Some people, at least, knew how to remember the Stalin years. Writing in 1957, the poetess Anna Akhmatova recalled an encounter from the time she was trying to visit her son, who had been jailed by the secret police:

“In the fearful years of the…terror I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Besides me, in the queue, there was a woman with blue lips. She had, of course, never heard of me; but she suddenly came out of that trance so common to us all and whispered in my ear (everybody spoke in whispers there): “Can you describe this?” And I said: “Yes I can.” And then something like the shadow of a smile crossed what had once been her face.”

And describe it, Akhmatova did:

“In those years only the dead smiled,

Glad to be at rest:

And Leningrad city swayed like

A needless appendix to its prisons.

It was then that the railway-yards

Were asylums of the mad:

Short were the locomotives’

Farewell songs.

Stars of death stood

Above us, and innocent Russia

Writhed under bloodstained boots, and

Under the tires of Black Marias”

From Requiem (1957)

Edvard Radzinsky’s Stalin has a good account of Stalin’s last days. This short passage caught my attention today:

“After February 17 no visitors to Stalin’s office are recorded. In fact he never returned to Moscow after that date. Someone has drawn a red line in the margins of the register as though closing the account.”

Except, of course, that this is an account that can never be closed.

This weekend’s Financial Times features a number of articles to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Stalin’s death (the old tyrant died on March, 5th 1953). There’s a lot that's worth reading, but the highlights include an interview with Robert Conquest, the greatest western historian of Soviet terror. Amongst the stories he tells is the response of French communists when Stalin lowered the age for the death penalty for children to 12:

"It was acceptable, they claimed, “because in Russia, they said, people mature so much quicker.""

Contrary to some of the bad press it has received recently, Belgium is, in its melancholy and rain-sodden way, a strangely alluring country (listen to Jacques Brel’s Le Plat Pays if you doubt me), but the ways of the appalling Belgian establishment make it all too appropriate that the country should be the epicenter of the EU, a body that is increasingly intolerant of dissent.

Here's a story from the London Guardian on Belgium's attempts to deal with the challenge posed by the Vlaams Blok, a Flemish nationalist party on the far right. The Blok is very far from being a likeable organization, to put it mildly, but the way to deal with such parties is through debate, argument and the ballot box. That's how democracy works.

Not all Belgians agree, apparently. Some of them tried another tack – they took the Blok to court.

And now it’s backfired. Idiots.

Another reader seems to think that one way that Aage could get round his legal difficulties is to prepare ‘special’ pizzas just for French and Germans. They could, he suggests, be topped with “all the weird crap they eat over there”.

Well, maybe, but let’s face it – a lot of that “weird crap” (the reader’s list includes liverwurst, sauerkraut and snails) is quite delicious. If Aage really wants to discourage French and German customers, why not offer them something American. Doctor Pepper should do the trick.

Of course, that will scare off the Brits, the Vilnius Ten and everyone else too.

Have you seen HBO's "Da Ali G. Show"? Oh, man, you gotta! "Ali G." is the creation of a British comedian named Sacha Baron Cohen. Ali G. is a Cockney "wigger," a hip-hop white gangsta clod who has his own interview show. In the taped episodes now running, Ali G. gets interviews with serious figures like Boutros-Boutros Ghali, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, ex-Atty Gen. Dick Thornburgh, et al. He straight-facedly asks them outrageously stupid questions (e.g., he asks ex-CIA director James Woolsey to return to the grassy knoll in Dallas to explain who really shot J.R.). What's so great is that these poor interview subjects don't realize they're being put on, and answer his questions with respect. It's a great send-up of what's happened to political journalism since Bill Clinton went on MTV and answered some yo-yo's question about his underwear.

Cohen has two other characters: Bruno, an outrageously gay Austrian fashion reporter; and Borat, a comically naive, sex-mad TV reporter from Kazakhstan, who travels the U.S. exposing himself, so to speak, to American culture. This show is ribald comic genius. Click here and here for videoclips and other info. New half-hour episodes come on every Friday night (Saturday morning) at 12:30 a.m. EDT, but they repeat throughout the week (see the schedule here).

A reader points out that I mistakenly and inadvertanly mischaracterized Scott Ritter's position on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Ritter's position is not that they never existed, but that they are no longer there and that, therefor, there's no evidence of them still being there. I'll flesh that out in a future column, but I just wanted to be on record.

Jonah:

The phrase "or else" is much older than your previous correspondent suggested. The phrase definitely existed in Middle English. Chaucer, who died at the end of the 14th century, used it often, most famously in his "Complaint to His Purse," which you can check out [here]

In the poem--a satiric love-ode to his empty purse and intended to make the new king laugh and send him some cash--Chaucer implores his money-sack, "Beth hevy agen, or elles moot I dye!" ("Be heavy again, or else I might die!"--delightfully pronounced, in Middle English, "or ellis motey dey-uh!")

The word "else" ("elles") is even older, from Old English, and crops up in _Beowulf_ and other Anglo-Saxon poems and prose works from the 10th century or earlier. I couldn't find any *specific* examples in the small corpus of surviving Old English texts to suggest that it was used to mean "or else," but it may have been, because even back them it had most of the other current meanings and usages (such as "otherwise").

Such questions are fine pasttimes for drowsy medievalists on cold, snowswept Fridays.

UPDATE: He sent me this follow-up email:
Cancel that last email! Just re-read and saw you were looking exclusively for "trailing" or-elses. My apologies--please ignore previous e-mail!

By a rough count, I've had two dozen people call me fascist. One person wrote to AOL to tell them that I am "Hitler incarnate." I began my McCarthy column referring to the erosion of meaning words suffer on the liberal side of the aisle. If I am Hitler incarnate, what words are left to describe genocidal murderers? If I am a fascist, what words are left for people advocating syndicalist economics and thuggish mass movements?

Gentlemen, According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first uses of "or else" in "trailing" form appear to have occurred in the 19th century, drawing upon the then-centuries'-old use of the phrase with a similar meaning but with the threats explicitly stated. The OED also defines the "trailing" use of the word as aposiopesis: the alternative to be imagined. ;)

Steve Teeter from New Orleans sent this encouraging dispatch yesterday, but I've been out of the office all week, and only just now got it:

Rod, you MUST know about this at once. Convey to the Corner as you see
fit.

I live in New Orleans on Napoleon Avenue, just above Magazine Street, which means that just about every uptown Carnival parade goes right in front of my house. (Because of the construction on Canal Street, they're all uptown this year.) Minutes ago I was out watching the Krewe of Chaos parade, Chaos being a three-year-old krewe formed from some of the members of the venerable Momus krewe, and continuing their ancient tradition of satire and mockery of current institutions and events.

Float No. 6 sent me rapidly indoors to my keyboard. In the Momus tradition, it was a moderate sized float with 8 or 10 masked riders throwing beads, and it was titled "The Betrayal." The papier-mache figure on the front was a rather ridiculous looking frog. Along the sides were painted images of determined-looking soldiers carrying American flags through heavy fire, with placards on the float reading "WW-I," "WW-II," "Cold War," "D-Day." At the rear was a sort of blocky superstructure labeled "French Toaster" with the NATO symbol on its side. At the front, just under the frog and facing forward, was the painted image of a rifle and two placards, the first thing all parade goers would see as it comes down the street, reading "French rifles for sale," "Never fired, dropped once."

In the next few hours, this float will roll in front of tens of thousands of parade goers as it wends its way down to Canal Street, and if the reaction of the people I heard around me is any indication, it will be greeted all the way by gales of laughter and loud cheers.

Ma'am, A real world example of what Mr. D. is talking about. Think of all those oddly shaped dice that players of Dungeons and Dragons use. Hope this is useful.

For Derb: When did the phrase "or else?" become a threat without need of finishing the sentence? Presumably at some point people would say "...or else we will cut out your tongue!" Or, "...or else, we will sew a ferret into your small intestine." When did the threat become implied? Was it a Shakespearean construction or deconstruction? Alas, unlike your Abbot and Costello question I have no idea what the answer is.

I also once read that he had a dime (or maybe it was a penny, considering inflation) stuck in his ear for nearly 30 years. Don't know where I read it or whether it's true.

I have to say I'm surprised "This Week" is doing so badly against "Meet the Press." I think Russert does a good job and all, but he seems so concerned with being the Sunday Show of Record. Meanwhile, "This Week" tends to break news and its panel -- especially when Fareed Zakaria is on -- is far superior to the occasional snore-fest panels on "Meet the Press" with Safire and Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Great item, via Drudge, about how Yassir Arafat is worth "at least" 300 million dollars. What a servant of his people.

Here's an email titled, "Under what rock did you crawl out from?"

Jonah,

I applaud your red-baiting ignoramus-rousing article,
"Two Cheers for “McCarthyism.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg022603.asp

You are a true example of why George Bush's Junta should be brought down a soon as possible. As US deficits soar, as false Homeland Security warnings abound, as the stock market continues to sink from the lack of addressing corporate fraud, we have you, Jonah Goldberg, tells us how wonderful it was to have Joe McCarthy falsely accusing thousands of upstanding Americans of being Communists.

Maybe we are better off with Bush's attack on Iraq resulting in having the whole Arab world committed to Jihad against America, rather than re-instituting McCarthyism. Why not? You are rich and can avoid the effects of the global upheaval that will result from your hero's misdirected war.

A: ... they give these ball players nowadays very peculiar names... C: You mean funny names? A: Strange names, pet names, like Dizzy Dean... C: And his brother Daffy? A: ...Daffy Dean... C: And his French cousin. A: French? C: Goo Fay. A: Goo Fay Dean... Oh, I see... [Lots of audience laughter.]

Jonah: Your "fair enough" response to this position is very congenial and illustrates a significant difference between conservatives and the left. If a conservative speaks or attends a seminar etc. at a place like Bob Jones University he or she will not be characterized as having a "vague association" with a fundamentalist group by the left.That person will be villified as showing their true colors.etc. Almost every person of the left I have known will tell you sooner or later that disagreement with their point of view means you are either stupid or a bigot. No leftist I have ever met would have been as receptive to an alternative point of view as you were to CALPUNDIT.

By the way all your efforts are a delight to read but this McCarthy
piece is a keeper.

AND:

Jonah, I have to admit my first reaction to your column was similar to Cal Pundit's. Shame on me for not reading more carefully. You are correct that there is nothing wrong in hunting communists, McCarthys's problem was that he did it with such paranoia and self-serving dishonesty. And you clearly identified him as a lout. Such a marvelous and infrequently used term is lout. You should do more with this. How about an online poll where readers vote for the "Greatest lout of the past" and "Greatest lout of the present". McCarthy could lead the list of choices from the past and, though my first reaction is to lead the list of the present with Bill Clinton, methinks Chuck Schumer would be far more appropriate (in the vein of McCarthyite dishonesty).

Has some thoughtful criticisms of my column. But I think he's missing the central point. He writes, "It's not McCarthyism to accuse a communist of being a communist. It is McCarthyism to accuse someone of being a communist who has only a vague association with communist friends, groups, or ideas."

Fair enough. And as I said the column and in the Corner, I am no defender of false-accusations and I think McCarthy's tactics set back the cause of anti-Communism. But the Hollywood Ten, for example, were not victims of "McCarthyism" since there was nothing vague about their membership -- not "association"-- with the Communist Party. Moreover, McCarthy had little to nothing to do with Hollywood communists. When Lilian Hellman said that anti-Communists picked communism as a cause with as much cynicism as Hitler picked anti-Semitism, she meant that there was no substance to the search for Communists. But there was. They did help Stalin get the atomic bomb, you know. That's hardly a strategically trivial point. Every effort to find, expose and punish spies and vassals for an enemy power -- which, again was really quite evil -- was ridiculed as McCarthyism. That's why the opponents of the Bush administration use the word so much. They want to suggest there is no point to looking for terrorists in our midst because they don't exist and anyone who claims otherwise is a bigot of some kind.

As for Calpundit's assertion that I spend 1,000 words defending McCarthy the "man," I'm not sure what he's talking about. It seems to me I defended the cause of anti-Communism which liberals routinely label "McCarthyism." As for the man, how many times do I have to call him a "lout" and a "jerk" before Calpundit will see that I'm not defending the man?

Now that's something you don't hear everyday.
Check it out.

I'm not going to post all of these emails. But i find this one really intriguing because of its larger significance:

I am constantly amazed by the views of a conservative mind. I was an Eisenhower Republican when I was young, but the party moved so far to the right after that, at ever increasing speeds, that I am proud to call myself a Democrat now. The Democratic Party moved to the center and replaced the Republican Party's concern for civil rights, the middle class, and sensible economic policies. A conservative, it seems to me, is homophobic in that they see evil in essentially all peoples that they disagree with. How sorrowful to have to live like that.

The first two thirds is boilerplate. But then this guys says that conservatives are "homophobic" because they see evil in essentially all peoples that they disagree with."

Again I say: Fascinating! Already, Fascism means anything undesirable, McCarthyism means anything mean and, now, homophobia means hatred of people who disagree with you. You would think that even this guy would understand that we still need words for people who don't like homosexuals. I confess that I don't like the word homophobia because I think fear is not necessarily the best explanation for anti-gay views. But we're stuck with it.

But here we have someone who believes, in all honesty, that hatred of active, dues paying, spying, Stalinists can best be described as "homophobia." This is the sort of slippery thinking that will give you road rash on your butt if you don't watch out. Are environmentalists homophobes because they hate oil men? Are vegans homophobes because they hate meat-eaters? Are gays homophobes if they hate Christian fundamentalists? By this logic I guess my dog is a homophobe because he loathes squirrels so. Then again, you know what people say about squirrels...

This guy makes me want to say nah-nah, booby-booby:

what disgusting drivel this one is. I used to think there might be a bottom for you conservatives to hit at some time. Now I think there is no low limit you folks will sink to in trying to justify your hatred of all people who do not agree with your and your self righteous bullshit. If you had lived during the Mcarthy era it might remind you of the lies, destruction and anti American wave of hatred and fear he generated through out our society. He was a liar and a boob and it was not till he was finally outted that we were able to resume life as Americans who could agree to disagree over political ideas. One thing you conservatives seem to always be ready to do is hate someone or something to justify your existence.

of a fan site if it's never updated?

I'll be debating Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, on the question "Does Global Free Trade Help Poor Nations?" at Wheaton College (the one in Mass) on March 11. Just an FYI.

And, if you've seen something really, really definitive that I might have missed, please send it to VoteGfile@aol.com.

Jonah, I'm with you on Mr. Rogers. I didn't care for his program as a kid, but as an adult -- and especially as a parent -- I really came to value what he stood for. Children's programming these days is so frenetic, artless and stylistically coarse, and as I've complained before, so much of it is one long commercial for toys and related products. I don't recall that Mr. Rogers ever licensed his name for marketing purposes. By happenstance, I spent a half hour last night watching a great videocassette sent to me by WAFB Channel 9 in Baton Rouge (thanks, y'all), a special commemorating Buckskin Bill, the local kiddie show host, who was on Channel 9 for something like 40 years. Of course it was a wonderful nostalgia trip for me (up with the Monday Morning March!), but it was also instructive to me as the father of a small boy.

It's hard to overestimate how much kids from the Baton Rouge area loved Buckskin Bill, and what a big part of our lives he was. How much we trusted him. Yet as is obvious from the old tapes, his program was extremely low-tech, and very gentle. There is no place for a Buckskin Bill in a Spongebob Squarepants world. Yeah, yeah, it's pathetic to listen to older people sit around whining about how they don't make 'em like they used to anymore, but I really do believe it's a huge loss for children that contemporary TV has formatted their brains to require jolts of manic entertainment, such that a Mr. Rogers or a Buckskin Bill comes off not as comforting but dull.

Malaysian leader Mahathir bin Muhamad has now taken over leadership of the so-called Non-Aligned Movement of nations, and used the occasion to launch a revolting attack on the West in general and Jews in particular. This news inspired David G. Littman, an NGO representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, to observe the following in an e-mail to the Corner:

"The outrageous remarks by the new chairman of the 116-member Non-Aligned  Movement: 'Mahathir -- one of Asia's most respected and outspoken statesman,'  according to an AP report  -- were in his usual fiery rhetoric style. Aside from 'collateral' damages comparisons - with 'the 3,000 who died in New York and the 200 in Bali,' his statement that 'there was no systematic campaign of terror outside Europe until the Europeans and the Jews created a Jewish state out of Palestinian land.' Four examples from the 1980s and 1990s should suffice to show the disgracefully racist flavor of his 'thinking' on 'Jews'!:
 
"1) At the 8th Conference Meeting in 1986 of the then 101-Member Movement of the same 'Non-Aligned' countries, held in Harare, Zimbabwe, he was quoted as saying : 'The expulsion of Jews from the Holy Land some two thousand years ago and the Nazi oppression of Jews have taught them nothing. If at all, it has transformed the Jews into the very monsters that they condemn so roundly in their propaganda material. They have been apt pupils of Dr. Goebbels.' (Int. Herald Tribune, Oct. 8, 1986). This public comment about 'Jews' by  Asia's 'respected and outspoken statesman' was made on Sept. 7, 1986, the day after Abu Nidal's PLO-dissident terrorist squad massacred 23 Jews at worship in the Neve Shalom ('Gates of Peace') synagogue in Istanbul.
 
"2) Three months later, he inaugurated Malaysia's 'Anti-Jewish Day' (New York Times Dec. 7, 1986, p. 6), and on a State Visit to Great Britain in July 1987 (received by the queen), he again repeated the 'Goebbels' calumny publicly, without overt criticism. 
 
"3)  In 1994, 'Schindler's List' was banned in Malaysia on the grounds that it was 'Jewish propaganda.' (IHT, March 24, 1994)
 
"4)  Then came the three months of accusations against American financier George Soros of 'helping trigger the region's currency losses' (the ringgit had lost 30% - 'Malaysian Leader Sees Hidden Jewish 'Agenda','  by Thomas Fuller, IHT, Oct. 11-12, 1996). He also declared: 'We are Muslims, and the Jews are not happy to see Muslims progress.'
 
"I need hardly add that at no time has this 'respected and outspoken statesman' from Asia been criticized at the UN Commission on Human Rights for his ongoing, blatantly racist and hateful remarks that are in contradiction with the International Bill of Human Rights.

"Earlier this week, again, he insisted that religious extremists were only reacting to 'blatant double standards' (Iraq and Palestine!). The real 'double standards' are that no Western democratically elected leader could get away with mouthing such crude garbage."

John - I must confess I was never a huge fan of Mr. Rogers. When I was a kid I watched him for a little while, but I quickly grew tired of him because he was so "soothing." I wanted more smashing and lasers -- that's just the kind of kid I was. But I have to say I grew to respect the man much more than I liked the show. Just this morning I was listening to him on NPR in an old interview. He had some profoundly conservative ideas about how children are and should be raised. First, he explicitly confirmed that children ape what they see grown-ups do -- one of the chief arguments for censorship. Second, he gave a great explanation of why kids need rules. I'm paraphrasing, but he said that if a kid runs away from you down the street and you don't yell "Stop! Come back!" that kid will reasonably assume that you don't care if he runs off. Children respond to limits on their behavior -- and test those limits -- because it is one of the most concrete ways we have to teach them that we love them.

Thankfully, this sort of thinking may be increasingly popular today, but I grew up among a lot of kids with parents who believed setting rules and limits for kids was a terrible idea. Being told that all of your ideas are brilliant and all your impulses should be acted upon teaches almost precisely the opposite lessons parents intend. Unconditional love is good, but unconditional respect and self-esteem-boosting creates not only dumb people but annoying ones. And, yes, this is a sweeping generalization with all sorts of exceptions.

My father is a font of anti-Communist arcana (what did you think I picked this stuff up from college or my New York City high school?). Here's an email he sent me about the Hollywood Ten, too late for inclusion in the column:

I believe the Hollywood Ten were legally at risk because they violated the Smith Act, which was passed in 1940 and made it a crime to advocate the violent overthrow of the government. The Smith Act was the bete noire of the Communist Party and they fought it tooth and nail. It became in Communist folklore the American Nuremberg Laws - BUT first to uphold the implementation of the Smith Act was none other than the Communist Party, USA, which gleefully turned over the names of Trotskyites to the FBI. I didn't trust my memory on this so I googled it (Smith Act - first entry gives a history - although tendentious in its opposition to it - of the act). Here's the pertinent paragraph:

"An ironic aspect of the convictions, which was not lost among civil libertarians and others, was that the Communist Party had fully supported the use in 1941 of the Smith Act against the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party. Motivated by its hatred of Trotskyist political opponents and its fervent support for the Soviet-American alliance of World War II, the Party had judged the Smith Act perfectly constitutional and the subsequent trials a legitimate government action. Those positions gravely undercut the credibility of the Party's efforts in the 1950s to characterize the Smith Act as unconstitutional and to mobilize a defense on the basis of political free speech and freedom of association."

The convictions referred to were of the leadership of the Communist party - Henry Winston, Eugene Dennis, John Gates, Gus Hall, Ben Davis, five others (all listed in the google story) - in, I believe 1949.) The Ten were convicted of contempt of Congress (HUAC hear ings), and several of them jumped bail and went underground but later were apprehended and imprisoned. Original sentences were for five years. The Commies had to wiggle out of their embarrassment of endorsing the Smith Act to punish the Trotskyites, back in 1940.. The bottom line in all this is that the Communists had no governing morality - they would use a law they detested in order to punish their enemies, just as they will use the word "peace" to disarm their enemies.

Jonah, you display the wisdom of Solomon! I already have a mug and a NRODT subscription. So, I'd like to offer you free use of my private jet for whenever you and your family need it and the keys to my villa in Tuscony. You deserve it!

Okay, I made that up. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't follow that lead. The rabbit race dogs chase isn't real either.

I love this email:

Jonah

I will be 73 in April. I have waited for 50 years to read what you said in the above mentioned column. 'nuff said.

Rebuilding Iraq will require a sustained commitment from many nations, including our own: We will remain in Iraq as long as necessary, and not a day more. America has made and kept this kind of commitment before--in the peace that followed a world war. After defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies, we left constitutions and parliaments. We established an atmosphere of safety, in which responsible, reform-minded local leaders could build lasting institutions of freedom. In societies that once bred fascism and militarism, liberty found a permanent home.

Kathryn - egads! Obviously they've labeled my opponent's comments as my own. Heads will roll. The only good thing is that it must bother her more than it bothers me.

From a reader:

Jonah,

In stating that dogs can be sexist and racist, you seemed to thoughtlessly link pierced males with anti-war protestors. I know of at least on pierced, tatted ex-skater who subscribes to NRODT and barks even louder than Cosmo at war protestors. I didn't follow the whole crunchy-con debate too closely but was able to pick out that you dislike clouding politics with such abstract relations to personal preferences. Just because you don't plop a name on the abstraction doesn't mean you aren't employing the same style.

Keep up the great writing, as a holey-inked-con I've endured enough stereotypes I can't fault you for having this one.

Re-reading it now that I've taken a breath.

My relatively tame syndicated column on Roe V. Wade etc. Interestingly, I've gotten nasty email from pro-lifers and pro-choicers.

There's a good piece in Slate about whether or not dogs can be racist. I suspect most dog owners already know the answer. Dogs owned by whites oftern have problems with blacks and vice versa. This has to do with the way dogs learn about "others." There's nothing sinister about it.

Dogs can also be sexist. Cosmo, for example, likes the ladies but has got serious problems with men, especially young men. He'll growl at young black guys and at young white guys while he'll work the magic with women of any race. We've also noticed -- and I'm not making this up -- Cosmo particularly dislikes skeeves, skate rats, and other males with aggressive hair and pierced faces. He just doesn't like them and, truth be told, I'm quite proud of him for it. Whenever my lovely bride and I see anti-war protestors and the like, we'll say "Oh, man Cosmo wouldn't like those guys." (As long-time readers know this is hardly shocking since the Wonderdog is rumored to be a Scoop Jackson Democrat and Straussian). Meanwhile, I have another take on dogs and racism, which was published in Slate -- eek -- four years ago.

I'm increasingly sympathetic to the argument that factory farming needs reforming, but this is the sort of intellectual and moral filth which will turn me off completely. Be warned, the images are grim -- as they compare factory farming to the Holocaust.

off to CNN (12:30ish EST). G-File -- a real stemwinder -- is in K-Lo's overburdened hands.

I had my first in-my-face liberal law school experience yesterday. I've experienced the liberal professors in class, the liberal students etc., but I was fit to be tied when I saw signs posted around school yesterday explaining to the students why JAG recruiters would be allowed on campus. The signs were meant to redirect the obvious indignation and shock we would feel from seeing a uniform-clad member of the armed forces in the very building where we are busily expanding our minds away from the school administration and towards...whom? The sign actually says that "recently enacted federal legislation known as the Solomon Amendments" were to blame….I guess everyone was too flustered with the emotional turmoil they felt seeing these warriors invade campus to take a moment and celebrate progress--the Army JAG recruiter dressed in Class A's whom I was chatting with on the way to class yesterday was pushing a baby carriage!

Important news from the Associated Press. After the Vilnius 10 comes the Fanoe one:
"A Danish pizzeria has banned French and Germans from dining there because of their country's stance on a war with Iraq.

Aage Bjerre, who owns Aage's Pizza on the island of Fanoe, said he's tired of French and German attitudes toward the United States.

He's put two homemade drawings on the shop door, one a silhouette of a man coloured red, yellow and black for Germany and another in the red, white and blue for France.

Both silhouettes have a bar across them.
He says Germans will be allowed in if their country joins a war on Iraq, but the French will have to endure a lifetime ban.

Aage said: "Hadn't the United States helped Europe in defeating Germany, there would have been photos of Adolf Hitler hanging on the walls around here."

The ban has yet to effect his business because the tourist season only starts after Easter and peaks during the summer. "I do what my conscience tells me to do," he said.

He added: "Frenchmen have a lifetime ban here. Their attitude toward the United States will never change.""

I have never been bummed about snow. I join my canine friends in believing that all snow is a joyous occassion. But this is getting ridiculous.

"You'd better gas up the dinghy and go fishing with Fredo, because you are dead to me." -- Dennis Miller, on the Tonight Show.

Miller was on fire tonight. He said: "If you're at a peace march, and the guy next to you has a sign saying 'Bush is Hitler,' stop the peace stuff for a second and beat his ass."

And he sent this message to Dubya: "If you're watching, I think you're doing a hell of a job. I'm proud you're my president. ...I think there are a lot more people out here on your side than you may think."

Ramesh, a friend of mine went to hear Hauerwas speak in Chicago recently. I asked him this afternoon if Hauerwas' speech was "idiotic." He replied:

I wouldn't say he was entirely stupid about the war, but he took quite a few cheap shots at President Bush. I think the cheapest shot was saying that he'd like to know whether Bush has ever paid any price for his Christian faith. (To which I would respond that simply being a wartime president is one hell of a price to pay.)

"Cheap shot" is a charitable way to describe that kind of remark, if you ask me.

I've gotten a few angry notes about my earlier posts on getting redundant email. I think most readers understand where I was coming from. But it's pretty clear there's a misunderstanding between me and a few of you. I couldn't be more sincere when I tell you that my readers are among my favorite people in the world. That goes for the critics as much as anyone. I really do consider you folks to be my friends. I do think that one of the reasons I've developed what I like to think is a friendship with my readers is that I've been honest with you. And, in all honesty, it's difficult to figure out where the line between what I'm free to say and what I should keep to myself resides. I don't think 1 in 1,000 emailers could claim that I've treated them with anything less than the respect they showed me. Anyway, for all I know this is an example of something I should have kept to myself, but I went to a party with an open bar, so that's my excuse for that. But that might be too much info too. You see, you just can't win.

The sturdy Squire to Gallic masters stoop, And drown his lands and manors in a soupe . Others import yet nobler arts from France, Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance.

I kind of knew that I would get an email like this:

Wow! Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! If you don't think that PART of your success is attributable to your popularity with your readers ---- those readers how felt like they "connected" with you at some personal level thanks to the frankness with which you express your personal views and the personal vignettes that made you seem 'approachable' ---- then you are taking something pretty important for granted.

As someone who sent you some French jokes, and is a sometimes 'fan' (but not a fanatic; I've rarely written), a word of advise: If you want to 'warn' a co-worker about how annoying your readers are, take it off line. The above actually felt like a slap in the face....

Now, as I have written about 8 billion times about how the "secret" of NRO's success -- and particularly of my column -- is my relationship with my readers, I take some exception here. I don't think any of my readers are annoying for the reasons this reader implies. But it is a simple fact that when you invite and encourage readers to stay in touch, they will sometimes repeat what other readers have told me before. This can be annoying, but it's the cost of doing business as it were. I don't have a private email address. The one you see is the one I use.

Sometimes when Drudge breaks a story I might be interested in, for example, I'll get a dozen emails from people sending me the URL because they saw it for the first time. There's no way they could know that I've seen it already. The same goes for French jokes. I don't see why I can't say this phenomena is annoying while at the same time hold that the readers themselves have A) done nothing wrong and B) are acting on an impulse I'm grateful for. Seriously, I love you guys. But if there were a way to have you send me only jokes and URLs I've never seen before I'd leap on it. But as the song goes, you take the good, you take the bad and there you have the facts of life. Just don't call me Tootie.

Glenn Reynolds is on the case.

Jonah,

Finally, at lower-middle age, a Claim to Fame! Back when Dennis was Mayor of Cleveland and my mom was a liberal activist, he lived on our street and I was his paperboy.

I actually admired his populist stance against Cleveland bankers, that drove the city into default. It was a courageous stance based on principles he believed in.

He has survived politically in Cleveland with a base of aging ethnic eastern European Catholics, such as myself. Obviously, as this base marches on to oblivion and his own need for a Legacy calls, he is scrambling towards the mainstream Democratic Party. We used to call this "selling out", back in The Day.

Your column today is wonderful. But I must caution you about getting into the French-bashing business. The more's the merrier, but you will get 8,000 emails of the same four or five French jokes. There's the sale on eBay for used French rifles -- "only dropped once." There's "How many Frenchman does it take to defend Paris?" Answer: "Nobody knows." Etc. etc. I would say I've gotten the URL for "Soldier of Surrender" magazine 100 times. I've heard that taking a Frenchman to battle is like taking an accordion hunting line from 150 readers, each thinking they were the first to tell me. I don't blame or begrudge anybody, but it just never ends.

Note that on Hooters Air infants carried on your lap fly free of charge.

As I recall, McCain's campaign was down, but not "doomed," when he savaged Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson ... but that attack probably sealed his fate with GOP primary voters. Even though I'm a religious conservative, I've always felt bad for him regarding that ill-advised speech. He shouldn't have attacked Falwell as well as Robertson; if memory serves, Falwell hadn't made an issue of McCain. Robertson had, and played very dirty pool down in South Carolina. I was down there covering that primary, and the kind of stuff Robertson and his Christian Coalition pulled down there in an attempt to defeat McCain was sickening.

There was the Bob Jones University professor who spread the rumor, via Internet, that McCain had fathered a black child (N.B., the McCains had adopted a Bangladeshi child). A CNN reporter tracked the Internet rumor to him, and asked him what proof he had for that charge. The professor wanted to know what proof the reporter had that it wasn't true. I spoke to a former senior South Carolina state official and Christian Coalition member who told me he was personally threatened by Pat Robertson that if he endorsed McCain, he (the official) would be ruined by Robertson. There was lots of that sort of thing going on. No wonder McCain lost his temper at these politically cutthroat followers of Christ.

I cannot believe that Dennis Kucinich's flip-flop on abortion has not gotten more press. This is a guy who regularly received failing grades from NARAL and was widely considered one of the staunchest pro-life Democrats. But even though he has absolutely zero chance of winning the Democratic nomination, he still feels the need to abandon his principled position and become "pro-choice." What is so stunning is not the immorality of essentially changing your mind on what constitutes murder in order to win votes, but the political stupidity of the decision. In a field so crowded the primary debates will look like the cover of the Sgt. Pepper's Album, with no shortage of anti-war candidates, Kucinich could have singled himself out as a man of such admirable principle that he's willing to challenge his own party on its pro-choice extremism. That would have established Kucinich as the McCain-like candidate to a certain extent and could have even won him more votes in Iowa or South Carolina (assuming he makes it to either). Comparisons to the late Bob Casey would have filled the airwaves. But instead he sends the signal that the Democratic Party cannot tolerate any break from Orthodoxy and even its mavericks must toe the line when the feminists crack the whip.

Peter Beinart had an excellent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal yesterday (subscription required, I think). He argues that the Democratic Party needs a John McCain of their own. "They need someone to incite a rebellion against the party's base, someone who will risk pariah status to lay the groundwork for the long-term ideological reconstruction of the Democratic Party." Beinart identifies two central problems with the Democratic Party right now: Al Sharpton and Iraq, which is to say race and foreign policy. The party is in the process of coronating Al Sharpton as a leader of the party and make him if not a king than a racial kingmaker. Meanwhile on foreign policy, the party is incoherent at best and pacifist at its base. He argues that a Democratic McCain-type would and should denounce Sharpton in much the same way that McCain denounced Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell:

Mr. McCain's insurgency wasn't based simply on a compelling persona; it was based on a frontal assault on the principles of the post-Gingrich GOP. With his support for campaign-finance reform Mr. McCain attacked the Republican Party's alliance with K Street; with his denunciation of George W. Bush's proposed tax cut he took aim at supply-side economics; and with his condemnation of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, he took on the Christian Right. It was an ideological kamikaze mission, an attempt, as people like William Kristol understood at the time, to blow up the post-cold war GOP and begin anew.

Not surprisingly, Mr. McCain lost. But his overwhelming support among independents, and Al Gore's subsequent victory in the popular vote, suggest that a Republican Party built upon the twin pillars of corporate special-interest and evangelical moralism did indeed have feet of clay. I suspect that had 9/11 not come along, and re-established Republicans as the hawkish party in an era dominated by national security, Mr. McCain's insurgency might eventually have transformed the GOP.

Beinart's certainly correct when he predicts that a Democrat running against Sharpton and for war would lose the nomination. Indeed it's hard to imagine any Democrat following his advice. Also, I think his analysis misses something about McCain. Attacking K-Street and special interests does not run against the grain of conservative voters. Running for mainstreet not Wall Street -- or K Street -- has been a winning cause of the conservative base of the GOP for a generation at least. Opposition to supply-side economics -- while unpopular -- is not a career-killer. After all, George H.W. Bush coined the phrase voodoo economics and was still picked as a the Gipper's runningmate because he represented a sizable portion of the GOP. As for running against the Religious Right, yes McCain did deliver a powerful speech against Falwell and Robertson, but, if memory serves, that was only after it was clear his campaign was doomed. Until then, his conflict with religious conservatives was narrowly focused on the issue of campaign finance reform. The speech was a huge Hail Mary pass delivered, some believe, only after the McCain campaign convinced itself that winning the praise of The New York Times and The New Republic could win you votes in Republican Primaries.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a Democratic McCain emerge and challenge the Democratic race-mongering machine and its McGovernite peacenickery (and it's pro-abortion extremism). But finding a Democrat to run against pretty much everything the Democratic Party is will be pretty damn hard.

I walk into the Corner and then everybody splits? What's up with that?

This might be the single dumbest email I've ever gotten. In response to Friday's column this guy writes:

Liberals are liberals because they are thinkers and readers. Conservatives (Rush's kind) are conservatives because, rather than read and think, they listen only to what they want to hear. All conservatives are not stupid, but all stupid people are conservative.

One request: please do not inundate me with email about how this guy's an idiot or in an attempt to respond to him. Just let the idiocy wash over and through you in a zen-like fashion.

Several readers have taken issue with this point I made earlier: considering Confederates to be traitors is the error of presentism, which is judging past generations by standards in effect today. Not true, they've said; Confederates were widely called traitors by Unionists. This is true, and I should have been more clear earlier. I wanted only to say that it seems to me an error to impute conscious treason to Southerners of 1860 who chose secession. It is not clear to me that average Southerners would have seen that their primary loyalty was to the Union, as opposed to their state, and an understanding of the Constitution that provided states the right to withdraw from the Union. The issue was not necessarily as clear in the minds of people who lived in the South as it is for us contemporary Americans, north and south.

Interestingly, I read over the weekend that before Lee surrendered at Appomattox, one of his top lieutenants urged him to disperse his forces so that the Confederates could wage guerrilla warfare against the Union. Lee refused, thus preventing the newly re-United States from becoming the Balkans of North America.

Thanks for all the e-mails about "The Bonnie Blue Flag." I can't quote them all, of course, so this one, from Joe Long, the registrar of the Confederate Relic Room and Museum in Columbia, SC, will do, inasmuch as this is pretty much what everybody is saying. But Joe adds some interesting postbellum details:

Confederates sang both versions. I thought the version I heard last night in the movie was a slight variation from each, but I may have been wrong...anyway, it was the most popular war song out there, and if you'll think about it, most enlisted men were NOT especially fighting for their property in any sense, so likely first modified the lyrics to suit themselves. Many songs had multiple versions, even "Dixie" (which somebody wrote "appropriately" martial lyrics to - hardly ever sung). "Battle Cry of Freedom," "Dixie," and some others also had Northern and Southern versions.

Now, AFTER the war the veterans probably sang the non-"property" version almost exclusively, since the concern about keeping the war from being portrayed as a "war over slavery" was immediate. For the same reason, vets often made good and sure to invite black veterans (generally cooks, musicians and such) to the reunions and put them front-and-center in photographs. But at the time of secession - both versions; and a show for Hood's Texans and put on by Hood's Texans (the movie situation): almost certainly the non-"property" version. (Our South Carolinians were more attached to the "peculiar institution" than Texans ever were.) (Besides, "property" is a much less "fightin' word" abstraction than "liberty" for anyone, unless you're Ayn Rand.)

One of the great things about the New Republic redesign is that it ushered in a new policy over there which allows subscribers to get an electronic copy of the mag ASAP. I have long advocated such a system and I can no longer keep my opinions within the chain-of-command. I will be filing for whistle-blower status immediately.

Andrew, I see your point and you're probably right. However, championing stability for an institution which is increasingly hostile to our interests is not exactly the best argument against instability.

But I do like this email, even if I'm not in total agreement with it:

Jonah,

You have to remember that the people writing to you in favor of the London commuter programme are British (you can tell by their vocabulary and context) and they have been socialized for years. They may be Tories, but they have forgotten that a truly free market has as little government intervention as possible.

When one argues that the government is applying market principles, one is already refuting one's point. Government, no matter how well-intentioned, is inherently anti-free market.

Shimon Peres has joined Tom Friedman in advocating that India replace France on the UN Security Councile. No French-bashing here, but you've got to admit that on a purely logical basis it makes quite a bit of sense. India is the second most populous nation. It's a nuclear power too. It's on the frontlines of many of the world's problems. Four European nations on the Security Council doesn't make that much sense. I can see a counter-argument along the lines of keeping the UN a Western dominated institution. But you really only need one veto for that and we'd still have two -- the US and Britain. Also, making India a member of the Security Council might accelerate its influence as a secular democracy for the Third World. France has the luxury of condescending to and coddling Islamist fanatics as a way to triangulate against the United States. India understands this is a fool's game.

It's almost 2:00 O'Clock. Where the heck is everybody else?

Thanks to the Danes, but i don't understand the anti-dog bias.

Jonah:

You missed the Friedman solution completely. In a true free market the city would have offered X number of passes in an open auction. Instead the city acts like the worst combination of suffocating bureaucratic state and big bidness monopolist. It sets an arbitrary "price" and calls it a "market".

Further, a true market solution would have encouraged car pooling. Yes, car pooling. When 4 co-workers combine their funds to purchase one pass for use in multiple vehicles on different days.

Even further, a true market would have a secondary level of transactions where those who own passes might trade them with other consumers for such things as bacon, Clash CDs, or even pounds.

Did I miss something, or have you gone nuts? The London demand-based pricing for traffic is indeed a market-based system. You state that there's no trade involved, but that's not true. They're trading money for time. For those who place a high value on being within the restricted area during high demand hours, they can pay more and get in. In this instance, supply is fixed. You can't instantly build roads; only a certain number of cars can get into the area over a certain period of time. Traffic jams are a result of inequalibrium (is that a word?) between supply and demand. But supply can't be adjusted quickly (how fast can a government build a road), so demand is adjusted by increasing the price.

The price when demand is low is free. The price when demand is high is whatever London has set.

The trade here is time, based on need. If I want to visit in the district, but can adjust my schedule to an off-peak time, I can do so with an economic benefit. If I have an important meeting, I cough up the fee and away I go.

How is this any different from the so-called "Lexus lanes" being advocated for in the US?

What am I missing?

Dear Jonah,

I have been a regular reader of your column for years. In general, I have agreed with and like your opinions. However, in regard to your view of the new London traffic fees I must disagree. Livingston’s effort is a perfectly reasonable and economic solution to the problem of gridlock.

Traffic jams are the result of a surplus of cars for a given amount of roadway. Seeing as a massive buildout of London roads (suppy) is unfeasible, one must curtail demand. To do this any economic-minded person should respond, “Raise the price.” Prior to these measures, London traffic jams exacted a tremendous price upon drivers: time. The fees allow people to freely exchange what would have been lost time for a few pounds. A London banker will happily pay the $8 and save himself an hour of commute, while the homemaker will avoid peak hours, pay no fee and wait until noon to run her errands. The market at work – beautiful!

I saw "Old School" last night and I thought it was hilarious. There are some weak points and the script could have used one more rewrite to iron out some of the plot kinks which really start popping up halfway through. But that's all irrelevant. Because it is still frick'n hilarious. One caveat: if you are a woman you are less likely to find it amusing. I say this with 100% percent certainty. This is a movie about the male quarter/third life crisis which comes before the midlife crisis. I got that idea from the posts attached to a review of the movie in Entertainment Weekly. Note how the reviewer, a woman, dislikes the movie and the posters, mostly male, love it.

A few readers are focusing on this statement of mine: "But I don't see how levelling fines on the legal use of private property is a huge triumph for capitalism." They object that the roads in London aren't private property.

Touché, I suppose. Though I was, in fact, referring to their cars as private property, not the roads. That said, I don't see how this has much to do with anything. Tolls on public roads are hardly a policy breakthrough and they are hardly famously capitalistic. When someone says "pure market economics" are at work I usually assume there are some mechanisms at work to establish prices etc. Also, businesses in downtown London have in effect been levied with a new tax, since buying anything in the city just became a bit more expensive than buying the same product in the suburbs. Look: I don't think Andrew's really a red and I don't think the policy is outrageous, but let's not call taxes and fines market breakthroughs simply because they force people to change their behavior. My sense is 90% of NRO readers would not respond to a huge new fine on driving to their place of work as a triumph of the free market.

And, to be clear, there's nothing which says that empires are the worst form of government or social organization. In fact, the only reason I object to America being called an empire is that the people who throw the word around mean it in the most pejorative sense. But I don't see why that has to be pejorative. Relative to the other evils that exist in the world, empires are fairly benign philosophically speaking. I'd rather live in a country that is ruled by another country, benevolently, than in an independent country that is ruled by a sadistic tyrant. It probably was more pleasant living under Roman rule than under the barbarian kings and chieftains. Certainly there are millions of Indians and Kenyans and Burmese (Myanyanese?) who are nostalgic for the orderly rule of the British, which provided for many freedoms. I know Molly Ivins believes imperialism was worse than Nazism or Stalinism, but Molly Ivins is a fool -- at least in this regard. If she really believes that she should launch a campaign -- a la the NAACP and the confederate flag -- to have the Empire State (New York) change its name. Ditto the Empire State Building.

Andrew could have made a more provocative argument by suggesting that the free-market and conservatism are not one and the same. Red Ken's measure is socialist, not capitalist. But you could argue that is also conservativ -- in that it is aimed at restoring the quality of life to that of the 1950s. Indeed, Andrew invokes the return to 1950s traffic levels as proof that the effort has been a success. I have no strong opinion either way on this. One could argue that such social engineering is precisely the sort of thing that kills cities by drowning them in kitsch. Or, one could say that preserving certain social arrangements is vital to the character of a city. It seems to me, however, that a conservative could come down on either side of the issue. Red Rod, with his Crunchy Con credo, might side with the tax because it supports the "environment" and improves quality of life. Un-red Ramesh might say "poppycock," economic vitality is the lifeblood of any city and throwing a wet regulatory blanket over London is nonsense on stilts. But you can still be a conservative and favor non-market-friendly regulation.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

A TRAFFIC SOLUTION: Early reports suggest that London's new approach to solving traffic jams is a huge success. The British capital recently set up monitors at all the entrance routes into central London. If you want to get into the hub at peak hours, you have to pay a fee. If you haven't paid the fee, you pay a fine. Cameras record number plates. If you live in the central district, you get 90 percent of the fees reimbursed. The result? A return in central London to the traffic levels of the 1950s. One thing you can always depend on in Britain: everyone is cheap. But what interest me more as a matter of media coverage is that all the praise for this initiative has gone (and rightly so) to Mayor "Red" Ken. But his solution is anything but red. It's pure market economics to achieve a good environmental result. It's Friedmanism for a traditionally liberal cause. - 2:48:36 AM

The LA Times has a good, straightfoward, article on Iranian support -- or at least ambivalence -- about a US war on Iraq (Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the link). This is hardly news to NRO's Michael Ledeen who has been the point-man on Iran for quite a while.

Or at least the war to protect this truck.

Also, the negotiations with Turkey offer another important lesson: We're not an empire. Empires do not negotiate to use their own bases and they do not take no for an answer. We did the former and were willing to do the latter. Every week I go on TV or on radio and have some lefty -- and a few righties -- drone on at me about America's "imperial designs." Maybe we need a new word for what America is , but it's not an empire.

I have real sympathy for Turkey and I am glad that we've apparently worked out a deal. This is not the case of a petulent ally trying to take advantage of us. First, the Turks were legitimately screwed by the US after the last war, losing billions after helping us out. The Turks wanted us to at least get rid of Saddam and we didn't. A second gulf war will create real costs for the Turks and since this is an elective war and we need Turkey's help they deserve some compensation. I don't know where the cost-benefit line is, but my guess is that the Pentagon and the White House do. So any deal they cut is probably a deal worth cutting. Also, this war is unpopular with the Turkish public and Turkey is a democracy. Democratically elected governments need to offer their publics some rationale for going to war. And, because Turkey is a democracy, we'll desperately need them as friends if we are going to tout them as the model for a post-Saddam Iraq.

I agree that it was disappointing, though truth be told I didn't watch much of the Grammys. Still, Fred Durst's -- the lead singer of Limp Bizkit -- declaration: "I hope we're all in agreeance that this war should go away as soon as possible" was pretty funny. I just wished he could have gone on about the consignment in the musical community that violins are never the solvent.

One interesting letter came from a California reader, who objected to the use of the rousing Confederate anthem "The Bonnie Blue Flag" in Gods and Generals. He says the filmmakers changed the lyrics to put the Confederates in a better light. He says the lyric (in the film) that says:

We are a band of brothers, and native to the soil/Fighting for our Liberty with treasure, blood and toil.

...is a bowdlerization. The original lyric, he says, goes like this:

We are a band of brothers and native to the soil/Fighting for the property we gained by honest toil.

Slaves were property, of course. The reader accuses the filmmakers of "falsifying history" to downplay the fact that one thing the Confederates were fighting for was the preservation of slavery. Regarding the true lyrics, the reader says not to take his word for it, to look it up.

So I did -- and I found both versions. Here's the "liberty" version; here's the "property" version. Which one was sung by the Confederates? Somebody let me know.

Thanks for all the mail on my Gods and Generals column. I am baffled by the few readers who thought I was somehow justifying slavery by my defense of the film against the political criticism it received. All I can say is: read the thing again. Who in their right mind would justify slavery today? Ron Maxwell's film certainly doesn't. But it does put the Confederate generals in a more human light, which serves to illuminate the tragedy of their gallant service. Being willing to fight and die for one's homeland is noble; when the defense of that homeland includes protecting that homeland's right to enslave human beings, it's tragic. Anyway, lest there be any confusion, I'm glad the South lost, because that loss not only delivered the slaves from bondage, but it delivered Southern slaveholders, and those whites who supported slavery, from their own corruption.

Others have written to say that Lee, Jackson, et al., were traitors, pure and simple, and they shouldn't be given any sympathy. I think this is the error of presentism, which is applying contemporary standards to a time and culture far removed from our own. Similarly, some have said that the Southern generals should have known that slavery was wrong. Again, this is applying the moral standards and clarity of the present day to the past, which is problematic. This is not to excuse, simply to offer a possible explanation for the failure of the South's moral imagination in that era. You know, 150 years from now, our descendants may say of us, "How on earth didn't they know how evil [abortion/cloning/etc.] was? How could they have let it be legal? How could their consciences have been so dull?"

One reader's suggestion: "soul food, of course."

This is how a writer in the Village Voice recently began a review of the work of Lithuanian filmmaker Sarunas Bartas:

“A voice from the frontier of both post-post-industrial civilization and art-film reductionism, Lithuanian film-maker Sarunas Bartas may be the ultimate litmus test for hardcore cineastes. His films represent a polar cap of inhospitable cinematic ordeal – they withhold orthodox pleasures so strenuously you imagine the filmmaker as a marching ascetic, disgusted with a decadent movie world. A Bartas film rarely moves, and is never host to more than a few moments of inconsequential dialogue – you arrive long after life has already wound down into hopeless silence.”

Popcorn anyone?

It’s difficult to avoid the suspicion that much of current psychiatric ‘therapy’ is nothing more than advice to constantly pick at a scab until it gets really infected. It’s a pleasant surprise to find an article in the New York Times that comes to pretty much the same conclusion.

One of the psychologists interviewed in the piece tells of working with a woman who said she was a sexual-abuse survivor and schizophrenic. “She had been in so much therapy and told her story so many times, and it reinforced her feelings of being sick. She’d been terribly infantilized by the mental health system, a system that tells women to recover by walking around clutching teddy bears and crying…With this woman, we never asked her about her past.”

It’s an important article, and well worth reading.

Not very, according to these two writers who protest a little too much in trying to argue that Chirac’s choice of words to lecture the East Europeans was less rude than it appears. Let’s just say that their approach to translation is generous to M. Chirac. More to the point, it’s important to remember that the French president’s remarks were made in a diplomatic context, a context when extreme politesse is usually the rule. The use of even possibly insulting words was clearly designed to send a message.

And the East Europeans understood what that was.

The New York Times runs an op-ed today on the current tensions between the US and “Europe” by one Regis Debray. Debray is described as a “former adviser to President Francois Mitterand of France, …editor of Cahiers de Mediologie and the author of the forthcoming The God That Prevailed. Quite what his article is about is hard to say: the French intelligentsia has not lost its talent for incomprehensibility. It's also a shame that the NYT’s description of Debray is so bland.

Could this be the same Regis Debray who was once a crony of Castro and Guevara, the same Debray whose Revolution in the Revolution? was a basic manual for those who saw social revolution as the only way to resolve the problems of the Third World, the same Debray who traveled to Bolivia to join Guevara on his fruitless crusade to impose revolution on that country and who was jailed for his pains?

Yes, it could. Pity the New York Times didn’t say so.

According to Andrew Sullivan the latest Vanity Fair (my copy has disappeared into the clutches of Mrs. Stuttaford and is, therefore, unlikely to turn up any time soon) includes a favorable piece about a new TV series that apparently portrays Britain's infamous Cambridge spies in a sympathetic manner. Given the way that support for Stalin is usually (and wrongly) regarded as having been infinitely less reprehensible than support for Hitler, this would be no surprise.

I need (obviously) to read the Vanity Fair piece, but the conclusion to Sullivan’s post is, in particular, worth reproducing in its own right. He takes this extract from Vanity Fair:

"Double agents are hard to root for - but Cambridge Spies makes a splendid case. 'It is controversial, portraying these guys as heroes,' says [actor Rupert] Penry-Jones. 'But to stand up for what you believe in the way they did is pretty heroic.'"

And then Sullivan asks:

""Heroic.” What does that make Solzhenitsyn or Havel? Fools?"

Still, in the end these Gulag groupies faced justice of a sort, albeit inadequate. Blunt died a despised figure in Britain, and as brilliantly suggested by the movie An Englishman Abroad (with Alan Bates extraordinary as Guy Burgess) the new lives that Philby, Burgess and Maclean tried to build in the supposed socialist paradise were suitably miserable, although infinitely preferable, of course, to the prison cells they so richly deserved.

Fans of a good graveyard (I’m one – I’ve always wanted to write a guide to the best worldwide, to be called, of course, Necropolitan, although a quick Google search would suggest that the name has been used elsewhere) will enjoy a visit to Philby’s final destination, a splendidly bleak spot just outside Moscow. In one section people are classified according to the services they rendered the Soviet state (or at least they were - I saw this in the early 1990s). So, for example, the air force men are all buried in one section, the naval folk in another. The tombstones often reflect these career choices. Those for the airmen sometimes carry aviation motifs, while the naval section boasts a good number with a more nautical design.

Naturally (this was the ex-USSR) the spies and other secret policemen had their own section (this is where Philby can be found). And on their tombstones? Appropriately enough, at least a couple featured people with fedoras pulled down low over their faces.

As for Burgess: For all his crimes, it was always said that his London club would credit him with one thing. Before fleeing to Moscow he apparently made sure that the books he had borrowed from the club's library would be returned in good time. Betraying his country was one thing, letting down his club quite another – a nice little example of how the Cambridge spies remained weirdly true to the class that they worked so hard to destroy.

Some Brits, at least, are not happy with the BBC’s coverage of the current crisis, while others (my heart bleeds) are discovering that it is not so straightforward being a human shield as they had thought.

What next? Could we see those grisly Taliban veterans returned to Afghanistan?

A post on the Corner earlier this year on classroom use of the computer drew a large response. Computers, it is clear, are a useful tool and a fine teaching aid. They are not, however, any sort of substitute for a good teacher. The same is true of the ‘on-line classroom’.

What’s more, children appear to know it.

Here’s an interesting piece on Blair and the Pope from the Sunday Telegraph. This is a debate that is likely to continue for some time with most Christian denominations. Rome is not alone in its current stance on the situation in the Middle East.

Blair and Bush should relax. It’s a pretty good rule that, when it comes to geopolitics, the best advice is to listen to clergymen with respect, attention and ostentatious displays of humility.

And then do the opposite of what they advise.

More on the UK as a haven for the Taliban. Last week it was the footsoldiers, this week it’s the secret police.

It’s just another reason to ignore Britain's arguments in favor of an International Criminal ‘court’. For all the talk about the importance of justice for the victims of tyranny, those notions clearly don’t apply when the Taliban was the oppressor and other Afghans were the oppressed.

Disgusting.

On Meet the Press just now:

RUSSERT: "Would you take someone like Al Sharpton as your vice president?"

GEPHARDT: "I haven't made that decision yet. ..."

Isn't that something? Gephardt doesn't have the guts to say that he wouldn't choose Tawana Brawley's pastoral counselor, a rabble-rousing, race-baiting Harlem street preacher who has never served on as much as a sewer board, as his running mate. For non-Democrats, this Sharpton for President campaign is going to be an unparalled delight to watch. Rev. Al's opponents are scared to death of him.