Past Ruminations...

May 1-11, 2002

Heroes and responsibility.  My wife, several friends, and I went to see Spiderman last night. The movie was better than we all expected it to be. Rated PG-13 mostly for its intensity, it contained almost no bad language or overt sexuality, which pleasantly surprised me. People do die, but not in bloody, gratuitous ways. The thing that stuck out over and over for me as the movie progress was the tagline. It comes from one of the last things Peter Parker's uncle says to him before he dies.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Would that this significant fact was not lost on so many in our government and our culture. The Green Goblin, Parker's nemesis for this first installment, tries to turn Peter to the "dark side" (to borrow a metaphor from the soon to open Star Wars film) by telling him that no one will ever appreciate his efforts at heroism. The Goblin taunts Spiderman that he will always be despised. Instead, he should embrace his power and join the Goblin. Together they can lord it over those who would diminish them.

Parker never falters, even when he is later presented with the classical dilemma of either saving the one he loves or a large group of innocents. Both the love of his life and a tram car of youngsters are in peril. However, like the ultimate classical hero, he tries to save both. He refuses to give into the either the Hobbesian or Hobson's choice. No easy out for him.

While Spiderman may be fictional, he embodies all the right choices in tough situations. He is someone we can all desire to emulate. I remember when Gladiator came out how it touched a cord in so many people: honor, duty, and heroism. Well, in a character more accessible to average Americans, those same virtues were spun like a web across the mental landscape of everyone watching Spidy do his thing. Yes, Peter Parker is a true hero. Isn't it wonderful? Thank you Sam Raimi. 
 

Arab hate. I wonder how true the assertion by Jamie Glazov is, that the real root of Arab hatred of Israel, the U. S., and the West in general is due to a sense of failure. His primary focus is on the Saudis, but he also generalizes from there to the larger Arab world.

Today, the Arabs hate Israel, like they hate America and the West, because it is the concrete symbol of the utter failure of Arab civilization. 

While he does not begin by explicitly stating the measuring rod for "failure" of the Arab civilization versus the "superiority" of the West, he does eventually get to the point. Initially, considering how dependent the Saudis are on our military assistance and trade, one might think the problem is economic. No, It is freedom. (emphasis added)

Today, the Saudis who most hate America and the West are not those who Western Leftists wish they would be: the poor and downtrodden Saudis who are the victims of unequal distribution of wealth. To the contrary: they are the wealthy individuals who have studied in American universities and spent time in American society. They are the approximate 200,000 American-educated Saudis who could not thwart their desires while they intoxicated themselves with American freedom.

Essentially, Glazov argues that the Saudi Arab, and by extension the Islamic world in general, hates the West. It particularly hates the U. S., as the West's most extreme example of success. Why? Because it tempts them. They cannot be both fundamentally Muslim and Western. As Glazov says

While they long for the freedom they cherished and enjoyed, these Saudis simultaneously indulge in tremendous guilt and self-loathing -- for they have violated the Islamic codes they venerate. This self-hatred leads to a hatred of the entity that tempted them in the first place.

Yesterday, in my discussions with my friend, which I talked about earlier, he argued that moderate or secular Islam doesn't make these kinds of demands or suffer from these types of problems. I agreed, in the same way that liberal or secular Christianity doesn't suffer from the guilt of sin. However, neither of these approaches, either to Christianity or Islam, are true to the fundamentals of their faith. They both have recast their faith into a new creation that suits their current worldview. They may still call it Islam or Christianity, but that is rhetoric, which succeeds only by redefining the essential meanings of their historic faith to fit their own current sensibilities. A simple example is John Shelby Spong, a now retired Bishop of the Episcopal Church. In both thought and action he is neither a Bishop (who are sworn by oath to uphold the fundamentals of the Christian faith) nor a classic Christian (he denies the basic tenets of the Christian faith such as the virgin birth of Jesus, his sacrificial atonement, even his physical resurrection). He uses the label of Christian and Bishop because it suits him and gives him a platform to propagate his views. No one would listen to Bishop Spong if he started his own religion, just as no one outside of Scientology listened to L. Ron Hubbard.

Why is this casting of moderate Islam against fundamentalist Islam a problem? Because it doesn't work. What Western liberals seem not to grasp is that liberal or secular Islam only holds sway were liberal secular political power expressed in a humanistic approach to governance holds sway. The closest example of that in the modern Islamic world is Turkey and it only succeeds because of ruthless prosecution of Islamic fundamentalism, not because any true liberal politics.

Glazov goes on to see the Islamic fear of corruption and temptation manifested in the Muslim treatment of women, in essence denying them publicly, but lusting after them privately. This angst creates a swelter of anger that finds ready outlet against the West and its freedoms, something else that is denied publicly but desired privately.

So what does this mean? It means that negotiation will solve nothing. There is no real common ground on which to build a consensus, the objective of all real negotiation, when the problem is really a fundamental conflict of worldviews. The only way the Arab and fundamental Islamic world could accept the West is for either them to become liberal and secular, in essence deny what they are, or for us to become fundamentally Muslim, in essence deny what we are.

It is not going to happen. Not to sound too apocalyptic, but it seems to me the players have taken the stage and there is nowhere to go but into the breech. Ý

Death and television. Dr. Mark Green died last night on ER. The show covered the last few weeks of his life as he tried to reconnect with his somewhat estranged fourteen year old daughter. He pulled her out of school in Chicago and they spent their last days together in Hawaii, where Mark's father had been stationed for three years while in the Navy, early in Mark's adolescence.

There was a glaring disconnect for me, especially as a Christian, in the episode. At no time during the course of Mark's slow descent did he, or his daughter, or his wife, address his impending death within any spiritual context. That doesn't mean there wasn't a redemptive context to the events, there was. The whole episode was the attempt of a father, who felt parental failure, trying to redeem the time he had left, to bring some closure to his life. However, he just never addressed it in any spiritual dimension.

The problem for me was, that after never discussing anything remotely spiritual, at the very end, at the gravesite, as the camera panned the faces of the members of the cast, the words of the prayer for the dead from the Prayer Book were solemnly intoned in the background. "I am the resurrection and the life says the Lord. He who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. He who lives and believes in me, shall never die." This is normally said when meeting the body at the rear of the church just before the beginning of the memorial service. In this context, it seemed like the director/writers were trying to add solemn weight to the closing of Mark's life. Too bad they had never seen the necessity to add similar solemn weight to the living of his life. It came across as out of character and manipulative.  Ý

Habits, friends, and other stuff.  Back when I first started this, I said if I could keep it up for 28 days it would probably become a habit. Well it has been 33 days, so I guess I am firmly in the habit stage.

An old friend and I were talking today about how hard it is for older men (past 40) to make friends with other men. I surmised that it is rare for older men to go through the crises together that usually form the basis of the bonding experience that men seem to need. It is true that a workable form of friendship can come about over time and familiarity, but the really deep bonds that men seem to only rarely form appear to come in the times of shared crisis. You see these bonds in combat, or sometimes on sports teams, that are a form of ritualized combat, in police and firemen who put their lives on the line for each other, but you also see it in the moments of shared pain and forgiveness that comes from working through serious mistakes. The key seems to be in the shared intensity.

We also talked about how hard it is to have more than a few really close friends. You can probably count them on one hand. Call it the physics of the male bonding experience. There is only so much high impact energy available in men's social super collider.

Ok, so friends are hard to make. Why is that important? Because you can make mistakes with friends. Yesterday my friend and I got on the opposite sides of an argument as we batted around our ideas in a highly charged atmosphere. However, he will be back today. I guess the only thing that could really hurt a tightly bonded male friendship would be a fundamental break in trust, something that went to the core of why you trusted each other in the first place.

That got me to thinking about other trust relationships: husbands and wives, parents and children, pastors and congregations, teachers and students, and I realized that all of those relationships, if they have any strength to them, were forged in some sort of crucible of intensity. Maybe it's not just older men who have a hard time making close friends, maybe it's all of us. It seems to me that all enduring relationships are built on the feedstock of trust and it is in those moments of shared intensity that the trust manifests itself. You can't pretend trust. You can't act it out, at least not for very long, and not in moments of true crisis.

When we think of children, especially young children, we think of trust given, without reservation. It's and expression of their social innocence. When we think of adults, we think of trust earned, and earned again and again. Why? Because as adults we have met the world, with all of its evil and sin and betrayal. We have seen the underbelly of the beast. And, it is only with those with whom we have confronted the beast and won that we become true friends. I am reminded of Proverbs 27:6 "Wounds from a friend can be trusted..."

So, it comes down to trust, a shared reliance on one another, a confidence that the ulterior motive is ultimately good. I guess in the end, the best friend of all the friends one could have is God. One would want to be in the position of Abraham, about whom it was said in Isaiah 41:8 "But you, Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, descendant of Abraham My friend." Maybe that is why the root meaning of faith is trust, because to really have faith in God means to share trust with Him and as we have seen, that leads to being friends with Him.
 

Human and sub-human. There are generally considered to be three great monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), and it is interesting that they all spring in one form or another from the same root, Abraham. However, in my renewed interest in Islam since September 11, I have come across a disturbing consistency of interpretation within this third effort at monotheism.

In both Judaism and Christianity, there is a respect for the essential humanness of those outside the camp of believers. The basic rules of conduct and the interpretation of sin is no different, whether the focus is on members or non-members. If you steal, rape, kill, or commit any other forbidden social act, it makes no difference whether the victim is a believer or non-believer. Not so in Islam.

There are numerous things that when done to an "infidel" are not considered sin. One of the most obvious, since has happened consistently throughout history, is rape. In Islam, It says in the Koran, S.2.223: “Your women are a tillage for you. So get to your tillage whenever you like.” While this enlightens us on Muslim male attitudes toward women in general, it is  S.4.24, which many interpret as giving Muslims the right to rape women who are captured in battle, the ones “your right hands possess”. When asked how one can justify sex outside of marriage to one's own wife (or wives), S.33.50 includes “what your right hand owns out of the spoils of war.” Of course the spoils of war in this context are captive infidels, specifically captive women.

Through out the history of Islamic conquest, up to and including modern times, rape and female slavery for the purpose of sex has always followed Islamic victory. As recently as last month a prominent cleric Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik with official standing in Saudi government, said in a tape titled "A Monkey desecrates Mosque" (emphasis added)

Muslim Brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy neither compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don't you enslave their women? Why don't you wage jihad? Why don't you pillage them? 

While he didn't come out and directly say rape them, that is not how it is taken on the street in the Middle East. They aren't interested in having Jewish women wash their dishes. This is evidenced by the questions of Palestinian boys in Islamic schools in Bethlehem. (emphasis added)

I remember students used to ask the teacher during our Islamic studies in Bethlehem High school, if it was permitted for Muslims to rape the Jewish women after we defeat them, his response was "The women captured in battle have no choice in this matter, they are concubines and they need to obey their masters, having sex with slave captives is not a "matter of choice for slaves.", this in fact was written in the Koran.

The undergirding issue for me here is what appears to be the general Islamic belief of the essential sub-humanness of those not fully Muslim (infidels), of which the above is but an example. They have no rights. They are essentially slaves and if women, sexual slaves. This is not radical Islam, but Islam as it has been practiced since the beginning.  Ý

The sky isn't falling after all.  It appears that The New Republic, generally considered a liberal publication, has broken ranks with the more radical environmental crowd. In an interesting retort to Natasha Hunter's condemnation of a recent TNR editorial, Gregg Easterbrook defends the Bush administration and government in general on its progress in dealing with environmental concerns and takes strong issue with the "sky is falling" crowd. His conclusion is succinct and to the point.

Thus The New Republic rejects the Democrats' entanglement with the doomsday viewpoint and with the sort of scare-mongering--of which the ANWR fight is an example--having more to do with fundraising and interest-group appeasement than with environmental protection. And thus The New Republic doesn't offer a phony, politics-driven case against Bush; we would rather people understand that the environment is improving and that government deserves much of the credit. The facts square with this interpretation. 

Clear thinking is clear thinking, whether liberal, conservative, or from whatever stripe and I say bully for it. Truth can only set those free who are willing to see it for what it is, no matter what their preconceptions.

One sure way to lead the troops is to demonize the enemy, whether it is Israel (from Arab perspectives), Palestinians (from supporters of Israel), Republicans (from anyone not), Democrats (by conservatives), and environmentalists (from those who believe in enviro-nazis).

I am reminded of Jesus' confrontations with the Pharisees of his day. They demonized "sinners" and castigated Jesus for associating with them. Some might argue that he then demonized them (you brood of vipers, you whitewashed sepulchers), but every one of his denunciations was a direct response to Pharisaic lying or dishonest manipulation. Jesus dealt with sin without demonizing the sinner, but he had no patience with the dishonest whomever they might be.

I guess I feel the same way. That is why I so disliked Bill Clinton and Al Gore. They were so dishonest. I can deal with their sin, heck, I am a sinner also, but I cannot deal with manipulative dishonesty, especially in an office that requires trust to operate. The Jews of Jesus' day trusted the Pharisees to instruct them in the truth and they lied, they were, as Jesus said, "blind leading the blind". It appears that Gregg Easterbrook has the same problem with dishonesty that castigates trust and I applaud him for it. The only way environmentalists can be taken seriously across the board is by husbanding the trust they need to be heard.
 

Zoning revisited.  Stuart Meck, a senior research fellow at the APA, wrote a castigating and impassioned rebuttal to Thomas Bray's critique of the issues surrounding the Community Character Act of 2001 (s.975). Having read the bill (I don't care what is in guidelines or other secondary materials, I care what is in the law itself), While the APA and Mr. Meck have every right to pursue their goals, I would like to ask Mr. Meck where ANY concern for property rights is even addressed, much less considered?

There are six ranking criteria for the distribution of federal funds under the act.

(A) As a fundamental priority, the extent to which a State or tribal government has in effect inadequate or outmoded land use planning legislation.

(B) The extent to which a grant will facilitate development or revision of land use plans consistent with updated land use planning legislation.

(C) The extent to which development or revision of land use plans will facilitate multistate land use planning.

(D) The extent to which the area under the jurisdiction of a State or tribal government is experiencing significant growth.

(E) The extent to which the project to be funded using a grant will protect the environment and promote economic development.

(F) The extent to which a State or tribal government has committed financial resources to comprehensive land use planning.

Though this is a "Community Character" act, no provision is even considered within the bill for those who own and make up the community. I cannot speak with surety to the APA's Legislative Guidebook. A quick perusal only found one statement dealing with private property.

Reasons to Support the Specific Policy: Environmental protection and land conservation have often been seen as the role of the public sector. However, nonprofit organizations and private property owners also have a role and responsibility in good stewardship of the environment.

Private property owners have "role" and "responsibility" though undefined. For me, it is the role of the turkey coming to Thanksgiving dinner, all give and no get.

God and man.  John Steward Mill in arguing for a Utilitarian ethic said that the highest normative principal was

Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.

Most people these days espouse similar views, though not expressed with such clarity. "Don't diss me" is at its root the same ethic. However there is a fundamental problem and it is in the definitions. Since happiness is the key to Mill's focus on objectives, and appears to be the goal driving much of our modern culture (not to mention Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence) a proper question would seem to be whose and when.

This brings me to God and man. There is a old saying, "He who laughs last, laughs best." The premise being that the true nature of things often takes time to bear its fruit. What may appear to promote happiness may in the end not do so and it is only over the expanse of time, when all events work to their fruition, that true happiness, or the lack there of, can be adjudicated. It is also why hindsight is so visionary.

Mill's argument was made in the climate of Western Christian civilization, premised on the foundational thought that God knows best. The idea is formalized in Paul's argument in Romans 8:28 "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." NASB The premise is that God sees to the end of time and both knows and works everything out. Without that undergirding assumption, on what basis can any decision about the unforeseeable future be trusted? Nothing, unless you want to argue for history. But there is a serious problem. History is held hostage to radical deconstructionism. So what is left? Answering that email for a larger endowment of physical sexuality, male or female? Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow I die?

Why is this important? Well, when happiness has become hedonism and God has become the former concern of small minds, where does Mill's premise, which undergirds much of the current social debate in the United States, and the nature of the American experience itself, leave us?

Up the creek without a paddle?  Ý

Why Israel?  In a well argued article in the National Review, Victor David Hanson investigates why most of the world hates Israel. After going through three pretexts and five general considerations, I was especially struck by the closing argument which dealt with the fifth consideration, the idea of Aristocratic guilt and the cult of the underdog.

Partly Marxist, partly ignorant, and mostly naive, these insufferable and affluent European and American leftists see their solidarity with Palestinians as inseparable from their own embarrassed personas. It is easy, cheap — and safe — to right the injustices of the world by marching, shouting, and signing petitions, rather than by living among, marrying, seeing daily, or materially aiding the "other." It can all be done in a few seconds on campus, on television, or in the suburb — without any true self-introspection about what really ensures one's own rather comfortable material existence in the university, media, or government.

The truth is that Westerners' support or hatred for Israel increasingly tell us far more about ourselves than they do about the real situation in the Middle East.

Easy, cheap, and safe — at least for now. There is a famous aphorism that says a liberal is conservative who hasn't been mugged yet. Loss of safety sometimes changes one's views, as it did for many of those directly effected by September 11. Despite my disagreements with them, I for one, pray that those affluent leftist Americans can still pursue their easy, cheap, and safe hobby for many more years. Ý

Not taking one for the home team.   In an interesting twist on the pro-life/pro-choice debate, a woman in Kalamazoo Michigan won a settlement in her suit against the city's police department for infringing on her First Amendment rights to display a graphic anti-abortion sign depicting a photo of a bloody, aborted female child's head held in a surgical clamp.

The police charged her for displaying a graphic sign in violation of the Michigan statute prohibiting the public display of pictures of murder. She sued on First Amendment grounds when, in my opinion, she should have turned herself in and accepted the conviction (she is pro-life after all). She could have then used the precedent to ask the same police department why they weren't prosecuting the murders that the photo depicted.

The obvious conundrum, to me at least, seems to have slipped past everybody involved. Everyone is making a big deal out of the fact that the city will have to pay for her new anti-abortion signs in a classic display of trumpeting the conquering of a molehill when a mountain lay within your grasp.

Sometimes you just have to take one for the home team.

Tyranny of the immediate.  One reason most bloggs don't have good access to the their past postings is that most people are driven by what I call the "tyranny of the immediate". People are driven by what's new, with its intendment sense of having something before someone else, whoever that someone else might be. It also seems to give some people a sense of aliveness. You can see them at Blockbuster on the morning new videos/DVDs arrive. There is always a line at the door comprised of those who must have the newest release, often regardless of its intrinsic quality.

Housekeeping.  I began rearranging the history portion of the site today, playing with some ideas about how I want to organize my past ruminations. One of the major problems I see in all bloggs is the lack of accessibility to previous writings. That is why I have begun an index. My opinion is that if it is worth reading once, it is worth reading again, and maybe for the first time for those who come later.
 

American minority poor revisited.  To listen to Jesse Jackson and other liberal Black-American spokesmen you would think that the African-American population in the U.S. were living below third world standards. Now from the Swedish Research Institute of Trade comes several intriguing assertions that shed an interesting light on their claims.

"Black people, who have the lowest income in the United States, now have a higher standard of living than an ordinary Swedish household," the HUI economists said.

If Sweden were a U.S. state, it would be the poorest measured by household gross income before taxes, Bergstrom and Gidehag said.

If the trend persists, "things that are commonplace in the United States will be regarded as the utmost luxury in Sweden," the authors said. "We are not quite there yet but the trend is clear." 

What makes this so significant, besides the obvious affront to the "victimhood" of the African-American poor, is that Sweden has long been championed by the left as the glowing example of the high tax socialist heaven we should all aspire to. I wonder what happened?

This report brings into sharp focus the relative nature of poverty and the way we define the poor. I guess the aphorism that "he who controls the definitions controls the culture" is essentially true. It seems to be patently obvious that special interests shouldn't be in control of the definitions.

A short aside on the terms Black-American and African-American. I used both as I am not currently up on the politically correct label for those Americans descended from the African Negroid population, either immigrant or slave. Neither are a very good choice when looked at objectively, since Africa includes the northern part of the continent that contains such non-Negroid populations as those in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Egypt to name a few. But then I have no say in the matter and that is something for a later discussion.

Round and round we go.  It appears the propaganda surrounding the alleged "Jenin massacre" continues unabated. In an emergency U.N. General Assembly session today, Arab and developing nations are pressing to condemn Israel for alleged "atrocities" in the Jenin refugee camp and for blocking a U.N. fact-finding mission from looking into the military attack. If you say something often enough is it true? The original language was modified to "get wider support".

The revised draft before Tuesday's session also softened language originally calling for condemnation of the alleged "atrocities" committed by Israel. Now, in an apparent attempt to get wider support, the text condemns "the brutal assaults committed by the Israeli occupying forces."

There is an interesting thing about one-way streets. They are an artificial attempt to regulate traffic. They only work when there is balance in the overall flow of the system. Where is the balance here?   Ý

Redundancy. It has finally happened. The government has proposed an agency to make sure government agencies operate efficiently. According to John Soat, senior executive editor of InformationWeek:

Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Technology and Procurement Policy, last week introduced legislation to create an Office of Federal Procurement Policy, with the aim of cutting through government red tape so the right official sees private-sector technology proposals to battle terrorism.

It seems federal agencies have been overwhelmed by proposals to deal with security and other problems while companies are complaining they can't find the right people to talk to. This new agency would solicit and screen proposals and then forward them to the appropriate agency for action. On the surface that seems like a good move, triaging the input and coordinating the efforts. However, there are numerous problems relating to knowledge assessment (how do you know what I need type issues) but there is also a larger issue. Would someone explain to me what the Office of Homeland Security is doing then? Aren't they supposed to be the coordinators of this type of thing?

Republicans have traditionally been the advocates of less government, but it appears everyone wants to show how concerned and responsible they are. How many agencies and new government growth is the aftermath of September 11 going to generate?
 

Things change.   Saturday night the White House Correspondents Association held its annual dinner. President Bush was there, as were many of the important and powerful in Washington. However, if you look at interest generated, the most important person at the event was not a politician or a member of the fourth estate; it was an aging heavy metal rocker by the name of Ozzy Osbourne.

Osbourne's famed has skyrocketed due to the recent success of his MTV reality show, The Osbournes, which follows his R-rated family (Osbourne, his wife Sharon, youngest daughter Kelly, and son Jack) around their daily activities and then is distilled for viewing in half hour segments. MTV has recently signed an agreement with the Osbournes for two more years of the series for an estimated $20 million.

The pervasiveness of Osbourne's success is seen by President Bush's statement about and to him in his speech, saying

The thing about Ozzy is, he's made a lot of big hit recordings," Bush told the audience. " 'Party With the Animals.' 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.' 'Facing Hell.' 'Black Skies' and 'Bloodbath in Paradise.' Ozzy, Mom loves your stuff.

This quote was taken from a Washington Post article by David Montgomery.

For those of us who do not agree with the "Osbourne" lifestyle, whether it is Ozzy's music, or the show's (and family's) salty, sexually explicit language, or views on sex, drugs, religion, and life in general, this is just one more example of the decline of our culture, not to mention the fact that it creates more fodder for our radical Islamic enemies to use against us. No I don't mean the MTV program, or its popularity, bad as that is. I mean the President of the United States publicly supporting this trash.

George W. Bush, what were you thinking?

It was later reported by Matt Drudge that Vice President Cheney's wife, Lynne, was embarrassed by the whole thing.

"He's hardly someone we should be applauding... not a role model, I am rather embarrassed," Cheney said after the dinner, according to sources.

Someone hasn't lost their sense of proportion, though Lynne Cheney will probably be castigated for her "intolerance".

Approaching legitimacy.  One interesting overflow from the Washington Post article are the quotes from Matt Drudge. Two paragraphs are devoted to the words and opinions of "Cyber-journalist Matt Drudge". Two things stand out. The first is that Matt Drudge is quoted in a Washington Post article at all, where he is not the focus of the article. The second is that he is called a cyber-journalist, with an emphasis on the journalist (at least for me), in the Washington Post. My how things have changed.

My zone, your zone. The federal government is attempting to permanently intrude into the local zoning process. In a move, that should have raised the hackles of any fair-minded person, the democratic leadership held a semi-secret committee meeting (the room was moved to a restricted area of the capital, keeping out the public, and the new location not posted in time for anyone to do anything about it) and vote on bringing the Community Character Act to the floor.

The essence of the act is detailed in a Wall Street Journal column by Thomas Bray. At issue is the federal intrusion into the local zoning process, one of the cornerstones of community government and local control of neighborhoods and businesses.

As a former president of my community association I am intimately familiar with the zoning process and what communities and property owners can do to assure that the will of the local residents gets its proper hearing. The further the governing body is from the location and the concerns of the affected citizens, the less voice the citizens seem to be able to muster. For example, it is always harder dealing with the state in Maryland than with the county. When there are problems locally, at least there is some recourse through the ballot box, along with local media and the petition process to deal with bad policy.

Once the federal government enters the picture, the concerns of the local citizen become so far removed, that there is almost nothing one can do about it. Witness the often unintended, but still impossible to deal with, effects of the endangered species act on all kinds of local situations.

What I do not understand, and I would like to ask my democratic brethren, especially those from Maryland, is how a party, supposedly for giving more power and say to the little guy, the average man in the street, could support a bill and a process that does just the opposite. Is the real agenda more pernicious, the eventual removal of one of the last elements of true local control over a community, its zoning decisions? It sure seems like it.

The Bush administration has announced opposition to the act, but that may not be enough. Write your senator and congressman about this intrusion into local sovereignty and demand it be defeated.

Can you top this?  Spiderman broke all records for its Friday opening. Previous champ Harry Potter did $32.3 million its first day; Spider-Man did $41,413,000 and is on schedule to do $100 million in its first three days, another first.

In two weeks, Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones will open and I guess Star Wars fans will see the Spider-Man record as a challenge to be broken. I know the feeling. I still check The Lord of the Rings receipts to see how far it has moved up the record listing. There are some people who have bought tickets to every show Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, which for the average theater would be 12 shows (four showings a day per screen).

How did we get so obsessed? Is it the natural progression of technology to produce this kind of aberrative behavior or is the seed already in us, just waiting for an outlet? I tend toward the seed already being present, but then I am "mankind is essentially fallen" kind of guy. I see this sort of compulsive behavior all around me, in myself even. Anyone who can drive themselves to work for 30 hours straight, has to have a compulsive streak in them.

So, here is the big question. As technology advances, giving us more and more outlets to explore our behavioral limits, what will we see happening? Sometimes I get awfully pessimistic about the future, but then Jesus did say "...when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" Luke 18:8b. I guess we may have an answer to that question.

Anti-Semitism's underbelly.  Ruth R. Wisse, professor of Yiddish literature at Harvard, said in an article in Commentary magazine in 1991 that anti-Semitism is not directed against the behavior of the Jews but against the existence of the Jews. Yasser Arafat emerges from his captivity in Ramallah and calls Israelis "terrorists, Nazis and racists." He doesn't mean their actions, despite liberal apologetics, he means the Jews themselves. This connection between fundamental Islamic anti-Semitism and the problems surrounding Israel needs further investigation. I have decided to work on an essay about it to appear in the future.

I will leave you with this one image, taken from The Nando Times (link no longer available) after Arafat's release from his Ramallah compound. The Catholic Cardinal is Roger Etchegaray, president of the Vatican peace and justice council, who was sent by the Pope John Paul II to try and resolve the crisis at the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem. 'Nuff said.  

AP Photo/Palestinian Authority/Hussein Hussein

The bill for Bill. The entertainment and news business is all abuzz with the latest Clinton incarnation, this time as a talk show host who, according to the LA Times, "has aspirations of being the next Oprah Winfrey." Matt Drudge reported that President Bush said he would check out the show and might even appear on it, and it was the subject of Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal column today.

Noonan did not believe that Bill Clinton would follow through with the talk show idea. Besides it being bad for Hillary, which would put the kibosh on the idea, she thought he didn't have the work ethic needed to do it. The salient passage in her article was

At any rate he loves to talk but not necessarily to work--to decide, to carry through.

Talk shows require discipline. You get up early, have conference calls, hold meetings, read every newspaper and magazine to stay current. You oversee the tone and topics of the show, prepare for plan interviews, rehearse skits and bits. You meet with writers, you coddle, dominate, bond with and coolly fire producers.

 In essence, talk shows require work, and the general consensus is that Bill Clinton is not about work. However, he is about the cult of celebrity, and when you think about it, what could he do to remain in the public eye. Bush senior has faded into the background, Reagan is incapacitated, Carter has Habitat for America and his self styling peace envoy status, and Ford has just disappeared. Bill is too young and too addicted to being the center of attention to fade away but he doesn't have a core issue or vision to keep him in the public eye. To go back to Noonan's premise, getting a core issue or vision, like Jimmy Carter's housing effort, requires real work.

What Bill Clinton likes to do is to talk, or maybe it is to be heard. Noonan says

...Bill Clinton is a talker. Those who witnessed his presidency up close speak of its iconic moment: the endless bull session, with the president talking issues every which way and from every angle. Some suggested he did this to fill time while he avoided decisions; his labor secretary Robert Reich said he thought Mr. Clinton enjoyed talking so much because the sound of it made him feel like he had real beliefs.

I personally feel his talk show exploration is a way to get back into the news, to be the center of attention for a while. I don't think it is serious; he just needs to stir things up. The contributions to the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library are stalled and in danger of not meeting the minimal goals to go forward. He has to do something on that front alone.

Another reason I don't see him doing a talk show is the 2004 election cycle. Shortly after the 2002 midterm elections (only six months away), the drive for 2004 will begin in earnest and the democrats will need Bill Clinton. They will need him for money, to help raise the necessary funds, especially now with the campaign finance law changes. You can't do a talk show if you stumping around the country giving speeches and hosting $1000 a plate dinners, and $10,000 a seat intimate gatherings.

No, Bill's real crisis will begin after the 2004 election. He will then fade into the deep background, with the only likelihood of serious re-emergence being on the support side of a Hillary run for the White House in 2008 which would start with her re-election campaign for 2006. He would have to do all the right things for her to succeed and he has never demonstrated the ability to be the one doing the supporting, sublimating his concerns for the good of the other.

Yes, Bill Clinton is in a quandary and the biggest part of that quandary is Bill Clinton himself. There is an old saying, "Time exposes the man." I guess we shall see.

He had it all.  We had a hailstorm this afternoon. Golf ball and large marble-sized hail fell for about 5 minutes, creating quite a racket on the roof, gutter, and even windows on the windward side of the house. These weather events are a rare occurrence in Maryland, so I had to go out on the front porch and watch, even though I was talking to a client at the time.

We humans really enjoy unique and rare experiences and it is just that, their rarity, that gives them an extra specialness.

There are three movies coming out in May that promise blockbuster status: Spiderman, Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, and The Sum of All Fears. I have noticed a trend in movies for special effects to attempt to overwhelm the visual and auditory senses. Each new movie seeks to propel us forward with new and as yet unseen special effects. The logical conclusion is that eventually nothing short of a grand mal seizure will be an adequate response to a new effect.

This problematic trend is the same issue that we must deal with in all experiences built around hedonism. Experience for experience's sake is like a drug, a drug that rapidly needs a higher dose, in an escalating race toward the "ultimate" thrill.

Theme parks are starting to see their numbers fall off. It has become impossible for ride designers and park owners to continue to escalate the sensual experience and maintain safety.

It is interesting that human sexual experience was designed (taking a biblical-based worldview as starting point) not to be continuous, but because of a woman's menstrual cycle, a period of abstinence was integral to the whole event.

In other, more pastoral times, other pleasurable aspects of our lives, such as food, were also cyclical. We had foods in season, which fostered an enforced variety and kept up expectation for the currently available taste treat.

When technology asserted itself into the mix and we created the ability to have anything we wanted, anytime we wanted, we lost that natural cycle and its balancing effect on our lives. Instead, over time, it appears that as a culture and as a species, we have sunk into a death spiral of excess: excess food, excess sex, excess thrill seeking, excess entertainments, and in the end, excess excess. What is the drug culture other than the attempt to experience the new and novel, to take our mind and bodily sensations beyond our limits and go where they have never gone before. Aren't we all trying to "Star Trek" our lives?

While those purveying asceticism have very little to offer, and even as a Christian there is no support for this, as Paul makes explicitly clear in the second chapter of Colossians, there is something seriously wrong with the current state of affairs. What is to be said about life that when lived, the best thing that can be said about it is, "He had it all"?

While my thoughts on this issue are still developing, I believe there is something here that needs serious consideration.

Never was a massacre. It appears there wasn't a massacre after all. A report in today's Washington Times by Paul Martin says

Palestinian officials yesterday put the death toll at 56 in the two-week Israeli assault on Jenin, dropping claims of a massacre of 500 that had sparked demands for a U.N. investigation. 

So, 33 Israeli soldiers and 56 Palestinians died. Considering the fighting, the booby traps and suicide bombings in the camps it appears that the Israelis acted with remarkable restraint and concern for collateral damage. It is interesting to note that one problem the Palestinians have to deal with is their own booby traps and unexploded ordinance.

The figures revealed that 18 persons had been injured and one had died after the fighting had ended, the result of accidentally detonating either shells left after the fighting, or booby traps that were set by Palestinian gunmen throughout the camp.

Martin gives examples that contradict the overblown reports of Israeli mistreatment of civilians in the Jenin camp.

Families living in houses directly opposite the destroyed area have told The Washington Times that Israeli soldiers, who temporarily occupied their houses just before the final battle began, treated them without violence and assured them: "You will not be harmed."

Maybe this apparently false claim of widespread atrocities and massacre can now be put to rest. However, the larger question remains. While the world jumps at any chance to hold Israel accountable for even imaginary offenses, when is someone going to hold the Palestinian Authority accountable for their outright lying? How many times can they cry wolf before someone says, "Enough" and calls them to task?

Whenever I see Arafat speaking I am reminded of Jesus' statement in John 8:44 "He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies." While Jesus is speaking of the devil, it is an apropos quote for Chairman Arafat, especially considering the stand taken in the recent fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.

It appears that Montazeri is not the only cleric speaking out against suicide bombing. There is a fatwa issued on September 15, 2001, four days after the attacks in American that specifically addresses suicide bombing. See Concerning suicide bombings on www.fatwa-online.com. Note especially the section toward the end, which Montazeri's decree seems to mirror (emphasis added).

So what we hold is that those people who perform these suicide (bombings) have wrongfully committed suicide, and that this necessitates entry into Hell-Fire, and Allaah¹s refuge is sought and that this person is not a martyr (shaheed). However if a person has done this based upon misinterpretation, thinking that it is permissible, then we hope that he will be saved from sin, but as for martyrdom being written for him, then no, since he has not taken the path of martyrdom. 

What I find interesting is that these decrees seem to get no play in the Western (much less Muslim) press. This is a curious omission.  Ý