Left And Right And Wrong

Saul Alinsky, guru for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, is familiar to me. I worked with his followers thirty-five years ago.

People who haven’t known me long are surprised that my politics were pretty far left when I was a young man working on a radical newspaper called “The Communicator” in Lowell, Massachusetts with some “Red Diaper Babies.” The term refers to children raised by parents who were members of CPUSA (Communist Party - United States of America). The ones I worked with were Jewish and devout followers of Saul Alinsky - hero to the two top Democrat candidates for president in 2008. His book: “Rules for Radicals,” was put in my hands by my Lowell friends who, just like Obama, called themselves “Community Organizers.” I skimmed through it, but it didn’t grab me. Alinsky and my friends wanted to kindle a revolution, but I just wanted to change a few things. One of the group was Alan Solomont, who later went on to become Treasurer of the Democrat National Committee during the Clinton Administration and slept in the Lincoln Bedroom. Alinsky followers like Solomont, Obama and Hillary Clinton took over the Democrat Party and pushed it far to the left.

Though I’ve always been conservative on social issues like abortion, I didn’t become fully conservative until the ’90s. Having worked both sides of the political spectrum gives me a broader view than most.
Regarding this election year, neither presidential candidate excites me and I expected to be bored by the record-long presidential campaign at this point, but I’m not - anything but. American voters have a clear choice between left and right and the debates will be fascinating from that perspective. Alinsky disciple Barack Obama has the most left-wing voting record in the US Senate. Joe Biden ranks third behind Ted Kennedy. Those three are more liberal than even Bernie Sanders - the Socialist Senator from Vermont. While John McCain’s right-wing credentials are somewhat lacking, it looks like he’s chosen a bedrock conservative in vice-presidential running mate Sarah Palin. The little bit I’ve learned about her so far tells me she is the genuine article. She’s pro-life, pro-2nd Amendment, wants to secure our borders, cut government, lower taxes, drill for oil, and - she’s articulate. Like most of Middle America, she and her husband have worked with their hands and still do. They didn’t go to Ivy League universities and are unimpressed by those who did. Americans who know how to shingle a roof, shoot a gun, dress out an animal, and change the oil identify with Sarah Palin. They’re the people who really make America work and this scares hell out of liberal elitists who run the Democrat Party and purport to represent average Americans. I can’t wait to watch her debate Joe Biden.

If I could be so bold as to sum up the political dichotomy of left and right, I would say right-wing conservatives believe what Thomas Paine said: “Government, in its best state, is but a necessary evil” - necessary only to maintain order while individual citizens live out their lives privately - with the liberty to make their own decisions and take responsibility for them. Whatever happiness they achieve is up to them alone. As Jefferson put it: “That government is best that governs least.”

Left-wing liberals believe the opposite: “That government is best that governs most.” Government is the source of happiness by being arbiter of who gets what and does what. Individual citizens depend on government for their welfare, cradle to grave. Unhappy citizens are victims. Their unhappiness is someone else’s fault. They blame “the rich,” for hoarding things so there’s not enough to go around. The size of the economic pie is static, they believe, and doesn’t expand. Rather than produce their own wealth, they use government to redistribute it.

Such victimhood dogma drove Alinsky strategy. His advice for “Community Organizers” like Barack Obama was: "Rub raw the sores of discontent.” No wonder Obama befriended race-baiting Jeremiah Wright. Rubbing raw the sores of discontent is Reverend Wright’s stock in trade, just as it is with those other two black “leaders,” the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton.

Alinsky was an atheist, but he understood the power of religion and used it perversely. Though he dropped it in subsequent editions to avoid alienating liberal church leaders, he dedicated his first edition of “Rules For Radicals” thusly:

"Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins -- or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer."

Hillary didn’t mention this in her senior thesis on Alinsky at Wellesley College either, but it’s worth pondering.

Canary in the Coal Mine

Israel is a canary in America’s coal mine. Miners kept a caged canary in the mineshaft as they worked and watched it carefully. Should odorless poison gas creep into the air, the canary would be affected first. It it collapsed, miners had to do something or they wouldn’t survive either. Both America and Israel are threatened by the poison of Radical Islam. We face the same enemy.

Israel’s creation in 1948, or rather its re-creation after going out of existence for nearly two millennia, was improbable - indeed it was unprecedented in all of history. America’s creation was improbable too - a tiny strip of land between the Appalachians and the Atlantic in 1776 - fighting the British in the north and across the sea, Indians in the west and south. Both are outposts of democracy in a world hostile to it. Israel is on the front line. It’s our canary and we must watch it closely. Both will elect a new government soon and our victory or defeat against Radical Islam will be strongly influenced. Choices are similar too. Will we pick aggressive leaders or conciliatory ones? Will we show Radical Islam our fists or the tails between our legs?

Will Israel pick someone to carry on outgoing Prime Minister Olmert’s policy of appeasement? He wanted to give the Golan Heights to Syria and the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority. Considering how giving over the Gaza Strip worked out, Israel might as well commit suicide now and get it over with. Land for peace is a failed policy, as Neville Chamberlain discovered when dealing with Hitler. Europe’s Jews were almost wiped out for Chamberlain’s folly. Those who survived the Holocaust formed modern Israel. Israelis fought four wars in twenty-five years against larger, Arab-Muslim neighbors dedicated to its destruction.

After four humiliating defeats, those enemies changed tactics. They don’t invade with conventional planes, tanks and troops. Now they use teenaged suicide bombers and rockets launched from civilian population centers by Iranian proxies Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and by Hamas in Gaza. Meanwhile, Iran builds nuclear weapons and promises to wipe Israel off the map. In spite of fifty years in an almost constant state of war, many Israelis still believe Radical Islam can be appeased and Chamberlain-like policies will bring peace.

Winston Churchill defined appeasement as: “Feeding the crocodile, hoping he’ll eat you last.” Hitler gobbled up mainland Europe and took near-fatal bites out of England before America stepped in. If Israeli appeasers elect another Olmert, Israel is doomed.

Modern Israel was founded by Jews who were determined to have their own military to defend themselves against the Hitlers who would make them extinct. Today’s Hitler takes the form of Radical Islam which denies the Holocaust while preparing nuclear genocide. In the face of this grave threat, many Israelis seem to have forgotten their birthright - they’re losing their identity, and if they don’t regain it, they’re doomed.

To wake up fellow Israelis, Natan Sharansky’s latest book is titled: “Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy.” Newsmax’s Christopher Ruddy interviewed Sharansky and reports:

The thesis of [Sharansky’s] book is that democratic society, if it has any hope for long-term survival, must offer an identity for its citizens. Looking out at the world, he says “our enemies look so dangerous because they have a strong will.” This means they have beliefs they are ready to die for. “The free world, if it does not have values for which people are ready to die, will be powerless, its people decadent. It will be doomed to failure.” Identity, he says, gives people these values. It is not the enemy, as many [multiculturalists] in the West believe. “Europe is suffering the most from a loss of identity. Faith and patriotism have weakened as it embraces a super-identity — all in an effort to avoid war.”

What’s the best way to avoid war? The “Bush Doctrine” - adopted after September 11th - authorized preemptive strikes against countries planning to attack us, but America, and Bush himself, have backed away. Voters will choose soon between Democrat Barack Obama - an appeasing worshiper of Multiculturalism, and Republican John McCain - someone who understands our enemy and is willing to do whatever it takes to defeat it. Israelis must decide soon if they will attack Iran before Iran “wipes it off the map” and vote accordingly. Do Israelis have the will? Do we? Iran is betting against it.

Martin Luther King said: “If a man has nothing he would die for, he isn’t fit to live.” If such people comprise the majority in Israel or the United States, neither country is fit to live and won’t for much longer. The Israeli canary is teetering on its perch.

McLaughlin Roots

Carrickabraghy Castle keep. All that's left of it on Isle of Doagh

Thirty years ago, I learned that my great-grandfather, James McLaughlin, emigrated to Boston from Isle of Doagh on the Inishowen Peninsula (pronounced “In-ish-own”) of Donegal with his brothers Michael and Jeremiah. They had a sister, Sarah, who stayed. Ever since, I’ve wanted to find the old homestead. Last week, I did.

Neal "Dick" McLaughlin and wife, Marge

If I’d put off the trip much longer, I wouldn’t have found it. Eighty-year-old Neal McLaughlin is the only one left there who remembers stories of my great-grandfather’s family and it took me three days to find him. Inishowen is loaded with McLaughlins - which they pronounce “Mac-Loch-lan.” The only name more common is Doherty, because the O’Doherty Clan defeated the McLaughlin Clan back in 1244 AD. Everyone I spoke to asked if James had a nickname. There are so many McLaughins that extended families get nicknames. For example, one of Neal’s ancestors was named Richard and called “Dick,” so Neal became “Neal Dick” to distinguish him from other Neal McLaughlins. Locals pronounce it “Nail Deck.”

Isle of Doagh, looking west at the Atlantic

The only other information I had was that in 1921 or 1922, my great-great-grandfather (whose nickname was “Wee John,” Neal told me) sold the family homestead to someone named McGonagle. According to family stories, Great-grandfather James went back to Ireland to settle the estate and bring back Michael’s and Jeremiah’s shares, but he stayed for seven years and returned to Boston with nothing. James liked to drink, and that’s where the money went. His brothers were not pleased of course, and may have come up with other nicknames for James Wee John, like “Shithead” perhaps. Though the brothers had emigrated more than a hundred years ago, I hoped that some older people in the neighborhood might have heard stories about James’s seven-year frolic in the 1920s. Neal McLaughlin - “Nail Deck” - had.

Isle of Doagh

It rained my first three days in Ireland. On the fourth I got to Inishowen - the northernmost tip of the country - and the sun was shining. My wife was sure we’d be killed driving on the left-hand side of its steep, narrow, winding roads, but we made it. Isle of Doagh is stunningly beautiful. One road leads to it across a boggy field, and then it’s sheep and cattle pasture, stone walls, limestone outcroppings, beaches, cliffs, grassy dunes, and the ruins of a castle - all surrounded by shallow bays and the Atlantic Ocean. As we explored, I wondered why James would leave such an enchanting place.

Yours truly with Glashedy Island behind off Isle of Doagh (Glashedy means "Green on top")

The first person we met was Mary McGeoghan, walking on the beach. She referred us to Marie McLaughlin, who lives at the end of the beach next to the ruins of Carrickabrachy Castle (built by the O’Dohertys). Marie is one of the “Castle McLaughlins.” I gave her my information but she couldn’t help me. She referred me on to Lily McLaughlin, (which she pronounced “Lally”) on the other side of the Isle. Neither Lily nor her many sons knew of James either. For three days, I knocked on doors and most people mentioned “Nail Deck” (among others) as someone who might be able to help me.

My wife, Roseann, at the castle

Neal lived in another part of town called Cloontagh (pronounced “Cloincha”) which means “gathering of houses” in Gaelic. He was on the phone when I walked up. He didn’t know me, but waved me inside anyway. When he hung up, I introduced myself and explained what I was looking for. He had a twinkle in his blue eyes as he listened patiently to my information. Then, to my great delight, he said he knew the family. He remembered stories about “James Wee John,” as my great-grandfather was called back then, and chuckled as he told me one: Sometime during James’s seven-year-frolic, a child was born and people were planning a Baptism celebration. James volunteered to take a chicken home to pluck and clean for the dinner. When it came time to cook though, James didn’t show up with the chicken. He’d gotten into some poteen (Irish moonshine - pronounced “pa-cheen”) and was found passed out in a field with the half-plucked chicken next to him.

“That sounds like James,” I said.

Carrickabraghy Castle keep from another angle

Neal, who is a retired farmer and building contractor with six sons, went on to tell me that Wee John’s house and ten acres were sold to James McGonagle for £160. Neal’s family owned the land around it then and still does. He knew James Wee John’s sister, “Sarah Wee John,” who married a Doherty and was “not long dead.” He said my great-great-grandparents - Wee John and his wife Winifred (nee McCarron) - are buried in the cemetery next to the chapel in Clonmany, just inside the gate, but don’t have stones.

"Wee John's" Lane with newer buildings to the left and right

Later, we drove to the old homestead. “There’s Wee John’s Lane,” said Neal. Up a sloping lane was a small house Neal remembered being built when he was a boy and now is used for storage. Stone sheds attached to it were older and probably existed during Wee John’s time. A still newer house and garage about ten years old stood nearer the road. The property displayed a typical evolution that can be seen everywhere as Ireland became prosperous.

Great-Great Grandfather "Wee John's" place, now a barn

I imagined how the place must have looked a century ago when Wee John lived there - very likely a modest, thatched-roof stone cottage with a low doorway. That’s what most of Ireland would have looked like then but little of that old Ireland remains. Few people are leaving the country these days. Affluent Ireland has an immigration problem now.

People, Time and Place

Inishowen Peninsula

First come those dew-covered webs ground spiders make on the lawn. Then crickets start chirping as they are while I write - early on this misty morning. Ferns will begin to wither soon. Those are the signs of waning summer I notice each year. Others may detect different indications of the passing season, but those are the ones that bring me that familiar mixture of anticipation and dread when I realize that school will begin soon. It’s more anticipation than dread this year because I don’t know how many more first days there’ll for me. I’ve gone back in early September more than fifty times. When that pattern will end I don’t know, but it won’t be long.

As I sit here on my back porch, one of Ed Dunlea’s cows is lowing over on Shave Hill and a loon is crying on Kezar Lake. The mist is rolling back and forth between my hill and Ed’s like an ocean tide. When it’s over me I can’t see very far, but then it rolls the other way and I can see the mountainous horizon with a few patches of blue. I like it because there hasn’t been too much blue to look at up there lately. It’s warm and wet this day, but soon will come a morning crisp and dry. I’ll need long pants and a quilted shirt to sit out here so early, but that means the humidity will be gone too and I’ve had enough of that. The towel in my shower was clammy this morning and the salt shaker was caked up last night when I tried to sprinkle my corn.

It’s my habit to rise before the sun, when everything is still and I can watch the day dawn slowly while I go through my morning rituals. The dog knows I’m about, but no one else. The complicated world is simpler at this time. Early and alone is my favorite way to start the day. Then I’ll try to stay in it - stay in the moment if I can. I know my mind will drift away to the future or the past, but I hope I catch it and get back to the present before it gets lost. That’s not always easy for a history teacher. Today though, there’s much I must do to prepare for my journey to Ireland.

By the time this is published Thursday, I should be walking the streets of Dublin. When I tire of that, I’ll go north a bit to look over Newgrange, a five-thousand-year-old structure of white quartz and other stone. Little is known of the people who constructed it and carved its spiral patterns. Were any my ancestors? Don’t know. Nobody does. Then I’ll look over the Battle of the Boyne site nearby - that place where Catholics were defeated in 1690 and the Protestant British hardened their control over the island. Then I’ll head northwest to British-ruled Ulster where I want to feel what may remain of the struggle or “The Troubles” as they’re sometimes called. Many McLaughlins have lived in the city of Derry (or Londonderry as the British call it) for eight centuries, and still do. One, Mitchell McLaughlin, is General Secretary for Sinn Fein - political wing of the Irish Republican Army. He lives in Bogside, the Catholic quarter. Will it feel at all like my visit to the West Bank last year? I hope not, but we’ll see.

Then it’ll be on to Donegal further to the north - to the northernmost tip of Ireland (the Inishowen Peninsula) from where my great-grandfather, James McLaughlin, emigrated around 1900. It’s part of the Republic of Ireland and most people are surprised to hear that. “Northern Ireland” conjures up British-occupied Ireland, but it would more accurately be called “Northeast Ireland.” I want to find what remains of his house and get a feel for the people still there. After more than a century, will I recognize any by their looks or their laughter or by something else? We’ll see. I’ll keep my movie camera handy to record it if I do.

During the few August days I spend in that remote place, I’ll smell it, see it, hear it, and feel it - find out why my great-grandfather left it, and maybe get some clues about myself.

Evil Speculators

Democrats blame “evil” speculators for the high price of oil. Speculators figure that, with liberal Democrats in firm control of Congress and a left-wing Democrat leading in the polls for president, the ban on drilling for oil on our coasts and in the Arctic will continue indefinitely - and oil prices will keep going up.

I’ve been speculating on the price of oil too. Does that make me a bad person? I sent a check to B&L Oil of Fryeburg to assure that I would pay no more than $4.85 per gallon for heating oil through next winter. I left my foot in the door a bit though. If the price should go down, I’ll pay market price. (Maybe Democrats will be forced to lift the ban? Heck, you never know) I could have paid up front for all 750 gallons - the amount I burned last year - at $4.60 per gallon. I have the money, but I chose what I chose because I still have the liberty to do so.

Some people are avoiding oil and laying in a lot of firewood. I have a couple of cords left out in the yard, but I’d prefer to burn oil. Some people are converting to wood pellets. Others are buying coal. Some will burn used motor oil, or even old vegetable oil from restaurant fryolaters. We’re all speculating. We’re exercising the liberty to make our own choices and live with the results. If we choose right, we’ll be happy. If we choose wrong, too bad for us. That’s how liberty works. As Benjamin Franklin put it: "The U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself."

Lots of people have been speculating in real estate over the past ten or fifteen years. Some made a lot of money at it, causing many others to jump in. They took out mortgages for more than they could afford to pay back. They took risks, and that’s what speculation is. They figured they would make interest-only payments while the value of their new real estate climbed. Then they would flip it - sell at profit. It worked for a while and many got rich. Were they bad people? Some think so because their speculation helped drive home prices up. People who already owned real estate, however, thought that was wonderful. People who were renting and wanted to buy a home didn’t think it was so great. Oh well.

Somewhere along the way, liberal Democrats noticed that banks avoided granting mortgages to people in certain neighborhoods. They called it “Redlining” and accused loan officers of racism. Banks pointed out that it was bad business lending to individuals who were unable to make their payments. If minorities happened to comprise a higher percentage of such people, or if certain neighborhoods had lots of them, that was not evidence of racism. Mortgage decisions were based on numbers, not colors. As economist Thomas Sowell pointed out in a recent column: “In our own personal lives, common sense leads us to avoid some neighborhoods. If you want to call that "redlining," so be it. But places where it is dangerous to go are often also places where it is dangerous to send your money.” Liberal Democrats in Congress, however, passed legislation forcing banks to make risky loans to certain people, and in certain places, where they never would have otherwise.

Eventually, real estate prices stopped rising. Many who speculated couldn’t make their payments and defaulted. Then prices fell and more defaulted. Then prices fell still further. Banks who lent money to a lot of risky speculators went belly up. No one knows when it will all bottom out because, as Benjamin Franklin pointed out a long time ago, there are no guarantees. Liberal Democrats in Congress, however, don’t believe that. They passed a $300 billion bill to bail out nearly half a million speculators. They want Americans who made the right choices to bail out those who chose wrong. We who are making our payments now have to help speculators make theirs too.

I don’t like that. I don’t like it one bit. I don’t want to take away from speculators the liberty to fall on their faces. They should have the freedom to fail because, as British farmer Thomas Tusser said half a millennium ago: “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

The question now is, are we fools too? Does the Democrat-controlled Congress take us for fools? It appears that way. What’s even worse? Our “Republican” president - the guy who put the “Dub” in Dubya - is going to sign the bill.

And here’s another question. Why are people who speculate on oil prices “evil” to be punished by excess-profits taxes, but those who speculate on real estate prices are “innocent victims” to be protected by taxpayer-funded bailouts?

Life Is Good

“Can you scrunch together more?” the photographer would say when he can’t back up any further. The people posing rub shoulders, and sometimes feel uncomfortable if they have to put their arms around others they don’t really like, or hardly know, to fit in the camera’s frame.

“Come on, now. Smile!” I almost never feel like smiling when I’m ordered to. Someone has to say something genuinely funny or I can only fake it. If the photographer has to take more than one shot and fumbles with the camera in between, my cheek muscles cramp up. I don’t like posing for pictures and I suspect most people are that way. I do like taking pictures and always have, but I don’t like getting people to pose any more than I like posing myself. I much prefer shooting people when they’re not aware of it, when they’re not self conscious about how they look to others, when they’re being themselves. I do take posed group shots, however, because people ask me to and it’s usually my wife who is doing the asking. She knows I almost always have a camera with me and, though it’s more work for me than fun, I seldom refuse.

With my economic stimulus check I bought a new camera: a Nikon D-60 SLR and it came stock with an 18mm to 55mm zoom lens. Now all that’s required for those tight group shots is a twist of the wrist and everybody is in the picture. I’d never used a camera with a wide angle capability before and I love it. Trees are a favorite subject - old individual trees with distinctive shapes. Many are in tight locations and it’s not always possible to move backward to include the entire tree from ground to crown. Again, the wide angle capability is terrific; just a flick of the wrist and the tree can be framed perfectly.

Another great feature of the D-60 is that the shutter clicks as soon as I press the release button, just like my old analog camera. For three years I used an earlier digital camera with a two-or-three-second shutter delay and it drove me mad. If I were shooting a moving object, I’d have to anticipate where it would be seconds after I pressed the shutter release. If a human subject wore a particular expression, it usually changed two seconds hence when the camera finally recorded it.

My wife and I rented a cottage on the Maine coast last week so I had lots of time to play around. I watched terns dive into the Little River at Reid State Park and come up with sardines in their beaks. I got several nice shots of their aerobatic diving that would have been impossible to obtain with my old camera. Then a huge osprey appeared and hovered high over the waves further out. He hung in the air long enough for me to change lenses and I was able to get several images of him (her?). The auto-focus feature was problematic at times with only blue sky as background. It was difficult to keep the bird in the center of the frame and the lens wanted to go to infinity when my aim was off. The osprey’s eyesight was apparently off a bit too because, as much as I wanted him to, he never dove for his dinner while I was shooting and eventually flew back inland. Oh well. Can’t have everything.

A quote I read recently keeps reverberating in my head: “We don’t see the world as it is; we see the world as we are.” I’m happy to say that I’ve been seeing many interesting and beautiful things lately and I’m taking the time record them. Life is good. The old man who sold me the camera said there are two kinds of photographers: “those who bring their camera to photograph a particular thing, and those who always have it with them because they see something beautiful every day.”

Graffiti and Anarchy

Some people consider it an art form, but I’m not one of them. To me it’s a canary-in-the-coal-mine thing, an indication of an unraveling civilization. It was appropriate that one of the symbols was an upper-case A with a circle around it - a symbol of anarchy. Last week, someone spray-painted graffiti representing whatever crude impulses entered his head around the Lovell Dump, or what is probably referred to as the Lovell Solid Waste Recycling Center now. If there ever were a proper venue for graffiti I suppose it would be a dump, but it was offensive even there.

Why do I say “his” head you may ask? Because the perpetrator was likely an adolescent male who knows very little but thinks he knows much. That two giant phalluses were among the symbols is also a clue. It’s possible he’s former student since I’ve taught nearly every fourteen-year-old who came through eighth grade around here for more than a generation. It’s also possible that he’s already been charged by the time this goes to print, but I’m out of town and out of touch, where there’s neither cellphone nor internet service and that’s nice. There’s no graffiti around here either. If he was caught and he’s under eighteen, his name won’t be published. People in town will know who he was though. They always do, and you can find out if you listen to the talk at one of the local lunch counters.

Graffiti “artists” who render crude phalluses probably wear their pants low on their rear ends - because they desperately want to belong to other groups of boys like themselves who don’t pull their pants up. Graffiti is part of their lifestyle. When they get old enough to drive, they’ll have sub-woofers installed in their cars to vibrate everything within a wide radius, blaring their angry “music” which they impose on us along with their graffiti. Sound and symbol go together, and those of us who pull our pants up consider both obnoxious.

Adolescent males who run in packs are anarchist by nature. The only limits they recognize are the impulses of the alpha male and change hour to hour. Anarchy is as old as the human race, but during the past two centuries, anarchists have adopted a loose philosophy. They believe there should be no government and they behave as if there weren’t any. They don’t respect private property, and that squares nicely with communists over on the extreme left of the political spectrum. Anarchists and communists have historically worked together to bring down governments. Once they’re successful in that, however, they part company. To fill the power vacuum, communists create huge government bureaucracies to control everything everybody does, and that’s the opposite of what anarchists profess.

Several anarchist groups like “Unconventional Action” and “Recreate 68” are planning to disrupt the Democrat Convention in Denver next month. According to the Denver Post: “A draft law proposed by the Denver Police Department would ban the possession by protesters of materials such as weighted pipes and chains and items that can make urine and feces bombs.” Hmm. Urine and feces bombs, huh? The excremental equivalent of rap “music” and graffiti, I guess. Would these be aimed at police or at Obama delegates?

Few adolescent boys understand anarchist history, but they’re attracted to symbols like the A with a circle around it because it’s associated with other angry young males who become sub-cultural heroes. Our media magnifies them as they make “music” and destroy things and treat young women like whores. Big media like Time Warner feed this subculture and profit mightily in the process.

The majority culture either accepts this adolescent anarchy, or even celebrates it because it’s associated with protected minorities. It is therefore an element of Multiculturalism - which purports that all cultures are equal. No culture, or subculture for that matter, is any better or any worse than any other. Cultural relativity has become a sacred principle and it’s not politically correct to question it. It’s even a hate crime in Canada where provincial Human Rights Commissions can bring charges against you and impose huge fines if you should publicly criticize a culture to the point where its adherents’ feelings get hurt. They don’t have a First Amendment up there.

Our society seems to have swallowed all this even when it means many of our adolescent boys behave like characters from “Lord of the Flies” and many of our adolescent girls look like prostitutes. Many grumble about it privately, but few speak out publicly lest they be called intolerant or even racist.

Such were my thoughts while I was photographing the graffiti before the dump attendant painted over it last week. That’s what we have to do with graffiti - kill it before it spreads, disinfect before it reproduces. Some claim this prevents “the broken-window effect” - if a broken window isn’t fixed right away, others around it will soon be broken too. Let’s hope we caught it in time.

Baby Bust

Hey liberals: I have good news and bad news.

Good news first: Remember how worried you were about increasing human population taking over animal habitat? Westerners using too much energy? Eating too much meat? Cutting down too many trees? Sending too much carbon into the atmosphere? Oppressing “people of color”? Well, the Western Civilization you hate is in decline. Europeans aren’t reproducing much and it looks like they’re just going to fade away in a few more generations. Immigrants “of color,” especially Muslims, are having lots of babies. They’re out-breeding Europeans (people “of pallor,” I suppose) as much as four-to-one. Won’t be long before Muslims “of color” are the majority, which is why some already refer to Europe as “Eurabia.”

The bad news? Europeans work few hours, take lots of vacations, then retire early with full benefits - just what liberal Americans think they should do too. Trouble is, that lifestyle requires working young people vastly outnumbering geezer retirees - and they’re just not there anymore. Not in Europe. Not in Canada. Not in blue-state America either (red staters are still breeding). A European cradle-to-grave socialist welfare system cannot sustain itself without lots of babies every year. It doesn’t work when there are more geezers than young people. So, the socialist utopia envisioned by American liberals and temporarily actualized by Europeans will disappear.

One great book covers this: “America Alone” ©2006 by New Hampshire’s Mark Steyn. He documents, in his tragic-comic style, how Western Civilization is committing suicide by refusing to reproduce. Meanwhile, Europeans bring in millions of Muslim immigrants from former colonies in Turkey, Pakistan, and Arab countries - most of whom refuse to assimilate and who breed like rabbits. They also collect welfare at higher rates than native-born French, Spanish, Italians, British or Germans. And, they would rather impose Sharia Law than support European geezers.

The New York Times finally got around to reporting the story in their June 29th Sunday magazine supplement with a cover piece called “Childless Europe.” Although author Russell Shorto quotes twice from “America Alone,” it’s as if he never read it. He acknowledges part of the problem, but doesn’t agree with Steyn about what caused it or how to deal with it. While Steyn blames multicultural, diversity-celebrating socialist welfare states for the continent’s baby bust, Shorto suggests they’re the solution, vainly in my opinion. He insinuates that because of it’s more generous child-care and maternity/paternity-leave programs, northern Europe’s birth rates are declining more slowly than southern Europe’s birth rates. North and south are both dying, but at different speeds. Steyn makes the case that Europeans don’t have children because of laziness, narcissism, and selfishness. Shorto claims it’s because they cost too much.

Steyn uses gallows humor to skewer sacred icons of liberalism - abortion and homosexuality - as obvious causes of Europe’s baby bust along with the social welfare state. Shorto ignores them completely - never mentioning either in his long article although there are 33 abortions for every 100 live births in western Europe and 105 abortions for every 100 live births in eastern Europe. Dead babies outnumber live babies there. How could Shorto overlook those statistical 800-pound gorillas in a cover story called “Childless Europe”? How could he disregard homosexual “marriage” as a factor in population decline? That’s hard, unless you work for the New York Times where they publish “All the news that’s fit to print.” Guess it’s not fitting to suggest that either abortion or homosexuality may be detrimental to society.

Steyn and Shorto both reference Paul Erlich’s “The Population Bomb.” Steyn ridicules Erlich’s predictions of demographic disaster and the western world’s Chicken Little reaction to it. Shorto interviewed Erlich and quoted him saying: “It’s insane to consider low birth rate as a crisis. Basically every person I know in my section of the National Academy of Sciences thinks it’s wonderful that rich countries are starting to shrink their populations to sustainable levels. We have to do that because we’re wrecking our life-support systems.”

It’s wonderful, huh Mr. Erlich? Just what is a “sustainable level”? Thomas Malthus’ “Essay on the Principle of Population” made a similar “running out of resources” case back around the turn of 19th century when there were fewer than a billion people worldwide. Charles Dickens’ “Ebeneezer Scrooge” reflects Malthusian thinking when he talks about “decreasing the surplus population.” Malthus was off the mark in his population disaster predictions since there are more than six billion humans on the planet now. In 1968, Erlich wrote: “the battle to feed all of humanity is over ... In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

Uh-huh. Now, about Al Gore’s writings . . . Nah. Never mind.

Worst That Could Happen

Thirty years ago, I remember feeling complimented when asked if I were an anti-nuclear activist. If I ever was, I’m not anymore. The world has changed and I have too. In my idealistic world-view, I thought it might be feasible to rid the world of nuclear weapons - too naive to realize that once the toothpaste is out of the tube, we’re never going to get it back in. People like me were against all things nuclear - weapons and power plants producing uranium and plutonium that could be made into weapons.

In 1979, Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant nearly melted down. In January of 1986, I was in my first term as a selectman when the federal government notified us that my town and others in southwestern Maine were being considered as a repository for high-level nuclear waste. Maine was moving rapidly leftward because of an in-migration of people like me and we were in high dudgeon as we berated bureaucrats from the US Department of Energy at hearings around the state. They tolerated us calmly and then abandoned their plans after the Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear plant melted down in late April.

Shortly thereafter, Presidents Reagan and Bush negotiated the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Soviet Union and after four decades of building them, we actually began dismantling nuclear weapons.

Trouble is, the Soviet Union disintegrated. It was as inept monitoring its nuclear weapons as it was monitoring its nuclear power plants. Its huge military was not getting paid. Its nukes, its plutonium, its enriched uranium, and its nuclear physicists were hanging around - lots of weapons and weapons experts looking for cash. Radical Muslims just to the south were flush with cash and looking for nuclear weapons. It doesn’t take an expert in international politics to understand deals were likely made. We must operate under the assumption that our enemies have nukes and are anxious to use them against us.

In January, 2007, I was in the audience in Washington DC when former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said: “At some point down the road, we run a serious risk of losing two or three [American] cities to nuclear weapons [in terrorist attacks], and it’s a lot better to act now before we lose a city.”

And it’s not just conservative Republicans warning us. On the other side of the aisle, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden said: “the most dangerous threat America faces is the possibility that one of the world's most extreme groups -- like al Qaeda -- gets its hands on a nuclear bomb."

Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government claims: “a successful terrorist nuclear attack devastating one of the great cities of the world is inevitable.”

Scotland’s Sunday Herald quoted Ian Dickinson, who leads the police response to chemical, biological and nuclear threats there: "These materials are undoubtedly out there, and undoubtedly will end up in terrorists' hands, and undoubtedly will be used by terrorists some time soon," he claims.

Although he didn’t use the word “nuclear,” Senator Joseph Lieberman said on CBS’s Face the Nation: “"Our enemies will test the new president early. Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration."

What Lieberman didn’t mention is that al Quaida returns to a target if they’re unsuccessful destroying it the first time - as they did with the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001. United Flight 93 was believed to be headed for either the White House or the US Capitol Building before it was taken over by passengers and crashed in Pennsylvania. Does al Qaeda plan to go back to the Capitol and finish the job?

SITE Intelligence Group revealed a horrific, computer-generated image of what the US Capitol would look like after a terrorist nuke attack. SITE found the image on two password-protected al-Qaeda-affiliated web sites. Evidently, our enemies found the image somewhere and use it to salivate while making their plans. With our porous borders and port facilities, we’re vulnerable.

Every American needs to look long at our enemies' vision for us. Perhaps it will help us understand that we need to get a whole lot tougher if we’re going to prevent it from becoming reality. Five Supreme Court justices should have gazed at it before voting to grant rights of habeas corpus to Guantanamo terrorists who would live only to bring down the Great Satan - that’s us, in case you didn’t know. To accomplish that, nothing would be more effective than nuking Washington, DC.

Last Word

“Shit.”

From all accounts it was my father’s last word, and he uttered it as paramedics struggled to lift his large body from his bed onto a stretcher thirty-one years ago last month. He died on the way to the hospital of a massive heart attack. He was fifty-five, and he’d been expecting it. I’m left with the dilemma of how to interpret his last remark.

Was he summing it all up? His had been a difficult life. Was he afraid of death now that it was finally visiting him? He said too often that it was imminent. When I objected, he’d say, “Every Irishman is born with one foot in the grave,” and I think of that whenever I hear someone singing “Danny Boy.” Or, it could have been just a casual remark, as you might say when the alarm goes off for work after going to bed too late the night before and you sit up on the edge of the bed. You’re not really ready, but you’re resigned to go anyway. Guess I’ll never know for sure why he said it.

He visits me in my dreams some nights. The last time, I was going into a cafeteria and I saw him sitting at a table in back by a window. He was looking at me. His face was peaceful and he smiled a bit as if he were glad to see me. That wasn’t typical in life. I don’t remember him smiling much and he seldom seemed peaceful, but it looks like he is now and I’m glad for him.

My mother told me they’d gone out to dinner that last night at the Harvard Club in Boston. On the way home, they drove around Charlestown where he grew up. He pointed out the many places around the Bunker Hill Monument where he had lived. He was the oldest son of an alcoholic father who often drank away his paycheck instead of paying the rent. Often they had to move to a different apartment late at night to avoid the landlord. With five younger brothers and sisters, he shouldered the responsibility that should have been his father’s - and he resented it. For the rest of his life, that accumulated anger was always just below the surface and it permeated the atmosphere of the household in which I grew up.

The last time I’d seen him, he passed me the research project he typed up for me. It was the final piece of my master’s degree program and he was proud that I’d finished it. He was sad too because he knew I was moving to Maine soon. As I was leaving I told him my wife, Roseann, was pregnant with our third child. “Hmm,” he said - not “Congratulations,” or “That’s great.” I’m not sure what he meant by that “Hmm” either. Was he afraid I was following his pattern of siring children in rapid succession? I’m the fourth of eight. I’ll never know because my not-quite-three-year-old daughter, Jessica, was pulling on my finger and telling me “Come on!” She wanted to go home and play with her one-year-old sister, Sarah. My father would have loved his granddaughter Annie though, who was born that December after we had moved to Lovell.

It was a busy winter - new job, new house, new child, new state - but I thought a lot about my father and what made him the way he was. When school was out the following June, we went back to Massachusetts for a visit and I looked up my father’s Uncle Bill - my alcoholic grandfather’s younger brother. We’d never met, but I wanted to pick his brain about my great-grandfather, James McLaughlin Sr., who immigrated here from County Donegal around 1900 and who had been a notorious alcoholic as well. At his request, I met Bill in the parking lot of a windowless American Legion Hall in Medford, Massachusetts. We shook hands and he invited me in for a drink. It being 10:00 am, I suggested a cup of coffee somewhere else instead. He agreed, but then he opened his trunk of his Cadillac and took two snorts from a half-gallon bottle of whiskey first. Later, he took me to visit his brother, James McLaughlin, Jr. and his wife because they’d been in contact with the McLaughlins who stayed in Ireland, and knew where they lived. I wanted to go there - to Isle of Doagh in Donegal - but it would take thirty years before I’d be ready.

When I go in August, perhaps I’ll learn something about the source of the addiction that has plagued the American McLaughlins for more than a century. I’ve learned more than I ever wanted about what comes with it - summed up succinctly by my father’s last utterance.

AIDS And Our Tax Money

Originally, it was called GRID - Gay Related Immune Deficiency. Homosexual men, who were the first to acquire the disease in the United States, didn’t like that name. In 1982, the Centers for Disease Control changed it to AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - and so began the sustained effort by homosexual activists to separate male homosexual practices from the disease in the public mind. This they largely accomplished by orchestrating a fear campaign about a world-wide heterosexual AIDS epidemic. That epidemic, however, never materialized. Last week, the UK’s Independent reported that: “Threat of world AIDS pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits.” AIDS continues to spread among men having sex with men.

The fellow making that announcement has the unfortunate name of Dr. Kevin de Cock, head of the WHO’s Department of HIV/AIDS. He said, that except for some peculiar circumstances in sub-Saharan Africa, “It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries.”

The article went on to say that “AIDS organisations, including the WHO, UN Aids and the Global Fund, have come under attack for inflating estimates of the number of people infected, diverting funds from other health needs such as malaria . . .” This seems to be a general pattern when it comes to AIDS. According to a Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) report: “Since the first federal resources were made available to state and local health agencies for AIDS prevention in 1985, federal funding, which now includes money for research, treatment, and housing, has skyrocketed to $13 billion for fiscal 2003. As a result of the work of highly mobilized lobbying forces, more is spent per patient on AIDS than on any other disease, though it does not even currently rank among the top 15 causes of death in the United States.”

What do you suppose are the chances that those “highly mobilized lobbying forces” were homosexual activists who early-on got themselves appointed to key decision-making positions governing taxpayer expenditures for AIDS? I’m willing to cover any bets here.

The CAGW report went on to say: “Research expenditures at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) demonstrate the uneven use of federal resources. In 1996, NIH spent an average of $1,160 for every heart disease death, $4,700 for every cancer death, and a whopping $43,000 for every AIDS death.”

AIDS is unique in that it became a political disease. Public health measures such as contact tracing - used effectively for decades to fight syphilis and gonorrhea - were abandoned with AIDS. With contact tracing, nurses would contact the sexual partners of people reporting to clinics for treatment of STDs to inform them of their exposure, encourage them to seek treatment, and avoid spreading the disease to others. Homosexual activists fought contact tracing because it would lead to the closure of San Francisco and New York City “bathhouses” in which promiscuous anal sex proliferated. That, of course, remains the most dangerous vector for spread of AIDS.

Ever hear about that development? Probably not. To take the focus off their own behavior, homosexual AIDS activists staged demonstrations around the country in which they blamed President Reagan for spreading the disease. That’s what the media reported on. And those bathhouses? They didn’t close. Instead, they got federal government subsidies. According to the CAGW: “In 1998, CDC approved a $338,000 grant to Hollywood Spa in Los Angeles, a gay bathhouse. The upscale spa is complete with strobe lights and club music. Patrons check each other out while wrapped in tiny gym towels. Is AIDS likely to spread in such an environment? As a 1997 Los Angeles Times article noted, ‘Local AIDS prevention workers do not pretend that all the sex is safe in bathhouses.’”

That’s the tamest of many nauseating examples of taxpayer money squandered on outrageous “AIDS prevention” activities in the CAGW study. If I wrote about the others, the family newspapers in which this column runs could not publish them. They’re that bad.

Under the original pretext of AIDS prevention, homosexual activists have gotten access to public schools as well, where for years now homosexuality is presented as a positive alternative lifestyle. Not mentioned in their seminars is data from the Family Research Institute indicating that, since the outbreak of AIDS, the average life expectancy for a homosexual man is only thirty-eight, and only about 2% live past age sixty-five. Yet, taxpayer-funded seminars continue for middle school and high school boys such as : “Queer, Questioning, Quiet: Developing Gender Identity & Male Sexual Orientation.” It was promoted by a Portland organization called “Boys to Men” for its 2008 conference at the University of Southern Maine. The conference cancelled that particular seminar when a representative from Maine’s Christian Civic League signed up to attend. Were they afraid taxpayers would discover what our middle school boys are being taught with their money?

Nah. You’d have to be homophobic to think that.

Color and Sex

Men are four to ten times more likely to be colorblind than women. Color is important to women. Men don’t generally care about it much unless they’re gay.

When my daughter bought a house last summer, all the women who checked it out said the house was “cute.” Without exception, however, they were appalled with the blue-painted woodwork in the living room and the pink walls in the bathroom. “I can’t live in here until I paint that over,” said my daughter, while the other women nodded gravely. Several volunteered to help put on a new color because it would have been too much to expect any women to exist in the presence of that blue. “Why would anybody do that?” they asked each other, referring to the previous owner’s color selection.

None of the men noticed the paint. None. They looked at the roof, siding, plumbing, wiring, septic system, and boiler. “Nice,” they said. The women didn’t like the yellow paint on the outside either, but the men were unaffected. “What’s wrong with it?” they asked. “It won’t need to be painted again for four or five years.”

“That yellow is icky,” said the women. The men shrugged.

Another woman told me how she saw a beautiful blue in the sky above the ocean one day and tried to capture it with her camera. When she got home and examined it, she was so disappointed, she cried. “You actually cried?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” I said.

Colors are related to creativity,” said my wife. “They affect your mood and women are more attuned to their mood than men are. Color affects mood for everyone, but women are more aware of it.”

That reminded me of something a poet said several years ago contrasting women and men about how they deal with their feelings. Women, he said, have a huge vocabulary to describe how they’re feeling and they tend to discuss it endlessly with each other. Men, however, do not, and if they should be feeling something strongly, they won’t necessarily know what’s going on inside them. It’s as if they turn their eyes backward and look down into their chests, he said. They see a maelstrom of feelings swirling there, but can’t label any of them.

Women have a huge vocabulary for colors too - several dozen at least - whereas most men I know have only six or seven basic words describing color corresponding to the spectrum. Men could talk on and on about the advantages and disadvantages of forced hot air heating systems compared to forced hot water or radiant heat systems. How they feel about them would never come up.

A University of Maryland study discussed how something called the OPN1LW gene for perceiving color resides in the X chromosome. “Because females can have two different versions of this gene, but men can have only one, females may be able to perceive a broader spectrum of colors in the red/orange range. Men and women may be literally seeing the world differently,” said one of the researchers.

It’s not just what they see that makes women different from us. How we process that data is important too. On any given day, men tend to use their heads more than their hearts, so color and mood would not be as significant for them as it would be for women who tend to use their hearts more than their heads. Head and heart are each necessary for an integrated human existence but balancing the two would seem best. Some men and women do this individually, but most of us have to do it in union.

While reading recently, a quote about mood and attitude jumped out at me: “We see the world not as it is. We see it as we are.” Since we’re all different, our existence would be awfully narrow if we didn’t listen to and ponder how people around us see things. I’ve lived long enough and been married long enough to know that men and women do indeed perceive the world differently and only some of that has to do with color. Most of the rest is still a mystery and likely to remain such - for me at least.

Can't Drill It Into Them

No blood for oil? Okay. How about food? Is anyone willing to fight for that? A gallon of milk is going up about as fast as a gallon of gasoline. Rice is going up too and so is corn. Why? Simple. It’s Economics 101: Supply is down and demand is up for both oil and for food, and now we’re using grain for biofuel instead of food and our federal tax dollars are subsidizing it. China and India are developing quickly, eating more, and buying more fuel. Supplies haven’t been going up to keep pace. The result? Higher prices. This isn’t rocket science.

Why haven’t supplies been going up? Congress won’t allow more drilling. They want to protect wildlife in Alaska (mosquitoes mostly) and along our coastlines. Animal lovers and their Democrat patrons are still traumatized by memories of sea birds coated with oil after the Exxon Valdez spill and nothing could be worse for them than a repeat of that. So, no drilling in ANWR. Local governments won’t allow construction of more refineries to produce gasoline and heating oil. Ted Kennedy won’t allow any windmills near Nantucket and nuclear power plants are not even discussed.

So we buy foreign oil. As the price of that goes up, more of our money goes to real or potential enemies like Iran, Venezuela, and Russia. We get weaker and they get stronger. But hey, we’re preserving mosquito habitat in Alaska and shark habitat in the Gulf, right? Soaring fuel prices get Americans to think about walking, riding bicycles and taking the train more, right? Carbon emissions are going down and Al Gore likes that, right?

After the Arab Oil Embargo thirty-five years ago, fuel prices soared. That was the kind of warning some forty-year-old guys get when they have a mild heart attack. The smart ones realize they better stop smoking, start exercising, and change their eating habits. The dumb ones ignore the warning and die of a big one by fifty. Our federal government ignored our early oil warning in the seventies and we’re still not ready to handle rising prices thirty-five years hence.

And it’s not just Democrats. Republicans have been in control of the White House and Congress a few times since then and they’ve done next to nothing about national energy policy either. It’s been nearly seven years since September 11th and still nothing from our alleged leaders in Washington. Doesn’t look like it’s going to change in the foreseeable future either. Obama doesn’t support drilling ANWR and even John McCain said he wouldn’t allow it either. It’s maddening.

Monday night, Maine’s First District congressional candidates debated at the Magic Lantern Theater in Bridgton. The primary isn’t until next week but Democrats and Republicans were on the same stage answering questions - pretty unusual. Judging from audience reaction, rising fuel prices were foremost in people’s minds. When asked about what they would do about them, the Democrat candidates offered the same old pap about alternative energy sources and conservation. They went on about wind, geothermal, hydro, solar and tidal energy, government-mandated miles-per-gallon limits, excess-profits taxes on oil companies - the same stuff we’ve been hearing for decades.

Republican candidate Dean Scontras pointed out that our our tax dollars are wasted on federal subsidies for biofuels. “It takes two gallons of gasoline to produce one gallon of ethanol,” he said. “There’s 86 billion barrels of oil off our coast and Congress says we can’t go out there [and drill]. All these alternative energy sources are great, but oil is going to be $200 a barrel by the end of the year. Those alternative sources aren’t going to reduce the cost to heat your home anytime soon. I’m for lifting the restrictions on drilling off our coasts, in North and South Dakota, in Alaska - increasing supplies so our prices go down. That’s how the market works. We haven’t built a refinery in this country in twenty-five years because of all the regulation required to construct one. Twenty-five years! That’s outrageous.” He added that the Chinese, the Cubans and the Canadians are drilling off our coasts, but we can’t. That answer brought - by far - the biggest applause of the night.

As I left the theater, I didn’t see anybody getting on a bicycle. On the way home, I didn’t see any windmills or solar panels either. I did see numbers outside gas stations advertising gas prices approaching $4 per gallon though. I saw lots of those.

Cracks in Barack

Growing up, I learned several things that Barack Obama seems to have missed. Most people I knew were civil, but some were downright mean. I learned that not everybody liked me, even when they found out how nice I was. They were dishonest, selfish, cruel, and ruthless. They didn’t care whom they hurt while getting what they wanted unless they were afraid of getting beaten up or arrested. I learned to avoid dealing with them unless I had to, and then to be prepared for the worst, and never go in without backup. I don’t know how it was where Obama grew up in Honolulu and Indonesia. Maybe he didn’t meet people like that, but that’s unlikely because they’re everywhere, at least everywhere I’ve ever been.

Maybe Obama has led a charmed life. Maybe he was able to enchant everyone he’s ever known the way he’s enchanted American voters. If he becomes president, he will definitely come into contact with some bad people who will challenge him to see what he’s made of, and some of what he’s saying lately worries me. He claimed several times that he’s willing to meet with world leaders who are sworn enemies of the United States - without any preconditions.

He wants to talk to Ahmadinejad. As a radical Shiite, President Ahmadinejad of Iran believes the 12th Imam, or Mahdi, has been living in a well for over a thousand years and will come out to rule the whole world if Iran creates chaos. To accomplish that, he’s defying the US, the UN, and the EU to build nuclear weapons with which to “wipe Israel off the map.” There’s nothing like a nuclear war in the Middle East to create chaos. If that weren’t bad enough, Ahmadenijad is supporting Hezbollah - a terrorist group dedicated to destruction of Israel and the United States. He supports Hamas, another terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of Israel. He trains and supplies weapons to Shiite terrorists who kill American soldiers in Iraq. Obama said he would talk to Ahmadinejad without preconditions. When scores of experienced American diplomats were appalled, Obama tried to backtrack.

How about Chavez? As a radical socialist, Hugo Chavez is nationalizing American oil companies in Venezuela. He threatens to choke off oil to the United States, supports communist guerillas in Colombia and Bolivia who smuggle cocaine into the United States, and conspires with Iran to bring us down. Obama said he will talk to Chavez without preconditions. When scores of experienced American diplomats expressed shock, Obama tried to backtrack again.

Maybe those crowds he speaks to while campaigning in the primaries don’t understand what Ahmadinejad and Chavez are like. Or if they do, maybe they believe Obama will charm them as he’s charmed Democrat voters. Does Obama believe he can work things out with foreign leaders like those guys? Obviously he does. “Yes We Can!” he says. How? Well, he is “The Change.” What change, you might ask? “Change You Can Believe In.” Hey - it’s worked for him with Democrats. Who is to say it won’t work for him with foreign tyrants?

One reason Obama looks good is that so many Americans are embarrassed by President Bush. They think he’s dumb, and when he speaks he tends to reinforce that impression. Obama seems smart because he speaks well and he went to Harvard. That he’s black is a bonus for a lot of Democrats who suffer from “white guilt” and are always looking for ways to prove they’re not racist.

Other are suspicious of Obama because he put down small-town Americans, saying: “They get bitter. They cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” He thinks they’re not sophisticated enough to understand economic dynamics as he does and that attitude has cost him votes in West Virginia, Indiana and Kentucky. Perhaps those “bitter” voters are wondering if he and his wife got into Ivy League schools through Affirmative Action and have become snooty about ordinary working-class people like them. They or their brothers-in-law have been passed over for jobs as firemen or policemen because of Affirmative Action and they resent it. They’re small contractors who have lost jobs to competitors employing illegal immigrants - and they resent that too. They don’t like it when Obama ridicules them while speaking to rich liberals in Marin County who use illegals as nannies and gardeners. Obama represents a Democrat Party which has played the racial victimhood card and the class envy card for decades. If I can paraphrase Obama’s spiritual mentor, could it be those Democrat chickens are coming home to roost?

Voters are beginning to suspect that Obama is naive and he doesn’t know how to handle bullies like Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Putin or Kim Jong-il. Most voted against him in the last several primaries. Come November, when their choice is between Obama and McCain, it’ll be interesting to see what they do.

Choices

The slogan “pro-choice” has been very helpful for those supporting abortion during the past three decades since Roe v Wade. People who call themselves pro-choice on this most controversial of issues can claim to be personally against abortion, but open to allowing others to have one if they choose. Their “mind my own business” approach is very American and, as such, has wide support. Supporting people’s right to choose, however, may prove a double-edged sword for pro-abortion groups. Recent advances in medical imaging technology are threatening their denial that what is being aborted isn’t human life and that abortion is about a woman’s control of her own body. It’s becoming more and more clear that there’s another body involved and abortion kills it.

How many times has a pregnant woman shown you an ultrasound image of her baby? Just about everyone has seen several by now. How many times did the mother say, “Would you like to see an ultrasound of my fetus?” My guess is never. When a pregnant woman is going to have an abortion, she calls what she’s carrying is a fetus if she talks about it at all. Otherwise, it’s a baby. Every year, the images are less blurry and it’s more and more difficult to deny that the image is that of a tiny human being just like us. Such images make their right to choose abortion vastly more difficult and that’s a big problem for the abortion industry.

On May 15th, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford signed a bill into law which requires abortion clinics to notify a woman seeking an abortion that she has the right to see an ultrasound image of her child one hour before the abortion. According to Lifesitenews.com: “Only [South Carolina] and Oklahoma require the one-hour waiting period after the ultrasound to give women a chance to reflect on the information without feeling pressured to continue with the abortion. In South Carolina an ultrasound is mandatory if the baby's gestational age is estimated to be 14 weeks or older or is unknown, according to state regulations. The ultrasound remains optional before 14 weeks of pregnancy.”

Women who have been brainwashed by radical feminists into believing that what they’re aborting is just a lump of tissue don’t make an informed choice. Activist groups who call themselves “pro-choice” like the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) should favor provisions that inform women of what their choices are, but instead they fight these statutes vehemently. “A woman has already made an agonizing choice before showing up at an abortion clinic and this law would put them through more unnecessary anguish,” they argue. What they don’t take into account, however, is the anguish many women feel for the rest of their lives after abortions. According to a 2004 study of Russian and American women, “65% report symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder they attribute to their abortions.” Suicide rates are many times higher in women who have aborted. One hour of reflection required by South Carolina may save a lifetime of torment.

Women need as much information as possible to really make a choice. According to the May 16th Elliot Institute News:

A survey released by Feminists for Life of America has found that many college students who become pregnant are unaware of resources available to them or don't have access to good resources. FFL president Serrin Foster noted that when pregnant students look for resources, ‘either they can't find them or the resources are inadequate or expensive.’ One pregnant student noted that without resources, ‘it sure doesn't feel like I have much of a choice.’ . . . [S]tudents who become pregnant are often immediately referred for an abortion by campus health center officials and are not given any information about other options or resources. [Other] surveys have found that lack of resources or support, and pressure and coercion from others, are leading factors for abortion.

Coercion indeed. The leading cause of death for pregnant women in America is homicide and several of these murders have gotten wide national attention. For too many pregnant women, the choice isn’t theirs; it’s someone else’s. Too often it’s the man who fathered the child or the under-aged girl’s abuser who is really choosing the abortion, not the mother. If people insist on being pro-choice, they should go all the way and insist that enough information is available for a women to really know what she’s choosing.

Being Catholic

Reactions to Pope Benedict XVI’s recent visit prompted reflections of how it is to be Roman Catholic in America. I was born a Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrat and that heritage is a big part of me whether I like it or not. And, “like it or not” sums up how I felt about it while growing up - part of me liked my heritage and part of me didn’t. Eleven years of Catholic education shaped me from ages seven to eighteen. I had little choice about going to Catholic schools while my friends attended public schools. My parents insisted on it and I resented it. I was deprived of some things - my high school had no girls for example - but there were compensations. Those nuns, brothers and priests did whatever it took to keep me in line - including many a whack in the head - and that was good for me. I might have gotten into much more trouble if I’d gone to the public schools with my friends. They certainly did.

After graduation from high school, I began my decade as a heathen. For about ten years, I didn’t go to church at all except for weddings and funerals, and doubted nearly everything I’d been taught. It was as if I had to reject it and then take back only what I came to believe for myself. I say nearly everything because I’ve always agreed with the church’s position on social issues, especially abortion, homosexuality and our obligations to the poor. Everything else was pretty much up for grabs. I even allowed myself to entertain doubts about whether there was a God at all. That seemed necessary for me to accept fully that, yes, He really does exist. More than that - He knew me before I was even conceived.

When my children were old enough to ask questions about God, my wife and I decided to bring them to church right in our community. The Lovell United Church of Christ was the only game in town and a lot of good people were members. The two ministers there at the time became good friends. The wider UCC was quite liberal, however, and becoming ever more so while I was moving in the other direction, both spiritually and politically. Gradually, I gravitated back to the Catholic Church and have been attending regularly again for about twenty years in Fryeburg, Bridgton and North Conway. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Fryeburg is my home church.

While I was away from the Catholic Church, it had liberalized as well. Boston’s St. John’s Seminary had been co-opted by homosexuals and graduated most of the priests who sexually assaulted all those altar boys, bringing the American Catholic Church its greatest scandal. Bishops and cardinals who oversaw other seminaries similarly corrupted covered up for the predatory homosexual priests they produced. The problem is that most of those bishops and cardinals are still in office. As the scandal was breaking in 2002, the rector of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC, Monsignor Eugene Clark said from the pulpit: ''In some seminaries in the United States, known homosexual young men have been accepted as candidates against every rule of church wisdom and church requirements. One need say no more of this as a breeding ground for later homosexual practice after ordination, and the manifest danger of man-boy relationships.''

Although many were glad that Pope Benedict addressed the clergy sexual abuse scandal, I was disappointed that he referred to it as a pedophile problem and not a homosexual priest problem, which it clearly is. I was also dismayed to see Cardinal Egan play such a prominent role during the pope’s mass at Yankee Stadium because he’s one of the most notorious enablers mentioned above.

He annoyed me with his speaking voice. Contrasting sharply with Benedict’s humility, Egan was theatrical. He seemed like he was paying less attention to what he said than to how he said it. It was a painful reminder that Rome should have overhauled the American Conference of Catholic Bishops [and cardinals] after the scandal broke and didn’t. Benedict is a reformer, but seems to prefer a quieter and slower reform where many Catholics like me would have preferred an immediate and thorough housecleaning.

As a cardinal himself, Benedict wasn’t shy about enforcing Catholic orthodoxy, so I hesitate to question his courage. He has bravely confronted Islamofascist resurgence and has dressed down administrators of Catholic colleges and universities in the United States who have strayed far from Catholic teaching. As leader of a two-thousand-year-old institution, he doesn’t rush things. I’m impatient, but he obviously is not.

Multicultural History

Every week I’m reminded of my love/hate relationship with the US History textbook used in my class. It blatantly panders to America’s public school teachers who favor politically-correct interpretations of history. That’s what I hate about it - and it’s also what I love about it. The book’s bias is easy for my students to recognize, and I can contrast it to my own conservative bias which I acknowledge very early in the school year. The book does not acknowledge its bias, purporting to be an objective account of events. It’s an easy foil.

I use the text mostly for students to read and answer discussion questions as homework, which we correct in class. In its coverage of the Vietnam War, one two-part question asks: “Why did civil war break out in [neighboring] Cambodia?” and “What were the results of the war?” As I walk around the room checking homework, a student volunteer acts as “assistant teacher” using the teachers’ edition to go over the questions and answers. He or she will read a question, listen to various answers from students, and then read the “correct” answer. As for what caused the Cambodian Civil War, the teachers’ edition gave the answer as: “US/South Vietnamese forces bombed and attacked Cambodia's bases; as Cambodians took sides, civil war erupted.” The clear implication is that America started it.

As for what the results of the war? The “correct” answer was: “Communist Khmer Rouge won; more than a million Cambodians died." They weren’t worked to death or murdered by the communists. They just “died.”

The first time I heard that I was appalled and I asked the student to repeat what the teachers’ edition said. President Nixon was no prize, but he didn’t start the Cambodian Civil War when he ordered US forces into North Vietnamese and Viet Cong sanctuaries there, and he didn’t cause the Khmer Rouge to murder millions of Cambodians either. Communists own that. It’s part of their dismal legacy around the world in the twentieth century, but the three historians who wrote my textbook seem deliberately blind about the evil effects of communism wherever it has been applied. They define it as: “an economic system is which all wealth and property is owned by the community as a whole.” Sounds fine when put in those terms, no?

Contrast the text’s definition with Random House’s (2006) definition: “a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.” Based on about ninety years of applied communism around the world and tens of millions dead as a result, which definition is most accurate?

Communism’s first application was in Russia after Bolsheviks took control of the revolution and instituted the Soviet Union. The text’s harshest criticism of their depredations is a description of how Americans were shocked “when the Soviet government did away with private property and attacked religion.” Then it covers the first Ukrainian famine saying: “Despite disapproval of the Soviet government, Congress voted $20 million in aid when famine threatened Russia in 1921. American aid may have saved as many as 10 million Russians from starvation.”

The text doesn’t speculate about why the Soviet government would “disapprove” aid to its own starving people. Neither does it mention that Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin engineered a “famine” in Ukraine ten years later to purposefully starve 7 million Ukrainians when they resisted “community ownership” of their farmland.

What about the Soviet Union’s military repression of eastern Europe after World War II? When the text begins its coverage of the Cold War, students are asked: “Why did tensions develop among the Allied Powers?” The “correct” answer is: "The US and Britain distrusted the Soviet Union's communist government; the Soviets, also distrustful, feared invasion." There’s no moral superiority in America’s $12 billion rebuilding of western Europe under the Marshal Plan compared to the Soviet Union’s virtual enslavement of eastern Europe.

Like it or not, that’s the multicultural, morally equivalent theme permeating nearly every textbook used in America’s public schools. No culture may be depicted as superior to any other culture, even when it is.