The Anchoress

My piece comparing and contrasting the press’ dire predictions about Pope Benedict XVI with the reality of the man is up at Pajamas Media today.

As if making my point for me, Newsweek has two pieces on Benedict, both falling rather heavily “pro” Benedict and “con” Benedict - I think perhaps the press is past understanding that balance means “a little bit of both.” The first piece, by George Weigel, I recommend to you because although it glows for Benedict, it also gives you an excellent sense of how deeply this pope may effect our age. The second, by Lisa Miller is your basic predictable condescension about how Benedict does not “connect” with Catholics…except for all the ones who love him, especially the young, but since they’re probably living in the woods with Barack’s “bitter” gunslingers, they don’t matter, do they?

Funnily enough, Sissy Willis manages to look at Benedict and Barack. You’ll like!

Related: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes

Lots of good stuff over at Pajamas Media, btw, there besides my poor effort. Bill Bradley has two piece ups, both on “Bittergate”, with the second looking at how Obama’s stunning elitism will be used against him, Mohammed Fadhil says the Iraqi government has a golden opportunity if they’ll take it, and Glenn and Helen are talking to Michael Yon.

Yes, I’ve been saying this all along…

Indeed. And indeed.

A while back (pre-Obama-surge) I wrote:

Come on - the last president who had a “D” after his name saw the 5.6% unemployment rates trumpeted as “essentially full employment” with no “ifs, ands or buts” about it. Every day was a rainbow day when the last “D” President was in office, and most of the news was good news. If the stock market went up - you heard about it. If it went down, that was just a correction and some profit-taking; no big whoop. And even if American interests and vessels were being blown up here, or overseas, there was no terrorism. The only real terrorist was the homegrown one, and I think he was the only one put to death for it, too, if I recall. When the American president had a D after his name, the troops that were deployed were never in harm’s way, and they were all going to be “home by Christmas.”

If the American President had a D after his name, do you think you would have to be your own news service in order to get some relief from the unendingly bleak-everything-everywhere-is-bad-and-the-world-will-continue-to-spin-into darkness and all-nations-will-continue to-hate the USA until-W-is-out-of-office and -our-guy-presumably-Hillary is-in-the- White House?

It’s going to take getting another D into the White House for good news to be allowed out to play in the American psyche, again. It may well take getting another D into the White House for our troops to be able to rely upon their funding, for their heroism to be noted and applauded with appropriate fanfare.

It’s very tiresome, isn’t it? The agendas and double-standards of the press and the willingness of the American people to accept superficial analysis and headlines. Yes, things are more expensive right now, mostly because of oil prices and the soaring food prices that are part-and-parcel of the enviro-hysteria that has America held-hostage to foreign oil (rather than independently supplied by her own resources) and is content to starve the world to burn dubiously “clean” bio fuels. I am at a loss to understand - and a little worried by - America’s willingness to be led about by the nose on these issues.

And I am coming concerned about how easily some Americans digest rank antisemitism without discomfort. That’s chilling.

Many Americans - seemingly more and more - are so busy entertaining themselves - with their flip videos, ear-buds, increasingly balkanized personal lives - that they don’t really care about the details; they just wants to plug in, tune out and (increasingly) let whoever they assign to be “Mom & Dad” in the government take care of them while they stay in their rooms, chat online and try to do as little around the house as they can.

For them, the coup is complete.

The ending, of course, is the coup d’état. Believing that the rest of us, now disillusioned, are no longer clinging to romantic ideals of honor, or truth or nobility, these always-restless First Children, devoted to deconstruction, believe they are about to take down the presidency, the churches, the “old” government and even the “old” media. They expect to put into place something “brand new.” But believe me when I tell you what they are building is older than dirt. And up from it. Which is why they will need their fortresses. Castro lives in one, too.

They’ve been practicing all of this, by the way, perfecting the Art of the Painless Coup so thoroughly that most ordinary folks do not even realize what has occured.

Over the past 40 years these hyperactive First Children have been pulling off small scale coups with varying levels of success. They managed to deconstruct the academies, so that education is less a broadening of knowledge than a narrowing of perspective. They have deconstructed the liturgy to insist that a pantomime in clownface is a vast improvement over 2000 year-old sacrament and liturgy. They have deconstructed government by constructing something so huge and unweildly that nothing coming out of it is reliable or dependable, and almost no one is accountable, either. They have deconstructed the press to the point where the truth of a story is less important than how it may be framed and spun. They have deconstructed the idea of fascism to mean “those democracies in Israel and America” rather than the freedom-suppressing regimes which surround them.

And all the while they have been busily pulling things apart, they have kept the rest of the family distracted with the television, with the radio, with the cinema - any or all of which have instantly been called into service whenever someone got a little bored and looked around, wondering what these kids were up to. “Abortion?” said Aunt Sally, “Abortion is a terrible thing!” Suddenly every news story is about the grim circumstance of illegal abortion. Suddenly sitcoms are showing the way. “Well, if Maude had an abortion…maybe sometimes it’s a good thing…”

“Free love,” sputtered Uncle Jim, “it’s immoral! It’s damaging to the family!” Suddenly every film hero or heroine is having free, uncomplicated, undamaging sex, and flashing some gratuitous T and A at Uncle Jim in the process. “I dunno,” he smiles to Aunt Sally as he settles back, “maybe it’s not all that bad…”

What we’re now being told is “not that bad” is the sort of socialized medicine that is bankrupting Britain and has her citizens pulling out their own teeth. We’re being told that we have no right to choose what sort of light bulbs we will use, what sort of television we will watch. We’re hearing that the inexorable creep of suppression of our free speech and our free press is meant to protect liberty, whose definition seems flexible for some.

Again:

Well, one way to prevent the coup is to be utterly fearless and authentic in pronouncing the things we believe. Pope John Paul II made enormous headway against the Painless Coup which had gone so far as to turn our beautiful churches into bare concrete monstrosities (ready-made for quick-conversion into temples to secular reason) and he managed to reclaim the liturgy and renew appreciation for the Eucharist by repeating the truth over and over, with the reminder, “do not be afraid!”

Thus so, we must repeat, over and over, that while illusions may well be all around us, some amorphous notions, like honor and freedom and truth, are still real. They are not just real, they are Eternal.

We must repeat again and again that America’s honor is no illusion. Imperfect as it may be this is still the land to which - in large or small ways - every free nation owes its current liberty. This is the nation that has routinely sent its idealistic young men off to foreign lands, to die there, not for empire, not for real-estate, but for the protection and advancement of that unseen thing that is freedom, the strengthener of the human spirit, the burnisher of human potential…this is still the nation to which millions of every creative or industrious person wishes to come, it is the nation to which the oppressed call out for rescue and relief.

We must repeat, over and over, that the American Presidency is, like a papacy or a monarchy, larger than the person who occupies the office, and it is noble. The American President freed slaves when too many would not entertain the notion. The American President has carried the big stick used to overthrow tyrants and bullies both foreign and domestic. The American President has put his airmen to use to keep his vanquished enemies in Berlin from starving in a brutal winter, he has used his navy to bring aid after tsunami. The American President has dreamed great space voyages into reality, has opened closed markets, has encouraged a people to tear down walls. The American President has envisioned tens of millions of people raising purple fingertips to the sky, and made it so.

We must repeat, over and over, that Liberty is the means by which we created creatures are meant to live and to grow and be. That Liberty lives in the Truth. That Liberty lives where people can speak freely, without fear of injury or reprisals. That Liberty lives only when the press is free and unencumbered - when it is detached from events instead of entwined in them. That Liberty lives when people refuse to be intimidated into silence or acquiescence, whether in the workplace or within the community. That Liberty is the fragile thing that diminishes whenever one refuses to acclaim it for oneself.

In between all of those repetitions, we must do something else, if we are to stave off the Painless Coup. We are going to have to turn away from our distractions - the television, the radio, the magazines, the talkshows, the films, the fashions, the escapist entertainment, even the internet. We will have to turn away from these empty things - to make them smaller in our lives, where they and the popular culture now loom so large - and we are going to have to get quiet.

A good musician knows that music is not created only by playing notes, but by understanding the spaces between the notes, and their value. Just so, it will not be enough to simply repeat what is true - if that is all we do, it will only add to the din - there must also be silence, in which to do our other, more powerful work.
[…]
It is true that there are many illusions in the world. And on the world stage there stride some masters of the sleight-of-hand and the misdirection - you can recognize them because they are all of a mind, and of a piece, and they are all working different parts of the same trick.

But if you can recognize a trick for what it is, you can prevail against it.

We are down to a few shabby illusionists, and if the audience is distracted enough, they can finish the misdirection and convince you that the best way for Americans to grow and be free is to submit to an ever-increasing and intrusive government. The noise is deafening, as everyone turns away, chattering amongst themselves - even here in the blogosphere.

I don’t have a good feeling. I think we really have to get our free - and by free I mean unencumbered and disenthralled - press back. And soon. I wrote someplace else:

There have only been 43 American Presidents in 230 years. There have only been 267 popes in 2000 years. There have been billions of other people. Greatness is not an illusion. And it is not fomented with easy praise. I worry sometimes that our over-indulged, over-applauded youngsters may not have the requisite strength within themselves to find “greatness” when we will need it.

How are you feeling about things, these days?

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.

Related:
Let’s do it; let’s impeach Bush
Shame, Praise, Idols and Undercutting Greatness
There go 800,000 jobs? Not really
The Rodney Dangerfield Economy
Maxed Out Mama: Wiped out by slackers

Yesterday I linked to the trailer for Ben Stein’s upcoming documentary, entitled, “Expelled.”

Thanks to my pal Shana today I link you to a trailer that Mark Steyn and others writing on on both sides of the demographic debates might find interesting: a flick called Demographic Winter.

Let me say upfront, I think the soundtrack is a bit melodramatic and over-the-top - way too many apocalyptic ahhh’s for my taste - and I am not sure I respond favorably to any of the talking heads involved. There is one gentleman who seems extremely uncomfortable on camera and he makes me squirm, too, but it has been suggested to me that some of his discomfort may stem from his being a scientist offering an unpopular thesis - perhaps he belongs in the Stein film.

In any case, the website has a good Q & A section that puts things more into perspective, and the topic itself is extremely compelling: how did societies get so caught up in a mindset of cultural and national self-disintegration? Is this a product of propaganda, self-loathing, materialism or some combination of many factors? Will economies collapse due to the birth dearth?

I put it out there for discussion.

A while back, my husband and I were taking a road trip and using a Tom-Tom to help us get there.

We made a discovery; instrumentation and other voices are too easy to rely on. Before you know it, you’ve stopped listening to your guts and your instincts and come to lean too fully on the authoritative voice telling you what to do because, 98.5 percent of the time, the voice is right.

In our case, Tom-Tom was telling us to proceed ahead, but my eyes and guts were saying, “that sign says New York, we want to turn here!”

My husband, who is a very smart guy, had become comfortable trusting the instrument, and he said, “no, we stay straight.”

The point is - although the Tom-Tom is remarkable, when it goes wrong that 1.5 percent of the time, you have to be able to recognize it and trust your gut. Lean too heavily on “other” voices and you lose that ability. And when you lose your own instinct, your own “inner voice,” then you get terribly, terribly lost. Stranded.

Many voters on the far-right are feeling stranded in the middle of an unknown and rather unfriendly-looking neighborhood, and they are fretting about where to go next.

(I am not really sure what to call these people. When I use the term “far right” they are offended, but until something better comes along, “far right” they be.)

No one wants to believe that, with all those directions one has taken, and with the Tom-Tom saying “you’re on the right road, keep turning right,” one has ended up in a swamp, with gators threatening from all sides. But that does seem to be about the gist of it. For the last four years, many of the “true conservatives” have been doing a lot of complaining about President Bush and the “RINOS” and so forth, but outside of bellyaching, they’ve done nothing. They’ve known since ‘04 that Bush would have no veep successor, but they didn’t bother seeking out and grooming an acceptable candidate. Offered many choices this past year, none were enough to move them to monetary and clear-throated support. So yes, they’re stranded, and waiting for Tom-Tom to tell them what to do next.

The wait may be over.

So, Mitt Romney is suspending his campaign. For the drama queens who can’t gasp enough, it will be yet another reason to scream and cry. Some will see this as happy reconciliation. For others it is a moment to raise an eyebrow and wonder whether this is a move to encourage a brokered convention or if it is the “break” that some have been waiting for.

Romney said:

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

That might be considered - by some - bright red meat. Ed Morrissey notes that Romney is speaking passionately about conservatism:

This has been one of his best speeches — he’s energized, emphatic, and inspiring. If this is his swan song, it will be a little ironic.

I recall listening to the Limbaugh program a while back - before Rudy dropped out - and it seemed to be an afternoon of women calling up gushing about Romney. They were ecstatic about his family, his manner with his wife, etc. Rush seemed very interested in their comments and seemed to want to hear from more of them.

Shortly after that, Limbaugh went on his non-stop anti-McCain-three-hours-a-day tirade. He never actually said much about Romney. I described him in another post as “curiously silent” on Mitt, comparatively.

A game is afoot. I’ve been telling you for a while, now, to stop engaging in emotionalism, to sit back and just watch. I’ve been telling you that everything is in flux, and constantly changing, and that anything can happen.

Some are seeing Romney’s move today as “good for the GOP.”

Others will wonder if Romney has not just very slyly provoked positive coverage and universal approval and admiration - all those good feelings - as a compare and contrast against the ill-will toward McCain. And if he is looking for a brokered convention, which I think he is, he now gets to rest up while McCain exhausts himself. At the convention he will look tanned, ready and rested, McCain will look old and worn out.

This is just getting interesting. He is only suspending his candidacy. The brokered convention is not impossible, and I am certain many are now hanging their hopes upon it.

Or…are we about to see that third party idea - a conservative break with the GOP - come about? Will Romney be the boy? He has very quickly and rather suddenly moved “hard right.” Will those who need “hard right” follow, even if he’s new at it?

If so, can a third party get the South (which let’s face if, if they wanted Mitt would have voted for him on Super Tuesday) to go pull a lever for him? Will they try to float someone else?

And what will the effect be? To win, a third party would have to be able to attract most of the GOP and some Independents. Not likely in ‘08, more possible in ‘12…or ‘16.

If a new “Conservative Party” candidate can’t win this year, but can siphon off just enough votes to kill a (presumed) McCain presidency, thereby acting in persona Perot to elect either Hillary or Obama, it will be partly responsible for the 3-6 SCOTUS Justices who will be seated by either Democrat before 2012 and will remain for decades. That would be a bad beginning for such a party.

And when we have troops fighting and dying in the Middle East, is it “honorable” and “principled” to abandon them to a Dem CIC who doesn’t believe in their mission and would render their efforts meaningless?

I don’t believe the “far right” will do that. So what I’m thinking is they’ll still try for the brokered convention I predicted after Florida. Expect the ultra-demonization of pro-life, pro-troop John McCain, First Assistant to Satan - to continue unabated in the meantime.

I no longer doubt that a Conservative Party will be formed, indeed, here is one effort I am aware of. It must necessarily be sprung from the grass roots, but it is the very destination Tom-Tom has been directing them toward.

Keep watching. Outside of all the noise, outside of all the directions you are being urged to take, there is much going on, things seen and unseen.

Meanwhile: both Sen. McCain’s speech and Romney’s were well-recieved.

More:
Jim Geraghty w/ third party thoughts
STACLU with them too
Roland Martin: Conservative hate of McCain makes no sense
Michelle Malkin Live from CPac
Tom Elia says Important Election/Strange Voters
Rick Moran for Pajamas Media
Modern Conservative Looking Nov in the Eye
Bookworm
Bob Owens

Heh. If Rush can say it, I can too, and it will sound prettier.

John Stephenson at STACLU has an open thread going and they’re watching the returns and speculating: could it be? Brokered convention?

The WaPo blog asked a similar question this morning.

Ahem.

I predicted the very real possibility of a brokered convention right after Florida, and was laughed at.

I suggested this was going to happen when Rush Limbaugh and the far right went nuts medieval on McCain after Florida.

Figured many (particularly in the South) would heed Rush and leave McCain, but that they wouldn’t rush to Romney if they had a choice. No matter how much they tell you they don’t mind that he’s a Mormon…that might not be quite the reality.

Elsewhere I have written:, I’m not much of a joiner, and I prefer not to get entangled in the mob. That doesn’t make me smart or in any way special - the truth is I am a social freakazoid - but it does make me observant.

Hence, when John Hawkins asked bloggers to name President Bush’s next SCOTUS pick, I alone pronounced: Harriet Miers.

I recently told you Hillary would cry before New Hampshire.

Suggested that Bill Clinton would soon be too under the weather to campaign much. No timetable on that, although I did say “soon.” That might still happen.

And the other day I wrote:

While I am not a “dittohead” I have listened and found Rush to be funny, articulate and smart - I thought his payback to Harry Reid re the Senator’s letter to his network was brilliant. What I have heard lately has been bombastic and rather a lot about himself…which leads me to believe…

6)A brokered GOP Convention is already in the works and should surprise no one. The hard-right conservatives will try to get their own candidate onto the top of the ticket. Don’t know who they’ve got in mind for it, but these folks are not going to stand for McCain and Limbaugh is curiously silent on Romney…

As we all know, he had been curiously silent on Romney until there was, really, no one left to love except John McCain.

Hence, Mitt Romney has become “the boy who can do no wrong, for now.”

Watching the far right fall into fervent and shrill love with Mitt, I observed that there is a passionate, rigid determination behind some of this Mittmania that is entirely inappropriate to the relative newness of his support. Sort of like a whirlwind romance you get into on a cruise…because you’re alone and you want so badly to have a romance with someone.

And yeah, that all means something.

So, the other day I wrote:

Should a magically pristine “true” conservative (perhaps from the private sector or the military) suddenly appear from on high (or from behind Kingmaker Rush) and begin to woo the right and right-leaning moderates, they will desert Romney in an instant.

I will be VERY surprised if either of these two men - McCain or Romney - is at the top of the ticket when you go to vote in November. :::CLARIFICATION::: Or maybe what I more properly mean to say is that they may or may not top the ticket, but there may be a third party candidate. Bottom line: I’m saying everything is still fluid.:::END
[…]
A game is afoot - and masters are playing it. Right now everything bears watching; observation, not hyperventilation. Don’t let yourself get sucked into a news cycle and a strategy; you’ll be worn out by summer.

Taking all of this into consideration, and understanding there is a game in play, what I think will happen next, is…

…check back a little later.

WELCOME: Instapundit readers! While you’re here, please look around; today we’re also wondering - regardless who is at the top of the ticket, what about Heather Wilson for the Veep slot? and we’re already really struggling with no sugar in our coffee. Or in our oatmeal…

I’m feeling a bit punk - feverish and swollen glands - so I’m just going to throw this question out and invite answers from readers and from other bloggers:

In 100 words or less: What’s Wrong With the World?

About 100 years ago, a British paper invited many writers to answer the same question, What’s Wrong With the World? They extended the invitation to G. K. Chesterton who wrote back,

Dear Sirs;

I am.

Sincerely,
G.K. Chesterton

I will take his answer for my own. Have at it.

I - and this site - am emphatically not responsible for the opinions of others expressed below!

UPDATE I: Dr. Helen turns the question on its head! Good thinking! It puts me in mind of The Psalm of the Common Man

UPDATE II - Over at Snarky Bastards, Hubbard has an amazing response: We are all Bernard Shaws, now. Go read!

What is it about Florida? Every time the people in Florida vote, the whole nation seems to lose its mind.

Hillary’s largely illusory Florida victory has Chris Matthews near tears, probably because he fears grovelling to President Hillary (who will make him pay for his past heresy) so that’s a little understandable, but there is a lot of hot-headed angst going on out there. My email is full of fulminating folks on the right who are either furious about McCain or disgusted with Rush or the Romney crew. Or they’re mad at Giuliani (hint - he’s out of the race, dudes, lay it down) for his ill-advised strategy. Some folks are still crying about Fred Thompson and there is huffing and puffing about “the split of the GOP.”

Ya’ll need to calm down. Stop huffing because the “split” is exactly what many of you want, deep down, and you know it. It is what Rush Limbaugh seems to have been pursuing for some months, now, even before the veep-scheming FDT dropped out of the race.

This is all just starting to get interesting, so save yer breath for yer porridge and think about a few things:

***McCain is older and he has some health concerns. He is a true war-hero, and I do think he can pick up Independent voters, but he is - within his own party - already facing the sort of venom from the right that it took Dubya several years to cultivate and achieve. I doubt that will go away soon, or easily.

***Romney excites “the base,” (which is remarkable for his flip-flopping) but only because there is currently no one else. His support is a mile wide and an inch thick and his blandness (I find him bland, anyway, and so does Roger L. Simon) doesn’t inspire. Should a magically pristine “true” conservative (perhaps from the private sector or the military) suddenly appear from on high (or from behind Kingmaker Rush) and begin to woo the right and right-leaning moderates, they will desert Romney in an instant.

I will be VERY surprised if either of these two men - McCain or Romney - is at the top of the ticket when you go to vote in November. :::CLARIFICATION::: Or maybe what I more properly mean to say is that they may or may not top the ticket, but there may be a third party candidate. Bottom line: I’m saying everything is still fluid.:::END

Rush Limbaugh is a very smart fellow and Oraculations linked to him having a clever bit of fun today. Rush is maneuvering, just like everyone else who is deeply involved in this process.

A game is afoot - and masters are playing it. Right now everything bears watching; observation, not hyperventilation. Don’t let yourself get sucked into a news cycle and a strategy; you’ll be worn out by summer.

Contrary to most, I’m not believing that anything is settled, or even means much, just now.

Remember:

It is true that there are many illusions in the world. And on the world stage there stride some masters of the sleight-of-hand and the misdirection - you can recognize them because they are all of a mind, and of a piece, and they are all working different parts of the same trick. But if you can recognize a trick for what it is, you can prevail against it.

Half of what you are seeing is illusory. The other half is in flux and will not matter tomorrow, and illusions are bi-partisan. Do not be enthralled by the zeitgeist, by the raging spirit of this age - one of manufactured discord, real hate, mistrust, anger, labeling and endless “isms” - because it is meant to keep us distractedly paddling the surfaces, chasing our egos and our echos. It is all meant to keep us from pondering the depths.

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” - G.K. Chesterton

It is easy to go with the flow - even a dead thing, or a dead movement, can do that - much more difficult to stand against a current and look about. If you’re riding the slipstream, consider side-stepping it for a little while, and see what it does to your perspective.

Pull back from the noise. Particularly in times of excessive noise and chatter and emotionalism and manipulation, like now. Turn off the radios; unplug the television. Click off the computer screen (yes, me too!) and spend some time being quiet, removing yourself from the reach of the illusionists (who are legion) and affixing yourself to what is real and true and NOW in your own life, and then spend some time in prayer - not the “O Lord destroy him; he maketh a blight” sort of prayer, but the generous one that first says “thank you” and then asks for guidance and wisdom, and then simply falls silent and listens.

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.

This ride is only beginning. Pace yourself. Clear your eyes and your mind and just watch. Detach from the tumult of it all, strap in and prepare for a hell of a ride. Pay no attention to the men and women behind the curtains. Save today’s headlines in your hard-drive and look at them again in November. You’ll see.

Clarification: By “Time Out” I mean “a breather,” not a punishment.

Related: McCain vs Limbaugh
What will Rush/Hugh say if McCain wins?

WELCOME: Instapundit readers. While you’re here, please take a look around. I am asking everyone to answer this question in 100 words or less: What’s Wrong With the World?. We’re also looking back a bit and remembering U2’s stunning halftime show after 9/11) and the time Bush rescued his own Secret Service agent.

Karen Hall at Some Have Hats has included me in a meme. As regular readers know, I don’t participate in these often, mostly because I hate to think of five other bloggers to amuse/annoy with it (you never know who will write back saying, “you shouldn’t have…really…you shouldn’t have!”

But this meme is kind of quirky and cute, and since I happen to have a book - only one - at hand (I am at my “second” desk, which is the one I try to keep neat and uncluttered because it’s in the middle of the house) I feel like I can honestly play the game.

Karen spells out the rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

The book currently on my desk is here because I reviewed it (and liked it very much) this week, for the blog - it is Lourdes; Font of Faith, Hope and Charity by Elizabeth Ficocelli, with a forward by Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR.

Page 123 as per instructions:

As John recalls, the first miracle he experienced in Lourdes was his own self-revelation. “When you are born sick, you often have the opinion you are the only sick person in the world. In Lourdes, my eyes were opened.

Karen’s book was ummm…very different than mine.

This meme is very cool - I can’t wait to see how the Holy Spirit maneuvers around and uses this one.

I’m tagging: Julie at Happy Catholic, Deacon Greg Kandra, Amba, Cobb, and the Snarky Bastards.

You can play along too, if you like, leave your 123 in the comments section!

Leftist students and professors at La Sapienza in Italy have basically shouted down Pope Benedict VXI, who canceled his plans to talk there, rather than deal with them or give them more airtime. This tendency on the left to silence what they do not agree with is getting pretty troubling.

Gerald at Closed Cafeteria has a translation of the undelivered speech but I would direct you to John Allen’s column, here, where he sounds a little exasperated with the intellectual dishonesty behind the students protests:

In a nutshell, therefore, Benedict is being faulted by the physics professors for quoting somebody else’s words, which his full text suggests he does not completely share. (Readers who remember Regensburg can be forgiven a sense of déjà-vu.)

Read the whole thing and ponder how unwilling the world is becoming to allow anyone to say anything or do anything without immediately accusing them of the worst. It’s not healthy.

Archbishop Charles Chaput is noting it as well. His upcoming book Render Unto Caesar, seems ready to address it, as he lays out in this speech:

George Orwell said that one of the biggest dangers for modern democratic life is dishonest political language. Dishonest language leads to dishonest politics — which then leads to bad public policy and bad law.

Dishonest political language creates untrustworthy narratives, too. For instance:

Remember the two iconic pictures of the Vietnam War - the napalmed little girl running naked and scared, and the Vietcong guy being shot at point-blank range? Neo-neocon researched the stories behind those two powerful images and discovered they did not actually involve America at all…but that’s not the narrative around them.

As I read the article about the photos, I felt a sense of disbelief. I wasn’t quite sure what I was reading was correct. Surely, if this information about both photos were true, I’d have heard about it before this. After all, thirty years had passed.
[…]
The experience was something akin to being married for thirty years, thinking your husband loving and faithful, and then by chance coming across evidence that he’d been living a double life all that time, with a wife and kids in another town. A sense of deep betrayal of a basic trust.

Read her piece - it’s affecting, and important. Dishonest political language.

Of course, some of it is Classic and routine.

Read Daniel Koffler really excellent piece on how political pledges to insure voter rights are limited. The last graph’s a kicker.

John Fund has more in more detail about this issue, and on flexible indignation when it comes to requiring Voter I.D.

Identity politics create narratives that get sticky, as Christopher Hitchens points out.

I don’t even know what sort of narrative this story involves - maybe it’s a narrative in-the-making? Seems to me Hillary’s Health Care Papers would be bigger news.

Some narratives really don’t require a willing suspension of disbelief, though:

About 75% of Baghdad’s neighborhoods are now secure, a dramatic increase from 8% a year ago when President Bush ordered more troops to the capital, U.S. military figures show.

Those narratives actually require more coverage than they get.

John Hawkins has an interview with Jonah Goldberg on his book, Liberal Fascism, which is all about another sort of dishonest political narrative.

Speaking of narratives, Jenna Bush is now a mild-mannered non-meat-eating teacher in the Washington DC public schools. That means she’s working in less-than-prime conditions with kids who are at tremendous disadvantage (the unrepresented people of DC have no one pandering to them, so they get short shrift). Her sister Barbara spent 9 months working at an African AIDS hospital, and lives discreetly. Jenna has written a book about a mother with AIDS, and now she is visiting UNICEF projects, and apparently she flying commercial when she does it.

This is good, admirable stuff, but the reportage is almost nil. Security plays into it, of course, but
do you think before Bush leaves office any network or dead tree news group will take a look at the Bush Twins and see how they’ve grown up during the past 8 years - to see if they have transcended the “drunk party girls” narrative? I’ve always thought that presidential kids deserved a second look - they change so much while their parents are in office. When Dubya took office, his daughters were college students who behaved, well, like most college students. It seems likely they are quite different women, now. People change and grow - movements, situations and stories change. Why don’t narratives?

You know, I might be better at this political analysis stuff than I knew. A few weeks ago I predicted Hillary’s Pre-New Hampshire Primary tears and a day later (maybe it was just the new year’s champagne) I wrote this:

Team Clinton has just given Team Obama the weapon which could well take Hillary down: mockery. Since it is unlikely that the mainstream press will ever cover the fundraising issues and shady connections that would bring down any politician other than Mrs. Clinton, her opponents cannot rely on “scandals” to whittle Mrs. Clinton down to size. Therefore, the candidate who can - by simply shining a humorous light on her own words, actions and tactics - get the country laughing at Mrs. Clinton, is the candidate who will defeat her.

Seems that the Obama campaign has come to the same conclusion:

Barack Obama has stepped up his campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton, and he’s trying to use humor to bring her down before this weekend’s Democratic presidential caucus.
[…]
Obama began by recalling a moment in Tuesday night’s debate when he and his rivals were asked to name their biggest weakness. Obama answered first, saying he has a messy desk and needs help managing paperwork - something his opponents have since used to suggest he’s not up to managing the country. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said his biggest weakness is that he has a powerful response to seeing pain in others, and Clinton said she gets impatient to bring change to America.

“Because I’m an ordinary person, I thought that they meant, ‘What’s your biggest weakness?’” Obama said to laughter from a packed house at Rancho High School. “If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, ‘Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don’t want to be helped. It’s terrible.’”

“Folks, they don’t tell you what they mean!” he said. Obama chuckled at his own joke before riffing on another Clinton answer in the debate, when she said that she is happy that the bankruptcy bill she voted for in 2001 never became law.

“She says, ‘I voted for it but I was glad to see that it didn’t pass.’ What does that mean?” he asked, again drawing laughter from the crowd and himself. “No seriously, what does that mean? If you didn’t want to see it passed, then you can vote against it! People don’t say what they mean.

Oh, my. This is trouble. There is no more powerful weapon on earth than mockery founded on truth. If Obama succeeds with this, and I’m thinking with that voice, that timing and that charisma he very well may, then Hillary might be toast.

This man is no one to take lightly or toy with. And the Republicans had better pay attention to this. If the “people don’t say wha