Things Fall Apart

Peggy Noonan has a funny feeling that the world and the country are winding down - the fabric of society fraying as a substantial number of elites (of all political persuasions) seek their own comfort in preference to the hard work of keeping it all "on the rails". (Hat tip: Hootsbuddy) She's not talking about the manufactured crises du jour surrounding the White House and Tom DeLay, but something much broader and more deeply rooted in the history of the last 40 years.

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon... I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours." ...Not all of course. There are a lot of people--I know them and so do you--trying to do work that helps, that will turn it around, that can make it better, that can save lives. They're trying to keep the boat afloat. Or, I should say, get the trolley back on the tracks. That's what I think is going on with our elites. There are two groups. One has made a separate peace, and one is trying to keep the boat afloat. I suspect those in the latter group privately, in a place so private they don't even express it to themselves, wonder if they'll go down with the ship. Or into bad territory with the trolley.

All of which set me in a frame of mind to see this news item in the larger context of the inexorable unraveling of institutions and norms that have kept society functioning (more or less) for millennia. Specifically, I draw your attention to statistics, buried in a just-released report from the National Center for Health Statistics (under the CDC), indicating that the percentage of births to unwed mothers reached a new high of 35.7% in 2004, up from 34.6% in 2003 and 30.1% in 1992. Is this significant? I don't know. When does the proverbial frog become so lethargic from the ever-warming water in which he's immersed that he concludes that he cannot leap out and save himself? And at that point - when nothing useful can be done - what does it matter anyway?

There are persistent differences between racial and ethnic groups in terms of out-of-wedlock births, but that is emphatically not my focus here. What's notable is that the percentage of unwed births has increased across every racial and ethnic group and extends well beyond teens to women in their 20's, 30's and even 40's, (the latter being a trend I've observed anecdotally among several acquaintances recently on the theory of "Mr. Right never showed up and I couldn't wait any longer and I just had to do this.") Call it the culture of "whatever" - an outgrowth of the culture of "me". Having observed (or at least heard) about their parents rebellion against just about everything in the 60's and '70's, one can imagine that the decision to marry before having children - or ever - seems on the margin at least to be a whole lot less urgent or significant than it used to be.

UPDATE: Walter Williams has an interesting tangent on this here.

The Associated Press - One Giant Editorial Page

Under the AP headline "Cheney Adviser Resigns After Indictment" we find a pretty conventional lede about 'Scooter' Libby, followed by this paragraph:

Karl Rove, Bush's closest adviser, escaped indictment Friday but remained under investigation, his legal status casting a dark cloud over a White House already in trouble. The U.S. military death toll in Iraq exceeded 2,000 this week, and the president's approval ratings are at the lowest point since he took office in 2001. [emphasis added]

Say what?? If this were written the way news used to be written, one might expect it to end with "...remained under investigation." But the new and improved AP gives us "dark clouds" and then uses that as a flimsy excuse to jump into free-association hyperspace and bring in Iraq death tolls and approval ratings... which are relevant to the headline how, exactly? I'm surprised they didn't slip in Halliburton.

Can you imagine the mainstream press slipping Monica Lewinsky and Whitewater into every other ordinary story about unrelated White House goings-on under Clinton? No, you cannot. And if you can, I'd like some of what you're smoking.

We have an indictment about the outing of a CIA officer who not only did not meet the basic criteria for being undercover but had already been 'out' to friends and neighbors for years. And this is a crisis? Of a presidency? Only in the media's mind. Which unfortunately is still influential despite its move away from news. And they say blogs do too much editorializing...

Iraq Fallout

A lot of newspaper staff must have stayed up very late last night poring over the final piece of the Volcker report on the UN Oil-for-Food program in Iraq. This is juicy. (subscription required)

The Volcker report confirms that Saddam Hussein demanded, and got, some $1.8 billion in illegal surcharges, kickbacks and bribes from companies doing business in Iraq. It confirms that he steered billions in oil and humanitarian contracts to his politically preferred clients, particularly Russia and France, and smaller sums to agents of influence (or their associates) such as British MP George Galloway, French Senator Charles Pasqua, and Oil for Food director Benon Sevan. It confirms that Saddam did so under the noses, and frequently with the connivance, of the U.N. agencies entrusted to monitor the program...

Of the oil purchasers, the Volcker report finds that 139 out of 248 companies paid illicit oil surcharges, which ranged from 10 to 50 cents a barrel. Among the 3,614 companies that provided humanitarian goods, 2,253 -- that's two thousand two hundred fifty-three -- companies paid some kind of kickback, or "after-sales service," as the Iraqis dubbed it [including]... the construction equipment division of Sweden's Volvo... Germany's Siemens... [Korea's] Daewoo...

The report also provides a list, which runs to 60 pages, of influential individuals or groups awarded lucrative oil allocations by Iraq because they "espoused pro-Iraq views or organized anti-sanctions activities." Here again, the range is astonishing. In addition to Messrs. Galloway and Pasqua (each of whom was given oil allocations of 11 million barrels), one finds the names of a pro-Iraq Vatican priest (2.5 million)... the Orthodox Church of Russia (two million), and the Presidential Office of Russia (21.3 million).

Among the handful of Americans named by Mr. Volcker is Shakir Al-Khafaji (12 million barrels), a well-connected Detroit-area businessman who led a delegation of anti-war Congressional Democrats to Baghdad in September 2002 and who funded an anti-sanctions documentary produced by former weapons inspector Scott Ritter... [emphasis addedd]

Prediction: some on the left will try to brush this thorough, non-partisan report off as politically motivated or a case of everybody was doing it or simply drown it out in a chorus of Bush is under siege! Look over there at Scooter Libby and Harriet Miers and Tom DeLay. Sorry. Those pale by comparison. Everything about the antiwar movement domestically, and its Congressional and national champions (e.g., Russia, France) is now tainted by this. Everything.

Sowell the Great on Group Identity vs. Reason

Thomas Sowell uses a sad example of a relationship gone bad (not his) in this excellent column (almost everything by Sowell is excellent) to illustrate the chasm between those who see the world as a complex, interdependent set of rational trade-offs to be made between always imperfect alternatives and those who see it primarily as a vehicle for narcissistic idealism. His target is the left (environmentalism and Mideast peace, using WWII and the Cold War for illustration), but the right is not without a few such badge-wearers on other subjects.

Compromise and tolerance are not the hallmarks of true believers. What they believe in goes to the heart of what they are. As far as true believers are concerned, you are either one of Us or one of Them... Many crusades of the political left have been misunderstood by people who do not understand that these crusades are about establishing the identity and the superiority of the crusaders.

When Extremism Really is a Vice

"Israel must be wiped off the map... [There is] no doubt the new wave [of attacks] in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot from the face of the Islamic world. Anybody who recognises Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury..."

- Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, President of Iran in remarks yesterday before a Tehran conference entitled "A World without Zionism"... not terribly surprising considering previous official Iranian government comments such as this.

"Since the United Nations was established in 1945, there has never been a head of state that is a U.N. member state that publicly called for the elimination of another U.N. member state."

- Shimon Peres, Israel's vice prime minister and a Nobel peace laureate, yesterday on Israel Radio

Prediction: Because of international (and particularly UN and European) failures to stem Iranian nuclear ambitions, Israel will launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran by the end of next year. As was true with US and international assessments of Iraq's intentions and capabilities under Saddam, one's responsibility as a head of state is not to discount and explain the clear and unambiguously hostile sabre rattling of foreign leaders, but to take prudent steps to protect one's citizens by ensuring that it is never actualized.

When You Can't Beat 'em With Words...

... it's time to doctor the pictures.













Condi before USA Today got hold of her (above left)... and afterwards (above right.)

Thought #1: What ever happened to rational discourse?
Thought #2: Couldn't this be considered "racism" (and "sexism") as most liberals define it?

Michelle Malkin has more. Much much more.

UPDATE: Proving my point better than I ever could, I've banned one juvenile commenter whose idea of rational discourse on this matter was to respond with two words: "you s**k". Yep. That'll convince swing voters and win elections.

My Brother - Back Story and Hope

In February, my brother was a healthy guy with a great life just coming into bloom. That changed in less than a week. In early March, he came home from a business trip, feeling a little tired. (Who doesn't?) The next day he felt like he had a cold. (It's March, so what?) The day after that he felt he had the flu but made it in to work anyway to give an important presentation. (New job - who wouldn't?) He told me it went well. Nobody remembers what it was about.

The day after that he felt like it might be a bad case of the flu. He went out to clear his driveway anyway. (How bad could it be?) That night his wife got worried and took him to the emergency room. Good thing she did. Within hours he was in chemo. They told us he wouldn’t have lasted another 48 hours without it.

Because of medical science and my sister-in-law’s vigilance, my brother lived seven months after that awful diagnosis of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. A young teacher at my daughter’s school missed that diagnostic window, earlier this year. She died within days.

My brother received the best care available – of that I am absolutely certain. Yet it was not enough. The beast that slew him remains thoroughly untamed. Nevertheless, it’s exciting to realize that new treatments are coming down the pipeline all the time. My brother missed a new, promising clinical trial by a little less than a month. Sad for us. Good for others.

To keep that hope alive, I will be running the Boston Marathon next April in support of the Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Basic Cancer Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. You can donate on-line here. I’ve met some of these folks. They are amazing: world class people doing cutting edge stuff that (it’s not too presumptuous to say), has and continues to have a fundamental global impact on the understanding and treatment of all kinds of cancers.

All of the proceeds from my run go directly to the research program. (The marathon part is staffed by volunteers.) Please think about giving generously and passing this along to friends and colleagues in your network. As my brother’s case illustrates all too well, no one is immune...

Turning a Corner After Climbing a Mountain

I've been unmotivated to blog since my brother's funeral a week ago today. I'm not certain that will change right away, (but don't delete me from your blogroll just yet!)

There are the obvious reasons: deep physical fatigue and complete emotional burnout after an intense hospice vigil. (Is hospice ever not intense? Under all the quiet, emotions can be as taut as a steel cable on a suspension bridge.)

Then there are the less obvious factors: a feeling - affirmed by readers - that a lot of my most inspired writing since March has been about his trials and not about the arcana of SCOTUS nominations or North Korean gulags (not that those aren't important.) Now that my brother is gone, I'm at a loss for what to say that's not just another voice in the chorus... (which is not to say that I've written my last righteous political screed!)

I'm also feeling - as a friend aptly put it - that I've come down off the mountain. There's a tentativeness in that that's unfamiliar... a feeling that it all needs to gel before it's ready to convey to others. Driving home from the three-night vigil at my brother's bedside eleven days ago seemed surreal. And that sense of surreality went beyond the sleep deprivation and PTSD symptoms such as "brain freeze" and a 10,000-yard stare (not such a good thing to experience in heavy traffic.)

I had a sense that day (and still do) that I had been privileged to witness up close something much much bigger than my brother's exit - a sense of flowing with God's larger plans for a few days, removed from the minutiae of this world and its petty concerns.

One must of course come down off the mountain - different for having seen. It was hardly an unclimbed peak. The universality of my experience is precisely what makes it relevant, while the usually cloaked nature of it is (I think), what makes it titillating. Everyone experiences death - even if they manage to postpone that experience until they're in it. Few see the details of it. And what we do not see, we generally fear.

It's roughly analogous to the open-ended feeling I used to get at airports: of wonder at the process of departure to far-off lands, combined with fear of the huge engines as they revved for take-off.

Finally (if you've bothered to read this far), I'm thinking I need to devote much of the energy that's gone into this blog so far into a real, honest-to-goodness book with a cover and maybe a publisher if I'm lucky. The topic is still gelling - informed by this trial, but melded with an outline that's been sitting in a drawer for over a year. More on that as it emerges.

Thanks all for sticking with me through this. Your prayers and comments have meant a lot.

Oh, and don't delete me from your blogroll. Did I mention that already? :)

Giving a Eulogy I Never Wanted to Give

One of the first thoughts I recall having after I got news last March that my brother had been diagnosed with leukemia was that I could not possibly get through a eulogy for him. Yet I knew that - if he died, as he finally did last Friday - I would simply have to... somehow. I was his only brother.

It sounds like a silly thought, but that has been my number one fear these past seven months... that and becoming the sole family caregiver as my parents age. I had plenty of other fears (missing him, pain for his widow, my niece, my parents), but those were the truly selfish ones.

Yet God has a way of making things work just in time - of giving us strength when we need it, even when it seems that in human terms, the pieces are not all going to fit together.

So it was yesterday at my brother's Funeral Mass.

All I can say is that I had help. Lots of help. And none of it from this world (aside from an enormously helpful review of a draft by my wife.) I never once got through the text without cracking up in practice. And sure enough, when I walked into the church yesterday, I seized up... my knees went weak... my hands froze, my breathing got shallow and my heart raced, my body shook, my throat closed, my eyes welling up. I couldn't even have told you my name at anything above a hoarse, distracted whisper if you'd asked.

Then something happened.

It had been a cloudy morning, threatening to rain. As the priest began reading from John 14, sunlight burst through one particular part of the stained glass window - the part depicting Jesus surrounded by children. And I kid you not, that improbable first beam of sunshine we'd seen all day struck 1) my brother's casket, 2) my father's face, and 3) my niece (Ed's daughter). The same thing happened ten minutes later when the singer launched into the first bars of Ave Maria. I've got 300 witnesses. I'm not making this up.

At that moment - not because of the sunlight so much as part of it and concurrent with it - I saw Ed's face in my mind's eye and this absolutely incredible warmth and peace came over me. It was at that moment that I knew with absolute certainty that Ed was happy, that God was smiling, that he wanted us to smile too... that this all had purpose we could not know but just to roll with it and trust Him... that I would be fine in delivering Ed's eulogy because God wanted it that way. That the rest of us would be fine too. That I'd been small and fearful in doubting that He would make it possible but that that was OK now... all behind us; don't worry and don't look back.

I had been absolutely dreading that moment for seven months. Yet when it came, I was borne up on a power not my own. I cannot describe it better than to say with absolute certainty that I was channeling something else... a mere conduit for outside power.

I've excerpted the introductory and closing parts of the eulogy (parts that others have told me they liked) in hopes that they're useful to others:

Dear friends… most of the time we walk in darkness. Glimpses of how others see us—of how we’ve lived and loved—are rare and often fleeting. Ed was blessed through his ordeal to walk in sunlight for a moment—to see with eyes wide open the impact he had on many lives… not least of them my own.

Many of you have seen it also—on the website and the blogs, in e-mail and in visits, in letters, phone calls and seven months of silent prayers. Those are just a tiny fraction of it. The blessings have been awesome. To count them all would fill a book. Yes, we prayed for one miracle in particular. It was not to be. But like a child on Christmas morning, it is not ours to say which gifts God must bestow and which we will accept. We can only be grateful, recognizing those we have.

We’ve been witness to an amazing coming together of friends, colleagues and neighbors, of family near and far, of nurses, doctors, clergy and social workers—living angels all. People we’ve never met have prayed for Ed and us: from Japan to South Africa, from Britain to California, Hawaii and much more; a beautiful tapestry of love, honor and memory on which the sun will never set, knit from the threads of Ed’s rich life...

...We’re conditioned to think that more time is always better; that making it to a long, tanned shuffleboard retirement somehow makes the man; that suffering and loving deeply are extra credit courses we can take once our lives are perfectly set; that vintage wine is always better than Beaujolais Nouveau.

But Ed knew well that quality trumps quantity; that integrity is the main thing; that the love that changes another can take just an instant to express and often costs absolutely nothing: a thoughtful gesture, a kind word or simply a negative thought kept silent to oneself.

Make no mistake about it: Ed died a Christian man, a Catholic man—a yoke he was as happy to accept for six days as for sixty years; a burden he knew was light; a decision carefully considered, to humbly walk with Christ, sure in knowing that love conquers all and the best is yet to come, or as the Apostle Paul put it: "to live is Christ and to die is gain."

I ask God from this day forward, to give us the clarity and courage to remember and share the blessings He gave us through Ed’s rich life, until we meet again.

God's Time - My Brother is Gone

My brother Ed is gone - at peace at last with God and the angels after a valiant seven-month struggle with leukemia. He waited until I got up this morning to give him his regular meds, a little after 8:30AM... a third night of fitful sleep... waiting; 'til we lifted the window shades to let in the morning light; 'til our parents arrived. My mother touched his arm and his breathing simply... stopped. Free at last. His wife and my little niece (age five) were right there at his side in his own bed at home, all of us around him, reciting prayers together. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Last night we toasted to Ed's life, circled 'round the bed. His wife put a drop of his favorite single malt scotch (The Macallan) on his lips. At that, he raised the corner of his mouth in the way he always did when he grinned mischievously, then moved his tongue side-to-side to indicate he was there with us, enjoying the moment - and the whisky. That was a huge effort on his part, but there was no ambiguity. He was still there - a small, low pilot light.

Thursday our hospice nurse came by. She has seen a lot of this. She assured us, from myriad small signs that Ed was OK - the meds calibrated just right to let him go when he was ready... on his own time (or rather, God's.)

An aide gently bathed him in bed, then shaved his face and put on his favorite cologne. Late in the morning, a CD arrived from a dear friend via Fedex with instructions to play a specific track. We did and it was... beautiful... soothing... astounding... tears and hugs and healing from 3000 miles away.

On Wednesday at 5AM the hospice nurse told us half an hour. He beat that by more than two days. Why the extra time? Why the Energizer Bunny effect? ("still going...") Why did the finish line seem to fade back and back again with each passing hour? Why did we need to stumble on through three very dark nights?

I don't know. Here's a guess...

We each thought at various points, that we had done enough to fulfill God's purpose in this drama: said enough goodbyes, asked for and received sufficient forgiveness, expressed well enough our loves left dormant for too long. But with each hour, more of God's mystery unfolded around us: a huge tray of sausage lasagna showed up on the doorstoop, friends called, wrote, or simply prayed. Friends of friends... of friends heard about us and held us quietly in prayer - their energy felt so profoundly for its being optional: a choice to feel and salve our pain.

Those sitting vigil learned how to love one another just a little more deeply - to pause before passing judgment, to forgive a little more quickly, to ask and listen just a little more. Even as our nerves frayed and the bags under our eyes grew deeper, the rough edges seemed to rub off. God's purpose. God's plan. Goodness through hardship. Purpose through broken things.

A doctor called - not to talk about medical things, but to express human compassion and participate in this sad tale - part of which she'd lived so well with us. My niece wandered into the room and said something amazing... and then something else, and something else again. "Mommy, what color are souls?" She has learned more than she knows, borne witness to something she needed to see: beautiful as it is tragic.

Another friend e-mailed midway through the drama to tell of the joyous birth of his child on Wednesday - a child wanted so much for so long... a child who took her time to make herself nascent in her mother's womb, after years of yearning by her parents. God's time. It is not ours to know. It cannot be scheduled. It just... is. We must stand still and quiet, waiting in awe and wonder.

Recent posts on my brother:
A Dark Night (and Another... and Another)
Brushing Back Fear
La Vita è bella
God's Special Delivery Service
My Friend 'G'
Frozen Sunshine (including all previous links back to when he got sick in March)

A Dark Night (and Another... and Another...)

My brother is still with us, though it's become harder and harder to tell how much he knows it. Occasionally he will make a small motion to indicate that he's heard us, including what I thought was a guffaw at one of my lame attempts at humor. A lot of the time however, he's in a dream state - looking at something we can't see, reacting to... memories, visions, spirits, repeated whispers of love. We can't know. He seems peaceful most of the time - comforted easily by a touch or a word.

Last night, he ate a hearty dinner, concluding with three different desserts(!), then helped my niece to get to sleep by cuddling up with her in her bed as he often does. This morning however, it became clear that my brother had slid a long way overnight and would not be getting up.

For awhile we thought it might be a drug issue, but virtually nothing had changed there. (One always clings to hope.) As I was leaving my driveway to come out to his house, God broke the news that I would not accept: my car radio came on to the last 30 seconds of 'American Pie'. Go find the lyrics if you don't know it. (My brother – a huge music fan and former DJ would.) No, I didn't make that up.

And in the streets: the children screamed,
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.
But not a word was spoken;
The church bells all were broken.
And the three men I admire most:
The father, son, and the holy ghost,
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died.

And they were singing,
"bye-bye, miss american pie."
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
Singin’, "this’ll be the day that I die.
"this’ll be the day that I die."

Around midday, the hospice nurse and doc made clear that the disease was finally taking over and with blessed swiftness. With the excellent counsel of those folks, we've been able to keep My brother comfortable throughout. They're telling us hours, not days.

The extended family and I are all here, continuing to sit vigil around the house, coming in and out of the room from time to time as my brother’s wife sits steadfast by his side. My brother has been a lucky guy indeed. One could not wish for a better wife. She has been a pillar of strength and comfort to all.

My niece comes in periodically to hug her daddy, help with his care (e.g. sponge water onto his lips), and show him things she's made. Their priest came by the house twice today - first to sit and pray with my brother privately, and later to give him communion as the entire family stood, sat, kneeled and prayed, holding hands together at his bedside. My brother was more alert for the priest’s first visit than for anything else all day. I suppose that's a good thing: when God's appointed agent enters, my brother marshals the energy to recognize him right away... the right channel to have tuned in right now.

My brother’s wife played guitar and sang a spiritual song to him late this afternoon. At various points throughout the day, I've played DJ, putting on various CDs that my brother likes. If there's beauty to be found in dying, we've found enough today to go on one more step... one more hour... one more breath. We hold each other close in love. There have been countless blessings along this hard hard road - blessings that we trust will flower when the sun comes up. Please pray with us tonight as we await the hope of dawn.

UPDATE (5:05AM Wed.) - We're still here waiting. It's been a peaceful night, with the opportunity for more kind words to be exchanged. I have felt calmed beyond reason by the prayers of so many. Thank you.

UPDATE (8:02AM Wed.) - My brother is slipping... peacefully, oh, so peacefully. His recently acquired crucifix is on his chest.

UPDATE (10:30AM Wed.) - God has His own time for these things. We've played some of my brother's favorite CDs this morning: REM, Joe Jackson, U2, Lyle Lovett (not a typo). My niece comes in and out, playing with our parents in the meantime, rough-housing with me in the hall. (Her dad has not been able to pick her up in months and she misses that.) I have read many of your kind comments to my brother in the last few hours. I am sure he hears them. We hear them. They sustain us. Thank you. Occasionally we daub a tear though he is mute, I sense he is still mourning for what could have been. I walked the block an hour ago and... wow... the pine trees, the birds, the rain, the wet leaves, my strong legs and unlabored breathing. Life is good. Life is precious. Don't take anything (or anyone) for granted. We all have so little time. Only God knows how much.

UPDATE (6:45PM Wed.) - I should have known that my brother would be tough. This is the same man who managed trips to the gym during chemo. The same man who has unambiguously kicked my behind on more than one long bike ride. Around 5PM he lapsed into unconsciousness - (though the boundary is hard to define.) He's hanging on with us, listening to more stories and goodbyes (small 'g') and resting without pain. We must be satisfied now with the idea that he can hear us. One of the hospice docs used the metaphor of a house. My brother can hear us at the front door of his self, but he cannot rise to open it.

The priest just left after a beautiful hour of prayer - silent and otherwise as the family stood and sat, all around his bed. Words flowed. Tears flowed. I felt the saints drawing near, beckoning gently, relaxing all tension in us as they all brush by in the room.

I cannot imagine another night. I fall asleep almost wherever I sit, only to wake to this nightmare from which we cannot really awake. This night, there is only one set of footprints in the sand. We are carried by Christ - forward ever forward. I have never felt so weak. I have never felt so strengthened by what I cannot see.

UPDATE (11:30AM Thurs.) - My brother is comfortable and strong. Very strong. My sister-in-law and I (I want to call her 'sis' after this) are sitting vigil.

UPDATE (10:44 PM Friday) - My brother passed 14 hours ago. I've turned this into a new post here. Thank you all for your comments and prayers.

Pleased to Meet You... Hope You Guessed My Name

The Anchoress is taking risks and losing readers, but making brilliant eternal points about human nature, pride and the other big sins. (Message to those who've defected from her blog: get a life.) Both 'left' and 'right' will be offended. They shouldn't be. My good friend 'A' has taken the analysis of the brouhaha surrounding the Miers nomination to a whole new level.

The war between red and blue that has been bubbling for 40 years has been all along been about much more than mere politics or ideologies - it’s been about obfuscation vs. clarity, negativity vs. optimism and chaos vs. unity - and the great weapon used to keep people and their reasoning skills off guard is the muddying up of language, meanings, genders, roles, etc.

If, on a supernatural plain, the only way for the side of obfuscation, negativity and chaos to win is to first divide and conquer what is standing in its way, then it will pull out everything in its bag o’ tricks to do just that. What’s in that bag? Oh, it’s only all the same old tired tricks that have been used since the very beginning…still being used, because they still confound the audience: Pride. Avarice. Wrath. Envy. Lust. Gluttony. Sloth. Stirring up long-held anger and a salivating desire for revenge heats up Wrath - and wrath demands confrontation and release.

And lest anyone think this is a "liberals evil, conservatives saints" argument, think again and note this clarification by the Anchoress in comments:

I didn’t say liberals were the tool of the devil. I said the tools of the devil were obfuscation, chaos, blurring of meanings, etc. I wouldn’t say liberals are tools of the devil…too many of them are my friends. What I do think though is that embracing fuzzy concepts is a liberal habit that allows them to be fooled. Just as embracing other things allow conservatives to be fooled. Don’t misunderstand me. In a very broad manner of explaining: Evil is not out to kill me and leave you. It wants to kill you, too!

Read it all. She's written copiously on Miers, including this excellent piece last week: an analysis of the 'W' Rope-a-Dope and the imbred pedigrees conservatives are suddenly seeking. Excerpt:

Drudge has the siren up because of what Harriet Miers did in 1989. 1989!!!! Ask me what I was doing in 1989! I was supporting liberal policies and writing letters critical of Reagan/Bush etc. Not every conservative was born a conservative, you know. Many, like me - and apparently like Miers - came by their conservative coming to accept Jesus Christ as Lord. Reagan wasn’t “born” a conservative! Egad! I wonder if he’d be good enough for some of our very purest folks, these days.

Me too: a formerly non-religious Dukakis Democrat who worked for Gary Hart and sent nasty letters to the Reagan White House about SS-20 deployments in Europe circa 1984. Hey, I was young. :) If conservatives really wanted to enforce the pedigree they seem to be seeking, why don't we nominate William F. Buckley, Jr. to the SCOTUS?

Brushing Back Fear

Before my brother got sick, there were two things I didn't expect about sitting vigil: 1) the tremendous amount of 'down' time (only so many chairs in the room and only so many waking hours for the subject), and 2) how much talk turns to the perfectly ordinary (the weather, what to have for dinner, the headline news of the day.) The situation may be extraordinary, but the sick person as well as with other 'sitters' are no different in their need for mental stimulation and distraction - a subject I touched on in May.

The process is 'heavy' - in myriad ways. I am constantly reminded by the mere presence of so many relatives and friends that this is a major life event (dying, that is.) Yet it is only partially about dying. Much of it is about living. And much of living is incredibly mundane. Meals are eaten, exercise taken, football games and kids watched. Those routines help to brush back fear of the unknown, providing assurance that however heavy our hearts may be a few weeks from now, life will go on and it will be much like this only less intense. The seas will calm. We will all be allowed the time and space and grace we need to heal.

During some of that downtime last Friday, I had time to scan the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. My brother - sensible man that he is - subscribes in hard copy to the two best papers on the planet: the WSJ and the Financial Times. Some quiet while he slept, a cup of strong coffee and a big clear kitchen table provided an hour of bliss during which I was pleasantly surprised to discover this editorial ('Kyoto? Mamma Mia! - subscription required), by Antonio Martino, Italy's defense minister.

The position of Defense Minister seems an odd perch from which to render informed opinion on such matters - until you think about the threat to national interest that Kyoto represents. The piece neatly sums up and deflates several of the primary global warming myths I've been blogging about here for some time:

America's "failure" to ratify the Kyoto Protocol -- regularly held responsible for extreme weather conditions around the globe -- was quickly found guilty of the destruction brought about by Katrina and Rita. As usual, the eco-doomsayers care very little for the small fact that their sweeping accusations have absolutely no basis in modern science... when Kyoto was submitted to the U.S. Senate for ratification on July 27, 1999, the result was 95 nays and zero yeas. Not a single senator, not even from the most liberal fringe, voted in favor of Kyoto... Mr. Bush's position, in other words, is not simply the product of a supposedly archconservative president who arrogantly imposes his radical views on a nation held hostage by religious zealots -- as a rather popular myth here in Europe would have it... there is no scientifically sound link between rising global temperatures and an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. Nor are the events of the recent weeks unprecedented...

...while a scientific consensus about the true nature of climate change is still lacking, we know for certain that the impact of Kyoto on the average global temperature will be negligible at best. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasts that... the benefits from Kyoto amount to about 0.06 degrees in half a century. Remarkably, this is even the most optimistic estimate: S. Fred Singer -- the climatologist who developed the method for measuring the ozone layer -- reckons that it may be as small as 0.02 degrees. This is a difference so minuscule that our available instruments wouldn't even be able to notice it!

Moreover, the U.S. is not the only country that did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Both China and India, major and growing producers of so-called "greenhouse-gas emissions," are not required to abide by its terms. The EU countries, including my own, ratified Kyoto. That the EU would still insist on implementing the protocol must be seen as an institutional form of collective self-flagellation. Kyoto will severely penalize the European economy without bringing any real progress toward the noble aims proclaimed by the EU... The cost of energy in Italy, already higher than the European average, let alone that in the U.S., will go up even more [with Kyoto]. Given the country's lack of competitiveness, that can only be described as a self-inflicted wound.

Perhaps the problems of our times are manmade, after all. But rather than being caused by those "neocons" in Washington, they stem from the noble intentions of environmentalists so bent on "saving nature" that in the process they wage an unremitting war against mankind and its endeavors. [emphasis added]

Fear is a powerful thing. Fear of the unknown. Fear of our inability to control our environment - and our very being. That fear cuts right to the core of the human dilemma. Whether that fear is about our own physical mortality or the future of our planet leads to a gripping desire to just do something - anything! - to make it just like it always was; to press 'restart' and revisit the Garden of Eden. I want my brother to look and feel as healthy as he does in his wedding picture. We want the air and water as pristine as in some mystical pre-agrarian past. That desire is so strong that even if that 'something' we figure we can do is completely irrational and unlikely to do any good, we want desperately to do it anyway. Give my brother some more chemo. Spend trillions. Do whatever it takes. Make it all better.

Yet in our fear and grasping, we shut out the possibility of a miracle and forget the flaws of the past: my brother without faith, the planet without penicillin and air travel (for example.) We fail to understand the patience of God. We stagger drunk on our fatal collective hubris - the idea that science reigns supreme and that we can triumph without Him over all. And being so distracted, we ignore the many miracles all around us - changed lives and quality time with my brother as a result of his illness, or in the case of global warming (for example), greater plant productivity as a result of increased CO2.

I don't mean to imply that the planet is dying (as some might infer from this post.) Rather, I stand mute in the face of what I cannot know and certainly cannot change. We fear because we see the downsides clearly. We fail to release that fear. It's the miracles take us by surprise.

La Vita è bella

As I reflected on time spent yesterday with my brother and his family, I began more and more to identify with Roberto Begnini's character in the 1997 film, 'Life is Beautiful'. Some saw that film as Pollyanna-ish, naive, blasphemous, disrespectful. I do not. I thought it brilliant.

I'm not nearly as entertaining, of course. Our trial hardly scratches the surface of the Nazi awfulness. But what is similar is the thought that with faith and hope much of tragedy (or its absence) is in our minds - under our control. Someone asked me yesterday: "Is this the worst day of your life?" and I thought, "well, yes of course, but that misses the point; it's also one of the best. In being crushed, we are lifted up to levels of intimacy and love inimaginable in our day-to-day lives. Absolutely unimaginable.

That mindset is especially true and important where kids are concerned. Does that mean my brother is not dying? No. He is. But through that process one need not 'awfulize' unnecessarily (to borrow a favorite term from my aunt.) There are worse things than death. Death of hope is worse. Lack of faith - in something larger than us - is worse. How else could one handle a five year old child crying (when they broke the news to her): "I'm very very very three-hundred sixty-five times sad! I don't want daddy to die! Why does he have to die?"

How does one respond to that? One can't - not alone, at least. Yet in a flash, not coming from me: "We don't want daddy to die either. But God needs him for a very big job. It's a secret job. We don't know what it is. God has big plans we can't know about. You know that, right? [head nods, crying stops] It's very special and important. Daddy will be working on it with Papa [great grandfather who died in June]. You remember Papa? Daddy will be working with him. You remember how much Papa loved you? He loves daddy too. Very much. And God loves all of us - daddy and Papa too. They'll be working together in heaven on God's project until we can get there and help them. That will be a long time, but they'll be OK together with God until we're old and we get to join them." Where did that come from? I don't know. I hope it helped. It was the best I could do. But to my great surprise, it was easy to say. It just flowed. Don't worry Roberto: your job is safe. In the meantime, thanks for the inspiration.

God's Special Delivery Service

Yesterday was tough... really freakin' tough. The first two hours of this morning tell me it's going to get even tougher.

My brother is dying - this time for real and not slowly either. (Back story links here for new readers.) My mind won't quite wrap itself all the way 'round that desperate fact. A dear friend (who knows a lot about terminal cancer in the family) remarked last night on a visit: Everything seems to have changed, and yet the world goes on as before. What's wrong with all of them? Indeed.

The doctors yesterday confirmed what they said on Monday, but with even greater certainty based on new tests: the current course of treatment is palliative. It is not going to put my brother into remission. It may buy him a few weeks. Based on what I've observed, I'm thinking more like days. They have absolutely run out their arsenal. Docs are human. (A clinical trial for another therapy may open late this month, but its effectiveness is dicey. It's not likely to arrive in time.) Medical science is often amazing, but it is the ultimate hubris to suppose it will change the fact that we all have a lease on life - not a deed. As much as we've hoped for a physical miracle, God seems to have other plans in this case. Other good will come of this and is coming of this. It is His Will that will be done.

My brother is very weak: in and out of dreamy morphine sleep, his hands and feet quite numb. Moving around is difficult. Ordinary tasks are difficult. It's all difficult. It's not natural for a 39-year-old guy to submit to being cared for in all the ways that have become necessary. My late grandfather made it to 97 last June. He had some time to adjust to all that. Submission is hard, yet in that submission - grace.

In the middle of the afternoon yesterday (while bro dozed in the infusion room), my sister-in-law and I made some rounds to see the nurses on the two units he has inhabited. They were instantly moved when they saw us there together. One took her break time to walk the quarter mile over to visit my brother and say goodbye. Another ex doc of his ('G') who has since moved on to another job also came by on hearing the news. Our social worker - the unheralded light in so many lives - broke down and cried as she said goodbye to him in private.

One doctor noted the glimmer of hope that's always there: some patients come out of hospice via the non-traditional route. To which I'll add: one particular dead guy came back after three days in a tomb and changed the course of history. That was a long time ago, but I'm told that a lot of people saw it happen. My brother gets confirmed into the Catholic Church on Saturday. In the meantime, he is confirmed of that truth in his heart. I don't know how he would get by - I don't know how anyone gets by - without that kind of faith to lean on.

It was a day for thinking and sitting and praying and being together. My younger daughter cooked a pasta candlelight dinner for two for my brother and his wife here at our house. Wine was served. What the heck at this point, right? I understand this was done at another special supper, twenty centuries ago. My brother kept a beautiful set of rosary beads with a crucifix near him - in his pocket, his hands, on his chest - throughout the day. That gave him comfort.

A little story about that. Bear with me. It comes with a circuitous wind-up:

Last month, I was involved in a crazy all-night relay running race in New Hampshire. I asked a friend ('L') to join the team. He and I asked another friend ('S'). She asked a friend of hers ('B') at the very last minute. Implausibly - VERY implausibly - he agreed to show up on less than 24 hours notice. Nobody does that. This race is a big deal - requiring sleep deprivation, 20 miles of hard running, and camping in a van for 36 hours with sweaty, tired people. It requires, how shall I say, a certain kind of person. The likelihood that 'B' would have been with us that weekend was nil: a ridiculous coincidence. And yet, there he was.

Thursday night before the race, 'S' and 'B' show up at my house to get an early start the next day together. We bustled in the pre-dawn dark, packing up our gear and heading out the door. Both 'S' and 'B' are Catholic. 'B' is devoutly Catholic... an amazing, loving, exuberant, exceedingly kind and respectful guy. In his early 60's, 'B' is involved in adult conversions to Catholicism at his parish. (I had not known that before that weekend.)

Flash ahead to Saturday night. We're all exhausted, dirty, sleep-deprived and hungry - our team of twelve having run over 200 miles in the course of the weekend. I'd learned a few hours earlier - during the race, in fact - of my brother's positive response to treatment. Everyone on the team was extremely supportive and happy for me.

After dinner, 'S' and 'B' left to go home. My daughters went in to change the bedclothes in the room that 'B' had occupied. It is a room with special significance around my brother - a place he has slept on the way back from hospital visits, a sunny place where, when things have hit bottom, I've gone to pray and cry my eyes out for his healing.

In the course of changing the sheets, my younger daughter discovered that 'B' had accidentally left a beautiful set of rosary beads behind. She recognized their significance right away and reverently brought them to me. I called 'B' on his cell phone. He was about ten miles out from my house at that point, driving home with 'S'. I asked how he'd like me to return them. Without hesitation: please give them to your brother and say "welcome to the faith". Needless to say, I did - the next day, Sunday. It was quite a moment... lots of hankies and smiles and hugs. He already knew he'd made the right choice. At that point he really knew.

One month to the day after he was given a death sentence by the docs; a few weeks after deciding to join the Catholic church, in a very precise, particularly special brother-related place, a set of the most beautiful rosary beads I've ever seen just SHOWS UP via a ridiculously long series of 'coincidences'. The unknowing courier: a man who exemplifies Christ's way of living more than just about anyone I know.

To be absolutely clear: 'B' did not plan this. He did not choreograph it. He wasn't even supposed to be there. Before that weekend, he didn't even know the details about my brother's situation. He had left the beads/crucifix there by mistake, presumably after praying, as we'd stumbled around in the dark on Friday morning.

Twelve team members. Friday dark, Sunday rosary. A perfect gift. You decide. Fedex has NUTHIN' on the Big Guy.

FEMA's Foolishness

As I've opined before, much of what's been thrown at FEMA is undeserved. This however, is absolutely moronic.

The Phoenix Fire Department's Urban Search and Rescue team has been suspended by a federal agency because it brought armed police officers for protection on hurricane relief missions... Phoenix's team included four police officers who were deputized as U.S. marshals when they participated in relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. The team was credited with plucking more than 400 Katrina survivors from rooftops and freeway overpasses in flooded sections of New Orleans.

It's reminiscent of aide agencies that pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan last year because headquarters bureaucracies were unwilling to allow aide workers to affiliate with armed escorts. In a world where one's opponents (Islamofascists or urban gang members), observe the Geneva Convention, none of this would be up for debate.

My Friend 'G'

Last June, I wrote about an astounding set of 'coincidences' that transpired last March in the first hours after learning of my brother's leukemia. I confess that I left something out: a seemingly mundane event didn't blossom into its full significance until just this afternoon.

I have this friend, 'G'. OK, it's a stretch to call her a friend. She's an acquaintance. 'G' is confined to a wheelchair, her body shriveled and wasted by chronic illness. 'G' lives in a nursing home. She goes to my church. I'd guess she's about my age - maybe just a little older. She's the kind of person whose physical appearance leads to social angst. How should I approach her? Should I speak more loudly than normal? Simplify what I'm saying? Should I bend down? Stand up? Should I try to shake her gnarled hand? What's wrong with her?! Aargh. I'll just ignore her.

When I walked into church last March, after visiting my brother for the first time in the hospital, she was the first person I saw. 'G' was the first person outside family to learn of my brother's leukemia. I came up the back stairs into the main hallway and there she was: sitting in a shaft of light, patiently in her wheelchair. (Our church hallway features two skylights.) Nobody else was around. I told her of my distress. She was an angel - speaking exactly the words of comfort I needed to hear at that moment, slowly and with great difficulty. Each one precious and full of love.

At the time, I thought: That's remarkable. Of all the people who would be on my short list (if I had one), to signal that God was with us through this... 'G'. Yes, 'G'. She'd definitely be in the top five. The least among us. The most overlooked. The most faithful. The most broken.

I filed that all away.

Flash ahead seven months...

This afternoon I stopped by church to drop off some items for the upcoming fair. I'd been meaning to do it all morning. I got delayed. I almost never stop by church on a weekday. I've never seen 'G' outside of Sunday worship, and often not then either. She's been hospitalized a lot. But today - of all days - just as we were pulling out of the parking lot to head over to my brother's house... there she was. A wheelchair transport van had summarily dropped her off in the parking lot. Out of the rear view mirror I saw her slowly, painstakingly making her way up the slope towards the long entrance ramp. (Why the van personnel didn't help her I don't know.) She was alone.

A test? A gift? An angel?

Yes, all of those - and more. I stopped the car and went to her. Her first thought was for my brother: how is he? Alas. I told her. She reached up and took my hand. In that gesture: God.

A Better Than Average Politics Test

Check out this fascinating five-minute test that goes beyond the traditional labels. My result: on W's chin, and Reagan's left shoulder. Interesting...

My brain is absolute mush today so this is about as coherent as it's going to get.

Frozen Sunshine

Yesterday I visited my brother at his home. It was the kind of October afternoon that seems eternal here in New England: blue sky, warm air, bright sunshine, no bugs, no pollen and not a breath of wind. Like a slice of heaven, it felt as if our earthly weather had been suspended for a time. Eden had been allowed a brief return. We took a walk. He stumbled a little. I held his arm. He didn't need it.

"What do you think?" I asked. "Do you think it's back?"
"No. It's not the same as last time. I don't think so."

I was so convinced by his assessment that this morning, in the hospital, I failed to notice the damp, red rims on Dr. S's eyes. She listened patiently while we explained the walk around the block, the feeling of 'not like last time'. The feeling that it was all OK except for a little backache and some fatigue. The feeling that we didn't think we even needed to explain: with weather this sublime, time had simply stopped.

But it had not.

Dr. S stood on the other side of my brother's bed. The state of her eyes registered just below the surface of my conscious thought. Something is not right. This is hard for her. Why is that?

"Your blood shows 42% blast cells. Your white counts are ten times normal. We're all a bit surprised that it came back this aggressively. You were clean on Friday. We can keep you comfortable. You don't have to come back here if you don't want to... I'm sorry. We've exhausted all the treatments that would work."

Ringing in my ears. Face tingling. Hyper-alert to the bed, the wall, the chair, the blanket, my shoes. Hands instinctively in pockets. Questions. Searching for control where none was to be had. I noticed his hands - my brother's hands. Men rarely look at one another's hands. They shake them. They high five. They rap knuckles. They do not contemplate. But there they were in my field of view: gentle and soft from six months in bed... warm and pink and here... still here. For now. I grabbed one, held it, and hugged my sister-in-law. Tears flowed.

The hospital chaplain arrived along with our dear social worker. The medical staff departed. We prayed and stood in silence. For a Very. Long. Time.

Silence in our society feels strange - like nakedness in public. What am I when I'm not speaking or listening but just being? It's a prickly, impatient feeling for many of us - something that takes practice - something few of us do well. Even without the heavy content, silence just feels... uncomfortable. We've been conditioned to be in motion: doing and imparting and absorbing. The mind will not sit still. Just 'being' feels like death. Of course it is anything but.

A part of me wanted to believe that if we weren't actually talking about my brother's impending death at that very moment that maybe it wasn't real. Part of me wanted to believe that a chat about the Red Sox or what to eat for dinner would somehow paper over the awful truth that had been spoken.

One wishes that the ordinary could crowd out this kind of extraordinary. And yet another part of me was alert: this is extraordinary for a reason. This has meaning. This is special. You are here with him and that is a gift. Cherish these moments. Remember them. They will soon be all you have... except for faith.

There is no easy way to sum up a day like this. Most of us have few if any reference points for the experience - no convenient norms or props from television or film about how one should behave. Oh sure, there are plenty of cliches - emergency room scenes, funeral scenes, deathbed scenes. But the entirety of the day is something for which there is no template. One grapples with each moment, waiting for sleep to take it all away - to wash it clean by dawn, but also wanting to press 'pause' - to freeze the sun and just be still.

Instead, one must walk meekly through each moment, asking for guidance and strength and getting just enough, just in time to do what needs to be done: call the parents, write the e-mails, comfort whomever needs comforting, take some time out to keep from bursting, and get it all together enough to clarify the awful truth again. Halfway through the afternoon it dawned on us: the first telling had been just a little too elliptical to my brother's heavily medicated state. He heard but did not hear - the space between the lines too narrow for the opiates to fit through. I volunteered to tell him. My sister-in-law left the room. I started. I stopped. I stared at a Phillips head screw on the bedrail for nearly a full minute. The room swam. I took another breath.

"There's nothing else they can do to cure you. They're saying days, maybe weeks."
"You mean I'm going to die?"
"Yes." Gasp. Blur. Cry.

There was more to it, but I'll leave it at that. The Anchoress wrote last fall about her brother's death as faintly sweet and I think I know now what she meant. My brother has opened up, softened, and slowed down. In giving up he has gained much. The last six weeks have been an incredible gift. Time to say goodbye. Time to cement his faith. Time to see what had been there for him all along. I have no doubt - nor does he - that we will see each other again. That he is going ahead. For the first time in our lives, I cannot lead the way.

This week's sunshine will be forever frozen, like a fly in amber. Like the Red Sox in last year's Series. Like "I do" and "it's a girl" and "congratulations" and "we're sorry". All those moments and more will come to define a life in the minds of those who love him. A life that will pass without a fortieth birthday.

Previous posts on my brother (in rough chrono order):

Change of Pace
The Infinite Value of Terri's Brokenness
Life Crashes In
Wise Friends; Troubled Times
On Suffering, Meaning and GodBlogging
Uncomfortably Numb
The Holy Spirit Hard at Work
Cancer and the Veil of Ordinariness
Politics Gets Personal - Cancer and the FDA
My Brother's Trials
Driving, Reflecting and Waiting
Death and Insight
Worshipping the World
Assurance When We Need It
Wisdom In Difficult Times
Coincidences That Aren't
Back to Reality
Dealing - In Funny Ways
Cancer Returns - Again
A Punch to the Gut - My Brother's Cancer
A Spiritual 'Thinness'
Being Present
Parking 'Karma' - God is a Bostonian
Eye of the Hurricane?
A Miracle: Hallelujah!
Catching Up

Alvinism and the Bushitler Crowd

Is Donald Sutherland (an) Alvinist?

Donald Sutherland warned this week: President Bush "will destroy our lives!"

Does anyone still remember the incomparable Marvin Kaplan, creator of dozens of comic icons? In the 1950s TV sitcom "Meet Millie", he played Alvin Prinzmetal, composer, poet, and psychotic. One of Alvin's paranoid peculiarities was that, whenever anyone voiced the slightest disapproval or disagreement, he would recoil, cringe, and hiss "you hate me!" I'd like to propose Alvin as the poster boy for a prevalent degenerative disease in social disputes—denouncing one's opponents as evil or insane. This is an ancient ploy that debaters call "poisoning the well"... the media are often willing tools of alvinists in other ways. Edgar Allen Poe, a journalist himself, said "it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation…than to further the cause of truth". Newspapers have not changed since Poe’s day and television cameras are drawn, as if by magnets, to the flamboyant and outrageous. [emphasis added]

The Software Equivalent of Yelling 'Fire' in a Crowded Theatre

One of the first things one is supposed to know about the First Amendment after 'freedom of speech' is that it does not extend to yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. I.e., the right is not absolute. It comes with responsibilities. Certain societal interests (e.g., avoiding the deaths that would ensue from a panicked stampede in said theatre), trump the individual's right to spout off in the way, place and manner of his choosing. This well accepted doctrine has yet to be extended to software. California Conservative has taken the time to craft a fact-filled, well-reasoned post about a depraved new videogame ("25-to-Life") that glorifies killing police officers.

...communities across the US have criminalized hate speech and created no-tolerance zones so draconian that children, who have no violent disposition or history, have been expelled from school for acts as benign as bringing scissors into a sewing class. Merely joking about bombs or hijacking at airports can result in missed flights and criminal charges.

So if these non-specific and largely unintentional acts are so dangerous, why hasn’t Congress criminalized the racism and violence actively used to promote video games, which indoctrinate hatred, desensitize our youth, and effectively train school-yard assassins? ...if the US Supreme Court’s standard of a clear and present danger doesn’t apply to the 10,000-plus violent crimes reported in the US each day, I’m not sure what does. Federal law also prohibits companies from providing material support and resources to individuals who prepare for certain criminal acts.

It's worth reading in its entirety. Don't forget to sign the petition at the end.

World War III

Can we lay to rest the idea that we're not at war with Islamofascism globally? We are not empowering this stuff. It is not new. We have faced a choice these past ten+ years: be passive and watch the carnage continue (been there, tried that), or go after it and root out those making it happen. Fortunately we're doing more of the latter these past two years.

Bombs exploded almost simultaneously Saturday in two tourist areas of the Indonesian resort island of Bali, killing at least 19 people and wounding 51 others, police and hospital officials said. The victims included at least two Americans.

"Some people have had their heads blown off... There was blood everywhere... At least four people have passed away and one is being resuscitated right in front of me." Another witness said body parts had littered the area around the Raja restaurant. "I ran inside and saw many injured and I found one man's head near the kitchen. I also found a leg and a man's body."

Meanwhile in France:

French authorities arrested an Islamist cell in the suburbs of Paris and in Normandy that was planning attacks on the Paris metro, airport and the DST- rough equivalent of the FBI- HQ... one of the arrested members of the cell confirmed the three targets and added that his group was planning attacks against other European countries. Also, some of the members of this group traveled to Lebanon to gain explosives expertise. And they even thought about launching a chemical or biological attack, using ricin but gave up because of the complexity of the technical aspect.

UPDATE I: New headlines are being posted every 10-15 minutes at the Jakarta Post. Unfortunately, servers for Indonesia's Antara News appear to be down. NewKerela out of India is reporting 30 deaths.

UPDATE II: This extraordinary speech by Condi Rice at Princeton on Friday (audio here) sets all of this nicely in context. More on the environment in which the speech took place, and the Q&A afterward can be found at the Bad Hair Blog.

...statecraft can assume two fundamentally different forms. In ordinary times, when existing ideas and institutions and alliances are adequate to the challenges of the day, the purpose of statecraft is to manage and sustain the established international order. But in extraordinary times, when the very terrain of history shifts beneath our feet and decades of human effort collapse into irrelevance, the mission of statecraft is to transform our institutions and partnerships to realize new purposes on the basis of enduring values...

...if you believe, as I do and as President Bush does, that the root cause of September 11th was the violent expression of a global extremist ideology, an ideology rooted in the oppression and despair of the modern Middle East, then we must speak to remove the source of this terror by transforming that troubled region. If you believe as we do, then it cannot be denied that we are standing at an extraordinary moment in history.

Some would argue that this broad approach to the problem is making the world less stable by rocking the boat and wrecking the status quo. But this presumes the existence of a stable status quo that does not threaten global security. This is not the case. A regional order that produced an ideology of hatred so savage as the one we now confront is not serving any civilized interest.

For 60 years, we often thought that we could achieve stability without liberty in the Middle East. And ultimately, we got neither. Now, we must recognize, as we do in every other region of the world, that liberty and democracy are the only guarantees of true stability and lasting security. [emphasis added]

Dang, she's good. The whole thing is worth reading - and reflecting on. I wish the prez spoke this well, but in the meantime, I can't help but thinking that somewhere, MLK is smiling.