Thou Hast Conquered, Galilean! Or Maybe Not.

Thou has conquered, Galilean! Or maybe not. Ross Douthat wants to re-Christianize America's public life:

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish: [S]erious Christians who worry about the naked public square don't rejoice when a Ten Commandments display... passes muster as "ceremonial deism."... [W]hen Christians cede control of their symbols to the mass culture, it's only a short jog to ceding control of Christianity itself to what you might call the American heresy - the gospel of success.... This could be an argument for withdrawal and quietism - for Christians to abandon the public square entirely, and focus on cultivating an orthodox subculture in a more materialist sea. But that's the counsel of despair. If the mass culture is really so bad for Christianity, maybe Christians ought to be doing more to change it, instead of letting it change them - which is what that whole "salt of the earth" thing was supposed to be about, I think. Changing the culture is hard to do, of course - a lot harder than winning Pledge of Allegiance battles, or even elections. But people (right or left, but the left has understood this better for some time) who think that culture wars are mainly about politics are kidding themselves...

In this endeavor, however, he has a big problem. His eager foot soldiers in the re-Christianization campaign turn out to be people like... well, like... Thomas Sowell who, to put it as politely as I can, certainly doesn't seem to know the True Meaning of Christmas:

Thomas Sowell: It was just a small thing but I was taken aback when I received a memo saying that the offices at work would be shut down during "winter closure." Then it dawned on me that "winter closure" was what we used to call "Christmas vacation."... The idea is that any mention of Christmas might offend people who are not Christians —- and that this should be avoided at all costs.... Christmas is now one of many things that make us walk on eggshells during this supposedly liberated era. Are we all wimps? Over the years, we have gotten used to the American Civil Liberties Union launching legalistic jihads against recognitions of Christmas, in between coming to the rescue of murderers and terrorists....

Note, first, that the "offices at work" to which Sowell refers to are the offices of Stanford's Hoover Institution for War, Revolution, and Peace, famed right-wing think tank--I recall one Stanford mainline economics professor saying, "Well, if he's a right wing nut I could get him a job at the Hoover Institution." If even the bosses of the Hoover Institution don't think it's worth pandering to Sowell's sensitivities...

Note, second, that when Thomas Sowell thinks of Christmas, his mind jumps to the ideas that (i) it is important not to be a wimp and (ii) it is important to HATE the ACLU, which is always "coming to the rescue of murderers and terrorists." This is not attractive. This is not even Christian--or should not be Christian. This is not even sane: one has to pray that someone will adjust Sowell's meds so that he can find a measure of peace.

Ross would not like what he would see if he accomplished his task. Not at all. As long as Thomas Sowell and company are his Christian soldiers in the public sphere, nobody sane can much care for it. As Ross knows very well: he shudders at the prospect of "more Christians making the case against same-sex marriage, or pushing all their chips into the battle over courthouse displays in Alabama."

Vastly preferable to a re-Christianization of the American public sphere spearheaded by the likes of Thomas Sowell is the further spread of the ethics of, say, Hollywood, as expressed in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure: "Be excellent to each other! Party on, dudes!" Those are sentiments Jesus would have a much easier time getting behind than those of our troubled Brother Thomas (see Mark 2:19, Luke 6:27).

So here is a story that we tell in order to make us less likely to behave like Thomas Sowell, and more likely to behave like Bill and Ted:

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, "Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger."

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

Be excellent to each other. Party on, dudes and dudettes. Merry Christmas, everyone.

Comments

[jerry]

Somewhat related is the re-Americanization of the public courthouse in the form of the strategic placement of Bill of Rights Monuments next to Ten Commandments Monuments.

http://www.mybillofrights.org/index2.htm

This is wondeful idea in and of itself. It is also a wonderful hack.

Happy Hannukah!

[Dubblblind]

May we be particularly careful to be most excellent to the Thomas Sowell's who are especially in need of such good cheer.

And a Merry Christmas to our gracious host and all those who grace this blog with their thoughts!

[bakho]

email Douthat. email Sowell. They should quit whining and organize a pickup truck display today. Great story about County banning nativity from the courthouse lawn. Local activist puts nativity scene in back of pickup truck and parks it at a meter in front of the courthouse. There is this weird connection with the Jesus story (born in a manger, no room in the inn). Is a camper on the back of a pickup truck our modern metaphor for "stable"?

http://www.jconline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051216/NEWS/512160333/1141/NEWS

[sm]

This fuss over December 25, or for that matter the month of December as a whole, as if it were the essence of Christianity to celebrate it with exactly the right words, front and center in the public sphere, is paganism of the most absolute sort.

Nonetheless, Merry Christmas, everyone.

[Bruce Moomaw]

Sowell's behavior doesn't surprise me; he's always thought that a chronically foul temper is an adequate substitute for brains -- something brought home to me with particular force a few years ago when he sneered at "environmental extremists", and then revealed in the same sentence that he had the dispute over ozone depletion mixed up with the one over global warming! He really should keep in mind, though, that when the ACLU actually WINS a case on behalf of accused "murderers or terrorists", it's either because they really weren't such, or because the government decided to become a dangerous tyrant while in pursuit of possible ones.

[Buce]

Look, I'm a strong separationist, and deeply private about matters of religious belief (so private that I post under a psuedonym). But I can't escape this inconvenient fact: I can't think of any society whose cultural engine was not powered by religion in some form. Everything about me resists the idea that we are "a Christian society." But how can we be anything else?

[Howard]

i think before we end up in some needless effort to "christianize" the public square, howzabout ross worries his head about reconstitutionalizing the public square.

right now, the president is busy violating the 4th ammendment, proudly, and various liars and scumbags are supporting him in the effort. That's a real problem, unlike the phony concern that american society isn't "christian" enough....

[Fred Hapgood]

> This is not even sane: one has to pray that someone will adjust Sowell's meds so that he can find a measure of peace.

This is ugly and offensive and Brad DeLong should feel ashamed.

[Somebody who associates "Christmas" with "Are we all wimps?" is in very deep trouble, is he not?]

[paulo]

" ...it's only a short jog to ceding control of Christianity itself to what you might call the American heresy - the gospel of success.... "

It has already happened: it only takes a few minutes in the popular suburban evangelical churches, mega or not, to find out that success ( + a 10 % tithe) is the core theme of modern US Christianity.

[anne]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/12/19/what_would_cardinal_cushing_do?mode=PF

December 19, 2005

What Would Cardinal Cushing Do?
By James Carroll - Boston Globe

THE DISPUTE OVER whether it is appropriate, in public, to say ''Happy Holidays" instead of ''Merry Christmas" puts me in mind of Cardinal Richard Cushing. He was my boss when I was Catholic Chaplain at Boston University, and I loved him. In the early 1950s, Cushing forced one of the great changes in Catholic theology by excommunicating Father Leonard Feeney for preaching on Boston Common that ''there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church." As is true of today's exclusivist claims for a Christian meaning of ''the holidays," there was an undercurrent of antisemitism in Feeney's exclusivist claim for Catholicism. An inch below all Christian triumphalism is special contempt for Jews who reject the idea that Jesus is the saving Messiah. Robust assertions of the one meaning of the winter celebration are a version of the claim that there is only one way to God. Jews may not accept that, but how dare they forbid the dominant Christian culture from celebrating its dominance.

What made Cushing's excommunication of Feeney astounding was that Feeney's line had been official Church teaching for most of a thousand years: No salvation outside the Church. Feeney confidently appealed to Rome, forcing the Vatican to take a position on the question. When the Vatican supported Cushing and upheld the excommunication of Feeney, the long-held doctrine of Catholic exclusivism was overturned.

Why was Cardinal Cushing the one to force this change? Cushing's sister Dolly, an MTA toll taker, was married to Dick Pearlstein, who, with his father Louis, ran the haberdashery that was on the way to being Boston's best men's store, which it remains. Cardinal Cushing was often in the Pearlstein home, and he had ample occasion to experience his brother-in-law's innate goodness. There came to be no question for Cushing as to whether his sister's beloved husband was beloved of God. That Dick Pearlstein was Jewish -- a ''non-Catholic" -- ceased to have decisive meaning, and Cushing began to take Feeney's ''orthodox" preaching as an insult to his own family. An abstract principle of theology was upended by the sort of cross-group interaction that had become common in America.

There are religious reactionaries in the world who are suspicious of America precisely because of the religious and cultural elbow-rubbing that occurs in neighborhoods and even families. Upholding the conscience of each individual means refusing to let a particular appeal to conscience dominate public space. But critics can see in such protected plurality of doctrine the top edge of the slippery slope toward ''relativism." One need not share that worry to acknowledge that when people of differing beliefs begin to treat each other with full respect, an elbow-rubbing of the mind always follows.

To encounter another approach to the great questions of transcendence is inevitably to rethink one's own approach. Competing truth claims can yield when emphasis shifts from the claim itself to the idea of truth behind it. The question, ''Is there one way to heaven?" can become the question, ''What is 'heaven' anyway?" Soon enough, believers can recognize that the truth of their own tradition does not depend on the falsehood of someone else's. The next thing you know, as in Cushing's encounter with the Pearlsteins, basic doctrines of one's own tradition may go out the window....

[anne]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/09/14/americas_jewish_founding_father?mode=PF

September 14, 2004

America's Jewish Founding Father
By James Carroll - Boston Globe

THREE HUNDRED fifty years ago, Jews came to America. Beginning today, observances in New York mark the arrival in "New Amsterdam" of 23 Iberian Jews in the year 1654. Noting the milestone in The New York Times last week, Jeremy Eichler celebrated "a tale of the passage from the periphery to the center, from immigrant yearning to mainstream achievement."

The Jewish story in America is usually told that way. An alien people comes to an already established national culture, does very well by transforming and inventing aspects of it, from show business and movies to intellectual life and literature. Jews are honored by this story -- their creativity and diligence enable them to "break in" -- and so is America -- the open society where outsiders are welcome.

But the most basic assumption of that "tale" is that, by the time Jews arrived, America was an already flowing "mainstream," marked by democracy, freedom, openness. The story as usually told does not credit Jews or the Jewish tradition, that is, with having centrally contributed to the invention of the national idea in the first place.

I write from outside the Jewish experience, but what strikes me about that time when Jews first came to "New Amsterdam" is how much the nascent American imagination was preparing to draw on the vital culture of the rabbis, going back centuries. The incubator for the new idea at that moment was, in fact, old Amsterdam, in Holland, where the great foreshadowing of what came to be called liberal democracy was embodied in a Jew.

Benedict Spinoza (1632-77) was a bridge figure between the religious tradition of Rabbinic Judaism and the philosophy of the Enlightenment. In his political writings, one sees, for example, the clear influence of Lurianic Kabbalah, an established Jewish spirituality. It is a small step from the idea that "emanations" of God inhabit the souls of all humans, to the idea that each person, taken individually, is as worthy as every other. That idea is the kernel of democracy. Political tolerance -- what we would call pluralism -- is rooted in this positive attribute.

But Spinoza also saw up close the dark effects of the religious wars then wracking Europe, and so there was a negative source to his call for political tolerance as well. Spinoza was himself expelled from the Synagogue (1656), investigated by the Catholic Inquisition (1659), and banned by the Calvinist Synod (1670). This experience of omnidirectional religious intolerance underwrote his two-fold new idea -- that the state's first obligation is to protect the freedom of conscience of each citizen; to do so the state must not itself be religiously identified. The separation of church and state begins here.

Spinoza is famous for proposing that all things be seen "sub specie aeternitatis," from the point of view of eternity. Nothing bound by time is absolute, which means no human institution is above criticism. Spinoza's political writing, especially his "Theologico-Political Treatise," imagines, therefore, social structures organized to support mutually critical give-and-take.

Here is the seed of a constitutional polity, based on checks and balances....

[John Emerson]

"A chronically foul temper is an adequate substitute for brains...."

Well, I use that method too. A clock that's stopped, etc., etc.

But screw Sowell. (There's no brotherhood among the foul-tempered).

[Dubblblind]

http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/christmastruce.htm

(With liberal cut and paste)

"You are standing up to your knees in the slime of a waterlogged trench. It is the evening of 24 December 1914 and you are on the dreaded Western Front.

All is quiet when jovial voices call out from both friendly and enemy trenches. Then the men from both sides start singing carols and songs. Next come requests not to fire, and soon the unthinkable happens: you start to see the shadowy shapes of soldiers gathering together in no-man's land laughing, joking and sharing gifts.

Many have exchanged cigarettes, the lit ends of which burn brightly in the inky darkness. Plucking up your courage, you haul yourself up and out of the trench and walk towards the foe...

The meeting of enemies as friends in no-man's land was experienced by hundreds, if not thousands, of men on the Western Front during Christmas 1914. Today, 90 years after it occurred, the event is seen as a shining episode of sanity from among the bloody chapters of World War One – a spontaneous effort by the lower ranks to create a peace that could have blossomed were it not for the interference of generals and politicians.

With their morale boosted by messages of thanks and their bellies fuller than normal, and with still so much Christmas booty to hand, the season of goodwill entered the trenches. A British Daily Telegraph correspondent wrote that on one part of the line the Germans had managed to slip a chocolate cake into British trenches.

Even more amazingly, it was accompanied with a message asking for a ceasefire later that evening so they could celebrate the festive season and their Captain's birthday. They proposed a concert at 7.30pm when candles, the British were told, would be placed on the parapets of their trenches.

The British accepted the invitation and offered some tobacco as a return present. That evening, at the stated time, German heads suddenly popped up and started to sing. Each number ended with a round of applause from both sides.

Along many parts of the line the Truce was spurred on with the arrival in the German trenches of miniature Christmas trees – Tannenbaum. The sight these small pines, decorated with candles and strung along the German parapets, captured the Tommies' imagination, as well as the men of the Indian corps who were reminded of the sacred Hindu festival of light.

Interestingly, the German High Command's ambivalent attitude towards the Truce mirrored that of the British.

Christmas day began quietly but once the sun was up the fraternisation began. Again songs were sung and rations thrown to one another. It was not long before troops and officers started to take matters into their own hands and ventured forth. No-man's land became something of a playground.

Men exchanged gifts and buttons. In one or two places soldiers who had been barbers in civilian times gave free haircuts. One German, a juggler and a showman, gave an impromptu, and given the circumstances, somewhat surreal performance of his routine in the centre of no-man's land.

Captain Sir Edward Hulse of the Scots Guards, in his famous account, remembered the approach of four unarmed Germans at 08.30. He went out to meet them with one of his ensigns. 'Their spokesmen,' Hulse wrote, 'started off by saying that he thought it only right to come over and wish us a happy Christmas..."

[Dale]

Thanks Anne

[otto]

It's a shame that Christmas isn't on Thor's day this year. There's a real god for you.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5332&u=17|4|...

Great Egret Dipping a Wing in the Water
New York City--Central Park, Harlem Meer.

Thanks, Dale :)

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5655&u=185|0|...

Snowy Egrets Taking Flight at Sunset
Jamaica Bay NWR East Pond, New York.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5656&u=99|8|...

Snowy Egret Feeding as Black Skimmer Feeds in Background
Jamaica Bay NWR East Pond, New York.

[Oskar Shapley]

Party on, Wayne!

Party on, Garth!

Schwing!

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=3153&u=143|46|...

Male Great Horned Owl
New York City--Pelham Bay Park, Hunter Island.

The great horned owl, I am reliably told, is still in Central Park. A female, yes, a stylish owlette, mouse shopping for the holidays :)

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=3200&u=143|47|...

Female Great Horned Owl Leaving the Nest
New York City--Pelham Bay Park, Hunter Island.

Holiday shoes and mouse pie. Hmmm :)

[cedichou]

note that: the hoover institution is on the stanford campus. Stanford, an institution which has a Winter break, as it has a Spring break and a Summer break. How about Easter break and Assumption break???? And the wars thereof?

That there is no war on the war on Easter, does it mean the war on Easter has been won, or lost?

[anne]

"That there is no war on the war on Easter, does it mean the war on Easter has been won, or lost?"

There there is a wonderful philsophical question for us :)

[MTC]

In defense of the Hoover Institution (gosh, I never thought I would be typing those words!) at least its researchers produce real scholarly work. Right wing...but still sound.

As for Dr. Sowell, he is your typical African American Harvard magna cum laude, Columbia Econ M.A, Chicago Econ Ph.D.--you know what I mean, a racist moron.

Seriously. It's Christmas. He's a right winger. What else would he say?

Fred Hapgood's admonition about the "adjust Sowell's meds" snark is apt. "Meds" in general are not funny. For a lot of folks, "meds" are the difference between a productive life and spinning, flaming madness.

Nice comment also by Mr. Moomaw in defense of the ACLU.

[Loose Shanks]

We Three Kings

1. Still want my Cold War Dividend the Neo-Christians promised, after the US
and UK banks skewered Gorbechev's hope
and slew the Great Satan of Communism!

2. What are we spending $1T/year on now?
Keeping fundamental Christians employed.
Look at the grotesque racial and cultural
disparity in DoD/DHS and its contractors.

3. What are the only masters degrees
you can get from a technical college?
MBA, and Masters in Criminal Justice.
America makes South Africa look good.

[Loose Shanks]

One More King

Jay: Did you hear Prince Charles wants to be called King George now?

Kevin: Did he say that? Yuk, yuk, yuk.

Jay: Yeah, he really did, but George Bush told him he'd have to wait until after 2008.

Budda-bing.

Jay: In a press-conference today, President Bush said it's OK if our National Security Agency spies on Americans.

Kevin: Did he say that? Yuk, yuk, yuk.

Jay: Yeah, he did, then Prince Charles called him up later, and reminded him not to use the word 'tampon' on a portable phone.

Bing-bang-boom.

Jay: And today the New York Times called Vice President Dick Cheney a mobster for, "using the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to invade Iraq, scrap the Geneva Conventions and Strategic Arms Treaties, and to spy on American citizens".

Kevin: Did they say that? Yuk, yuk, yuk.

Jay: Yeah, they did. But Cheney just shrugged his shoulders and said, "I'm gonna make them an offer they can't refuse. I'm gonna give them the Royal Tampon."

[A. Zarkov]

“If even the bosses of the Hoover Institution don't think it's worth pandering to Sowell's sensitivities... “

It seems reasonable to suppose that the Hoover Institute follows the Stanford schedule of holidays, and the names for those holidays. After all Hoover is closed from Dec. 17 to Jan. 2, matching the academic calendar. Unless you really know differently, you should not present speculation as fact.

A better question is do the Stanford speech codes apply at Hoover? Note that FIRE gives Stanford a speech code rating of “red,” meaning it has at least one policy that substantially restricts freedom of speech.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/weekinreview/25word.ready.html?ex=1293166800&en=68d3974074e8743a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

December 25, 2005

The Truce of Christmas, 1914
By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA

When Europe marched to war in the summer of 1914, both sides thought the fighting would be over in a few weeks. Instead, by the close of December, World War I had already claimed close to a million lives, and it was clear the fighting would go on for a long time.

Yet on Dec. 24, much of the Western Front fell silent as ordinary soldiers made temporary peace with the enemy. This was the remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914.

It's estimated that about 100,000 men, mainly British and Germans, took part. In fact, the sheer magnitude of the event led many to doubt that it ever happened. As late as 1983, one veteran called the truce a "latrine rumor."

Today, however, it is often seen as one of the few bright moments amid the slaughter of the Great War, in which 14 million people were killed.

The last survivor of the truce, Sgt. Alfred Anderson of Scotland's Fifth Battalion Black Watch, died last month at the age of 109. Here are excerpts from letters, journals and memoirs of some of the other participants.

THOMAS VINCIGUERRA

The truce broke out spontaneously in many places. Pvt. Albert Moren of the Second Queens Regiment recalled the scene on Christmas Eve near the French village of La Chapelle d'Armentières:

It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere; and about 7 or 8 in the evening there was a lot of commotion in the German trenches and there were these lights -I don't know what they were. And then they sang "Silent Night" - "Stille Nacht." I shall never forget it, it was one of the highlights of my life. I thought, what a beautiful tune.

Rifleman Graham Williams of the Fifth London Rifle Brigade recalled how the mood spread:

Then suddenly lights began to appear along the German parapet, which were evidently make-shift Christmas trees, adorned with lighted candles, which burnt steadily in the still, frosty air! … First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started up "O Come, All Ye Faithful" the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fideles. And I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary thing - two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war....

[Dubblblind]

The truce of 1914, if you think about it, is a truly remarkable event. Sworn enemies who are actively engaged in combat on the front lines, pledged to killing each other on sight, finding, in the midst of all that, the true spirit of Christmas,

"and on earth peace, good will toward men".

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/weekinreview/25word.ready.html?ex=1293166800&en=68d3974074e8743a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

The shared carols inspired Capt. Josef Sewald of Germany's 17th Bavarian Regiment to make a bold gesture:

I shouted to our enemies that we didn't wish to shoot and that we make a Christmas truce. I said I would come from my side and we could speak with each other. First there was silence, then I shouted once more, invited them, and the British shouted "No shooting!" Then a man came out of the trenches and I on my side did the same and so we came together and we shook hands - a bit cautiously!

The enemies quickly became friends, as Cpl. John Ferguson of the Second Seaforth Highlanders recalled:

We shook hands, wished each other a Merry Xmas, and were soon conversing as if we had known each other for years. We were in front of their wire entanglements and surrounded by Germans - Fritz and I in the center talking, and Fritz occasionally translating to his friends what I was saying. We stood inside the circle like street corner orators. … What a sight - little groups of Germans and British extending almost the length of our front! Out of the darkness we could hear laughter and see lighted matches, a German lighting a Scotchman's cigarette and vice versa, exchanging cigarettes and souvenirs.

On Christmas Day, some Germans and British held a joint service to bury their dead. Second Lt. Arthur Pelham Burn of the Sixth Gordon Highlanders was there:

Our Padre … arranged the prayers and psalms, etc., and an interpreter wrote them out in German. They were read first in English by our Padre and then in German by a boy who was studying for the ministry. It was an extraordinary and most wonderful sight. The Germans formed up on one side, the English on the other, the officers standing in front, every head bared.

According to several accounts, soccer games were played in no man's land with makeshift balls that Christmas. Lt. Kurt Zehmisch of Germany's 134th Saxons Infantry Regiment witnessed a match:

Eventually the English brought a soccer ball from their trenches, and pretty soon a lively game ensued. How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as our friends for a time....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/weekinreview/25word.ready.html?ex=1293166800&en=68d3974074e8743a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

When Gen. Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, commander of the British II Corps, learned of the consorting, he was irate:

I have issued the strictest orders that on no account is intercourse to be allowed between the opposing troops. To finish this war quickly, we must keep up the fighting spirit and do all we can to discourage friendly intercourse.

Inevitably, both sides were soon ordered back to their trenches. Capt. Charles "Buffalo Bill" Stockwell of the Second Royal Welch Fusiliers recalled how the peace ended early on Dec. 26:

At 8:30, I fired three shots into the air and put up a flag with "Merry Christmas" on it on the parapet. He [a German] put up a sheet with "Thank You" on it, and the German captain appeared on the parapet. We both bowed and saluted and got down into our respective trenches, and he fired two shots into the air, and the war was on again.

[anne]

http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?title1=&title2=ALL+QUIET+ON+THE+WESTERN+FRONT+%28MOVIE%29&reviewer=Mordaunt+Hall&v_id=1579&pdate=

April 30, 1930

All Quiet On the Western Front
By Mordaunt Hall

From the pages of Erich Maria Remarque's widely read book of young Germany in the World War, All Quiet on the Western Front, Carl Laemmle's Universal Pictures Corporation has produced a trenchant and imaginative audible picture, in which the producers adhere with remarkable fidelity to the spirit and events of the original stirring novel. It was presented last night at the Central Theatre before an audience that most of the time was held to silence by its realistic scenes. It is a notable achievement, sincere and earnest, with glimpses that are vivid and graphic. Like the original, it does not mince matters concerning the horrors of battle. It is a vocalized screen offering that is pulsating and harrowing, one in which the fighting flashes are photographed in an amazingly effective fashion.

Lewis Milestone, who has several good films to his credit, was entrusted with the direction of this production. And Mr. Laemmle had the foresight to employ those well-known playwrights, George Abbott and Maxwell Anderson, to make the adaptation and write the dialogue. Some of the scenes are not a little too long, and one might also say that a few members of the cast are not Teutonic in appearance; but this means but little when one considers the picture as a whole, for wherever possible, Mr. Milestone has used his fecund imagination, still clinging loyally to the incidents of the book. In fact, one is just as gripped by witnessing the picture as one was by reading the printed pages, and in most instances it seems as though the very impressions written in ink by Herr Remarque had become animated on the screen.

In nearly all the sequences, fulsomeness is avoided. Truth comes to the fore, when the young soldiers are elated at the idea of joining up, when they are disillusioned, when they are hungry, when they are killing rats in a dugout, when they are shaken with fear, and when they, or one of them, becomes fed up with the conception of war held by the elderly man back home.

Often the scenes are of such excellence that if they were not audible one might believe that they were actual motion pictures of activities behind the lines, in the trenches, and in No Man's Land. It is an expansive production with views that never appear to be cramped. In looking at a dugout one readily imagines a long line of such earthy abodes. When shells demolish these underground quarters, the shrieks of fear, coupled with the rat-tat-tat of machine guns, the bang-ziz of the trench mortars, and the whining of shells, it tells the story of the terrors of fighting better than anything so far has done in animated photography coupled with the microphone....

[anne]

Nonetheless, the war was on again. "All Quiet On the Western Front" is a masterpiece of a novel and film and should be experienced by us all.

[Dirty Davey]

You know, if Sowell really wants a "Christmas break", then his butt better be back in his chair working on the 27th (the 26th in years when Christmas is on a weekday). If he wants to be off work through New Year's, then he's taking a holiday break and he can shove his complaints up that selfsame butt.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5895&u=4|2|...

Hooded Merganser (female) Drying Wings
New York City--Central Park, Harlem Meer.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5877&u=99|13|...

American Kestrel in Flight
Floyd Bennet Field, New York.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Be excellent to each other indeed, amen. Merry Christmas!

[MTC]

anne -

Please. Stop. Please.

[Blue Nomad]

If there is a proper historical analogy here it is the fragmentation of Greek culture and society that took place at the end of the 5th century BC, and paved the way for the multi-cultural Hellenistic world, or the fragmentation of Roman culture and society that took place in the late republican era, and paved the way for the multi-cultural Roman empire.

There will be no repeal of the 1960s, no restoration of the Judeo-Christian social order. Morality will continue to be privatized (we will all have our household gods); Christianity will continue to become a matter of private practice rather than the basis of public policy. Liberal and mainline churches will persist in their decline, and in a century or two Christianity will be a worldwide sub-culture actively practiced mostly by conservative evangelicals and Catholics.

The west is being slowly primed for the introduction of a new dominant religion (Christendom is in a more advanced state of decay than the other major world traditions, and will be replaced first) and possibly a new civilizational order predicated on that religion. It will bring an entirely new cultural ethos to our neighborhood that probably isn't either Christian or pagan, and it will arise from the postmodern/post-Christian world in much the same way Christianity arose from the Hellenistic-Roman world.

[liberal]

MTC wrote, "In defense of the Hoover Institution (gosh, I never thought I would be typing those words!) at least its researchers produce real scholarly work. Right wing...but still sound."

Huh? Some of it is perhaps sound; a lot of it is pure garbage.

[liberal]

MTC wrote, "Please. Stop. Please."

WRONG AGAIN.

The _proper_ chant to invoke at that juncture is, "Does anne have a blog yet?"

:-)

[liberal]

Buce wrote, "Everything about me resists the idea that we are 'a Christian society.' But how can we be anything else?"

Depends what you mean by "Chrstian" and "society".

Consider the founding document of our national government, the Consitution. It is not a Christian document, but rather an Enlightenment one.

[marale_gringo]

Davey posted:

"You know, if Sowell really wants a "Christmas break", then his butt better be back in his chair working on the 27th (the 26th in years when Christmas is on a weekday). If he wants to be off work through New Year's, then he's taking a holiday break and he can shove his complaints up that selfsame butt."

Or, the good doctor could do his part to increase productivity by taking a pay cut and getting back to work today (26th) like the rest of us...(grumbles about another 2 day 'Holiday' weekend.)

[Gene O'Grady]

Dear Blue Nomad,

I hope I'm not too much in violation of the holiday spirit to suggest that your Hellenic history may be open to question. There's rather a gap began the crisis of the late 5th century BC (and how was it clear at the time that it differed from previous crises, or that the perhaps more relevant crises of the 370's or 350's differed from previous crises?), and a "multicultural Hellenstic" world that may or may not have existed.

And as to the replacement of Christianity, I believe Bertrand Russell had a nice repost to that notion. It's not like it hasn't been done before -- I remember from my Roemisches Wanderjahr seeing still visible "new era" dates that had been devised to replaced the obsolete Christian calendar fading away on public buildings.

[Randall]

What impresses me is the idiocy of worrying about Christmas when everywhere about I have watch Christmas preparations being made for months and everywhere I turn the celebration is there, but what I have little noticed, most especially from the save Christmas crew, is any emphasis on "Peace on Earth."

[Randall]

All the cards I sent this year were cards wishing for peace, for what should be more thought of in war time? No one objected to my card, which may tell us something about saving Christmas in our hearts, but a friend I called did complain about the war against Christmas and I just said I had not noticed and did not understand and the subject was ended.

Hey, all my cards had "doves" on them!

[enfant terrible]

Those shepherds could not have been "abiding in the field" in late December. It is much too cold at that time, even in Palestine.

[Arun Khanna]

"Well, if he's a right wing nut I could get him a job at the Hoover Institution."
I think one has to be an intelligent 'right wing nut' for a job at Hoover Institution.
It's a bit of a surprise that a balanced 'reality based' blog mentions 'right wing nuts' but not 'left wing struts.'
I am kidding it's not really a surprise if the blog is 'reality based' in Berkeley:)