Russian-Armenian painter Ivan Aivazovsky

                               

It's surprising that Mr. Aivazovsky, who died in 1900, is not more famous than he is. Take a minute to ponder this large wave (above).

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, July 9

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. COMEY, LYNCH, AND THE CLINTON E-MAIL SCANDAL

THE FBI AND MRS CLINTON HAVE A "REVIEW" MEETING; HILLARY BRINGS FIVE LAWYERS: Accompanying Mrs. Clinton into the meeting were her lawyer David E. Kendall; Cheryl D. Mills and Heather Samuelson, longtime aides who are also lawyers; and two lawyers from Mr. Kendall’s firm (Williams & Connolly), Katherine Turner and Amy Saharia.

THE FBI DIRECTOR COMEY AND A.G. LYNCH - BLURRING DUTIES: James Comey has submitted his FBI report and made a most succinct televised report in his presentation answering a lot of questions. The FBI did not have a way to retrieve the 20-30,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton and her lawyers scrubbed before releasing her server for public view. “Thousands of work related emails” and three classified emails not submitted by Clinton were found  on email accounts of other officials investigated.

The decision how to enforce the law then fell into the Attorney General’s hands. No matter what she said after the Clinton airplane meeting she could not turn this duty of her office  over to the FBI. She had plenty of disciplinary actions available.  Comey's recommendation was that she not press charges, but other sanctions were available (see his clear statement on that below). Even though she is a woman and Mr. Comey is a man, she should not defer her duties to the obvious dominant male. A good place to start would be to revoke Mrs Clinton's security clearance in the same way that Mr. Clinton’s perjury led to the suspension of his Arkansas law license and his disbarring from the Supreme Court practice. Mrs. Clinton cannot be trusted with the secrets of our country nor the role of protecting our statesmen or soldiers. When there was a decision to safeguard her career or safeguard the country - her choice was clear. That is what the FBI reported in no uncertain terms on July 5, 2016. A day later AG Lynch said the matter is now closed.

Some of Comey’s remarks:

It is also likely that there are other work-related e-mails that they did not produce to State and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they [HER LAWYERS] deleted all e-mails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it. While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.

In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts.

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.

As a result, although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.

Mr. Comey came to public fame with his prosecution of Martha Stewart in 2003. This was part of his statement at that time:

At a news conference announcing the charges against Ms. Stewart, James B. Comey, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said, ''This criminal case is about lying - lying to the F.B.I., lying to the S.E.C., lying to investors.'' Addressing a question that has long hovered over the investigation, he added, ''Martha Stewart is being prosecuted not for who she is, but because of what she did.''

How Republican-appointed Jim Comey became FBI chief in Obama administration.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

ISIS IN AMERICA - MINNEAPOLIS SOMALI TRIAL: Scott Johnson of Power Line looks at what the media missed. Mr. Johnson, who attended the trial, is struck by the anti-American insularity of the Somali immigrants and the normalcy of young males picking ISIS as a career choice. For now that meant going overseas, but what will happen when the strategy is to "fight where you are"? According to Mr. Johnson and the Minnesota FBI there are probably 100,000 Somalis in Minnesota.

ISIS SHOOTERS DIDN'T NEED TO GO TO ISIS CALIPHATE TO GET THE MESSAGE; TWO SHOOTERS, TWO TRIPS EACH TO SAUDI ARABIA: From Dow Jones Newswires:

Saudi officials have said that Mateen made two pilgrimages to the country, first in 2011 and again in 2012, to perform Umrah, a religious pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca. The trips lasted between eight and 10 days each. Details about the first trip couldn't be learned.

Pilgrims flock to Mecca and Medina year-round for the Umrah. The pilgrimage is optional, and many worshipers prefer to make it during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Around five million people from around the world visit Saudi Arabia every year for Umrah. Commonly known as the lesser pilgrimage, it can be performed at any time. By comparison the hajj, the major Muslim pilgrimage, is mandatory once in every Muslim’s life and takes place at a specific time each year.

Syed Rizwan Farook, the main suspect in a mass shooting that killed 14 people in San Bernardino last year, visited the kingdom twice in 2013 and 2014 to perform hajj and Umrah, Saudi officials have said.

DEATHS OUTSIDE OF WAR ZONES: A report on the drone war mostly targeting male groups in Pakistan.

ISIS ATTACK IN MEDINA: The one Ramadan attack which deliberately killed Sunnis was aimed at the Saudi role in guarding the Holy Places. They don’t think the Saudi royal family should control the Holy Places because they are hypocrites. They teach Salafist jihad, but don’t allow it in the kingdom. It is certainly true that the Wahhabi-Salafists of Saudi Arabia should no longer be the keepers of the Holy Places if Muslims around the world want to distinguish following the will of God (ISLAM) from the slaughter of Jews, Shiites, foreigners, and Christians.

BOMBING IN BAGHDAD WAS DELIBERATE RELIGIOUS SLAUGHTER: Iraq reminds the world that Muslims are the chief victims of ISIS, and ISIS reminds Iraq which Muslims they are after. "The raids of the mujahedeen [holy warriors] against the Rafidha [Shia] apostates will not stop."

SALAFIST JIHAD ATTACKS IN TURKEY AND BANGLADESH - TWO LARGE SUNNI NATIONS: If we learn to define the war we are in, there will be Sunni nations who will help us destroy the demonic ideology of the Salafist jihad. Every time a body of Sunnis establish a nation (Indonesia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Egypt) with real borders they set themselves against the Salafist jihad ideology. We have not made this clear enough. Islamic civilization, like Christian civilization, has been the soil of many distinct nations. This is in keeping with the will of God and Divine Providence. Those who would destroy the spiritual nature of national entities in the name of Western gender-ideology or Salafist jihad are the natural enemies of religion and the nations.

ISIS GOES OUT OF THE MIDEAST. MESSAGE IN BANGLADESH IS SUNNIS ARE SAFE AND FOREIGNERS WILL DIE: From the NY TIMES report:

“You don’t need to be so tense,” one of the men told them. “We will not kill Bengalis. We will only kill foreigners.” At that, Mr. Barai’s gaze flicked to the floor of the restaurant, where he could see six or seven bodies, apparently shot and then sliced with machetes. All appeared to be foreigners. Even as they killed the foreigners, the attackers were unfailingly polite and solicitous with the restaurant staff and other Bangladeshis, Mr. Barai said.

They took the staff into their confidence, complaining that foreigners, with their skimpy clothes and taste for alcohol, were impeding the spread of Islam. “Their lifestyle is encouraging local people to do the same thing,” a militant said.

“They were all smart and handsome and educated,” he said. “If you look at those guys, nobody could believe they could do this.” In the predawn hours, the militants lectured their captives on religious practices, instructing the kitchen staff to say regular prayers and study the Quran.

Early in the morning, the gunmen released a group of women wearing hijabs and offered a young Bangladeshi man, Faraz Hossain, the opportunity to leave, too, said Hishaam Hossain, Mr. Hossain’s nephew, who had heard an account from the hostages who were freed.

Mr. Hossain, a student at Emory University, was accompanied by two women wearing Western clothes, however, and when the gunmen asked the women where they were from, they said India and the United States. The gunmen refused to release them, and Mr. Hossain refused to leave them behind, his relative said. He would be among those found dead on Saturday morning.

III. THE FOURTH OF JULY

FOURTH OF JULY: Two Georges. John Ireland, Patriarch and Patriot. Fulton Sheen on America as revolution or the sacred.  America the Beautiful - Crowning Brotherhood with Elvis Presley.

THREE WARTIME PRESIDENTIAL SPEECHES ON INDEPENDENCE DAY - LINCOLN, WILSON, TRUMAN: From War on the Rocks.

IV. AROUND THE WORLD R&G ROUND UP

CONTROVERSIES IN JERUSALEM ONE STATE AND THE TEMPLE MOUNT: A new Knesset lawmaker and the Temple Mount.

FOREIGN POLICY ELITES URGE ELITES TO REVOLT AGAINST THE IGNORANT NATIONALISTS: In their own words.

CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL ELITES - WHY SUCH HYSTERIA ABOUT TRUMP AND SUCH AMBIVALENCE TOWARD GENDER IDEOLOGY: Who says commentators like George Will, David Brooks, and Charles Krauthammer are the true conservatives? They are all so troubled by Donald Trump. There is something deep here which we have not yet touched. None of them believe in God. Two openly support marriage between males. If Christians think they are losing the culture wars, it might be because the warriors in our front line on the BIGGEST CULTURAL ISSUE are "intellectuals," not men under God. They are not fighting our fight. He who does not see God may have trouble understanding that politics is about brotherhoods under God. There are many men who do not believe in God,  who do believe in murderous brotherhoods. All three of our conservative commentators think ISIS and Hitler and the KKK are outrageous. But they will never understand the fraternal spirit under the Great Patriarch that will defeat those powerful forces.

ECONOMIC ELITES - BREXIT FALLOUT: From the Daily Beast: "The Brexit vote reflected the class aspect of the Rebellion. The London Times post-election analysis , notes socialist author James Heartfield, found the upper classes 57 percent for remain, the upper middle class fairly divided, while everyone below them went roughly two-thirds for leave. It doesn’t get much plainer than that... This dissent reflect the consequences of the globalization celebrated by elites in both parties. Britain’s industrial workforce, once the wonder of the world, is half as large as it was as just two decades ago..."

THE ORTHODOX MEET IN CRETE: Their statement.

Friday BookReview: "Shop Class as Soulcraft"

(first published June 19, 2015)

"It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas."

- Charles Peguy

                                               

Some excerpts from Francis Fukuyama's review of Shop Class as Soulcraft:

[This] is a beautiful little book about human excellence and the way it is undervalued in contemporary America. 

Matthew B. Crawford, who owns and operates a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond, Va., and serves as a fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, notes that all across the United States, high school shop classes teaching mechanical arts like welding, woodworking or carpentry are closing down, to free up funds for computer labs. There is a legion of experts denigrating manual trades like plumber, carpenter and electrician, warning that the United States labor force needs to be "upskilled" and retrained to face the challenges of a high-tech, global economy. Under this new ideology, everyone must attend college and prepare for life as a "symbolic analyst" or "knowledge worker," ready to add value through mental rather than physical labor. 

There are two things wrong with this notion, according to Crawford. The first is that it radically undervalues blue-collar work that involves the manipulation of things rather than ideas. Expertise with things permits human beings to have agency over their lives — that is, their ability to exert some control over the myriad faucets, outlets and engines that they depend on from day to day. Instead of being able to top up your engine oil when it is low, you wait until an "idiot light" goes on on the dashboard, and you turn your car over to a bureaucratized dealership that hooks it up to a computer and returns it to you without your having the faintest idea of what might have been wrong. 

The second problem with this vision is that the postindustrial world is not in fact populated — as gurus like Richard Florida, who has popularized the idea of the "creative class," would have it — by "bizarre mavericks operating at the bohemian fringe." The truth about most white-collar office work, Crawford argues, is captured better by "Dilbert" and "The Office": dull routine more alienating than the machine production denounced by Marx. Unlike the electrician who knows his work is good when you flip a switch and the lights go on, the average knowledge worker is caught in a morass of evaluations, budget projections and planning meetings. None of this bears the worker’s personal stamp; none of it can be definitively evaluated; and the kind of mastery or excellence available to the forklift driver or mechanic are elusive. Rather than achieving self-mastery by confronting a "hard discipline" like gardening or structural engineering or learning Russian, people are offered the fake autonomy of consumer choice, expressing their inner selves by sitting in front of a Harley-­Davidson catalog and deciding how to trick out their bikes. 

This glorification of manual labor would seem patronizing but for the author’s personal biography. Crawford grew up in a commune in the Bay Area with a theoretical physicist for a father, and worked his way through high school and college as an electrician. Along the way he picked up the ability to rebuild the engines of old Volkswagens, something that stayed with him even as he went on to get a Ph.D. in political philosophy at the University of Chicago...  

Crawford argues that the ideologists of the knowledge economy have posited a false dichotomy between knowing and doing. The fact of the matter is that most forms of real knowledge, including self-knowledge, come from the effort to struggle with and master the brute reality of material objects — loosening a bolt without stripping its threads, or backing a semi rig into a loading dock. All these activities, if done well, require knowledge both about the world as it is and about yourself, and your own limitations. They can’t be learned simply by following rules, as a computer does; they require intuitive knowledge that comes from long experience and repeated encounters with difficulty and failure. In this world, self-­esteem cannot be faked: if you can’t get the valve cover off the engine, the customer won’t pay you. 

Highly educated people with high-­status jobs — investment bankers, professors, lawyers — often believe that they could do anything their less-educated brethren can, if only they put their minds to it, because cognitive ability is the only ability that counts. The truth is that some would not have the physical and cognitive ability to do skilled blue-collar work, and that others could do it only if they invested 20 years of their life in learning a trade. "Shop Class as Soulcraft" makes this quite vivid by explaining in detail what is actually involved in rebuilding a Volkswagen engine: grinding down the gasket joining the intake ports to the cylinder heads, with a file, tracing the custom-fit gasket with an X-Acto knife, removing metal on the manifolds with a pneumatic die grinder so the passageways will mate perfectly. Small signs of galling and discoloration mean excessive heat buildup, caused by a previous owner’s failure to lubricate; the slight bulging of a valve stem points to a root cause of wear that a novice mechanic would completely fail to perceive. 

Crawford asserts that he is not writing a book about public policy. But he has a clear preference for a "progressive republican" order in which the moral ties binding workers to their work or entrepreneurs to their customers are not so readily sacrificed at the altar of efficiency and growth. He argues that there is something wrong with a global economy in which a Chinese worker sews together an Amish quilt with no direct connection with its final user, or understanding of its cultural meaning. Economic ties, like those between a borrower and a lender, were once underpinned by face-to-face contact and moral community; today’s mortgage broker, by contrast, is a depersonalized cog in a financial machine that actively discourages prudence and judgment. 

In the end I must confess that it would have been hard for me not to like this book. While I make my living as a “symbolic knowledge worker,” I have both ridden motorcycles and made furniture — my family’s kitchen table, the beds my children slept on while growing up, as well as reproductions of Federal-style antiques whose originals I could never afford to buy. Few things I’ve created have given me nearly as much pleasure as those tangible objects that were hard to fabricate and useful to other people. I put my power tools away a few years ago, and find now that I can’t even give them away, because people are too preoccupied with updating their iPhones. Shop class, it appears, is already a distant historical memory.

                                 

Dr. Pence, you say that today's culture could use a big dose of the spirit of Thomas Edison. What do you admire about him?

Edison studied materials. He experimented with them. He understood their practical properties. The light bulb was not a summation at the end of a mathematical calculation, nor did it come from the so-called scientific method of hypothesis, experiment, observation, and conclusion. Needed was a material that responded to electrical current with much more illumination than heat -- a slow bright burn, if you will. Edison's work-space looked a lot more like a farmer's work bench than a university laboratory. He knew how lots of things worked. He tried things out.

                                   

What is science?

In general I think there are many sciences. They are bodies of knowledge about defined subjects based on categories and definitions accepted in each field. I don't believe there is a Science with a capital S. That is an epistemological claim of modernists who have abandoned the disciplines of theology and philosophy. There is a branch of philosophy called epistemology which is about how we know what we know.
. Most “scientists” who talk about Science with a capital S as the only way to know reality have never heard of epistemology and are  really quite puerile in discussing the subject.  I think here especially of Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins.

Is there an American science or American sciences?

I think historically there is an approach to the physical world and the various sciences which is peculiarly American. Celestial navigation, wood work, surveying, metal work, and the agricultural sciences were worked in with traditional school subjects in certain colonial schools. This was a pretty unique American approach. They didn't start as vocational tracking or class-based disciplines. I wrote my Educational Masters Thesis on the history of shop, agricultural classes and home economics in American education. I argued to reintegrate these tactile disciplines in a renewed, more integrated, approach to teaching the sciences. When we think of that peculiar American genius for different sciences, I see farmyard inventors, kids on computers late at night, and bicycle mechanics before I see German professors on their blackboards.

Come on, Pence, try imagining America's atomic bombs without German physicists scribbling on blackboards!  

Actually, that's one of my favorite examples.  We needed certain physicists (not at all like Einstein) who were working with uranium as a material, and we needed General Leslie Groves of the Army Corps of Engineers to actually make them. The making of the bomb was a huge technical enterprise which we often forget. But, you are right; I will concede in this case a good deal of credit to the German blackboard.

One of the big initiatives in science education is STEM -- a program to stimulate more interest in engineering and the sciences among secondary students. As a high-school science teacher, what was your take on that?

It was too focused on pushing kids into more math. It needed more of the Engineering E in its name, and much less of the ideology of science. If it could have stressed the tactile arts-shop, woodworking and electronics (including the use of  power tools), it might have discovered  a real untapped group of boy scientists and engineers. Instead, the special focus on girls in the sciences was another victory of ideology over reality. The focus of math over manufacturing was a victory of the cerebral and theoretical over the practical and tactile.

Is there any political or educational movement that might address these concerns?

Some community and vocational colleges are trying to get much earlier pathways for their institutions into the  high-schools. Those vocational schools have the trained staff and facilities which have been driven out of our high schools. The vocational colleges actually grew out of local school boards, not state institutions. This is a kind of full circle. A significant group of high-school boys would gain if this movement by vocational college teachers and counselors could reach them to  free them from the mechanical deficiencies and institutional biases of their high-school teachers and the ever more bizarre colleges of education which shaped them. I don’t mean to sound so anti high school teacher. I am not . But there a group of great teachers in vocational schools down the street from our high schools who know important skills our high school kids need. They are being kept out of daily teaching contact with high school students because of institutional sluggishness and union protectionism.

"Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys." 

         - Sam Walton

                       

UPDATE: On Ron Schara's outdoors program (show #741 -- go to the 6:30 mark), they had a good four-minute segment about city kids who put their heart and soul into learning the craft of boat-building.

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, July 2

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. THE POPE, THE MARXIST CARDINAL, APOLOGIES, MISDIRECTION, AND GENOCIDE

Another plane interview with the Pope. Read the full interview to see how out of context the reporting is, and to see how fascinating is the conversation on returning from Armenia (6/26/2016).

The headlines say 'the Pope says Church must apologize to gays,' but the heart of the interview is about Armenia and genocide, Brexit and community, and the insights of women. He defended his use of the word genocide about Armenia, and said the 20th century is marked by the three genocides:  Armenia, Hitler, and Stalin. During all three the great powers looked away for a time. His position on homosexuals was very unlike Cardinal Marx. He even talks about CONDEMNING some of the more outlandish acts of the political gay movement. No headlines on that line. He also corrected the notion that "the Church" must apologize. No, "CHRISTIANS must apologize, the CHURCH IS HOLY." This is a critical distinction lost by liberals and conservatives alike. The Pope goes forward to Poland and Azerbaijan, but the US press has only time for "apologizing to gays." It is as if the communal life of religions and nations does not exist - only gender ideology.

ON WOMEN:  "The women think differently from us, and one cannot make a good decision without listening to women. Sometimes in Buenos Aires, I consulted with my advisers, and then I asked women to come and they saw things in another light, which departed greatly . . . But, then, the solutions (were) very fruitful, very lovely. . . But this, I would like to emphasize, is more important: the way of understanding, of thinking, of seeing of women and the capabilities of women. The Church is a woman. It is 'la Chiesa', who is not a spinster; she is a woman married to the son of God, she is the spouse of Jesus Christ."

ON USING GENOCIDE TO DESCRIBE ARMENIAN EVENT:  "I didn’t know another word. I come from this word. When I arrived in Rome, I heard another word: 'The Great Evil' or the 'terrible tragedy,' but in Armenian, I don’t know how to say it… and they tell me that no, that that is offensive, that of 'genocide,' and that you must say this. I’ve always spoke of three genocides in the last century… always three! The first was the Armenian, then that of Hitler, and the last is that of Stalin… there are small ones, there is another in Africa, but as in the orbit of the two great wars there are these three… I’ve asked why… 'but some feel like it’s not true, that there wasn’t a genocide'... another said to me… a lawyer told me this that really interested me: the word 'genocide' is a technical word. It’s a word that has a technicity that it is not a synonym of 'extermination.' You can say extermination, but declaring a 'genocide' brings with it actions of reparation… this is what the lawyer said to me. Last year, when I was preparing the speech, I saw that St. John Paul II had used the word, that he used both: Great Evil and genocide. And I cited that one in quotation marks… and it wasn’t received well."

ON HOMOSEXUALS - NOT MARX AT ALL:  "I will repeat what I said on my first trip. I repeat what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: that they must not be discriminated against, that they must be respected and accompanied pastorally. One can condemn, but not for theological reasons, but for reasons of political behavior... Certain manifestations are a bit too offensive for others, no? ... But these are things that have nothing to do with the problem. The problem is a person that has a condition, that has good will and who seeks God, who are we to judge? And we must accompany them well...this is what the catechism says, a clear catechism. Then there are traditions in some countries, in some cultures that have a different mentality on this problem. I think that the Church must not only ask forgiveness – like that “Marxist Cardinal” said [laughs] – must not only ask forgiveness to the gay person who is offended. But she must ask forgiveness to the poor too, to women who are exploited, to children who are exploited for labor. She must ask forgiveness for having blessed so many weapons. The Church must ask forgiveness for not behaving many times – when I say the Church, I mean Christians! The Church is holy, we are sinners! – Christians must ask forgiveness for having not accompanied so many choices, so many families..I remember from my childhood the culture in Buenos Aires, the closed Catholic culture. I go over there, eh! A divorced family couldn’t enter the house, and I’m speaking of 80 years ago. The culture has changed, thanks be to God."

CARDINAL MARX ON THE OTHER HAND: (FROM 'NCR' ARTICLE) -- "German Cardinal Reinhard Marx wants the church to do more than apologize to gay people - a statement Pope Francis affirmed June 26. He said society must create structures to respect their rights, like civil unions, and the church should 'not to be against them.' Marx made his comments to journalists in Dublin, where he had delivered a keynote address at the conference 'The Role of the Church in a Pluralist Society: Good Riddance or Good Influence?' hosted by the Loyola Institute in Trinity College. Marx, who is president of the German bishops' conference and a member of the pope's advisory council of nine cardinals, called on not just the church to apologize to gays and lesbians, but society as a whole, which he said was implicated in this 'terrible scandal.' 'The history of homosexuals in our society is a very bad history because we have done a lot to marginalizes them. It is not so long ago and so as church and as society we have to say sorry.' The 62-year-old cardinal archbishop of Munich and Freising reiterated his view, expressed at the first Synod of Bishops on the Family in 2014, that, 'You cannot say that a long-term relationship between a man and a man, who are faithful, is nothing. That it has no worth.' He admitted his views had shocked some at the synod. Referring to the passing of legislation in Germany recognizing civil partnerships, he urged the church 'not to be against them'. He said the state had to make arrangements for homosexuals so that their rights are recognized as equal but he also suggested that marriage is something different. So far, there has been no move in Germany to permit gay partners to marry."

The position of Cardinal Marx of Germany and Bishop Lynch of Florida is diametrically opposed to the position of Pope Francis and the Catechism. To the Pope there is "nothing remotely analogous" about homosexual relations to marriage. To Marx and Lynch male homosexual relations are a form of LOVE which deserves respect. Again, the most important apology relating to homosexuality and Catholic clergy should come from the huge hidden subculture of homosexual priests and bishops who perpetrated and covered the sex abuse scandals in Germany, the US and Dublin. How can anyone say the Catholic clergy was not welcoming to gays in the last 40 years - we turned our priesthood and episcopacies of several large rich countries over to them and their sympathizers. This is especially true in the sexually corrupted, financially plush state-supported dioceses of Germany.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

ISIS HAPPENED BEFORE - THE FOUNDING AND EXTENSION OF SAUDI ARABIA: An excellent history essay.

ARE WE REALLY AT WAR WITH SAUDI ARABIA? A six-point strategy for war against the Salafists and Saudi Arabia by Dr Pence.

TURKEY HIT BY ISIS. COULD THEY STRIKE BACK?
Turkey (72% Sunni, 28% Shia) has been an ISIS enabler to this point focusing hostility on their wars with the Kurds and Syria and animosity toward Russia. They are actually ranked the Mideast premier military power. If they were part of a serious coalition to destroy ISIS, it would happen.

III. NATIONS R&G ROUND-UP

BREXIT - NATIONS RISING AS THE GLOBALIST PRESS MELTS: Buchanan applauds. The Washington Post says double down on NATO so we can show Putin (of Russia) and Xi (of China) there is still a West with Brits and US arrayed against them.

THE RUSSIAN SOUL: Putin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. Each nation has a gift - a ray of life. The real Russian project.

POLAND SET FREE FROM THE SOVIETS - A NEW FILM: From a review of the film: liberating Continent - JPII and the fall of communism. "Interestingly, the film rightly posits the beginning of the end of the Polish Communist regime with one event. On the first trip to Poland, in 1979, at the Mass in Victory Square the Holy Father prayed loudly and intently for the Holy Spirit to come upon his homeland and set it free. As he did so, something happened."

IV. PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

NEO-CON KAGAN FOR HILLARY -- SHE WAS A HIGH ALTITUDE WARRIOR AS FIRST LADY, TOO: The husband of Victoria Nuland is stumping for Mrs. Clinton. Globalism vs. nationalism really is the debate. Hillary, Madeleine, and getting Bill to bomb those Serbs.

THE REVOLT OF THE ELITES - AN ANALYSIS OF TRUMP: American Conservative Editor McConnell - very good article and reminder of the early campaign.

TRUMP SPEECH: His most coherent sustained differentiation of the two candidates.

V. AMERICAN CULTURE R&G ROUND-UP

FROM 'A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS' TO 'BONNIE AND CLYDE': A masterful piece on the degradation of cinema and the new Hollywood. Real insight about one facet that turned American culture.

THE SEXUAL LEFT: The best historian of the sexual left is Professor Paul Kengor. Here he is on an influential founder of America’s homosexual/leftist connection.

NEW CHAIR OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: Fr. Thomas Reese, SJ, appointed by President as Chair of Religious Freedom.

RUST BELT PATRIOTISM BEATS THE CALIFORNIA VALLEY: From Cleveland on Lebron James - God, Country, and the NBA championship.

Friday BookReview: The sneakily simple play that may be America's greatest

(first published December 5, 2014)

"Want to tell you something about that boy Joe Crowell there. Joe was awful bright -- graduated from high school here, head of his class. So he got a scholarship to Massachusetts Tech. Graduated head of his class there, too. It was all wrote up in the Boston paper at the time. Goin' to be a great engineer, Joe was. But the war broke out and he died in France. -- All that education for nothing."                                                                                    (Stage Manager addressing the audience)

               

Thornton Wilder wrote 'Our Town' between the World Wars. Set in a small New Hampshire town, the play opens in the spring of 1901. (Hal Holbrook gave one of the best portrayals of the Stage Manager.)

What is it about? As Emily, one of the main characters, puts it: "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? -- every, every minute?"          

                                                                                     

                                                                                 

Mr. Wilder, son of a diplomat (and strong Christian), grew up in China. He was an artillery corporal in the First World War; and rose to lieutenant colonel doing intelligence work in WWII.  

This 7-minute video will give you a better idea of what animates the heart of the play.





Arthur Ballet, longtime professor at the University of Minnesota, contended that 'Our Town' was suffused with elements of Greek tragedy.
(Taking his lecture course on the history of theater, I would exit each session walking on air. He regularly offered up a brief panegyric on the hidden depths of Wilder's classic.)

This short clip of the closing scene reveals why the actress Penelope Ann Miller is considered the finest interpreter of Emily.

"Now there are some things we all know, but we don't take'm out and look at'm very often. We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars... everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being."                                                                                               (Stage Manager)

                                                     

   [sketches by David Tripp]