Maggie's Farm

The Fjordman is back at Gates of Vienna, with a piece on the dangers of the EU. Is the EU an imperialist scheme to remove power from the people of Europe? One would tend to think so. A quote:

Booker and North calls the European Union “a slow-motion coup d’état: the most spectacular coup d’état in history,” designed to gradually and carefully sideline the democratic process and subdue the older nation states of Europe without saying so in public.

Read the entire excellent review of the long, sneaky history of the EU idea. Image: Stolen from the piece at G of V, above.

In the late 1800s, yacht clubs were established along the northeast coast of the US with a dual purpose in mind: yacht-racing, and making sure there were enough sea-wise people to fill the ranks of naval officers in the event of need. Thus these old yacht clubs functioned as an informal naval auxiliary, as does the excellent US Power Squadron.

That is the reason that these clubs are commissioned each spring, and de-commissioned each fall; that is the reason for the para-military uniforms worn by yacht club officers on formal occasions; that is the reason such clubs always have a "Ship's Surgeon" and a "Fleet Captain," and that is the reason the chairmen of yacht clubs are titled "Commodore" - the lowest rank of Admiral in many navies.

My club, which was my parent's and grandparent's club, founded in 1880 in Westchester County, NY, held its commissioning last Monday. It's always a stirring event (for the non-terminally cynical), and always the same, complete with dressed ships, cannon fire, the national anthem, the first raising of the flags for the year, state and local dignitaries (no Hillary), representative officers from other Long Island Sound yacht clubs within drinking-and-driving distance, a long prayer, recognition of members who died over the past year, recognition and appreciation of the devoted club staff, speeches, etc. Then dinner. It's an unspoken rule that every member shows up in blazer, tie, and good cheer - or have a good excuse not to ... plus the pre-ceremony cocktail hour is "free."

Image: That's the fashionable north shore of Long Island in the far distance, where the anorectic women with their fancy horses, and their tall, elegant, seemingly-diffident husbands all speak Locust Valley Lockjaw - aka Connecticut Lockjaw - about 6-7 miles across Long Island Sound. The green spot just offshore is just some little island with a huge egret colony - but of no military significance!

As regular Maggie's readers know, Roger Scruton is in our pantheon of essayists, right up there with Dalrymple. From his recent piece on John Stuart Mill (a very smart guy but perhaps lacking in wisdom and life experience - but I detest retrospective judgements, especially when performed by intellectual inferiors like me) whose thinking evolved from utilitarianism to liberty to socialism:

Mill's defense of liberty, which was enunciated with great force and seeming clarity, soon followed the path taken by his defense of utilitarianism, and died the death of a thousand qualifications. "On Liberty" sees individual freedom as the aim of government, whose business is to reconcile one person's freedom with his neighbor's. "The Principles of Political Economy" by contrast, while pretending to be a popular exposition of Adam Smith, accords extensive powers of social engineering to the state, and develops a socialist vision of the economy, with a constitutional role for trade unions, and extensive provisions for social security and welfare. The book is, in fact, a concealed socialist tract. While "On Liberty" belongs to the 18th-century tradition that we know as classical liberalism, "Principles" is an example of liberalism in its more modern sense.

Mill's hostility to privilege, to landed property, and to inheritance of property had implications which he seemed unwilling or unable to work out. His argument that all property should be confiscated by the state on death, and redistributed according to its own greater wisdom, has the implication that the state, rather than the family, is to be treated as the basic unit of society--the true arbiter of our destiny, and the thing to which everything is owed. The argument makes all property a temporary lease from the state, and also ensures that the state is the greatest spender, and the one least bound by the sense of responsibility to heirs and neighbors. It is, in short, a recipe for the disaster that we have seen in the communist and socialist systems, and it is a sign of Mill's failure of imagination that, unlike Smith, he did not foresee the likely results of his favored policies.

Yes - in other words, a return to Feudalism. And ah, that pesky Law of Unintended Consequences. Here's the whole piece at Opinion Journal. Mill's thinking on various subjects seems as alive today, as ever. Here is a brief synopsis of his life.

VDH on Our Brave New World of Immigration:

In the dark of these rural spring mornings, I see full vans of Mexican laborers speeding by my farmhouse on their way to the western side of California's San Joaquin Valley to do the backbreaking work of weeding cotton, thinning tree fruit and picking strawberries.

In the other direction, even earlier morning crews drive into town - industrious roofers, cement layers and framers heading to a nearby new housing tract. While most of us are still asleep, thousands of these hardworking young men and women in the American Southwest rise with the sun to provide the sort of unmatched labor at the sort of wages that their eager employers insist they cannot find among citizens.

But just when one thinks that illegal immigration is an efficient win-win way of providing excellent workers to needy businesses, there are also daily warnings that there is something terribly wrong with a system predicated on a cynical violation of the law.

His entire piece at RCP here.

Glenn Reynolds takes a look
at why people in
industrialized countries have fewer babies.

He asserts that, in addition to the cost in money and time, parenthood no longer has the social value that it once had. He does not mention two medical factors: the Pill and the drop in infant mortality.

A quote:

There's also the decline in parental prestige over generations. My mother reports that when she was a newlywed (she was married in 1959) you weren't seen as fully a member of the adult world until you had kids. Nowadays to have kids means something closer to an expulsion from the adult world. People in the suburbs buy SUVs instead of minivans not because they need the four-wheel-drive capabilities, but because the SUVs lack the minivan's close association with low-prestige activities like parenting, and instead provide the aura of high-prestige activities like whitewater kayaking. Why should kayaking be more prestigious than parenting? Because parenting isn't prestigious in our society. If it were, childless people would drive minivans just to partake of the aura.

The piece is here.

...the International Herald Tribune reports, Brown has managed to convince many readers that DVC is "largely true." Indeed, as the IHT also reported, it is precisely the truth claims that attracted the attention of Sony executives: "The amazing thing about this book is it's provocative: Is it all true? Isn't it true?"

Perhaps no one has ever captured the basic problem with the truth claims made on behalf of DVC and its ilk better than C.S. Lewis, who observed in Mere Christianity that:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

All Dan Brown, Ron Howard, Tom Hanks, and that whole crew have accomplished is getting richer by saying that "really foolish thing."

Bainbridge's whole piece here.

Time to plan your August cruise. Medium or small ships are the best places, because you can never forget that you are at sea. We are very fond of the Holland-America Line, and have been for fifty years. For all of their trips I have taken, my favorite remains the old NY to Southampton route. Chilly, foggy, and old-fashioned. No need for a fancy suite: being on the ship is the thing. Make that historic crossing before you grow too old to enjoy it. Forget the food: you can see whales, petrels, shearwaters, giant ocean swells, the rare passing ship, mist rolling in and, if you're lucky, a good North Atlantic storm that will stir the soul and spirit (and stomach).

Walking a few miles around the Promenade Deck at 6 AM in the cool North Atlantic mist, on a jerkin' boat, is a very fine thing to do.

Image below: MS Statendam

I hope Bob did not copyright "wackademia,"
because Maggie's Farm is going to appropriate the
term via eminent domain.

Many Boston College profs etc are protesting the selection of Condy Rice as graduation speaker. Why? Because she works in the interests of the USA. While this is clearly political, it is completely bizarre as a rationale, since that is what she is paid to do.

I understand where they are coming from - an anti-American, internationalist place in their dreams. But they are so far from the reality of life...they really need some reality therapy. Perhaps 9-11 wasn't sufficient to convince them that there is evil out in the world, and not just in themselves and their evil, evil country.

A quote from Adyanthaya's piece on the subject at RCP:

The authors of this letter, Theology Department Chair Kenneth Himes and theology professor David Hollenbach, seem to be arguing that any high U.S. official is unfit for a Boston College honorary degree. For what President, Vice President, or Secretary of State would not maintain that “U.S. foreign policy should be based on U.S. national interest”? Himes and Hollenbach betray their anti-American bias by assuming that the U.S national interest is somehow less concerned with “the common good of the entire human family” than is the “international community” interest.

Here's the contradiction: the US government is too evil and too powerful, but it should be the government of the world? Theologians need to stick to their knitting - God is a big enough job for them, or anybody. And the US Government needs to focus on protecting and defending the US - that's a big enough job for anybody, too.

Why can't "older" women find husbands?

Joe explains it:

For a woman of any age, finding a good man is a daunting task. By the age of forty, women find that all men are either (a) already married, (b) gay, or (c) idiots. Since the good ones are already taken, women have a choice of either stealing someone else’s man or stealing someone else’s man - and then converting them. Over the age of forty, women have a similar difficulty since all men are (a) still married, (b) still gay, or (c) dead.

Their endless, entitled demands on the city have become ridiculous, and it has become some wierd mission or morbid obsession, it appears, on their part. They are wrong to use their loss to control and manipulate the rest of us: that is an abuse of grief. 

Personally, I think a bronze plaque on a wall of the new building would be perfectly appropriate: "On this site, on September 11, 2001, America was attacked by Islamic Jihadists resulting in the deaths of 2752."

We do not need a multi-billion dollar hystrionic thing to remember what was done to us, as a city and as a nation. A self-selected group of "Families" have become professional mourners and wailers, and that is unbecoming - and annoying. Bury your dead, remember them in your hearts, set your spirit against the enemy, and move forward. And quit it with the victim family schtick (sp?). All of us around here had friends and neighbors and family members die in 9-11, but don't make that grief a life-long career. We have also had plenty of death in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are in a war which we did not seek, or want.

Not one of us forgets what was done to you and your loved ones, and to us as a nation. We saw it. We are dealing with the enemy. That is what matters, and that will be history's memorial.

Mayor Bloomberg seems to be fed up, too.

The WCC has taken the now-well-trodden path away from God, towards the temptation of secular and political moon-bat-ism, (which is a much easier path to walk along, as it is the path of spiritual pride and self-satisfaction. It must feel good).

With its co-option by the Loony Left, who hope to use its reputation as one more mouthpiece, the hope for ongoing ecumenical dialog has died. But, I wonder, how important is that idea anyway, really?

A few quotes from the report in Touchstone:

The decision has been a generation in the making, and no single vote, speech, motion, paper, legislative minute, consciousness-raising session, litany of repentance, people’s drama, or interpretive dance arising from the World Council of Churches’ 9th Assembly, held February 14–23, 2006, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, can be accounted as the definitive end of its Christian life. The thirty-year battle for the soul of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the institutional ecumenical movement has ended.

Founded in 1948 to foster the reunification of Christian Churches, the WCC has effectively shed its religious calling, and in its place has chosen social activism in the pursuit of "relevance.”

and

This “relevance” found voice at the opening session of the 9th Assembly when the North American delegates offered a litany of repentance. Americans and Canadians confessed to the delegates from more than one hundred countries “the sin of racism,” “our compulsion to despoil the earth,” “our thirst for violence,” “the hunger for revenge,” “our lust for empire,” our “self satisfaction and self-adoration,” and our “hearts hardened by terror and media manipulation.”

Latin American delegates joined the chorus agreeing that America was the problem, confessing to having “to breathe air polluted by foreign-owned industries” and to being “subjected unilaterally to the interests of large corporations or the countries reckoned to be great.”

Asian delegates added a refrain, calling for repentance for “the invalid babies still born in Vietnam as a result of Agent Orange used [by America] during the war in Vietnam.” The call had to be made in absentia, however, as no Vietnamese were actually present.

I find this public hand-wringing both pathetic and ridiculous. Not to mention prideful, since I am sure none of them can really take credit for the sins they recite. Read the whole sorry tale here. It reads like just one more story of the Left insinuating itself into worthy non-profit organizations, like the YWCA, the UCC, the Ford Foundation, PBS, etc. Sad stuff. They never quit, and seem to have more time on their hands than normal working folks.

And they have no right to repent any guilt of mine: that is my problem, not theirs. They are not Jesus, and they should climb down from their manufactured plastic cross.

Image: Aslan. Not a tame lion.

If anyone has not read Steele's piece yet, now is the time to do it. It's an important and clear analysis of why the West seems to lack moral authority and plain old red-blooded American backbone. One quote:

Because dissociation from the racist and imperialist stigma is so tied to legitimacy in this age of white guilt, America's act of going to war can have legitimacy only if it seems to be an act of social work--something that uplifts and transforms the poor brown nation (thus dissociating us from the white exploitations of old). So our war effort in Iraq is shrouded in a new language of social work in which democracy is cast as an instrument of social transformation bringing new institutions, new relations between men and women, new ideas of individual autonomy, new and more open forms of education, new ways of overcoming poverty--war as the Great Society.

This does not mean that President Bush is insincere in his desire to bring democracy to Iraq, nor is it to say that democracy won't ultimately be socially transformative in Iraq. It's just that today the United States cannot go to war in the Third World simply to defeat a dangerous enemy.

It's a must-read, here at Opinion Journal.

What is the goal of "higher education"? Meaning college. I would say that it is the ability to write clearly, which means to think clearly; to know a ton of stuff about all sorts of things; to know Shakespeare, the Bible, geology, calculus (which also means to be able to think clearly) and Locke and Aquinas etc., and I could go on and on.

Kalthoff at American Spectator reports that the old goals have been co-opted by the moonbats. That is not news, thanks to good ol' Dave Horowitz, but Kalthoff does a good job with the theme. One quote:

Universities were not created to encourage diversity or throw parties in its honor. Rather, they were founded upon the principle that ascertainable Truth exists. These days many conservatives seek to reform higher education by demanding that universities practice their professed diversity. These conservatives grant the diversity crowd's premise. Then they beg, in the name of fairness, for a seat at the table. They plead, "Let us traditionalists, let us strict constitutional constructionists, and let us defenders of Intelligent Design Theory have seats beside the queer theorists, the professors of deconstructed whiteness studies, and the post-Marxist feminist evolutionary biologists."

This tactic betrays the historic purpose of higher education, which is not to give every view a place at the table. The university ought to be concerned with truth, not diversity. Giving every side an equal say denies that some things are actually higher and more worthy than others. Universities exist to serve the higher things -- the pursuit, preservation, and propagation of the Truth. Alongside this goal stands the traditional aim of American colleges to foster virtue, both moral and intellectual.

 I agree with every word. Read the whole thing.

Enviros have been clamoring for expensive gas for years: they have figured that costly energy should be a driving force for less gas use, and for the development of alternative sources.

Indeed, the US has been spoiled by dirt-cheap gas prices for many years. But the prices we pay now are in fact politics-created. If you want cheap gas:

1. Remove the taxes. What is the federal and state tax per gallon where you live?

2. Get rid of this dumb ethanol additive nonsense. It costs more, complicates distribution, and is nothing more than a boondoggle for corn farmers.

3. Let's drill for oil in the US. Let's use our own, offshore and in Alaska, etc. Or do not complain.

4. Let's increase refinery capacity.

And, whatever is done, the price of oil will increase due to worldwide demand. Pejman takes a look at how gas prices have become a political football. And Ex-Donk takes a look at how the Dems will try to exploit it - without offering any solution other than empty bromides, like "alternative sources instead of drilling," as Brewton points out today. Attack, attack, attack.

I disagree with lots of it, and agree with lots of it. But I welcome a sane, adult, and friendly debate about the proper role of government in the lives of free people.

Our Uncle Norm has posted it here.

If I had the time, I would go through it point by point. But I have a business to run, jobs to create, opportunities to nurture, money to be put to work, and new ideas to develop. Maybe I will find the time soon.

In the meantime, I wish Uncle Norm would covertly take on a real job in the real world, and have the chance to find out what it is like. He might be quite surprised: Good capitalist work is great, challenging, life-affirming, scary, creative, rigorous, and infinitely more exciting than being a professor to a bunch of drooling, hormone-poisoned, brains-full-of-mush late adolescents. And it is fun to make a real income.

I wish those good guys would try it, before they pontificate about socialism. But I like them and enjoy them anyway. There is lots more to life than politics - but individual freedom is high on my list of pleasures. For better or worse, let me deal with what I have been blessed with, and leave it to me to figure out what my goals are - if any.

John Kekes refreshes our memory of The Terror of the French Revolution, for which the ends justified the means. One quote:

...in declaring his aim to be a society in which “the immortal principles of equality, justice and reason” would prevail, Robespierre simply dropped liberty and fraternity, substituting whatever he regarded as justice and reason. The justification of the massacres was that those killed were enemies of the republic, counterrevolutionaries who had conspired against that equality, justice, and reason whose realization would “establish the felicity of perhaps the entire human race.” The pivot on which all turned was those principles of equality, justice, and reason, which Robespierre spelled out in a declaration that formed the basis of the Constitution of 1793. Some extracts: “Article 1. The object of every political association is to safeguard the natural and imprescriptible rights of men.” “Article 3. . . . rights belong equally to all men, whatever their physical and moral differences.” “Article 4. Freedom is the right of every man to exercise all his faculties at will. Its rule is justice, its limits are the rights of others, its source is nature, its guarantee is the law.” “Article 6. Any law which violates the imprescriptible rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical.”

How did Robespierre actually interpret these principles? He said: “[W]e must exterminate all our enemies with the law in our hands”; “the Declaration of Rights offers no safeguard to conspirators”; “the suspicions of enlightened patriotism might offer a better guide than formal rules of evidence.” Commenting on an execution, he said: “Even if he had been innocent he had to be condemned if his death could be useful.” In a letter advising the Revolutionary Tribunal, he wrote: “People are always telling judges to take care to save the innocent; I tell them . . . to beware of saving the guilty.”

Read it all and remember. The guy was a creepy loser. Whenever you hear "equality, justice and reason," run for the hills. It means they want to kill you: it is "rational." If someone says "freedom from the state," - go there: it means they respect the human heart and soul. As much as I like Norm Geras, I would not want to be a serf or slave on his socialist plantation. It would be soul-destroying, and could turn me into a lazy, undignified, working-the-system bum, like the blue-eyed hedonistic jerks in Sweden or the brown-eyed infants in France.

The top 5% of income earners pay 50% of the taxes in the USA.
The top 10% of earners pay 2/3 of the taxes in the USA.
The top 50% of earners pay 96% of the taxes.

So when they talk about tax cuts for the "rich,"  which includes a NYC cop married to a nurse, they are talking about the folks who pay most of the taxes. It isn't very complicated.

If they can move 100% of the taxes paid by the top 10%, the voters can vote themselves whatever they want for free, paid for by others. A sweet deal, if you want to be a kid all of your life.

In my opinion, this is a lousy program. Everyone should pay heartily - it's supposed to be the price of civilization, and the dues you pay to be a member of a fine nation. But I felt the same way when Nixon got rid of the draft. A bad, politically-motivated decision. Everyone should be required to serve their country, and to pay their dues. Period. Including females.

And there should be no withholding of taxes - that should not be an employer's problem. We should all just pay, ourselves, to make it clear that it is our money, our dues, our deal, and our country.

Before I head off to do the Stations of the Cross - the most moving ritual in the Christian calendar -  let's remember the greatest Republican President, killed 141 years ago today as he relaxed at the theater - one of his favorite diversions, besides memorizing Shakespeare and the Bible, reading the humor of the time, and just hanging out with the remarkable Seward, and his other buddies.

In those days, the President could just stroll over to his friend's houses, or hop on a horse and ride. All summer, he would commute daily, alone on his horse, from the Soldier's Home, until the death threats became too alarming.

And I owe the blog a review of Goodwin's bio of Lincoln, which I am finishing now. Can I say "spellbinding" without being cliched? Read it.

That guy was one hell of a non-political politician. 600,000 died in the war, which engaged 3 million Union soldiers. The righteousness of the war can still be debated (the popular vote for his re-election was very close, due a strong anti-war, "give-up" faction), but the weight of Lincoln's character cannot. His relentless sense of humor is a revelation, but most of it is lost. His capacity to deal serenely and kindly with political adversaries should set an example for all in that ugly trade.

Re the book, three small bits jump to mind, off the top of my head:

"If I were two-faced, do you think I would wear this one?" 

"Revenge is suicide."

"I'd rather swallow my buck-antler chair than appoint Chase to the Court, but it was right for the country."

...and one bit, a letter to a friend from his wife, and I paraphrase "Thank God that my darling Abraham was re-relected. I owe over $27,000 to my New York dressmakers, and I could not hope to carry that debt without this job."  That was a big credit card debt, back then. Her husband never knew. She was a shopaholic, and never really got over the death of her son.

Image: A montage of Lincoln and his Generals. Such a photo-op never actually occurred. They were far too busy, and the wonderful General Grant was the last guy to get in a photo. He preferred sleeping on the ground, in the company of his troops. How Grant tolerated being President, I do not know. Maybe booze helped him get through it.

American and Canadian citizenships are the most desirable in the world. Both countries are the most welcoming in the world, sometimes to their detriment.

We were both, long ago, huge empty expanses in need of sheep-herders, ranchers, pioneers, miners, farmers, and shop-keepers. Both countries made it easy to obtain citizenship, compared to all other countries on the planet.

Far too easy, if you ask me, because true citizenship is not only a gift, but a privilege which is accompanied by many dead-serious responsibilities and duties. Acceptance as a citizen is not a free lunch.

I suppose I view Duties as more important than Rights, because, as a social contract nation, rights and freedom can only be protected by a dutiful people. Jefferson: "A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society."  (In these times, the word "right" has been perverted and twisted to mean "a right to get" something rather than a "freedom from state power".)

As I observe all of the complexities of the illegal immigration issue, and peruse the Aliyah Diary series posted here, depicting the long and difficult process of becoming an Israeli citizen, I begin to wonder what American citizenship means, and what it should mean - not the legal part, but the thing itself.

When I call someone a "good citizen," or a "desirable citizen," this is at least part of what I mean, as a regular American:

- They try to obey all of the laws of the land (excluding speeding).
- They aspire to honest and honorable behavior in all of their dealings with people and institutions, as defined by our civilization.
- They are interested in, and know, the history and traditions of the country and its philosophical underpinnings.
-They have some concept of what freedom means, and are skeptical about government power.
- They take care of their kids and their families.
-They aspire to personal independence and responsibility
-They seek ways to give of themselves ("Ask not...")
-They are willing to fight and die for their country when called upon, even if they think they know better.
- They speak their mind fearlessly.
- They keep themselves informed about world and national issues.
- They like to work and to assume responsibilities.
-They vote, even if they hate their choices, and get involved in community activities.
- They love our capitalist heritage, because it provides opportunity and freedom to try to do whatever we want without the weight of government on our backs.
-They Pledge Allegiance, and mean it - not so much to a flag, but to an idea, embodied imperfectly in a nation of people.
- They help a neighbor in need; they are charitable.
- They delight in the words of the Constitution on which we are founded.
-They respect our abundant and wonderful free worship of God.
-They are grateful for the remarkable system we have.
-They love our land, want to protect and preserve our heritage, not as real estate, but as a precious gift and a heritage to be passed on without destruction.
- They receive and profess citizenship as a sacred blessing for us as a precious island in a world full of danger, tyranny, insecurity, lack of opportunity, ignorance, hopelessness, brutality, and inhumanity.

There is no higher honor or achievement in life than that of being a "good citizen" of a free republic. It is not easy. I aspire to it, and it is my highest compliment.

Gospel of Judas' Authenticated, Translated After 1,700 Years
2006-04-06 15:16 (New York)

By Samantha Zee
     April 6 (Bloomberg) -- An ancient manuscript known as the`Gospel of Judas,'' which was lost for almost 1,700 years, has been authenticated and translated, providing a new view of the relationship between Jesus and the apostle who betrayed him.
     The leather-bound papyrus manuscript, believed to have been copied down in Coptic probably around A.D. 300, was found in the 1970s in the desert near El Minya, Egypt. The 66-page manuscript also contains a text titled James, a Letter of Peter to Philip, and a fragment of a fourth text scholars are calling the Book of Allogenes, according to the National Geographic Society.
     Unlike accounts in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, in which Judas is reviled for his traitorous act, this gospel portrays Judas as acting at Jesus's request when he hands Jesus over to authorities. The 26-page Gospel of Judas was written on 13 sheets of papyrus, both back and front.
     The discovery of the ancient, non-biblical text, "considered by some to be the most significant of the past 60 years, enhances our knowledge of the history and theological viewpoints of the early Christian period,'' said Terry Garcia, executive vice president for Mission Programs for the National Geographic Society in a statement on its Web site.
     The Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art and the Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery were also part of the international effort to authenticate, conserve and translate it.

     The manuscript circulated among antiquities traders, moving from Egypt to Europe to the U.S. It was held in a safe-deposit
box in Long Island, New York, for 16 years before being bought in 2000 by Zurich-based antiquities dealer Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos.
     When attempts to resell the manuscript fell through, Tchacos, alarmed by the manuscript's rapidly deteriorating state, transferred it to the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art in Basel, Switzerland, in February 2001 for conservation and translation.
     It was authenticated as a genuine work of ancient Christian literature through radiocarbon dating, ink and handwriting analysis and imagining techniques, Garcia said. The manuscript, now known as Codex Tchacos, will be delivered to Egypt and housed in Cairo's Coptic Museum.
     In the text, Jesus challenges his disciples to look at him and understand what he really is, though they turn away. In a key passage, he tells Judas that "you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.''
     Pages of the papyrus manuscript, or codex, are on public display at the National Geographic headquarters in Washington.

Remarkable piece from Ledeen at NRO - h/t Ed Driscoll. Here, he quotes Oriana Fallaci and comments:

How come that, in a country where 85 percent of the citizens say to be Christian, so few rebel to the ludicrous offensive which is going on against Christmas?!? How come that so few protest when your Caviar Left speaks about abolishing Christmas holiday, Christmas-trees, Christmas-songs, the same expressions Merry Christmas and Happy Christmas?!?

That’s the sort of anger that comes from a self-described "religious atheist" like Oriana, who knows that if anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism spread again, it is only a matter of time before they will come for people like her.

As indeed they have already, with their legal briefs and their anti-hate-speech codes, dragging her off to the latest version of the Inquisition for the sin of apostasy against the Church of Political Correctness. San Francisco, under cover of "existing and established customs and traditions," bans free speech. The little reichs of San Francisco, St. Paul, and Paris ban free religion. And "top professors" at Harvard and Chicago take off after the Jews.

No wonder Ayman al Zawahiri and his buddy, the Ayatollah Khamenei, think we’re going to be an easy prey.

Read the whole thing.

Mexico invades and defeats the
United States of America, without a shot being fired.

"Nothing will stop us," they declare.

The Dems and the Repubs have figured it out together, in Washington over cigars and double Laphroiags, and the hell with the voters.

Guess what? The entire illegal immigration issue is about a complicated partisan maneuvering, and has nothing to do with the interests of Americans. And if both parties can conspire together against the voters, who can you punish with your vote?

This is one of those cases where politics trumps reason, law, national sovereignty, economics, common sense, and the will of the people. 

People bitch about contentiousness in DC - but look what happens when both sides are on the same page, and against the voters. As the rapist said, "There's nothing you can do, so just sit back and enjoy it."

The fix is in. Just watch it unfold. As Mark Levin says, regular Americans are just too busy to protest.

Image from the LA march of Illegals on Parade, via Moonbattery

This man cannot help pandering to, or seducing, or flattering anyone he encounters.

It is a disease in him.

At Gateway, Clinton tells the Brits that their economy and system is the envy of the US. Let's hope the Brits don't believe that steaming pile of happy horsesh-t, because not a solitary soul in America envies the Brit government-stifled economy. And very few envy their antiquated socialistic and statist tendencies, and their Nanny-style emasculating Government.

On the contrary, Brits have every reason to envy the US economy and American freedom from an oppressive state.

Image, from Gateway, of Clinton reacting with his trademarked modesty to applause, recently in Britain.

First, read this advice and these US State Dept.
rules and regulations.

Second, read this on Mexican immigration laws and regulations. Remember, it is a felony to be in Mexico  illegally. And their jails are not very nice - no TV and no A/C. And their guards and police are not well-schooled in multicultural sensitivity.

And the suggestion for the Minutemen and those who wish to support the laws of the US: Get a thousand folks to cross the border into Mexico without money and without passports. Seriously. See what happens. It would make an effective statement.