AL QUEDA’S USEFUL IDIOTS:
At Least One Columnist “Gets It” About Islamo-Fascism

(First published June 15, 2004) 

In his very thoughtful column yesterday at National Review Online, Victor Davis Hanson addresses a central Western liberal attitude which will inevitably lead to the demise of the West if something isn’t done to reverse it.

The West, especially Europe, says Hanson, has been playing into the hands of Al Queda and other militant Islamists through self-loathing combined with ignorantly regarding them as mere nutcases and unthinking fanatics who “don’t understand” us. On the contrary, he asserts, they understand us all too well, and perhaps better than we understand ourselves. And that is what makes them so dangerous, on some level even more dangerous than the Nazis and the USSR were:

..[T]oo many of us deem bin Laden's new fascists unhinged — their fatwas, their mythology about strong and weak horses, and their babble about the Reconquista and the often evoked "holy shrines" are to us dreamlike.

But I beg to differ somewhat.

I think the Islamists and their supporters do not live in an alternate universe, but instead are no more crazy in their goals than Hitler was ...Nor was Hitler's fatwa — Mein Kampf — any more irrational than bin Laden's 1998 screed and his subsequent grainy infomercials. Indeed, I think Islamofascism is brilliant in its reading of the postmodern West and precisely for that reason it is dangerous beyond all description — in the manner that a blood-sucking, stealthy, and nocturnal Dracula was always spookier than a massive, clunky Frankenstein.

Like Hitler's creed, bin Ladenism trumpets contempt for bourgeois Western society. If once we were a "mongrel" race of "cowboys" who could not take casualties against the supermen of the Third Reich, now we are indolent infidels, channel surfers who eat, screw, and talk too much amid worthless gadgetry, godless skyscrapers, and, of course, once again, the conniving Jews.

Like Hitler, bin Ladenism has an agenda: the end of the liberal West. Its supposedly crackpot vision is actually a petrol-rich Middle East free of Jews, Christians, and Westerners, free to rekindle spiritual purity under Sharia ...an Israel to be nuked, a Europe to be out-peopled and cowered, and an America to be bombed and terrorized into isolation. This time we are to lose not through blood and iron, but through terror and intimidation: televised beheadings, mass murders, occasional bombings, the disruption of commerce, travel, and the oil supply.

It was hard for the Islamic fascists to find ideological support in the West, given their agenda of gender apartheid, homophobia, religious persecution, racial hatred, fundamentalism, polygamy, and primordial barbarism. But they sensed that there has always been a current of self-loathing among the comfortable Western elite…If anyone doubts the nexus between right-wing Middle Eastern fascism and left-wing academic faddishness, go to booths in the Free Speech area at Berkeley or see what European elites have said and done for Hamas. Middle Eastern fascist killers enshrined as victims alongside our own oppressed? That has been gospel in our universities for the last three decades.

...bin Laden understood the importance of splitting the West, just like the sultan of old knew that a Europe trisected into Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism would fight among itself rather than unite against a pan-Islamic foe...

If after four years of careful planning, al Qaedists hit the Olympics in August, the terrorists know better than we do that most Europeans will do nothing — but quickly point to the U.S. and scream "Iraq!" And they know that the upscale crowds in Athens are far more likely to boo a democratic America than they are a fascist Syria or theocratic Iran.

Just watch.

CAVING IN TO "ISLAMIC LAW":
Will the West Sacrifice Its Freedoms to Placate the Implacable?

At least one American columnist thinks so.

Back in 2006 at the height of the controversy over some editorial cartoons critical of the radical wing of Islam, Washington Times columnist Diana West got it right in the op-ed piece "Cartoon Rage," about the Western media's cowardly response to ongoing militant Muslim riots and threats over the cartoons:

"...We dress up our capitulation in fancy talk of 'tolerance,' 'responsibility' and 'sensitivity.' We even congratulate ourselves for having the 'editorial judgment' to make 'pluralism' possible. 'Readers were well served... without publishing the cartoons,' said a Wall Street Journal spokesman. 'CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam,' reported the cable network....

"...Calling these cartoons 'unacceptable,' and censoring ourselves 'in respect' to Islam brings the West into compliance with a central statute of sharia [Islamic "law"--JE]. As [Danish newspaper] Jyllands-Posten's Flemming Rose has noted, that's not respect, that's submission."

Amen!

PEGGY NOONAN WRITES ABOUT 9/11 ...IN 1998

Noted Conservative Columnist Saw the Signs of the Times

Below is an eerie passage from a piece written by columnist Peggy Noonan on Nov. 30, 1998.

It was republished on Sept. 18, 2001 at the Wall Street Journal web site opinionjournal.com, where the entire piece can be read:

There Is No Time, There Will Be Time
....Something's up. And deep down, where the body meets the soul, we are fearful. We fear, down so deep it hasn't even risen to the point of articulation, that with all our comforts and amusements, with all our toys and bells and whistles . . . we wonder if what we really have is . . . a first-class stateroom on the Titanic. Everything's wonderful, but a world is ending and we sense it.

I don't mean: "Uh-oh, there's a depression coming," I mean: We live in a world of three billion men and hundreds of thousands of nuclear bombs, missiles, warheads. It's a world of extraordinary germs that can be harnessed and used to kill whole populations, a world of extraordinary chemicals that can be harnessed and used to do the same.

Three billion men, and it takes only half a dozen bright and evil ones to harness and deploy.

What are the odds it will happen? Put it another way: What are the odds it will not? Low. Nonexistent, I think.

When you consider who is gifted and crazed with rage . . . when you think of the terrorist places and the terrorist countries . . . who do they hate most? The Great Satan, the United States. What is its most important place? Some would say Washington. I would say the great city of the United States is the great city of the world, the dense 10-mile-long island called Manhattan, where the economic and media power of the nation resides, the city that is the psychological center of our modernity, our hedonism, our creativity, our hard-shouldered hipness, our unthinking arrogance.

If someone does the big, terrible thing to New York or Washington, there will be a lot of chaos and a lot of lines going down, a lot of damage, and a lot of things won't be working so well anymore. And thus a lot more . . . time. Something tells me we won't be teleconferencing and faxing about the Ford account for a while.

The psychic blow--and that is what it will be as people absorb it, a blow, an insult that reorders and changes--will shift our perspective and priorities, dramatically, and for longer than a while. Something tells me more of us will be praying, and hard, one side benefit of which is that there is sometimes a quality of stopped time when you pray. You get outside time.

Maybe, of course, I'm wrong. But I think of the friend who lives on Park Avenue who turned to me once and said, out of nowhere, "If ever something bad is going to happen to the city, I pray each day that God will give me a sign. That He will let me see a rat stand up on the sidewalk. So I'll know to gather the kids and go." I absorbed this and, two years later, just a month ago, poured out my fears to a former high official of the United States government. His face turned grim. I apologized for being morbid. He said no, he thinks the same thing. He thinks it will happen in the next year and a half. I was surprised, and more surprised when he said that an acquaintance, a former arms expert for another country, thinks it will happen in a matter of months....

--by Peggy Noonan, originally published in Forbes ASAP magazine, 11/30/1998

"UNTIL THEN..."

A Magnificent Tribute to Our Guys and Gals in Uniform

This Flash presentation first appeared in 2006. It was moving and beautiful then, and remains so now. It incorporates some wonderful photography of our troops "over there," together with a recording of Marta Keen's gorgeous song "Homeward Bound," the lyrics of which are as follows:

In the quiet misty morning when the moon has gone to bed,
When the sparrows stop their singing and the sky is clear and red.
When the summer’s ceased its gleaming,
When the corn is past its prime,
When adventure’s lost its meaning,
I’ll be homeward bound in time.

Bind me not to the pasture, chain me not to the plow.
Set me free to find my calling and I’ll return to you somehow.

If you find it’s me you're missing, if you’re hoping I’ll return.
To your thoughts I’ll soon be list’ning, and in the road I’ll stop and turn.
Then the wind will set me racing as my journey nears its end.
And the path I’ll be retracing when I’m homeward bound again.

Bind me not to the pasture, chain me not to the plow.
Set me free to find my calling and I’ll return to you somehow.

In the quiet misty morning when the moon has gone to bed,
When the sparrows stop their singing,
I’ll be homeward bound again.

-Music and Lyrics by Marta Keen

OH, THE IRONY!

Greenpeace Damages Coral Reef (11/1/2005)


"In one of those 'the operation was a success but the patient died' scenarios, Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior II damaged a coral reef in the central Philippines--during a climate change awareness program. 

"The ship and its Birkenstock crew will have to pony up after being assessed a 640,000 peso ($15,000) fine after the 55m motor-assisted environmentally friendly schooner ran aground at the Tubbataha Reef Marine Park on Monday, according to park manager Angelique Songco. 

"The ship's bow sliced through a reef formation measuring 160sq m., she said...."

THE REAL ORIGINS OF HALLOWEEN

It's Not a Wiccan Holy Day After All

On BeliefNet (use the link above to read the article), a Catholic priest writes about the history of this allegedly pre-Christian pagan festival:

"We’ve all heard the allegations: Halloween is a pagan rite dating back to some pre-Christian festival among the Celtic Druids that escaped church suppression. Even today modern pagans and witches continue to celebrate this ancient festival. If you let your kids go trick-or-treating, they will be worshiping the devil and pagan gods.

"Nothing could be further from the truth. The origins of Halloween are, in fact, very Christian and rather American. Halloween falls on October 31 because of a pope, and its observances are the result of medieval Catholic piety...."

IT'S THE VICTIMS' FAULT?
Baptist Writer: Hurricane Katrina Was "God's Wrath"

In a rambling pontification on his internet-based radio broadcast, Baptist writer and "scholar" James White argues that the USA, if not the populace of New Orleans, brought Hurricane Katrina upon itself:

White seems convinced that Hurricane Katrina, like the 9-11 terrorist attacks, was an instance of God's wrath against the USA for rejecting "biblical Christianity" (which rejection, no doubt, includes allowing the Catholic Church to exist on American soil) and especially for "cultural degradation," such as allegedly promoting sexual immorality.

Yet the French Quarter --the section of the city known for its extravagant uber-partying, its transsexual strip joints, and its largely homosexual population-- stayed dry and mostly untouched. As one commentator noted, upon encountering the Wrath Theory embraced by White, God's aim must've been off that day.

Moreover, White's Wrath Theory cannot account for the fact that in the predominantly traditionalist, orthodox Protestant culture of 1900 --decades before there was any such thing as Planned Parenthood abortion clinics, or Playboy magazine, or MTV, or the gay "rights" movement-- a hurricane wiped out the town of Galveston, Texas, killing between 8,000 and 10,000.

(To be fair, White insists that San Francisco would've been more deserving than the Big Easy of such a demonstration of divine judgment. But it doesn't really matter because, as his Hyper-Calvinist Manichean theology informs him, merely being born human makes you ipso facto evil and therefore deserving of death anyway.)

Catholic blogger Mark Shea masterfully puts such nonsense to rest in his own debunking of the Wrath Theory:

...From where I sit, there are certain things I think it's safe to say. First, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Second, God is in control of stuff (including weather). Third, life is extremely mysterious. Fourth, God is the judge of the world, not me and not even my most especially holiest readers. Fifth, if I were in the position of people in New Orleans, I would be strongly tempted to give a good swift kick to the Holy Ones whose first thought is not, "How can I help?" but "This is your fault, you know."

Theodicy is a fun game in the abstract. Sort of like playing "Lifeboat" in a college bull session. I enjoy a good game of "What if" as much as the next guy. But playing Lifeboat is much less fun when you are in a lifeboat and sensible people know that there is a time and place for speculating on the mysterious purposes of the Almighty and a time and a place for shutting one's trap and just helping.

...Was New Orleans judged by this hurricane? Only in the sense that everything that happens to us can be a means by which God reveals himself and ourselves to us. Certainly, I think, we learned some very unpleasant things about ourselves last week. But then again, I think as the stories of heroism emerge (as they will) we will also find that (at least some people) learned some very surprising and good things about themselves and others last week too.

...In a strange way, it helped me make sense, at an experiential level, of Paul's talk in Romans about how the trials of this life are nothing compared with the glory to be revealed. It explained how an entire generation can look back fondly on a time of depression and war. Because the judgement does not consist of our external circumstances. It is, rather, how we embrace God's love and live it out under those circumstances.

Our task is not to check on other people's test scores, but our own.

Jesus Himself made a similar point in Luke 13: 4-5: "Do you think ... those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them ... were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish."

The bottom line is we don't know why thousands of Christians were killed in Galveston in 1900. Nor why tens of thousands of Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, and others were killed in Indonesia and Thailand last year. Nor why over 650 (according to the latest count) were killed in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast, although most of those deaths were the direct result of human error, incompetence, and malfeasance in the first place.

Nor can anyone this side of Heaven know why Katrina was "allowed" to do what it did.

It is, as Shea correctly points out, a mystery. Know-it-all "prophets" would do well to humble themselves before their Creator by keeping that in mind and "checking their own test scores," lest they risk invoking upon themselves the very same wrath they seem to think the Almighty rained down upon New Orleans three weeks ago.

“RELIGIOUS LIBERTY FOR WHOM?”
Political Correctness and the Coming Death of the First Amendment

Dr. James Hitchcock, a professor of history at St. Louis University, notes some scary trends here and in the rest of the West which bode ill for the survival of freedom of conscience and religion –at least for those whose consciences are religious in orientation.

In his weekly column, titled Religious Liberty for Whom?, Hitchcock cites some examples of how liberal government officials here and abroad have been increasingly trampling on the rights of Christians and other religious people who refuse to walk in lockstep with whatever guilt-and-envy-driven public policy comes down the pike. For example:

In England a crowd assaulted a street preacher who posted a sign saying, "Stop Homosexuality." The police arrived and made an arrest of — the preacher! He was convicted of insulting and harassing behavior. Also in England, an Anglican bishop was investigated by the police after he publicly suggested that homosexuals seek counseling.

and,

Meanwhile the Irish Council for Civil Liberties has warned the Catholic Church of possible prosecution if it promulgates the Holy See’s official statement on "same sex unions.

and,

In Canada a teacher has been suspended for writing a letter to a newspaper saying that homosexuality is immoral. The preacher was being deliberately offensive, and the teacher’s letter no doubt upset many homosexuals among his students.

As for the notion that This Could Never Happen Here in the Good Ol’ USA, don’t be so sure. Hitchcock warns, 

 “…where homosexuality is concerned, governments are prepared to abrogate civil liberties. The American tradition of free expression so far has resisted these measures, but there are no grounds for complacency. Just outside public view, in books and journals read only by scholars, there are influential American political and legal theorists who openly advocate the restriction of religious liberty, in order to prevent the ‘wrong’ ideas from being circulated. In particular these theorists bluntly insist that parents have no right to inculcate their own beliefs in their children.”

That humming you hear may not be coming from the cicada invasion. It may be Thomas Jefferson spinning in his grave.

TED RALL vs. THE FIRST AMENDMENT:
Far-Left Cartoonist Takes a Page from the Church of Scientology’s Law Book

One of the more interesting aspects of Looney Left “journalist” Ted Rall’s character (see our June 9 post on Rall, “Attack of the Girlie-Men,” below) seems to be how he handles criticism, including when it comes from a colleague in the form of parody.

In 1999, fellow editorial cartoonist Danny Hellman poked scathing fun at Ted Rall for the latter’s strange Village Voice article defaming noted Jewish cartoonist Art Spiegelman, author-illustrator of Maus, a creative psychological exploration of his Holocaust survivor father’s life under the Nazis. Apparently sick and tired of Rall’s narcissistic rants in general, Hellman set up an e-mail list of his fellow cartoonists to whom he sent out a few over-the-top “letters,” using the internet ID “TedRallsBalls,” satirizing Rall’s writings, style, and personality.

One of those on Hellman’s e-mail list was Rall himself.

Now, any normal adult would merely laugh off such antics and take them like a mensch, especially someone who seems bent upon making a public figure of himself. But not Ted Rall, for whom the words “normal” and “adult” apparently hold little or no meaning.

Instead, Rall seems to have followed the example of late paranoid cult leader L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology. Hubbard’s cult, as cult watchdog groups well know, takes as kindly to criticism as Rall seems to, especially when it comes from the media. For example, in 1986 Time magazine published a lengthy, well-documented expose of Hubbard’s “church” titled “The Cult of Greed and Power,” in which it detailed the long checkered history of Hubbard’s shenanigans as well as several Federal crimes which had been committed by some of Hubbard’s top lieutenants, for which they ended up in a big house, courtesy of Uncle Sam.

The “church’s” reaction to the story? Following its decades long tradition of “handling” critics, it sued Time magazine for “libel.” After years of legal battling with the “church’s” in-house lawyers (who seem to outnumber its ministers) and spending millions of dollars defending its First Amendment rights, Time managed to get Scientology’s case thrown out of court as a SLAPP (“strategic litigation against public participation”) suit, a tactic of intimidation-via-litigation used by wealthy corporations to silence public dissent.

Like the Church of Scientology, Ted Rall responded to Danny Hellman’s criticism by suing Danny Hellman for libel, and –get this!— to the tune of 1.5 millions dollars. However, unlike the Hubbard cult, Rall thinks of himself a “journalist.”

Not even the Church of Scientology is that out of touch with reality.

ATTACK OF THE GIRLIE-MEN:
Envy-Ridden “Journalists” Whine One More at the Gipper

German sociologist Helmut Schoeck points out in his book Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour that envy is "a drive which lies at the core of man’s life as a social being…[an] urge to compare oneself invidiously with others." The envious person is a type of sociopath who, upon comparing him- or herself with another of higher character or greater accomplishment, finds him- or herself wanting. But rather than emulate that other person the envious person will try to destroy him or her, or at the very least in some way bring that person down to their own level.

Thus even before Ronald Reagan's corpse had a chance to get cold, some on the Looney Left, like the stuck-in-adolescence dimwits they seem to be, couldn't wait until after the funeral to vent unrestrained vitriol about the former Prez.

One such example is a shamelessly soul-less narcissist named Ted Rall, who seems bent upon dancing on whatever nearby freshly dug grave will further his career as a "journalist" and editorial cartoonist, and keep his name on the front burner. As noted writer and blogger Mark Shea (compared to whom Rall is an intellectual amoeba) aptly summarizes Rall’s character, “Notice ME! NOTICE ME! NOTICE MEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!”

Rall, some may recall, initially made quite a splash for himself in the mainstream media barely two months ago by publicly denigrating the sacrifice made by the late Pat Tillman --the NFL player who quit pro football and a 7-figure-earning career to serve his country in Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks-- and insulting Tillman’s family and friends in the process. Tillman lost his life; it turns out, by friendly fire. Rall's reaction to Tillman’s death, while Tillman's loved ones were still burying him, was to make Tillman the subject of his syndicated cartoon series, in which he calls Tillman an "idiot" and portrays him as a bloodthirsty bigot who wanted to kill Arabs.

Tillman, whined Rall, "falsely believed" the war in Afghanistan was linked to the September 11 attacks and was a "cog in a low-rent occupation army that shot more innocent civilians than terrorists to prop up puppet rulers and exploit gas and oil resources." Contrariwise, however, Rall approved of the cozy relationship the Taliban had with Al Queda while the former were executing women in football fields for showing their faces in public, or going to school, or in other ways displeasing their Mullahs. As for Al Queda's attack on Rall's own town, no doubt he found a way to blame that on Bush. Or perhaps the NFL. Or both.

Similarly, this week, fresh on the heels of Ronald Reagan's death, in his "Search and Destroy" web log and elsewhere, Rall asserts that the late former president must be in Hell "turning crispy brown right about now" for all his alleged "crimes" against humanity --which in Rall's world seems to consist only of gays, liberals, and his buddies in Al Queda and the Taliban. "If there is a hell," Rall says, "this guy is in it." Reagan, Rall declares, "was an idiot" who "elevated unjustifiable military action to an art."

Of course, Rall has not been alone in his envy-ridden denigration of real men like Tillman and Reagan. At about the same time the cyber-ink was drying over at "Search and Destroy," in chimed veteran crank Christopher Hitchens, who, like Rall, seems to relish in bashing his betters. For example, back in the 1990s Hitchens defamed Mother Teresa not only with a nasty character-assassinating book but with an equally nasty character-assassinating "documentary" as well, both sarcastically titled "Mother Teresa and the Missionary Position."

In his June 7 column immediately after Reagan’s passing, the supposedly more-mature-than-Rall “journalist” Hitchens cannot seem constrain his lesser impulses to “memoralize” Reagan by engaging in the same level of scorn and character assassination he leveled at Mother Teresa almost a decade ago. For example,

“…The famously genial grin turned into a rictus of senile fury…”

and

“The fox, as has been pointed out by more than one philosopher, knows many small things, whereas the hedgehog knows one big thing. Ronald Reagan was neither a fox nor a hedgehog. He was as dumb as a stump.”

and

“He had no friends, only cronies. His children didn't like him all that much. He met his second wife —the one that you remember— because she needed to get off a Hollywood blacklist and he was the man to see.”

And

“I could not believe that such a man had even been a poor governor of California in a bad year, let alone that such a smart country would put up with such an obvious phony and loon.”

Thus it's the propensity of envy-ridden girlie-men like Hitchens and Rall to detract real men and any others who are or seem better than they are in some way. But only when it's safe, such as when the latter are dead and the former live in a country kept free by their betters. There can be only one explanation for this sort of conduct on the part of allegedly civilized persons:

Envy.

In response to Hitchens, Shea points out in his web log. one of the “peculiar talents” Americans have is “burying the hatchet.” Shea wistfully wishes that “people like Hitchens” --and Rall-- “would learn it.”

However, it seems they did: But they buried it in Mr. Reagan's back. It’s the only way they know.

THE FOUNDING FATHERS GO DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE
A Frightening Trend in "Higher" Education

It seems that university history departments around the US are abondoning study of the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution. As one source notes,

"Two of the leaders in colonial- and revolutionary-era scholarship, Bernard Bailyn at Harvard and Gordon Wood at Brown, are being replaced by historians with no apparent interest in the Revolution and the founding. The same happened some years ago at Yale when Edmund Morgan retired."

If true, this is pretty scary stuff and it just goes to show what can happen when relativism, political correctness, and post-modernism take over a culture.

Read more about it here:

Forgetting the Founding Fathers

HAIL TO THE CHIEF
Ronald Reagan, Rest In Peace

The USA and the world have lost a great leader, and a very good man.

God bless you, Mr. President. And thank you!

MEMO TO THE WEST, POST-NICK BERG:
How to Respond to Islamo-Fascism

The recent mea culpa hand-wringing in the West over the abominable mistreatment of imprisoned Iraqi terrorists and insurgents by rogue American military personnel is as much a commentary on the morally weakened state of the West as it is yet another demonstration of the blindness of the West to an evil which cannot be comprised or negotiated with. Namely, the Islamo-fascist movement, which has no regard for the rule of law and order, as defined in Western civilization and most other civilizations, as it seeks to destroy everything and everyone in its path which does not meet its demented Muslim standards.

This weakness and blindness was made clear by Western responses to the videotaped murder-by-decapitation of Nick Berg --an innocent American contractor helping the Iraqis to rebuild their country-- by a group of Muslim terrorists. Even the Bush administration, which should know better, talks about "bringing" these subhuman thugs "to justice" rather than hunting them down and eradicating them as the destructive vermin they are.

The Bush administration, and the West in general, needs to revive the classical definition of "outlaw" as understood under the time-honored Catholic legal code known as the English Common Law, created by Catholic King Alfred the Great and incorporated into American jurisprudence over 200 years ago:

Under that system, anyone who deliberately placed themselves outside the law by making themselves autonomous ("self-law" or "law unto oneself") also thereby placed themselves outside the rights and protections guaranteed under that law. Hence, they could be hunted down with impunity by anyone and taken "dead or alive" with no guarantee of safe passage, much less a trial. Wikipedia.com puts it this way,

"To be declared an outlaw [under the English Common Law] was to suffer a form of civil death. The outlaw was debarred from all civilised society. No one was allowed to give him food, shelter, or any other sort of support; to do so was to commit the crime of couthutlaugh, and to be in danger of the ban yourself. A person who encountered an outlaw was allowed, and indeed encouraged, to kill them; to do so was no murder. Because the outlaw has defied civil society, that society was quit of any obligations to the outlaw; outlaws had no civil rights, could not sue in any court on any cause of action, though they were themselves personally liable."

Berg's Al Queda murderers, along with the rest of the Islamo-Fascist thugs, are clearly nothing more or less than outside the law, "outlaws" in the original sense of the word. They should be officially declared as "outlaws" and treated as such.

THE COMING "PASSION" FRANCHISE?
The $150 MIL (and Counting) Success of Gibson's Film Demands Sequels

Since The Passion of the Christ continues to do so well at the box office, we predict that Hollywood will jump on the band wagon and demand the production of sequels.

In fact, to those of us out here in the cultural hinterlands (i.e., outside the LA beltway). it seems to be the rule that *anything* which makes enough $$$ at the box office ends up getting turned into a franchise.

Thus we expect to see coming down the cinematic pike...

"The Passion II: The Wrath of Saul"

"The Passion III: The Search for Greeks"

"The Passion IV: The Voyage Rome"

"The Passion V: The Gaulic Frontier"

"The Passion VI: The Undiscovered Brits"

"The Passion VII: Regenerations"

...and so forth.

And then there's the matter of the t.v. series and spin-offs. Not to mention the Broadway musical version, "The Passion: All This and Vatican II."

It's only a matter of time.

"THE PASSION" AS RORSCHACH TEST:
Why Most of the Opposition Comes from Liberals

Well, the screeching in the Establishment media continues.

Even before the general public began to view The Passion of the Christ for themselves, liberal commentators have been attacking it as "pornographic" and "obscene" in part or in whole because of Mel Gibson's hard-to-take but thoroughly accurate depiction of the sadistic torture and death Christ suffered at the hands of the ancient Romans, surely the Nazis of their day. When they look at The Passion, instead of seeing a message of redemption, love, and forgiveness they see "racism," or "anti-Semitism, or a "dangerous" philosophy of "divisiveness."

For liberals, religion should be about niceness, feeling good about oneself, and preaching sweetness and light from the back of the cultural bus. It ought not move up to the front to challenge the status quo, especially with in-your-face images of a suffering Savior who makes demands and wants you to make a decision ("who do you say that I am?," He asked His disciples).

For liberals, including those who think of themselves as "Christians," The Passion of the Christ is a Rorschach Test in which they see the cross as "foolishness," as the Apostle Paul observed about the Roman pagans of his day. He could just as easily have penned the same thing about modern-day liberals, including modern-day liberal Christians. 60 years ago, someone else did:

While the Nazis were plunging Europe into world war, partly due to apathy on the part of mainline Christians here and in the Reich, noted German Protestant theologian and anti-Nazi activist H. Reinhold Neibuhr summarized modern-day mainstream Christianity, especially in Germany and America, as a religion in which "a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment though the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."

As Presbyterian minister William Sloane Coffin once said about Fundamentalists and their interpretation of the Bible, Mel Gibson's film "is something like a mirror: if an ass peers in, you can't expect an apostle to peer out.''

FOR MEL GIBSON, HIS FILM IS A MASS:
ZENIT on The Passion, Catholic Liturgy, and Anti-Semitism

The Italian news agency ZENIT, the only secular media outlet which specializes in covering the Vatican, released the following remarkable article this week.

==================================================
ZENIT News Agency, The World Seen from Rome
==================================================

"'The Passion' … for Its Author, Is a Mass"

Vittorio Messori on Mel Gibson's Work

ROME, FEB. 18, 2004 (Zenit.org).- Vittorio Messori is the first journalist in history to publish a book-length interview with a pope, the multimillion-selling "Crossing the Threshold of Hope" (1994), as well as numerous other works such as "The Ratzinger Report" (1987) and his best-selling "Ipotesi su Gesù" (The Jesus Hypothesis, 1976).

After seeing Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," he wrote the following article for the Italian daily Corriere della Sera and offered the piece to ZENIT for publication in other languages.

* * *

A Passion of Violence and Love

By Vittorio Messori

After two hours and six minutes, the lights flick on again in the little soundproof room. There are only about a dozen of us (I the sole journalist), and we are aware of a privilege. By invitation of Mel Gibson and producer Steve McEveety of Icon Films, we are the first in Europe to see the final copy of this film which just arrived from Los Angeles. The same version that next Wednesday will be in 2,000 American cinemas, 500 English ones, and as many Australian, the version whose expectation has caused a short circuit on Internet sites and which in the first week will recover (the bookmakers say it is certain) the $30 million of production costs.

The Pope himself has only seen a provisional version, lacking among other things the final soundtrack. But, if this evening we are the first, the Italians will have to wait until the 7th of April, the French and the Spanish until June.

When the long list of credits ends, where American names alternate with Italian, where recognition of the municipality of Matera is side by side with that of theologians and experts in ancient languages, where Rosalinda, the daughter of Celentano (the devil) is next to a Romanian Jew, Maia Morgenstern (the Virgin Mary), and the technician presses the light switch, silence continues in the little room.

Two women weep quietly, without sobbing; the monsignor in clergyman's dress who is next to me is very pale, his eyes closed; the young ecclesiastical secretary nervously fingers a rosary; a tentative, solitary start of applause quickly dies out in embarrassment.

For many, very long minutes, no one stands up, no one moves, no one speaks. So, what we were being told was true: "The Passion of The Christ" has struck us, it has worked in us, the first guinea pigs, the effect that Gibson wanted.

For what it's worth, I myself was disconcerted and speechless: For years I have examined one by one the Greek words with which the Evangelists recount those events; not one historical minutia of those 12 hours in Jerusalem is unknown to me. I have addressed it in a 400-page book that Gibson himself has taken into account. I know everything, or rather, I now discover that I thought I knew: everything changes if those words are translated into images of such power to transform in flesh and blood, striking signs of love and hatred.

The Gamble

Mel has said it with pride tempered by humility, with pragmatism kneaded with mysticism which becomes in him a singular mixture: "If this work was to fail, for 50 years there will be no future for religious films. We threw the best in here: as much money as we wished, prestige, time, rigor, the charism of great actors, the science of the learned, inspirations of the mystics, experience, advanced technology. Above all, we threw in our conviction that it was worthwhile, that what takes place in those hours concerns every man. Our eternity is bound up forever with this Jew. If we don't point this out, who will be able to do so? But we will point it out, I am sure of it: Our work was accompanied by too many signs that confirm it."

In fact, on the set much more happened than what is known; much will remain in the secret of consciences: conversions, release from drugs, reconciliation between enemies, giving up of adulterous ties, apparitions of mysterious personages, extraordinary explosions of energy, enigmatic figures who knelt down as the extraordinary Caviezel-Jesus passed by, even two flashes of lightning, one of which struck the cross, but did not hurt anyone. And, then, coincidences read like signs: the Madonna with the face of the Jewish actress with the name Morgenstern which, it was only noticed later, is, in German, the "Morning Star" of the litanies of the Rosary.

Gibson remembered Blessed [early Renaissance artist-monk Fra] Angelico's warning: "To depict Christ, it is necessary to live with Christ." The atmosphere, between the Sassi di Matera and the Cinecittà Studios seems to have been that of the sacred medieval representations, of processions of scourged pilgrims before the relics of martyrs. A 14th-century Thespis' cart, with which every evening, a priest in black cassock, of the type with the long line of buttons, celebrated an open-air Mass, in Latin, according to the rite of St. Pius V. Precisely here, in fact, is the real reason for the decision to make the Jews speak in their popular language, Aramaic, and the Romans in a low Latin, of the military, which wounds our schoolboy ears, used to Ciceronian refinements.

Gibson, a Catholic who loves the Tradition, is a strong champion of the doctrine confirmed by the Council of Trent: the Mass is "also" a fraternal meal but it is "above all" Jesus' sacrifice, the bloodless renewal of the Passion. This is what matters, not the "understanding of the words," as the new liturgists wish, whose superficiality Mel mocks as it seems like blasphemy to him. The redemptive value of the actions and gestures that have their culmination on Calvary has no need of expressions that anyone can understand.

This film, for its author, is a Mass: Let it be, then, in an obscure language, as it was for so many centuries. If the mind does not understand, so much the better. What matters is that the heart understands that all that happened redeems us from sin and opens to us the doors of salvation. Precisely as the prophecy of Isaiah reminds us on the "Servant of Yahweh" which, taking up the whole screen, is the prologue of the entire film. The wonder, however, seems to me to be verified: After a while, one stops reading the subtitles to enter, without distractions, in the terrible and marvelous scenes -- that are sufficient in themselves.

The Quality

On the technical plane, the work is of a very high quality, so much so that previous films on Jesus might seem reduced to poor and archaic relatives: in Gibson, strategic lighting, skillful photography, extraordinary costumes, rugged and sometimes sumptuous set designs, incredibly convincing makeup, recitations of great professionals supervised by a director who is also one of their illustrious colleagues. Above all, such amazing special effects which, as Enzo Sisti, the executive producer, said to us, will remain secret, to confirm the enigma of the work, where the technique is intended to be at the service of faith. A faith in the most Catholic version -- no accident that it was pleasing to the Pope and to so many cardinals, not excluding Ratzinger, for whom "The Passion" is a manifesto that abounds in symbols that only a competent eye can fully discern. There will be a book (two, in fact, are in preparation) to help the spectator understand.

Very briefly, the radical "Catholicity" of the film lies first of all in the refusal of every demythicization, in taking the Gospels as precise chronicles: The things, we are told, happened like this, precisely as the Scriptures describe it. Catholicism is present, then, in the recognition of the divinity of Jesus which exists together with his full humanity. A divinity that bursts forth, dramatically, in the superhuman capacity of that body to suffer a level of pain as no one before or after ever has, in expiation of all the sin of the world.

But the radical "Catholicity" is also in the Eucharistic aspect, reaffirmed in its materiality: The blood of the Passion is continuously intermingled with the wine of the Mass, the tortured flesh of the "corpus Christi" with the consecrated bread. It is, also, in the strongly Marian tone: the Mother and the devil (who is feminine or, perhaps, androgynous) are omnipresent, the one with her silent pain, the other with his/her malicious satisfaction.

From Anne Catherine Emmerich, the stigmatized visionary, Gibson has taken extraordinary intuitions: Claudia Procula, Pilate's wife, who offers, weeping, to Mary the cloths to soak up the blood of the Son is among the scenes of greatest delicacy in a film that, more than violent, is brutal. Brutal as, in fact, the Passion was. The desperate Peter after the denial, falls at the feet of the Blessed Virgin to obtain pardon. I believe, however, that the theological importance attributed to the Madonna, as well as to the Eucharist -- an importance not spiritualized, not reduced to a "memorial" but seen in the most material, and therefore Catholic, way (the Transubstantiation) -- will create some uneasiness in American Protestant churches which, without having seen the film, have already organized themselves to support its distribution.

If two hours are dedicated to the martyrdom, two minutes suffice to recall that that was not the last word. From Good Friday to Easter Sunday, to the Resurrection, which Gibson has resolved by making a particular reading of John's words: an "emptying" of the funeral shroud, leaving a sufficient sign to "see and believe" that the tortured one has triumphed over death.

Anti-Semitism or, at least, anti-Judaism? Let's not play around with words that are much too serious. From my viewing, I agree with the many and authoritative American Jews who admonish their co-religionists not to condemn before seeing. It comes across very clearly in the film that what weighs Christ down and reduces him to that state is not this one's or that one's fault, but rather the sin of all men, no one excluded.

To Caiaphas' obstinacy in calling for the crucifixion (that collaborator Sadducee who did not in fact represent the Jewish people, but, rather was detested by them; the Talmud reserves terrible words for him and for his father-in-law Annas), more than abundant counterbalance is made by the unheard-of sadism of the Roman executioners. The political cowardice of Pilate that leads him to violate his conscience stands counter to the courage of the member of the Sanhedrin -- an episode added by the director -- who confronts the High Priest crying out that that trial is illegal. And is it not John, a Jew, who supports the Mother? Is not the pious Veronica a Jew? Is not the impetuous Simon of Cyrene a Jew? Are not the women of Jerusalem, crying out in despair, all Jews? And is it not Peter -- a Jew -- who, when forgiven, will die for the Master?

At the beginning of the film, before the drama is unleashed, an anguished Magdalene asks the Virgin: "Why is this night so different from any other?" "Because," Mary answers, "we were all slaves and now we will no longer be so." All, but absolutely all: whether they are "Jews or Gentiles." This work, Mel Gibson says, saddened by aggressions to prevent it, intends to propose again the message of a God who is Love. And what Love would it be if he excluded any one?

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ON PREVENTING POGROMS IN PITTSBURGH:
An Orthodox Rabbi Responds to The Passion's Jewish Critics

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, an Orthodox Rabbi, is president of Toward Tradition, an ecumenical "bridge-building" organization "providing a voice for all Americans who defend the Judeo-Christian values." On February 12, Rabbi Lapin had the following to say on his web site about Mel Gibson's new film, The Passion of the Christ, and the high-profile Jewish groups and "leaders" attempting to ostracize it:

Why Mel Owes One to the Jews

by Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Two weeks before Mel Gibson's Passion flashes onto two thousand screens, online ticket merchants are reporting that up to half their total sales are for advance purchases for Passion. One Dallas multiplex has reserved all twenty of its screens for The Passion. I am neither a prophet nor a movie critic. I am merely an Orthodox rabbi using ancient Jewish wisdom to make three predictions about The Passion.

One, Mel Gibson and Icon Productions will make a great deal of money. Those distributors who surrendered to pressure from Jewish organizations and passed on Passion will be kicking themselves, while Newmarket Films will
laugh all the way to the bank. Theater owners are going to love this film.

Two, Passion will become famous as the most serious and substantive Biblical movie ever made. It will be one of the most talked-about entertainment events in history; it is currently on the cover of Newsweek and Vanity Fair.

My third prediction is that the faith of millions of Christians will become more fervent as Passion uplifts and inspires them. Passion will propel vast numbers of unreligious Americans to embrace Christianity. The movie will one day be seen as a harbinger of America's third great religious reawakening.

Those Jewish organizations that have squandered both time and money futilely protesting Passion, ostensibly in order to prevent pogroms in Pittsburgh, can hardly be proud of their performance. They failed at everything they
attempted. They were hoping to ruin Gibson rather than enrich him. They were hoping to suppress Passion rather than promote it. Finally, they were hoping to help Jews rather than harm them.

Here I digress slightly to exercise the Jewish value of "giving the benefit of the doubt" by discounting cynical suggestions growing in popularity, that the very public nature of their attack on Gibson exposed their real purpose ? fundraising. Apparently, frightening wealthy widows in Florida about anti-Semitic thugs prowling the streets of America causes them to open their pocketbooks and refill the coffers of groups with little other raison d'?tre. But let's assume they were hoping to help Jews.

However, instead of helping the Jewish community, they have inflicted lasting harm. By selectively unleashing their fury only on wholesome entertainment that depicts Christianity in a positive light, they have triggered anger, hurt, and resentment. Hosting the Toward Tradition Radio Show and speaking before many audiences nationwide, I enjoy extensive communication with Christian America and what I hear is troubling. Fearful of attracting the ire of Jewish groups that are so quick to hurl the "anti-Semite" epithet, some Christians are reluctant to speak out. Although
one can bludgeon resentful people into silence, behind closed doors emotions continue to simmer.

I consider it crucially important for Christians to know that not all Jews are in agreement with their self-appointed spokesmen. Most American Jews, experiencing warm and gracious interactions each day with their Christian fellow-citizens, would feel awkward trying to explain why so many Jewish organizations seem focused on an agenda hostile to Judeo-Christian values. Many individual Jews have shared with me their embarrassment that groups,
ostensibly representing them, attack Passion but are silent about depraved entertainment that encourages killing cops and brutalizing women. Citing artistic freedom, Jewish groups helped protect sacrilegious exhibits such as
the anti-Christian feces extravaganza presented by the Brooklyn Museum four years ago. One can hardly blame Christians for assuming that Jews feel artistic freedom is important only when exercised by those hostile toward
Christianity. However, this is not how all Jews feel.

From audiences around America, I am encountering bitterness at Jewish organizations insisting that belief in the New Testament is de facto evidence of anti-Semitism. Christians heard Jewish leaders denouncing Gibson for making a movie that follows Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion long before any of them had even seen the movie. Furthermore, Christians are hurt that Jewish groups are presuming to teach them what Christian Scripture "really means." Listen to a rabbi whom I debated on the Fox television show hosted by Bill O'Reilly last September. This is what he said, "We have a responsibility as Jews, as thinking Jews, as people of theology, to respond to our Christian brothers and to engage them, be it Protestants, be it Catholics, and say, look, this is not your history, this is not your theology, this does not represent what you believe in."

He happens to be a respected rabbi and a good one, but he too has bought into the preposterous proposition that Jews will reeducate Christians about Christian theology and history. Is it any wonder that this breathtaking arrogance spurs bitterness?

Many Christians who, with good reason, have considered themselves to be Jews' best (and perhaps, only) friends also feel bitter at Jews believing that Passion is revealing startling new information about the Crucifixion. They are incredulous at Jews thinking that exposure to the Gospels in visual form will instantly transform the most philo-Semitic gentiles of history into snarling, Jew-hating predators.

Christians are baffled by Jews who don't understand that President George Washington, who knew and revered every word of the Gospels, was still able to write that oft-quoted beautiful letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, offering friendship and full participation in America to the Jewish community.

One of the directors of the AJC recently warned that Passion "could undermine the sense of community between Christians and Jews that's going on in this country. We're not allowing the film to do that." No sir, it isn't the film that threatens the sense of community; it is the arrogant and intemperate response of Jewish organizations that does so.

Jewish organizations, hoping to help but failing so spectacularly, refutes all myths of Jewish intelligence. How could their plans have been so misguided and the execution so inept?

Ancient Jewish wisdom teaches that nothing confuses one's thinking more than being in the grip of the two powerful emotions, love and hate. The actions of these Jewish organizations sadly suggest that they are in the grip of a hatred for Christianity that is only harming Jews.

Today, peril threatens all Americans, both Jews and Christians. Many of the men and women in the front lines find great support in their Christian faith. It is strange that Jewish organizations, purporting to protect Jews, think that insulting allies is the preferred way to carry out that mandate.

A ferocious Rottweiler dog in your suburban home will quickly estrange your family from the neighborhood. For those of us in the Jewish community who cherish friendship with our neighbors, some Jewish organizations have become our Rottweilers.

God help us.

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH'S REVOLVING DOOR:
For Many Parishioners, Gay Bishops and Gay "Marriage" Were the Last Straws

The New York Times reported this week that once again the membership of the Episcopal Church USA is undergoing migrations in and out the church's doors, this time in response to the ECUSA's ordination of an openly active gay bishop and it's increasingly liberal stance on gay "marriage" or "unions":

...Some lifelong Episcopalians have left their churches, saying the vote to affirm a gay bishop was the last straw in what they saw as the church's long slide away from orthodoxy. Many of these people have started attending Roman Catholic churches.

"It breaks my heart," said Shari de Silva, a neurologist in Fort Wayne, Ind., who converted from Episcopalian to Catholic this year. "I think the Episcopal Church is headed down the path to secular humanism."

Some Episcopal parishes, meanwhile, are welcoming clusters of new members, many from Roman Catholic churches, who say they want to belong to a church that regards inclusivity as a Christian virtue. The newcomers include singles and families, gay people and straight people...

The main church of choice amongst Exiting Episcopalians seems to be the one across the Tiber River in Rome, primarily because...

"...[t]he Catholic Church has reiterated its position on homosexuality, one that is a stark contrast to the Episcopal Church's. In July, the Vatican denounced homosexual acts as 'deviant behavior' and said the church could not condone gay marriage or adoptions by gay couples. In September, the American Catholic bishops said they would support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage."

It seems that in its new gay bishop, the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, the clueless upper echelon of the ECUSA has found its very own Howard Dean: Robinson is likely to doom the ECUSA to irrelevance, if not extinction, the same way Dr. Dean will ensure the Democratic Party's slow demise, especially after the Presidential election next Fall.

In related news: Today's Washington Times reports that in Canada the liberal Anglican bishop of Vancouver, B.C. has shut down Holy Cross parish for protesting his policy of blessing same-sex "unions." However, the parish's conservative rector, Rev. James Wagner, continues to hold services at his home.

H. L. MENCKEN AND RELIGION:
An "Atheist" Reader Takes Exception

Early last week --barely three days before Christmas Day, of all times!-- a self-styled "atheist" sent us an e-mail to let us "know" something he had apparently already determined we did not know, namely that our "patron saint," early 20th century pundit and skeptic H. L. Mencken, was "agin" religion (as we Virginia gentlemen would put it).

Of course, anyone with more than two brain cells working can tell just by reading a good cross-section of Mencken's writings, the Bard of Baltimore was no friend to the "established" religions of his time --Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish-- and disdained religious belief and theology in general.

No argument there.

The problem, and point of departure with our "atheist" interlocutor, comes when some folks with ideological axes to grind hijack Mencken to make him appear to be one of their crowd. Just do a Google search with "Mencken" and "atheism," and up will pop more "atheists" on the internet than Hosts in Heaven selectively quoting Mencken's most bombastic and less mature statements about religion and religious persons as "proof" that Mencken was an extremist unto their own image and likeness.

Never mind that Mencken at times had some complimentary things to say about some religious persons (cf., his obituary of the scholarly Presbyterian theologian J.Gresham Machen), and even some religious institutions (cf., his comparison of the Catholic and Protestant churches of his time).

And never mind that Mencken never once called himself an atheist, preferring instead to be seen as a "doubter" or a "skeptic," and only because "sound thought," he wrote in 1921 to his then-girlfriend Marion Bloom, cannot take us further than that:

...No sane man denies that the universe presents phenomena quite beyond human understanding, and so it is a fair assumption that they are directed by some understanding that is superhuman. But that is as far as sound thought can go. All religions pretend to go further. That is, they pretend to explain the unknowable...

In other words, to Mencken, both theism and, by implication, atheism (which also "pretends to go further ...[and] explain the unknowable," namely by denying that category en toto) were presumptuous, so he embraced neither camp although he was more sympathetic to the latter. Catholic journalist and Mencken scholar George Weigel puts it this way in his thoughtful First Things article, "God, Man, and H. L. Mencken":

Throughout his mature life, Mencken insisted that he was not an atheist (for such a judgment would require a knowledge that was beyond "sound thought") but rather an agnostic. Asked once what he would do if on his death he found himself facing the twelve apostles, he answered (and in this instance we may be sure that beneath the humor lay deep convictions about intellectual honesty), "I would simply say, 'Gentlemen, I was mistaken.'" Imagine Carl Sagan saying such a thing about the possibility of his encounter with a postmortem minyan, and you begin to understand the difference between the agnostic Mencken and the true village atheist.

Noted essayist and Mencken scholar Joseph Epstein, as cited by Weigel, presents a more nuanced interpretation of Mencken's relationship to religion than the simplistic militant atheist P-R image both Protestant Fundamentalists and Atheist Fundamentalists like to promote:

...[Mencken's] objection to religion is that it represents an effort by ignorance to account for a mystery that knowledge simply puts aside as intrinsically impenetrable...

None of this is to deny that Mencken regularly made mock of religious convictions and practices. But he did it with a deftness and, in most cases, a good humor in which was rarely found the arrogance of sheer contempt. Moreover, Mencken was not insensible to the allure of religion or to religious contributions to what he regarded as the world's meager stock of decency. Thus Mencken on Roman Catholicism in 1923 (and in what some will regard as virtually a prophetic mode):

"The Latin Church, which I constantly find myself admiring, despite its frequent astonishing imbecilities, has always kept clearly before it the fact that religion is not a syllogism, but a poem. . . . Rome, indeed, has not only preserved the original poetry in Christianity; it has made capital additions to that poetry-for example, the poetry of the saints, of Mary, and of the liturgy itself. A solemn high mass must be a thousand times as impressive, to a man with any genuine religious sense in him, as the most powerful sermons ever roared under the big-top by a Presbyterian auctioneer of God. In the face of such overwhelming beauty it is not necessary to belabor the faithful with logic; they are better convinced by letting them alone. . . .

"[But the Roman] clergy begin to grow argumentative, doctrinaire, ridiculous. It is a pity. . . . If they keep on spoiling poetry and spouting ideas, the day will come when some extra-bombastic deacon will astound humanity and insult God by proposing to translate the liturgy into American, that the faithful may be convinced by it."

In summary, as in the areas of politics, economics, social criticism, journalism, and culture Mencken was "a party of [his] own" when it came to religion. Neither atheist nor theist can squeeze him into their prefabricated pigeonholes. He was simply too big for them.

Of course, such "inconvenient" facts serve only to irritate those who prefer caricatures and fantasies over reality, and who --like our "atheist" interlocutor-- prefer to call those who present them "liars" and "sophists" for having the temerity to cast doubt upon those caricatures and fantasies.

HELP WANTED: NEW ANTI-CHRIST NEEDED!
Saddam's Capture Re-Opens Much Sought-After Position

The Office of the Anti-Christ is vacant once again, according to National Review Online columnist and Veteran Rapture Watcher DeLuxe Carl Olson. It seems that Bible prophecy researchers had regarded ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as the leading candidate for that position.

As End Times expert Timothy LaHaye put it in his 1999 book Are We Living in the End Times? ("a nonfiction companion to the Left Behind series"), "Long before Saddam Hussein became a household name, he was busy fulfilling Bible prophecy" [by rebuilding "Babylon," as Iraq was known in ancient times]. Also said LaHaye, as quoted by Olson,

"As sure as there is a God in heaven who keeps His word, Babylon will live again as ‘the seat of Satan.' . . . Even now, in our lifetime, Babylon is being prepared for its final appearance on the stage of human history. The ancient prophecies about Babylon are unfolding before us — just like so many other prophecies of the end times."

Of course, this scenario went belly-up as soon as U. S. forces found the Anti-Christ and World Dictator hiding in a hole in the Babylonian mud disguised as a Bedford-Styvesant wino --and (in our humble opinion, providentially) only a week before Christmas. Thus ends the satanic career of yet another in a long line of has-beens who have failed to keep the Office of Anti-Christ intact, including Kaiser Wilhelm, Adolf Hitler, Henry Kissinger, Anwar Sadat, Bill Gates, Martha Stewart, and whoever invented those flimsy and practically useless plastic grocery bags.

Just goes to show that you can't find good help anymore.

But Old Scratch seems to have had great difficulty for over 100 years recruiting and keeping reliable personnel to carry out his nefarious work. Perhaps he ought to consider contracting the job out to one of the many high-profile Washington, DC head-hunters. We suspect they would have long lists of former Congressmen, retired CEOs, and practicing lawyers who would easily qualify.