for them. They have been oppressing the Kurds and Shiites for the last half-millennium or so, under the Ottoman Empire, the Hashemite kings, and the Baathists.

As the brilliant Charles Krauthammer pointed out, the U.S.-led coalition has basically been fighting a civil war against the Sunnis for the last year and a half. Once Iraq gets its native lawmakers together and they form a constitution, the formerly oppressed groups may want to extract some payback from the Sunnis if they're still misbehaving. Who can blame them? Whereas if the Sunnis at least try to be conciliatory, they might receive mercy. But their ingrained Arab pride will get the better of them, and they will be arrogant to the last.

For similar reasons, I don't think Catholics should stop participating in mainstream society, which is why I am not generally in favor of homeschooling (and neither is the Church, which considers Catholic schools to be the first option if it is at all possible.) It isn't even possible to shield your kids entirely from the effects of our diseased culture: it still seeps in through the cracks. So go out and try to transform it as best you can, and choose what is good and encourage it.

In was talking to someone today about the Gonzales hearings, I pointed out that Democrats were singling out the nominee for things he didn't do. My interlocutor said that Gonzales "authorized torture." I replied that Gonzales had done no such thing: he had merely given a definition of the line where torture begins; also, he repeated the plain-as-day fact that al Qaeda and Taliban detainees are illegal combatants, and cannot be considered legal under any conceivable definition of the Geneva Conventions.

I gave my personal opinion: that we should have extracted whatever information we could from the detainees, then executed them, as customary international law allows. My friend persisted: we should do no such thing. We should always treat the "prisoners," as he called them, at the highest level of kindness. Furthermore, Judge Gonzales should never, ever have given the opinions he did, because he was "representing the United States."

I demurred again. No, I said, the man was White House counsel. He was called upon to give legal opinions, not moral treatises. He was asked, "What treatment can these detainees receive without torturing them?" and he answered the question. He was not called up to answer whether the treatments were prudent or even moral.

Sticking to his guns, my friend repeated that Gonzales should not have said such a thing. It was completely wrong for him to do so. I said that was a recipe for either lying or making sure legal advice is delivered orally, so there is no written record of the advice. It would mean that in the back of the counsel's mind, he would be thinking, "Should I give him my legal opinion, or the legal opinion that would look best if I'm ever up for Senate confirmation?"

My friend proceeded to connect the "condoning" of torture with the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, and that all the officers in the abusers' chain of command should have been indicted. (Hey, to me those pictures looked like a normal Saturday night party at Andrew Sullivan's townhouse.) This seemed like a departure from the rule of law that he was just championing — since there is no evidence that the officers authorized the abuse, why should they go to jail? I mean, I'm all for humbling the mighty when they've done wrong, and the military should have sacked the abusers' superiors (which they did). But to throw them in jail on the mere suspicion that they might have participated, in the absence of any proof, did seem a little unfair to me. If the low-level people had been able to implicate their superiors in exchange for lighter sentences, at least some would have. Since none of them have, it's reasonable to conclude they were acting out their own diseased fantasies.

There are, however, many people who not only want to excuse torture, they want to see it practiced as a matter of course. John Derbyshire on NRO reports that when he wrote a column against torture, "reader response...was overwhelmingly pro-torture." That comports with my own experience, as I have argued with people that it is inhumane to torture convicted murderers to death, and why it would not be a good idea to allow police officers to summarily execute criminal suspects.

So, on the one hand, you have people to whom cutting off a detainee's finger is A-okay. On the other, you have people who think that raising one's voice at a detainee is a war crime. (Don't tell my kids!) Occasionally, for a flickering moment, I wonder why God bothered to give us an intellect and free will in the first place.

Preface: Charlie, my 5.5-year-old son, is fascinated with "Spider-Man," though of course we won't let him see either of the movies (not because they're bad -- we own them both -- but because he's way too young.) The following is an actual conversation about "Spider-Man 2":

Charlie: Daddy, does Dr. Octopus die in the end?

Me: Yes, he does.

C: How come?

M: He drags his science experiment into the river so it won't blow up and hurt lots of people.

C: Why did he die?

M: Because that was the only way to stop the experiment.

C: I thought he was bad.

M: Yeah, but he turned good at the very end and decided to save all those people.

C: [thinks a moment] I guess Dr. Octopus had to spend a lot of time in inventory.

M: In what?

C: Inventory.

M: What are you talking about?

C: You know, the place where Jesus fixes you before you go to heaven.

M: Oh, you mean purgatory.

C: Yeah, purgatory.

M: Right, Dr. Octopus would probably have to go there.

...while the United Nations, the "last, best hope of the world," sends some well-paid bureaucrats to Asia, where they will assess the situation and attend meetings. But the U.N. has more "moral authority." Right?