Unto the place Golgotha

Isaiah 53

1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?

2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.

9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

12 Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Christian Reflections, Good Friday (continued)

Man of Sorrows

Man of Sorrows! what a name
For the Son of God, Who came
Ruined sinners to reclaim.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned He stood;
Sealed my pardon with His blood.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Guilty, vile, and helpless we;
Spotless Lamb of God was He;
“Full atonement!” can it be?
Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Lifted up was He to die;
“It is finished!” was His cry;
Now in Heav’n exalted high.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!

When He comes, our glorious King,
All His ransomed home to bring,
Then anew His song we’ll sing:
Hallelujah! What a Savior!

by Philip P. Bliss

Christian Reflections, Good Friday

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

His dying crimson, like a robe,
Spreads o’er His body on the tree;
Then I am dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

by Isaac Watts, 1707

Chronicle of the Damned, part 10

PETA Attempts Ultimate Mockery

Holocaust insinuations and slavery comparisons apparently were not enough. This year, a PETA chapter in Vienna plans to stage a crucifixion of three animal mask wearing activists.

"We suffer and die for your sins of nourishment," is their slogan.

They will attempt this outside St. Stephan's Cathedral, on Good Friday.

The People's Party, which is quite conservative, denounced this as a "mockery of a religious community on one of the most important days of the Christians," and concluded that "the action would be more blasphemy than animal protection."

The Archdiocese of Vienna firmly declared,"It's a completely unacceptable falsification of the religious dimension of Good Friday." Furthermore he hinted that "The square outside the cathedral was a 'sensitive' place where not anything could be permitted to happen."

Plans for a crucified lamb billboard in Sydney were rejected.


Should those activists complete their plans, no animal mask will hide them from the sight of God. They mock the death of His Son. Woe unto them.
To equate scriptural passages with a political agenda equals blasphemy.
PETA no doubt has many good intentioned folk. Those who do well to remember the Bible's teachings on cruelty to animals.
Nevertheless, most members miss the mark. They place animal "rights" over human life (ask them to choose between medical testing on animals or human death), they forget that animals do not have a soul, and they would place animals above the economic well-being of humans. Humans are set apart from the rest of creation and are to be in dominion over it. Animals are in subjection to humans, to be used in labour, or for food. And this is a result of the fall, man sinned and all creation "groans" under the curse.

For those who will try this Good Friday stunt we say, beware.

Your actions place you in Circle Five, reserved for the wrathful and sullen. Theirs is righteous anger, but instead of concern over sin, murder (what if half the energy of saving animals from a variety of real and perceived cruelties was directed at an undeniable cruelty, namely, abortion), and other human injustices, PETA focuses on all the wrong aspects and gets quite worked up over it.
"Sotto 'l velame de li versi strani" or "under the veil of the strange verses" describe the denizens here.

Another respite will be endured in Circle Seven, among the blasphemers. No mockery of the Cross can, without repentance and faith in the very object (Christ) they mock, lead anywhere else.

Some may even fall into Circle Eight with the falsifiers and practicioners of fraudelent rhetoric.
"Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta" or "and of his ass he had made a trumpet" is a fitting description for many of PETA's protesting hordes.

The Veteran in a New Field, 1865

"When I was in the army, many years ago, I was an infantryman, and in the course of what I saw, and did, and came to understand, I was broken. Sometime after I had returned to the United States and my life had resumed, I rounded a corner in the Metropolitan Museum in New York and saw a painting I had known all my life but which I had not until that moment been able to understand. This was Winslow Homer’s masterfully restrained portrait of a veteran returning to his fields. The generation touched by fire in the Civil War understood the great import of this painting, they knew why the veteran had his back turned to the painter, why he was alone, why he worked in utter quiet, why the light was so clear, the scene so tranquil. After years of war and destruction, they understood, and after having passed this painting for the first time as a man, so did I.

As if there had never been a Gettysburg, an Antietam, or a Chancellorsville, the light struck the soil and the wheat grew. The world was the same. The essential rules had not changed. Devastation had not triumphed. The veteran could return to his fields, and the answer to his tentativeness was that, as if by a miracle, they were now even richer than he had remembered them."
by Mark Helprin

(in an article for The New Criterion, 1994)

Nota Bene: Bradley Birzer -- Little Words and Mighty Swords

Editor's note: we present another fine commencement address
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“Little Words and Mighty Swords”
Spring Convocation, 2004
Delivered at Hillsdale College
By Dr. Bradley Birzer

Before I begin I would like to thank several persons: the members of the Senior Class of 2003, the members of the Senior Class of 2004, my faculty colleagues, and the administration. I can’t imagine a better group of people to work with and for.

And congratulations to Dr. Willson for his well-deserved award. He is the Cato the Elder of the history department, and I thank him for his many services to God, country, and Hillsdale College.

But, I especially want to thank my wife, Dedra, who turned 35 today. I thank God everyday that He saw fit to put us on this earth at the same time, to share our pilgrimage.

My talk today is about death, love, mystery, and myth.

G.K. Chesterton wrote some of most stirring words of the past century in his “Ballad of the White Horse.”

The Men of the East may search the scrolls,
For sure fates and fame,
But the men that drink the blood of God Go Singing to their shame
The wise men know what wicked things are written on the sky,
They trim sad Lamps, they touch sad strings,
Heaving the heavy purple wings,
Where the forgotten seraph kings Still plot how God shall die.

Out of the mouth of the Mother of God like a little word come I;
For I go gather Christian men from sunken paving and ford and fen,
To die in battle, God knows when, By God, but I know why.
And this is the word of Mary, The word of the world’s desire:“No more of comfort shall ye get,
Save that the sky grows darker yet and the sea rises higher.”
Then silence sank.

Though it was ostensibly a poem about an event in the ninth century, King Alfred’s valiant defense of the Christian Anglo-Saxons against a massive invasion by barbarian infidels, “The Ballad of the White Horse” really served as a thinly veiled, gallant call to arms for those who would have to suffer through the miseries and pains of the twentieth century, the deadliest century in the history of the world. Though Chesterton wrote the poem before the horrors began, he prophetically believed that a world that was embracing the materialism of Marx, Freud, and Spencer would only come to ruin.

Indeed, the twentieth century was one that witnessed the flourishing of the vast filth and blatant inhumanity of the killings fields, the holocaust camps, and the gulags. Whether in the camps of the European or Asian ideologues, some humans, convinced of the righteousness of their cause, viewed all other human persons as nothing more than a collection of parts, ready to be dismembered and reassembled in Picasso-esque fashion, or perhaps simply quartered and the quartered again. Armed with the ideological doctrines of fascism, National Socialism, and Communism, the twentieth-century became a century of the inverted vision of Ezekiel: wheels within wheels, endlessly spinning, the abyss ever expanding, ever within reach. The names of the ideologues may have varied, but they were all of the same stripe, and, in the end, they will most likely arrive in the same place, their names absent from the Book of Life. And to them, I say “good riddance, may justice be done.” Each denied the uniqueness and dignity of the human person, seeing him or her not as Imago Dei, in the image of God, but, instead, tragically, as only a means to an end; nothing but a cog in a vast machine, and the system—as all systems are wont to do—run amok. Indeed, with modernity and its many servants, the Logos wept, and in marched the new gods: Demos, Leviathan, and Mars. And, they quickly took possession of the field, claiming victory, and setting up their supposed utopias, based on race, class, or any other fanciful human notion. Once we have overturned history and superstition, the new prophets of the new gods argued, we should start at the year zero. Once this has been accomplished, man—or at least certain men—might attain godhood—and the apotheosis began.

And, then. . . the terror reigned. No bright and creative utopias of liberated individuals flourished. But, instead, the specter of cold, brutal, and endless death. Indeed, in the twentieth century, the vivid colors of the glorious reality of Creation became the dull grays of conformity, and, then, very quickly, with failure after failure to perfect the man or woman, the bright reds of blood became one with the browns and blacks of mud; an unholy, coagulating, turbid muck. Those four colors: gray, red, brown, and black define the previous century.

The new gods—Demos, Leviathan, and Mars—demanded many sacrifices, and their murderous appetites seemed insatiable. Their toll of deaths in the twentieth century overwhelm our imaginations and steal much of our innocence away from us: 200,000,000—by the latest count, but more are being unearthed—human beings, each created uniquely in a certain time, in a certain place, for a certain purpose. For, nature makes nothing in vain.

But, we have no room to breathe a sigh of relief that we have left the twentieth-century. For, the new gods have not departed; they have simply taken on new names. For certainly the killing has not ceased simply because we’ve entered a new century. The brave new worlds continue. The twentieth century witnessed the greatest slaughter in history, but the twentieth-first century has continued apace: with 160,000 Christians being murdered per year since 1991. Shockingly, over 65% of all Christian martyrdoms in the past 2,000 years have occurred in the last 86 years!

T.S. Eliot described it best in his dramatic homage to St. Thomas A Beckett, with the Chorus:

Now I fear disturbance of the quiet season:
Winter shall come bringing death from the sea,
Ruinous spring shall beat at our doors,
Root and shoot shall eat our eyes and our ears
Disastrous summer burn up the beds of our streams
And the poor shall wait for another decaying October.
Why should the summer bring consolation
For autumn fires and winter fogs?
What shall we do in the heat of summer
But wait in barren orchards for another October?
Some malady is coming upon us. We wait, we wait,
And the saints and martyrs wait, for those who shall be martyrs and saints.
Destiny waits in the had of God, shaping the still unshapen:
I have seen these things in a shaft of sunlight.
Destiny waits in the hand of God, not in the hands of statesmen
Who do, some well, some ill, planning and guessing,
Having their aims which turn in their hands in the pattern of time.
Come, happy December, who shall observe you, who shall preserve you?

And, yet, despite the optimism of the end of Eliot’s chorus, many in the past century waited and waited for December to come, the blessed moment of the Incarnation to celebrate. For many citizens of the past, foul century, though, waiting, longing, and suffering under the reign of the new gods, Good Friday represented far more than Christmas.

The blood of the martyrs built the Church in the first several centuries AD. What will the blood of the twentieth and twenty-first century martyrs build? Absolutely nothing, if we forget their sacrifice. And, even worse, less than nothing if we mock their sacrifice.

As Americans, we too easily forget or ignore their sacrifices in our historical memory—after all, it happened “over there, somewhere in Europe and Asia, and they’ve always had problems.” Or, so we comfort ourselves even as our Mexican brethren, connected to us by a very long—if often permeable—border suffered some of the worst excesses of attempted genocide between 1917 and 1930.

But, Chesterton gave us words of hope.

Out of the mouth of the Mother of God like a little word come I;
For I go gather Christian men from sunken paving and ford and fen,
To die in battle, God knows when, By God, but I know why.

The little words. What are they? Who are they? The Word is obvious—that which and who Created the World, that Which and Who Entered the World; that which Redeemed it; that which conquered Death; that which will one day bring all things back to right order. The stoics and Christians know it as the Logos; the Jews as the
Memra who will come.

So, in our own ways, we may each understand “the Word.”

But, again, what about Chesterton’s Little Words?

Well, you are a little word, and I am a little word. Each person behind me is a little word. Each one of us is glorious in that we are Imago Dei. It is a terrible burden, and an awesome grace. For, as little words, we are called to sacrifice. Not others—as the ideologues of the twentieth and twenty-first century believe—but our very selves.

This is not mere theory, mere wishful thinking, or mere romanticism. This is reality. And, we can find evidence for it throughout history. Indeed, the West itself, is the product of sacrifice: the sacrifice of 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. When the last Greek died at the Gates of Fire, the West was born.

We see it in Jesus Christ, as the greatest exemplar of sacrifice. Others, though, in the classical and Christian world followed his example, before and after the Incarnation: Leonidas, Socrates, Cicero, Sts. Peter and Paul, Stephen, Felicity, Perpetua, and Boniface; Sts. Thomas A Becket, Thomas More, and John Fisher; the many men of the Continental Army and Patriot movement of the 1770s and 1780s; the 620,000 men who gave their lives for a better republic in the American Civil War; and the many men who served their country and their faith in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the 2 Gulf Wars.

And, most recently, who can forget Tom Burnett—that 38-year old Wall Street Banker, father of three girls, husband to a beautiful wife, and a devout Christian. This man, a former college football player for St. John’s College in Minnesota, a lover of business as well as of ancient Greek philosophy, helped two other courageous western men drive a jet airliner into rural Pennsylvania soil on a clear September morning, 2001. “We’re all going to die, but three of us are going to do something about it. I love you honey.” These were the last words his wife heard over the cell phone.

What better words could serve us in a new century?

But, at heart, we must ask: what is sacrifice? Is it always blatant heroism? In the City of God, St. Augustine tells us that the early Church refused to use the word “hero,” for it was a pagan term involving will power. But, he conceded, if the Church were to appropriate the word, it would have to give it to the martyrs. For, what is sacrifice, but the highest form of love, nothing more and nothing less. And, Love is the force that created the universe, animates all things, and, in its own time, bring all things back to right order. We see it everyday and in every moment of history. We see it in the many western martyrs mentioned above. I see it in the vast dead of the twentieth-century, most of whom are forgotten, many of whom simply disappeared into the shadow worlds of the Gestapo and KGB.

In the words of Eliot’s chorus:

Even in us the voices of seasons, the snuffle of winter, the song of spring, the drone of summer, and voices of beasts and birds, praise Thee.
We Thank Thee for Thy mercies of blood, for Thy redemption by blood.
For the blood of Thy martyrs and saints shall enrich the earth, shall create the holy places.
For wherever a saint has dwelt, wherever a martyr has given his blood for the blood of Christ,
There is holy ground, and the sanctity shall not depart from it
Though armies trample over it, though sightseers come with guide-books looking over it. . .
From such ground springs that which forever renews the earth.

But, love is not dead, and it is certainly not about death. Immensely far from it; for love conquers death. And, I, right here and right now, see love in front of me, and I see it behind me. I see it to my right, and to my left. For love is ultimately quite simple, and it comes in a variety of different packages. In its highest form, it is the willingness to lay down one’s life for another. But, it is also the willingness to change the baby’s diaper at three in the morning, when one’s spouse would like to sleep. It is the willingness to follow the lead of a college professor of rhetoric and classics to fix bayonets and charge down a Pennsylvania hill on a hot, humid July afternoon in 1863. It is also the willingness to forgo a Friday evening party because the person in the dorm room next to yours needs someone to talk to, right then and right there.

For, each one of us is called to love. Nature makes nothing in vain. For, no one is made for this earth. . .

-To be an exemplar of pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, or sloth
-no one is made to live a quiet life of desperation
-no one is made to be a mere player on a stage
-no one is made to be a cog in a machine
-For, no one is made to be a means to some earthly end
-For, no one is made to be a consumer; merely choosing between Wal-Mart and Target; between Pepsi, Coke, and R.C.
-For, no one is made to spend his time in front of the TV

Instead, we are called to prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope, and love. We are called to be extraordinary in ordinary situations. We are called to greatness. We are, after all, Imago Dei, each a little word.

As I look back over the past two thousand years of civilization, I see three profound gifts, each a sword, ready to aid us.

The first is Romano-Celtic. A lady of supreme beauty rises from a lake, and she bequeaths—temporarily—to a young Celtic man with an unlikely, non-Celtic name of Arthur, the Sword of the Roman Duke of Britain, Excalibur. With it, he is to restore order to his kingdom, under siege from within and from without. He forms his company of warriors, marries the stunning Guineivere, and creates the kingdom he was meant to create.

But, fallen men behave in fallen ways, and Arthur’s men are offered the supreme choice: worldly, false beauty or otherworldly, true beauty; Guineivere or the Holy Grail, the cup of the Last Supper. Even the Sword of the Lady of the Lake can not attenuate such a choice. Lancelot chose poorly, Galahad chose wisely. Divided, the kingdom dies.

For my second sword, I choose a blade forged in the mythical fires of the first age of the world. A short blade, its purpose is to vanquish the world of incarnate demons. Toward the end of the third age of the world, two unlikely suffering servants, Frodo and Sam, journeyed into Hell itself, carrying the Ring of Power, the burden of the world, to its doom. The guardian at the gates of hell, Shelob, the unholy spawn of an evil of the ancient world, traps the two. Frodo unsheaths the sword, Sting, and says bravely to Sam, “Come, let us see what Sting can do. It is an elven-blade. There were webs of horror in the dark ravines of Beleriand where it was forged.” When Shelob gets the best of Frodo, Sam takes up the sword. As Tolkien wrote, “Sam did not wait to wonder what was to be done, or whether he was brave, or loyal, or filled with rage. He sprang forward with a yell, and seized his master’s sword in his left hand. Then he charged. No onslaught more fierce was ever seen.” But, even with his small victory, all seemed lost, for Frodo was most likely mortally wounded.

And, yet, not all was lost. Deep within Mordor, “Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.” Sam saw Beauty; such Beauty demonstrated for him the permanence of the Good, and he fought for the truth of the One, the One who created all things and Who allows us the privilege of being little words, agents in His Grand Story.

Sam’s hope is the hope that springs forth from the Grace imparted by the Incarnation, the Death, and the Resurrection of Christ. It is the hope that reminds us that the baptized must sanctify the world and “redeem the time.” It is the hope that reminds us that God makes nothing in vain, and that Grace and Grace alone perfects fallen and sinful nature. It is the hope that each one of us is born in a certain time, and a certain place, for a certain purpose. It is the hope that reminds us that we mean something, that God loves us so much that He blessed us by making us a part of His Story: the story that began when He spoke the Universe into Existence; the story in which The Father sent His only Son to live with us for 33 years, fully God and fully man, to teach, and then to suffer, and then to die on a piece of Wood, betrayed by even his closest friends.

But St. John remained. And from the cross, Jesus turned to His Mother, and said, “Behold your son.” It is the hope that Mary and St. John held in their hearts. It is the hope that comes after three days of anxiety, gripping frustration, and utter despair, as the women at the tomb understand that the One they mourned conquered Death, ransoming us from our own follies for no other reason than. . . Love. Indeed, it is the hope that all things are created and animated by the Love of the Spirit. Love is, after all, the greatest force in the Universe. Even Samwise Gamgee, the mythical Hobbit living in a pre-Christian world—the land between heaven and hell, this Middle-earth—understood that. And, so should we.

Let not future generations say of us: we slept. Instead, may they remember us as those who fought the good fight for the Logos and for humanity. Let it be said that in the twenty-first century we took up either of our mythically-laden swords and wielded them with all the force imaginable. We would be blest indeed if a future historian wrote of us: “No onslaught more fierce was ever seen.” Just as the Enemy arrives in new packages and in a variety of different forms throughout time, so too does the Army of the Logos. As with Arthur and Sam, each little word—you and I—arises at the time he or she is most needed. And, we are each lent the weapon which we will best wield. Understood properly, we should come to realize that each sword is the embodiment of the same sword, and that the damage it inflicts upon the Enemy is vast and incalculable. When we understand that Excalibur and Sting are one and the same, we will hold in our hands the third sword: the Sword of the Spirit, the sword of love.

And, through Grace, we will conquer.

Thank you and God bless.

Nota Bene: Mark Helprin -- Defend Civilization Itself

editor's note: we present this speech in the spirit of spring commencements
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Defend Civilization Itself
24 May 2002
Delivered at Hillsdale Academy
By Mark Helprin

I had wanted to speak to you tonight about defense, about the campaign in Afghanistan, and the war against terrorism — to shower you with facts and figures, which would support my contention that, in regard to the defense of this country, three administrations in a row have not done, and are not doing, enough. Three administrations in a row have not appreciated, and still do not appreciate, the gathering storm. I had wanted to do that, but the president of a surrounding college said, wisely, "Remember the occasion." And I shall, for it is a most worthy occasion, and he is right, it must take precedence over policy, which not only blows with the wind, but disappears with it.

The graduates tonight cannot know what is in their parents' hearts. You have been spared that, until you have children of your own, who are about to take the first step in leaving you . . . forever. Among those of false and mechanistic emotion, the expectation is that your parents will be overjoyed. But in a world where things matter, where love is understood in its relation to mortality, and where there is the courage of commitment — which is to say, in this world — they cannot be overjoyed. And this I know not only because I once left my own parents, and then they left, me, forever, but because I have two daughters of your age, and although they must, it breaks my heart to see them go.

My heart will have to wait, however, because by tradition in this the very last act of your extraordinary secondary education I am obliged to impart to you some sort of resolution for which, given the nature of that education, you are particularly suited. It is also my hope that, in regard to resolution, I can outdo the deservedly most famous high school commencement address in all of history, Clarence Darrow's command to a 1918 graduating class: Get out of here, and go swimming. That's admirable, but I would like to add just a little more, and to lengthen it by only a third. My charge to you, then, taking into account who you are and the nature of this institution, is: Get out of here, go swimming, and defend Western Civilization. Admittedly that is a bit more than Darrow asked, but then again he was a Progressive, and Progressives are notoriously permissive with their young. I know that such a charge is most ambitious, but it comes at the right time, both in history and in your lives.

There is a time to lay down arms, and there is a time to take them up, and that we are now in a time to take them up is self-evident. Those for whom it is not self-evident, who would challenge the right to defend against and preempt barbarous attacks upon our persons and our country, and who would instead substitute a distorted inquiry that would end in the condemnation not of the terrorists but of the terrorized, do not find the need to defend their civilization — Western Civilization — self-evident. Nor do they find the action of doing so congenial, in that it is something from which they habitually abstain. This is a serious charge, and I have drawn a clear line, but I mean to, so let me give you an example.

Several years ago, I was speaking in a university town in Massachusetts. By some quirk which I hope never to see reproduced, and before I knew what was happening, I found myself debating my entire audience on the subjects of human sacrifice and cannibalism. These well-educated and polite people — only a few of whom would actually have murdered or eaten one another — who had sons and daughters, Ph.D.s, and BMWs, were defending the Mayan and Aztec practice of human sacrifice — that is, in the main, of children — and the South Sea custom of cannibalism. It wasn't that they were for such things: they weren't. It wasn't that they were not against them: they were. It was that to take the position that human sacrifice and cannibalism are wrong is not only to reject relativism but to place oneself decisively in the ranks of Western Civilization, such a position being one of its characteristic distinctions, and this they would not do. They were ashamed to do so, and they were afraid to do so. My charge to you is that in this, you never be either ashamed or afraid.

Civilization is vulnerable not only to munitions; it is vulnerable to cowardice and betrayal. It is a great and massive thing of many dimensions that can be attacked from many angles. When professors of ethics at leading universities advocate infanticide, you know that civilization is under attack. When governments and churches advocate racial discrimination, you know that civilization is under attack. When a popular "art" exhibit consists of human cadavers in various states of mutilation, including a bisected pregnant woman and her unborn child, you know that civilization is under attack. The list is endless. The daily assault could fill an encyclopedia of decadence and degradation.

You must never fail to stand against such things, to use your education to break the sophistry that surrounds them, and to draw upon it to summon the memory of a thousand struggles, of ten thousand battles, and of the countless millions who fell to establish and defend those principles that not long ago were called self-evident, and that, now and forever, absent moral cowardice, are self-evident.

If civilization can be attacked on many fronts, it can also be defended on many fronts, and to do so you need not necessarily drop into Afghanistan by parachute or found a political party. Last summer, in Venice, I was walking from room to room in the Accademia, which, unlike timid American museums, throws its windows wide open to the light and air of day. As if to bring even further alive the greatness and truth of the Bellinis and the Giorgiones on the walls, the galleries were flooded with music. As is most everything in Italy, it was unofficial. It came from a guitarist and a soprano on a side street. He played while she sang — gloriously — Bach, Handel, Mozart, and anonymous folk songs of the 18th Century. Because it was music, I cannot properly convey to you how beautiful it was, but it was accomplished, precise, and infused with the ineffable quality that lifts great art above that which merely aspires to or pretends to be great art. I could not see them from the windows, but when, several hours later, I went outside, they had neither ceased, nor skipped a beat, nor produced a single false note.

They were impoverished Poles, who appeared to be in their late twenties. She was thin, sharp-featured, and hauntingly beautiful. Most people simply passed them by, some dropped a few coins in a basket at her feet, and the visitors to the Accademia had no idea who they were, but she sang as if she were bathed in the footlights of La Scala, where she should have been, and where someday she may be. It did not matter that they were unrecognized, that they sang on the street, or that they were desperately poor, because that day in Venice they rose above everyone else, except perhaps the saints. In this they shared a brotherhood with the American soldier who made the first parachute jump, in the dark, into Afghanistan. For they and he were defending the civilization of the West, and they and he are inextricably linked. Without the soldier, they could not exist except in subjugation, and without them, he would not have enough to fight for.

I ask you to join this brotherhood, and, in your own way, whatever that may be, to defend and champion the sanctity of the individual, free and objective inquiry, government by consent of the governed, freedom of conscience, and the pursuit — rather than the degradation and denial — of truth and of beauty. I ask you to defend a civilization so buoyant with the presence of God that it need never compel others in His name. I ask you to defend a civilization that rather than deliberately obscuring the difference between combatants and non-combatants, struggles to maintain and respect it. I ask you to defend a civilization of immeasurable achievement, brilliance, and freedom. I ask you to defend civilization itself.

It is not without risk, and to request this of you in the presence of your parents is something I can do only because I ask the same of my own children. Because of the temper of the times (and, some would say, the temper of all times), what may be exacted from you is sacrifice — of income, position, title, acceptance, respect, perhaps even of life. But what may be provided, or, rather, earned, is a kind of battlefield commission that will give you neither rank nor insignia nor anything but honor. And therein lies the justifying balance, for honor is usually worth at least what you must give up to obtain it. We have heard of late how we are at a disadvantage in the war that has just begun, because in the West we cling to life and comfort at the expense of honor. Our enemies tell us that, and in the telling they barely conceal their enjoyment. Do they really believe this? Because if they do, I have a message for them: The sense of honor in the West may be slow to awaken, but it exists in measures and quantities, when it does awaken, enough to fill the world, as it shall, as it must. How do they think we have come to where we are? How do they think we survived the battles that led to the great revisions in this civilization, its unprecedented turnings, redirections, and rededications — of which, being entirely unself-critical and subjective, they have not yet had the courage to make even one? They say we have no history. Did we spring from a leaf? How do they think we have come through our five thousand years? Honor. From long familiarity, we know what honor is.

It is what enables the individual to do right in the face of complacency and cowardice. It is what enables the soldier to die alone, the political prisoner to resist, the singer to sing her song, hardly appreciated, on a side street. It is God's valuation and resplendent touch, His gift of strength to those who need it most, when they need it most.

I ask you to defend and protect what is great and good, to choose your battles, to stand your ground. For little things cascade into big things, and even should the larger battle not go well, hold your position. Even if, in the end, you do not prevail — though you must — you will have done right, and the ghosts of those who came before you over many thousands of years, of those who fell unknown and unremembered while doing right, of those who upheld against all pressures and in the face of wounding opposition, will be justly honored, as you will be justly honored, by those who come after you.

Congratulations, and God bless.

Spucatum tauri: Our country is spending itself to death

Normally we tend to avoid matters of pure politics, and more still matters of pure public policy. Today we're going to break that rule.

If you haven't seen it (and judging by the newspaper headlines, you haven't), check out the 2005 Financial Report of the United States Government.

It takes some time to wade through it all, but it's worth the effort. The report is chock full of frightening stuff. If a private company made financial projections like this, their stock would plummet. Alas, the U.S. government needn't worry about such repercussions and accountability, which is the biggest reason why there's a storm gathering on the horizon.

For those tempted to blame the current (and admittedly spendthrift) president and congress for this problem, hold your horses for a second. This is a problem with roots going back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and every presidential administration and congress since then shares the blame for this. For those tempted to blame this decade's tax cuts and the war in Iraq for our nation's financial problems, once again you'd be wise to take pause and actually read the report. Adjustments to the government's balance sheet resulting from tax cuts and the Iraq war are a DROP IN THE BUCKET compared to "entitlement" and social spending (i.e., Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, etc). The numbers clearly show that even if President Bush hadn't cut taxes (a big reason, by the way, why the U.S. economy is doing pretty well now) or invaded Iraq, our fiscal future would still be dreadfully red.

Finally, for those tempted to think that the worst-case-scenario is simply "oh, well, social security and medicare just won't be there when I retire," think again. A likely outcome of this problem is the complete financial collapse of the United States. Think about that for a second. It's not a pretty thought. The bottom line is that our government is making promises to its own citizens it can't keep, and unless things change one day the chickens will come home to roost. It's only a matter of time.

Read through the report. Look at the graphs and charts. Complain to your elected officials. Tell your friends and family. Share this with the media. Burying our heads in the sand isn't going to solve this problem.

Quote for the Day

Choruses from "The Rock"

by T.S. Eliot

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursue his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

Spucatum tauri: When Vile Imbeciles Camp (or Hysterics from Hell)

Sheehan is at it again

Apparently she has found time in her busy schedule (meeting with South American dictators, bashing America, and speaking at The Sixth World Socialist Forum) to once again camp in the ditches outside Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch.

Here is a sample rant:

"Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full well that my son, my family, this nation and this world were betrayed by George Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agendas after 9/11. We were told that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedoms and democracy … not for the real reason, because the Arab Muslims who attacked us hate our middle-eastern foreign policy."

Not only does Sheehan look like the worn out liberal, her rhetoric echoes it. Singer and liberal activist Harry Belafonte recently called Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world" on Hugo Chavez's show. Sheehan, recently on his show, seconded that brilliant geo-political analyis, "I agree with him."
She sure is bright. If only our country had more like her, you know, with friends like Sheehan...who needs enemies.

We humbly suggest a touch of the ol' tar and feathering. An historical show of support for traitors. For indeed, Sheehan has long moved past the concerned citizen with the greater good of our nation as her goal.

Fortunately, Christopher Hitchens spares me the need to write anything more about this thoroughly un-American women and flays her in a recent column.

Hitchens writes, "I dare say that her "moral authority" to do this is indeed absolute, if we agree for a moment on the weird idea that moral authority is required to adopt overtly political positions, but then so is my "moral" right to say that she is spouting sinister piffle. "

Christian Reflections, Eleven

"God most true does not forget his own covenant."

Gregory of Nazianzus

from Theological Orations

Quote for the day

Mark Steyn, a journalist worth reading.

From his recent article "Facing Down Iran: Our Lives Depend On It," in City Journal

"Back when nuclear weapons were an elite club of five relatively sane world powers, your average Western progressive was convinced the planet was about to go ka-boom any minute. The mushroom cloud was one of the most familiar images in the culture, a recurring feature of novels and album covers and movie posters. There were bestselling dystopian picture books for children, in which the handful of survivors spent their last days walking in a nuclear winter wonderland. Now a state openly committed to the annihilation of a neighboring nation has nukes, and we shrug: Can’t be helped. Just the way things are. One hears sophisticated arguments that perhaps the best thing is to let everyone get ’em, and then no one will use them. And if Iran’s head of state happens to threaten to wipe Israel off the map, we should understand that this is a rhetorical stylistic device that’s part of the Persian oral narrative tradition, and it would be a grossly Eurocentric misinterpretation to take it literally."

You can read his entire column here.