Posted on 07/06/2005 10:01:01 PM PDT by annalex
THE NEEDLE, PLEASE
I think I was in college when I first subscribed to "National Review" magazine. I kept renewing faithfully for more than three decades. Some years ago a youngish editor was brought in, and after a while I no longer saw any of the familiar names.
Of course, some long-time writers had moved into a well-deserved retirement, and some had died. It was natural for the roster to change, but other things also changed, including the magazine's intellectual level and commitment to principle.
This year I ignored the pleas to renew and let my subscription lapse. Occasionally I visit the magazine's web site, National Review Online, but the same new writers are there, producing much juvenilia and showing themselves to be more loyal to a political party than to traditional ideas.
Let me give one example. John Derbyshire, a transplanted Englishman, wrote this at the web site:
"At the Atlanta bash last month, an audience member asked the panel whether the [Terri] Schiavo case had caused us to change our minds about the underlying issues. I piped up and said, yes, the case had changed my mind in one respect. It had made me realise--a thing I never realised before--that I do favor euthanasia.
"Ramesh [Ponnuru, another writer for "National Review"] asked me at some point why, if I were willing to see Mrs. Schiavo have her feeding withdrawn so that she dehydrated to death over several days, I wasn't willing to just have her [be] given a lethal injection. I couldn't think of any satisfactory answer to this, and haven't been able to since; so in all honesty, I am bound to say I favor the lethal injection, in at least some cases.
"Since I have never had a strict anti-abortion position, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to find that I don't have a strict anti-euthanasia position, either. I just hadn't thought it through before."
Apparently not.
LITMUS TESTS
Sandra Day O'Connor has tendered her resignation, and President Bush is making preparations to nominate a replacement. We will know soon enough who that will be.
Liberals on the Senate judiciary committee are making the usual demands for a "centrist" nominee, which is to say someone who passes the pro-abortion litmus test. Unlike many others, I have no problems with litmus tests. I think the President should use one in making his choice.
The one he should use was given in our "Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics." The nominee should be someone who conforms to Catholic teaching on all five non-negotiables, even if the nominee is not a Catholic. Other considerations should be secondary: male vs. female, this ethnic group or that, long-time confidant of the President or not.
Just as a litmus test should be used in selecting a new member of the Supreme Court, so one should be used in selecting writers for a magazine that claims to articulate the conservative political position. While I hope that the President will have the courage to impose a litmus test (I have my doubts, but we shall see), I have no real hope that "National Review" will undertake an internal reform. I think the magazine is too far gone.
"National Review" has been reliably, if not ideally, pro-life, but why is a man such as John Derbyshire still associated with it?
I had not been aware that he "never had a strict anti-abortion position"--I do not recall his having written about abortion--but now he has admitted it, and he has gone further than most of the people who sided with Terri Schiavo's husband. Derbyshire says it would have been fine if she had been put to death the way inmates on death row are put to death (and the way pets are "put to sleep"), with an injection.
No matter what his skills as a writer--and he has produced nicely crafted columns--Derbyshire has shown himself to be a bad thinker. He may be expert at mathematics (I have enjoyed his frequent mathematical interludes), but he is hopeless at morals. That he remains at the magazine tells us much about its editors and their principles.
There was a time when "National Review" really did "stand athwart History, yelling 'Stop!'" (a line from its first issue). But that was a long time ago. Accommodation with the secular mind-set started several decades back, but with the almost complete changeover in staff the accommodation accelerated, and the result is a party magazine that increasingly follows the "big tent" strategy.
This is not a strategy based on firm principle but on the exigencies of political maneuvering. If today the magazine has no qualms running articles by someone who favors euthanasia, is there any certainty that in a few years it won't favor euthanasia as an editorial policy?
POPE PETER II
Yes, this is a look at another anti-pope. I ask you to read these few paragraphs because there will be a follow-up in next week's E-Letter. The follow-up will not be about the man who styles himself "Pope Peter II" but about a prominent American apologist who, it seems, has a connection with this anti-pope.
For now let me tell you about Maurice Archieri. He says he became the real pope in 1995 through the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Archieri was then 70, so he would be 80 now. Prior to his retirement he worked as an automotive mechanic. I have been unable to find at his site anything to suggest any sort of theological training. What I did find was a touching video. You can find it and his position papers at http://custodi.club.fr/Indexangl.htm
The video shows the 2002 episcopal ordination of Jean-Marie Archieri. The ordinand seems to be nearly as old as "Pope Peter II," so perhaps he is his brother. Be that as it may, the video shows a ceremony that takes place in a tiny chapel, cluttered the way most "independent Traditionalist" chapels are cluttered. The room may have been used previously as a bedroom. It is that small.
The two Archieris are assisted by a much younger man, dressed in a surplice. He looks a bit bored. He frequently turns his head to look around the room, and at one point he rubs his finger in his ear. I wonder what he really thought about these two elderly men playing bishop.
"Pope Peter II" heads a group called Catholici Semper Idem (Catholics Always the Same). Its web site is in French with an execrable translation into English. The translation apparently was generated automatically by a computer program--in this case a program that needs a more skilled programmer.
Despite the mock-English, you can make out well enough the group's arguments, the chief one being that John Paul II was not a real pope. In the mind of "Peter II," the late pontiff actually was a "prophet of the Antichrist" who merely dressed up as pope. This is ironic, coming from a man who dresses up as pope.
There are many anti-popes in today's world, perhaps more than at any time in history. In some cases--and perhaps this is one--it is hard not to feel empathy for the pretender because the man does not realize that he is pretending. For whatever reason, he really thinks that he is the head of the Church.
It is hard to be angry with someone whose actions may be the result of mental imbalance, senility, or grossly misguided idealism. (Some anti-popes are quite clearly con men, but most appear to be convinced of the authenticity of their papal status.)
As I said, these paragraphs about yet another anti-pope have a connection with something that will appear in next week's E-Letter. Stay tuned.
Until next time,
Karl
You're accusing Keating of being a "liberal"?
A personal matter in which he felt necessary to disclose the name of his "friend", the name of his friend's wife and family members on a public forum, knowing that this person posted by a pseudonym. Yep, he sure has class. [sarcasm] Did you happen to read the Sungenis article in the link?
"Everyone already admits that when there is a military necessity, draft is permissible."
Which means every day of every week of every year until the Second Coming.
How can you be unsure? It is not difficult to determine whether the Constitution grants the federal government the power to compel community service: simply read it. Unless there a provision somewhere in that document that grants such power, the federal government may not do it.
At least that is the theory. Unfortunately, we have come to the point that the plain meaning of the Constitution is too often twisted or ignored entirely. As I indicated before, if enough people go along (five members of the Supreme Court are enough in some cases), all kinds of unconstitutional things are done every day.
As for a constitional amendment—good luck.
Depending on the extent and conditions of such service, I think it does. "Limited" is not synonymous with "nonexistent."
I was using limited to mean "performing functions explicitly granted by the Constitution, and none else." So yes, in areas for which it has no explicit powers, the government should be nonexistent.
It might, or it might not [become a boondoggle], depending on how well it were accomplished.
The same was undoubtedly said by the proponents of every other government boondoggle in our history. They always underestimate the cost and overstate the benefits of their pet programs. Name me a federal social program that has delivered on its promises, and I will name you five that have not.
As I stated earlier, one good place to put them to work would be in the repair of roads and bridges.
Road and bridge repair is performed by companies that have the specialized knowledge and equipment for the job; it is not work for untrained amateurs. So of course the young people would have to be trained in road and bridge repair. Someone would have to be paid to do the training, either the companies themselves or a third party. (That increases the cost of the program and provides an opportunity for graft.) Once trained, the young "volunteers" would pose a threat to the jobs of the paid workers, so something would have to be done to address that problem. (More bureaucrats will be needed.) An easy way to do this would be to restrict the "volunteers" to work that is not in direct competition with the current workforce. So rather than actually repair the roads, the "volunteers" might be set to work picking up trash alongside the roads. (We have prisoners doing that work in my county.) That activity would soon lose its appeal to the young people, so their supervisors would either have to find ways to motivate them or give up on the project. My guess, based on other government work programs, is that they would do the latter.
Tell me again why you think compulsory national service is a good idea.
Not at all. It means that a draft needs to be militarily justified in the concrete circumstance. For example,
"Israel is being invaded by Hamas. We need 2,000,000 men under rifle by Monday to stop that. We need a draft". Or "Canada has a 20-division invasion force ready to cross St. Lawrence. They have a territorial claim on Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. As soon as they move, Mexico is sure to advance across Rio Grande. Nicaragua has an expeditionary force of 5 divisions armed by the Taliban. We need 2,000,000 men under rifle....".
"It means that a draft needs to be militarily justified in the concrete circumstance."
A draft is always militarily justified under the concrete circumstance.
Right now, for instance, China is preparing for war on us.
"it is not work for untrained amateurs."
Anybody can shovel macadam and drive a steam roller.
"Tell me again why you think compulsory national service is a good idea."
Not interested. Anytime anyone wants to do anything, there is a certain type of person that always has a zillion reasons it wouldn't work.
Luckily there is another type of person that ignores the nattering nabobs of negativity, and just goes ahead and gets things done.
Dear dsc,
I agree with you that it seems that the government has the power and authority to require community service of young folks.
I disagree that it's a good idea.
The problem is that the folks who wind up in charge of community service are often folks who think that government should often be the first resort to solving any social problem. These folks also believe in solutions to which conservatives are usually averse.
Because these folks gravitate to this (and to government service, in general), it's difficult to avoid a bias in the administration of the program, a bias that is highly unfavorable to conservatives.
In my own state of Maryland, to graduate from high school, high school students must perform a certain number of hours of community service. Would that it were restricted to, say, cleaning roadsides and parks and things.
In Maryland, last year, our Republican governor tried to get approved slot machines for some of our horse racing tracks. Horse racing in the United States actually started in Maryland, in what is now Bowie, but the industry has been in decline for many years, in part because neighboring states have other forms of gambling at their horse tracks. In part to raise revenue (our previous governor left a billion-dollar deficity), and in part to save the historic horse racing industry in Maryland, the governor proposed the slots.
The state branch of the NEA decided that this was a bad idea (I'm not altogether sure why teachers' unions must pronounce on policy issues as varied as war, abortion, and slot machines at race tracks, but apparently they see some reason for it.). Thus, principals and teachers in many of the public schools organized protests at our state capitol during the last session of our General Assembly, and gave out community service hours to students who attended and protested against the governor's proposed policies.
Students who rallied in favor of the governor's proposals were given no community service credits.
In an ideal world, this kind of crap wouldn't happen.
But folks who are more liberal, and less morally scrupulous are the ones who are more likely to gravitate toward this nonsense, and if we're going to have community service programs, conservatives must face the reality that it will be a continuous, uphill struggle to prevent them from being co-opted by folks with a liberal agenda.
Based on pragmatic grounds, I oppose this idea.
sitetest
Please.
We have enemies, for sure. We also have a military that says it does not need its statesside bases and is within 5% (or better) of its recruitment goals, despite high-visibility battlefield losses. The kind of conflicts we are in and likely to be in call for better intelligence, better allies in the Third World, better special ops, better civil defense, and an immigration reform. Our military doctrine is technological, not numerical, superiority. These are conditions justifying a draft?
However, it is good you moved away from your earlier concept of a draft as a national therapeutic good toward a discussion of concrete military needs.
I am not so sure. In any case, there appears to be more to road repair—and much more to bridge repair—than that. The crew that has been working on the roads in my area do not shovel macadam; they operate large, specialized machinery to do the work. Undoubtedly, young people could be taught to operate the equipment, but at what cost? And what do we do for those who do such work for a living? I notice that you did not bother to address those issues.
Not interested. Anytime anyone wants to do anything, there is a certain type of person that always has a zillion reasons it wouldn't work.
I assume that means you cannot offer convincing reasons why compulsory service would be a good thing. That is not surprising, since I have yet to hear anyone else do so. Those who promote the idea seem to have a vague feeling that it would be good for young people to be doing something for their country, even if that is something that doesn't really need doing.
To get the country to adopt compulsory national service, you will have to cite specific benefits. You will also have to address the practical problems that would inevitably arise. For instance,
1. How long would people serve, and where?
2. Who would be required to serve? Would some people be exempted from serving? If so, who?
3. What jobs would they do, and how would they be assigned?
4. Where would the "volunteers" housed? How would they be fed and clothed?
5. What would be the effect on the civilian job market?
6. What would have to be done to protect the livelihoods of workers who must compete with "volunteers"?
7. Who will be responsible for seeing that "volunteers" are properly trained and that they do the work they are supposed to do?
8. How do you motivate "volunteers" to do the work expected of them? What is to be done with those who cannot—or will not—work?
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Luckily there is another type of person that ignores the nattering nabobs of negativity, and just goes ahead and gets things done.
That is fine so long as worthwhile things get done. Alas, too much of what the government does is useless at best.
"I assume that means you cannot offer convincing reasons why compulsory service would be a good thing."
Well, you know what they say about assuming.
The fact is that your negativity just makes my ass tired, it's been a long week, and I don't feel like dealing with it.
"Please."
Begging won't help. Better do some reading.
"We also have a military that says it does not need its statesside bases"
We have a Klintonized military that doesn't have the balls to stand up to the likes of Schumer and Durbin.
"and is within 5% (or better) of its recruitment goals"
As a result of (a) fudging goals; (b) fudging standards; and (c) putting women into positions that men will have to fill in the eventuality of a war with a serious opponent--which means those positions are effectively vacant, even if the paperwork looks right.
"The kind of conflicts we are in and likely to be in"
If history teaches us one thing, it is that the unlikely happens.
"Our military doctrine is technological, not numerical, superiority."
It has been said that plans are the first casualty of any war. Losing doctrines are never far behind.
"These are conditions justifying a draft?"
Not the conditions you cite. Unfortunately, the actual conditions we face are.
"However, it is good you moved away from your earlier concept of a draft as a national therapeutic good"
Haven't done that at all. Service is good for a young man, and turns them into better citizens.
"These folks also believe in solutions to which conservatives are usually averse."
So you oppose it on the presumption that liberals will be in charge.
Sounds like pre-emptive surrender to me.
Awesome story! Thank you for sharing it!
OK.
This thread is about NR and the antipope. Since you have all this time and ideas how to make better citizens out of young men, why don't you start your own, dedicated to that silliness, thread?
I've been subscribing to NR for 4 years. It's great. I read it on the train. I think it's a fine magazine.
"Another way to look at it is to look at the actual experience"
Hey, we all know that liberals goon up everything they touch.
Is it impossible that conservatives will ever be in charge of anything?
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