http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Wed, 23 Jun 2004 19:40:07 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/06/23/194007.php Kieran Dickinsonby Conor DickinsonWhen most people think of airports in this day and age, the first feeling they get might be fear. Airport terminals are places where we are frisked by security guards, hassled by customs officials, and wait anxiously as a voice over the loud speaker warns us to be wary of ownerless luggage. If fear isn't the first feeling that comes over us, then it's certainly boredom. Who hasn't had to wait a seemingly interminable amount of time in an airport terminal waiting on a delayed connecting flight? Yet in "The Terminal," director Steven Spielberg turns an airport into a wonderland of modernity, a Mecca of consumerism in which he finds sleek beauty. A cynical mind might claim that Spielberg opportunely mines this territory for product placement money (is it any surprise that there's a Verizon store prominently displayed, among others, and that the film co-starts Catherine Zeta Jones, Verizon's spokeswoman?) Yet in the end, we are won over by Spielberg's skill at subverting our expectations of the airport setting, just as we are won over by Viktor Naborski's (Tom Hanks) strange Capra-esque, odyssey which criticizes governmental bureaucracy, while ultimately reaffirming man's goodness in troubling times. Viktor, played with humor and pathos by Tom Hanks, arrives in America and is refused permission to leave the airport because the fictitious Eastern European country he hails from has just had a military coup, and the U.S. government has not officially recognized their new government. Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci), the airport's security czar, is unable to communicate to the non-English speaking Victor why he can't leave, but does manage to get across the idea that he must not leave the confines of the airport. Dixon assumes that Victor will leave anyway, as any normal person would, and become someone else's problem. The thought of leaving after he's been told not to, never occurs to the innocent Victor, however, and he makes the airport into his home, befriending a multicultural and eccentric assortment of the lower rungs of airport personnel, romancing a beautiful, but unlucky in love flight attendant (in perhaps the film's most implausible plot point), and eventually becoming something of an icon to the airport community. The plot is farfetched and nonsensical (though it is "inspired" by a true story), but in a charmingly whimsical sort of way that makes the illogicality seem unimportant. The episodic structure weaves together sketches of Victor's life as he manages to transform an impersonal airport into a cozy home. The Capra element is there, particularly with its populist admiration for "the common man," but the film also significantly recalls Charlie Chaplin - in one scene Victor makes a bed for himself out of two rows of chairs and Spielberg shoots the funny scene in one long take, as Chaplin would have, allowing Hanks' performance tell it all rather than using any unnecessary cinematic flourishing. There are some very funny moments, several provided by Kumar Pallana, an Indian janitor whose sole pleasure in life is watching people slip after they've ignored his "Caution: Wet Floor" signs, too consumed in their cell phone conversations, or too preoccupied with rushing to get to their terminal on time, to ever bother looking up. Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson's screenplay also wittily mines Viktor's communication barrier, and Hanks does a wonderful job with his Eastern European accent (Hanks also amusingly mimicked the Southern accent in the abominable "The Ladykillers" earlier this year--Meryl Streep has a new competitor).Unfortunately, the film looses steam in its final third. The episodic structure of "The Terminal" simply doesn't build to any conclusion so it feels like one had to be tacked on. Also disappointing is a weak last minute revelation involving a mysterious box of peanuts that Viktor carries with him at all times. The muddled message could also be troubling to some. The illogical plot would appear to serve as a perfect vehicle for wagging a finger at the increased, to the point of paranoia in Spielberg's mind, red tape of airport security in post 9/11 America. Yet, thankfully perhaps, Spielberg's heart doesn't seem to be in the indictment. Much as in his underwhelming World War II epic, "Saving Private Ryan," Spielberg can't quite make up his mind what he thinks about his subject. "Saving Private Ryan" opens with a horrific battle scene which suggests that war is hellish and completely dehumanizing, then utilizes an anti-war plot (in which eight men are sent to risk their lives to save one man), and ends as a mildly patriotic war picture meant as a salute to America's veterans. Some might find this frustrating, but while the film itself is deeply flawed, its ambivalence is its most admirable aspect. In "The Terminal," Frank Dixon symbolizes cold, robotic bureaucracy, yet even he is humanized, and most of the security guards and agents are presented as decent people just doing their jobs. Likewise, one isn't sure what to make of the theme of consumerism. When Viktor asks Frank what he's supposed to do in the terminal as he waits for a new visa, Frank replies curtly, "the only thing you can do: shop." Depending on one's point of view, one could either be offended by Spielberg's reduction of American culture to a vast shopping mall, or instead be appalled by the way he actually seems to embrace it. Spielberg has always seen the aesthetic beauty and emotional comfort of American suburban cultural hegemony, as displayed in the way he lovingly photographs Elliot's neighborhood in which all the houses look the same in "E.T." or the way he uses children's toys appearing to come to life to forewarn us of alien contact in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." "The Terminal" provides many laughs as well as some (perhaps unintentional) food for thought. While it won't live on in the public consciousness like the Frank Capra or Charlie Chaplin films it is inspired by, it's an entertaining couple of hours that may make you smile when you leave the theater, and will certainly provide a breath of fresh air from the typical assortment of dumb comedies and special effects extravaganzas that summer films usually offer us. Video16774@blogcritics.org Wed, 23 Jun 2004 19:40:07 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/05/02/123754.php Kieran DickinsonBy Dan DickinsonThe Scalawags: Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction by James Alex Baggett, Louisiana University Press, Baton Rouge. Louisiana, 271 pages. $55.00.Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Sorty of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Yankee Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy by Elizabeth Varon, Oxford University Press, New York, New York, 261 pages. $35.00.Visit any bookstore and you'll see shelves groaning with volumes about America's Civil War. Titles abound regarding battles, leaders, and campaigns. They extol famed units, detail soldier life, and even present "oddball" stories about women who served dressed as men and children who fought while pretending to be men. Taken together, the Civil War is America's formative historical obsession. Encased in these tomes are some of our best historical and fictional writings, by such distinguished authors as Shelby Foote, James McPherson, Bruce Catton, and U.S. Grant. What is lacking are volumes detailing the events that led to disunion in the first place. Absent, too, have been studies that tell us much about the fact that, while a majority of Southerners favored leaving the Union, a substantial number of Southerners didn't support secession. And while most Southern dissenters accepted the inevitable, more than a few sided with the Union throughout the war, providing moral and material support, and, in some cases, intelligence. After the Federal victory, many of these same pro-Union elements came to dominate Reconstruction politics. These individuals have earned the epithet "scalawags," to distinguish them from their Northern emigre counterparts, the "carpetbaggers." The "scalawags'" subsequent fall led to the development of a "Redemption" south not hugely different from the gracious, class dominated, and almost feudal society of anti-bellum times. Yet, the question must be asked: Did the Redeemer's victory lead to a better South? Or did the Redeemer triumph delay the South's progress for an additional century? If the answer is the latter, just what is the proper place of the "scalawags" in American history?The present volumes offer two views on the scalawags, one from a general perspective, the other highly personal. Both, in their different ways, seek to answer these questions.According to historian James Baggett's impressively researched study, the "scalawags" were pro-Union Southerners who had opposed secession in the years leading up to the Civil War. Few were Republicans (Lincoln didn't even appear on the ballot in the South), most were Whigs, and the vast majority voted for John Bell's anti-secession Constitutional Union Party in the 1861 election--an effort that carried most border states and scored strongly in much of the south. When secession came, most "scalawags" offered reluctant support to the Southern Cause. Others emigrated north or sat the war out. More than a few resisted, either forming pro-Union guerilla outfits such as North Carolina's Patriots of America or providing intelligence to the invading Northern Armies.As parts of the South fell, the "scalawags" emerged, joining with "carpetbaggers" in forming "State Governments" in union occupied territory. Except in West Virginia, these efforts did little but inflame the mostly pro-South inhabitants. As pathetic as these quasi-state fiefdoms were, though, these efforts did train the "scalawags" in how to write constitutions, hold elections, and make laws. When the Confederacy collapsed, the "scalawags" found a political vacuum in the South. They were more than happy to fill it. Thus, from 1865 - 1874, while many white Southerners were disenfranchised, "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers" ran most of the South. Thanks to the resumption of voting rights and the violence of the Klan, the "scalawags" were then swept out of power, to appear in history only as corrupt, sadistic, and cartoonish caricatures in such movies as "Birth of a Nation" and "Gone With the Wind." Were the "scalawags" so bad? Blaggett argues that the scalawags bore little resemblance to the backstabbers of Southern myth. Contrary to the stereotype of the scalawag as an ignorant country bumpkin, most "scalawag" leaders were middle to upper class professionals, well educated, and with some experience in government. While there were few rich planters among them, many were prominent merchants, lawyers, and manufacturers who bridled against the backwardness of the plantation system.And while scalawags are usually portrayed as advocates of radical racial reforms and "social equality," the truth is that most scalawags shared Southern biases. While they favored abolishing slavery (and had a decided self-interest in black voting), ideas such as integrated schools and "race mixing" found few advocates among them. Rather, they favored economic development, industrialization, and an educated public. Many of the state colleges in the south and many of the South's public school systems were founded by scalawag governments. And though some had a fondness for the "stars and bars" and a fair number served under it, they put "Old Glory" first. Basically, the scalawags of the 1860s were in many respects similar to the Southern Republicans of today.Who were the scalawags, then? They were, as they would have said, "loyal men," who believed that loyalty and some good ideas constituted a license to lead. In the end, though, the scalawags made the mistake of trying to reign backed by armies and minority voting, without broader support. When the troops went away, their governments collapsed. Still, it is interesting to contemplate what the history of the South would have been like had the industrialized, progressive, pro-free enterprise region that began to emerge at the end of the 1960s Civil Rights era happened a century earlier. Had that occurred we would live in a very different, less racially divided, and even more prosperous country. Wellesley College historian Elizabeth Varon's Southern Lady, Union Spy is a biography of Elizabeth Van Lews, a prominent scalawag, but not a very typical one. A Southern lady from a leading merchant family, Elizabeth spent her life in her family's mansion in Church Hill, Richmond's wealthiest anti-bellum neighborhood. Like many from the merchant class, Elizabeth was a Whig and an anti-secessionist. Unlike most, though, once the war began Van Lew's didn't give up her Union allegiance. Rather, she used her ample contacts among pre-war Unionists, pro-Union blacks, her social position, and her natural guile to build the most effective Northern espionage network in the South.It is a stirring story. Van Lew's began her work slowly, bringing aid to Federal Soldiers held in the various Confederate prisons in the Richmond area. Appalled by the conditions Union soldiers were held in, she worked to aid a successful breakout attempt from Libby prison. Later, in what may be her most spectacular coup, she located, retrieved, and sent to Union lines in one of the only two metal caskets in Richmond the remains of Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, a Union officer and Admiral's son who had been killed in a raid on Richmond and whose body had been mutilated and put on display by Confederate authorities, operating under the probably mistaken belief that Dahlgren had been sent to murder Davis and the Southern Cabinet. Beyond these spectacular deeds, though, Van Lew's main contribution was using her network to update Union leaders about the Confederate armies strength and plans. Towards the end of the conflict, she was in communication with U.S. Grant about twice a week. After the War, a grateful Grant made Van Lews Richmond's Postmaster, a move much resented in the South. Nevertheless, she served with some distinction, introducing home delivery and promoting local blacks into important positions. Van Lews also, and unlike most scalawags, became a "radical republican" and a vociferous proponent of civil rights and women's suffrage. Inevitably, as the Redeemers returned to power, Van Lew's became more and more isolated. Republican President Hayes, under Southern pressure to stop "radical reconstruction," refused to re-appoint Van Lews. She finished her years living alone in her mansion, hardly spoken to. As she grew old, "Crazy Bet," so named because of the face-saving idea that the outspoken Van Lew's had betrayed the South due to mental illness, became a sort of local crone - a figure parents used to scare their children with. Ironically, though, her death in 1900 made headlines in both North and South. Van Lews may have been neglected, but both regions recognized the contribution she made to the Northern victory. The obituaries about Van Lews focused on her role as a spy - a term she bitterly resented. "I do not know how they can call me spy," she wrote, "serving my own country within its recognized borders." Actually, Elizabeth Van Lews was right. She wasn't a spy. She was a patriot. Varon's biography about this unsung heroine is a compelling tale. Books15307@blogcritics.org Sun, 2 May 2004 12:37:54 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/04/26/084152.php Kieran DickinsonThe lead scientist who creates David, the robotic boy in Artificial Intelligence, closes the first scene in the film by asking if God did not create man, just as the scientist plans to create David, because God needed man to love him. The question reveals this scientist's fundamental misunderstanding of creation, and it leads to disaster. Three themes in Artificial Intelligence are of particular interest: (1) creation; (2) love; and (3) children.Creation First creation. God, who is infinitely blessed in himself, created man for man's own benefit. He--one should almost say they, for God is triune--created man to share his own blessed communion of persons. God revealed himself to man--specifically, to the Jews; "salvation is from the Jews," Jesus said. He gave man laws that, if followed, lead to human flourishing. He gave man prophets, and, indeed, in these last times, he gave man a Savior, one like us in all things but sin. In the words of Richard John Neuhaus, since God became man, God has become inextricably bound up in "the human project," and because of this it cannot fail. God's plan of salvation was known from all eternity. In a way, the redemption is part of the creation.How different God's way of creating from man's. God creates for the benefit of those created. Man often creates for the benefit of himself. God gives man the freedom not to return God's love. In Artificial Intelligence, David is programmed to love his adopted parents and cannot do otherwise. When there was a problem--man abusing his freedom--in real life God himself became a man and allowed himself to be murdered by men in order to save men from their own pride. In Artificial Intelligence, when there is a problem, David's adopted father wants David to be taken back to the lab for destruction, while his adopted mother leaves him in the woods to fend for himself. LoveThese relections lead us to consider the meaning of love, and how hard it is for man in his selfishness to love. Love is an act of the will, pursuant to which we desire the good of another. Thus the classic scholastic definition. Love is self giving, as JPII would put it; whose opposite is not hate, but "using." God's creation and redemption of man show us the meaning of love put into action. Love is patient and kind. The lover seeks not his own good but the good of the beloved. The lover does not ask "What's in it for me?" The moment that it is forced on the beloved, love ceases to be love. Love does not control the beloved. The act of loving does cause joy in the lover--because we were created to love, and there is always joy when we do what we ought to do and what is our deepest longing to do--but more often than not the act of loving is accompanied by suffering. This suffering, in turn, is a call to love more deeply, more purely, more as God loves. Men who are actng with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit often love in the way just described. They need not be Christians--God works through people of all beliefs. Nevertheless, one wishes that this love were more common that it is. Someday it will be, when "every tear will be wiped away." In the meantime, there is all the more reason to pray for the grace, and to use all human means, to love truly. ChildrenChildren are bound up in all these thoughts. To begin, mothers and fathers do not create their children, nor are they the masters of their children. Some people accuse the Catholic Church of being obsessed with babies. She is not. Rather, she is obsessed with love. Parents, the Church teaches, do not make babies. Rather, they make love. From this act of love, somehow, we know not and should not want to know how, the miracle that is a child may result. God creates the universe anew every time a child is conceived. He brings forth out of nothing a human soul that will live forever, a soul made in the image and likeness of God, called from all eternity to share in God's eternal beatitude. Parents are given the privilege of cooperating with God in this sublime endeavor. What threats there are today to little children! Here in Washington, DC, this very day tens of thousands will march in favor of the right to kill babies in the womb in the name of freedom and autonomy. A multi-billion dollar industry has sprung up all over the world to manufacture and promote devices to keep children from being conceived at all. Children are seen as threats to the autonomy of their mothers. Children keep mommy from advancing in her career and being successful. Children require expensive, inconvenient day care. Someday they will grow up and go to college, and by that time, we have all heard, college will cost $100,00 per year, and who can afford that? Around the world hundreds of thousands of children are used as prostitutes, and the authorities do shockingly little to stop it. In the rich countries, children are now being manufactured in laboratories, much as in Artificial Intelligence. In this case, whose good is primary--the parents', who pay for the procedure, or the child's? Recall the scene in Artificial Intelligence when David finally meets the scientist and asks where he came from. He is led into a room with model after model of himself. He is not the product of an act of love. He knows this is wrong. How much different is in vitro fertilization? Often half a dozen or more embryos are created--each unique, each human--and discarded before settling on a chosen few to implant. Because of IVF, there are today a couple hundred thousand human embryos in freezers in the United States; this even as some forty million "unwanted" babies in wombs have been aborted in the United States since 1973. The very act of creating these embryos was an injustice; what to do with them now is an almost impossibly difficult dilemma. AI, the title by which Artificial Intelligence was marketed, could also stand for "artificial insemination." A modest proposal: let us try treating children as human beings, respecting their dignity, respecting their freedom. Let us treat them as David wanted to be treated--as a real boy. Children are little people, with their own thoughts, dreams, feelings, hurts, sense of justice, wills, intellects, and memories. They are not to be manufactured. They are not to be harvested for their body parts. They are not to be used to feed their parents' egos, or to make up for their parents' failures. They are not to be abused in any way. They should be the products of love and the recipients of love, and encouraged to become the givers of love. For all are called, in the end, in the words of Mother Teresa, "to love and to be loved." Video15087@blogcritics.org Mon, 26 Apr 2004 08:41:52 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/04/26/082915.php Kieran DickinsonDr. Laura Schlessinger has written another book that deserves a place on the best seller list with six of her other books, such as Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives and Ten Stupid Things Men Do to Mess Up Their Lives. The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, from this unmarried man's perspective, is an excellent manual for women on how to get want they want from men and marriage and, generally, how to be happy. Dr. Laura makes a number of important, practical points, based on her experience in private practice, from advising her radio callers, and from literally hundreds of letters and emails she received from men and women while she was writing the book. Here are the points that struck this writer, together with commentary:1. Men Need Women, and This Need Gives Women Huge Influence. Dr. Laura states the point as follows: "[M]en are simple creatures who come from a woman, are nurtured and brought up by a woman, and yearn for the continued love, admiration, and approval from a woman." Women have great power and influence over men, and wives in particular have tremendous power over their husbands. How they use this power essentially controls the relationship, because women are the masters of most relationships and marriages. That's why Dr. Laura says that she probably won't write The Proper Care and Feeding of Wives: wives already have most of the power and their marriages depend, for the most part, on them. 2. Women Err in Favoring Children Over Husband. A friend once told this writer that once a woman has children, her husband is relegated to the moral equivalence of a piece of furniture. How sad if this is true in many marriages. Here's how Dr. Laura puts it: "Once wives became mothers, they had no time to be wives. The men would even compliment their wives on being great mothers, but expressed considerable pain over not being shown love, affection, or sexual interest. The typical reply from a wife challenged with this was 'I only have time to take care of one person, and our child is that person. I'm just too tired for you.' This puts fathers in the ugly and uncomfortable position of feeling competitive with and resentful of their children, whom they love so much." 3. Men and Women Are Different. That men and women are deeply different ought not to be notable, but for the fact that it is so often challenged today. Dr. Laura says that society tries to make both men and women "unisex." But men are happiest being men, and women are happiest being women, with few exceptions. The differences start to manifest themselves very early. In one study Dr. Laura mentions, a barrier was placed between 1 year-old babies and their mothers. What did the little boys do? They attempted to get around the barrier or knock it down. The little girls? They cried until their mothers' picked them up. Men tend to respond to things physically, women verbally. In fact, the two sexes are just right for each other. 4. Not Every Thought and Feeling Needs to be Said. Women tend to be so verbal, so expressive, that they can tire out men easily unless they exercise some restraint. Dr. Laura reports that wives generally overwhelm their husbands with communication. "Husbands imagine (so foolishly) that their wives are telling them something they actually need to know because they're supposed to do something about it. Otherwise, men can't imagine why the 'communication' is happening at all. It confuses them, frustrates them, and their response is to turn off. That's when they unfairly become labeled insensitive." Husbands and fiances are not girlfriends or psychologists, and women who want attention should adjust their communication style accordingly when speaking with them. 5. Men Are Not Mind-Readers. Most men are not very intuitive compared to most women. Many women "get caught up in the absurdly romanticized notion that 'if he loved me, he'd just know what I'm thinking, what I'd like, what he should say.'" If a woman wants her man to do something, she should just ask him plainly, without nagging, and show appreciation when he does it. To act otherwise, as many women do, shows arrogance and lack of respect for the husband's difference, and it leads to unhappiness in the marriage and in the family.6. Man Is an Embodied Soul. No, Dr. Laura didn't put it that way; "embodied soul" is a Catholic concept. But that concept is what underlies her discussion of how important it is to a man that his wife try to keep up her appearance. What does it mean that we are embodied souls? It means that our bodies are integral parts of who we are. We are not just souls. Our bodies are not like clothing that we can take on or off. There was no time during which we had only souls and not bodies, and in eternity as well we will have bodies. It is through our bodies, in fact, that we communicate to our loved ones and to the rest of the world. One thinks of the beautiful line from the old Anglican marriage rite: bride and groom pledge to each other "with my body I thee worship." It is ironic, but in many cases men--sex-crazed pigs in the minds of many women--actually have a truer understanding of the beauty of the body and the meaning of the marital embrace than their wives do. "Objectification" may come as much or more from the woman's side as from the husband's if the woman sees her own body as being separate from rather than an integral part of herself. Dr. Laura writes: "In reading all the letters from men, I was struck by their depth of senstivity about the issue of women's appearance. It wasn't an impersonal, animal reaction (as it is with women the men don't personally know), it was a deeply personal one. The wife's comfort with and appreciation of her own body and femininity, and her willingness to share that with her husband, actually fed his sense of well-being, his feeling of being loved as a husband and valued as a 'man.'" 7. Infidelity by Omission. Brides and grooms make a number of vows, not only of sexual fidelity. Marital vows include and imply words like love, honor, protect, and care for. "[W]hen one breaches those vows by neglect, is that also not a form of infidelity? Perhaps we should start looking at the act of intentionally depriving a spouse of legitimate needs as infidelity, too, because it stems from being unfaithful to the intent of the vows."8. In the Bedroom. To her credit, Dr. Laura gives due place to the importance for marriage of the marital act: "The bedroom is the foundation of marriage and family." St. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, that supposedly conservative institution within the Church, put it this way: "The marriage bed is an altar." Enough said?9. Women Should Appreciate Men's Masculinity. Dr. Laura relates a trip she made recently to a swimming pool. A mom and a dad were wading with their infant child. Mom held the child against her chest, cooed to him, and swooped him up and down. She passed the baby to dad. He turned the baby's face outward and swooshed him forward and up into the air. "Mom equals protection and nurturance. Dad equals autonomy and adventure. It is the perfect balance that helps produce a functional, secure human being." Too many women, though, act like Alice Kramdens, constantly belitting their husbands, shooting down their aspirations, treating them like children. Dr. Laura writes: "When a wife treats her man like he's one of her children, when she puts him down or thwarts his need for autonomy, adventure, risk, competition, challenge, and conquest, she ends up with a sullen, unooperative, unloving, hostile lump."10. Thou Shalt Not Covet. Dr. Laura contributes a novel (to this writer) and insightful contemporary application of the commandment, "thou shal not covet." Specifically, she understands it as a rebuke to people who want it all, especially feminists. "Perhaps the feminist notions about women having power if they do it all has obstructed too many women's ability to realize that in real life we all make choices, and that the true joy and meaning of life is not in how many things we have or do, but in the sacrifice and commitment we make to others within the context of the choices we've made. The Tenth Commandment, about coveting, reminds us that none of us can have everything there is nor everything we want. Without enjoying and appreciating our gifts and blessings, we create a hell on earth for ourselves and for those who love us." Books15089@blogcritics.org Mon, 26 Apr 2004 08:29:15 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/04/21/101224.php Kieran DickinsonIn Death on a Friday Afternoon, Richard John Neuhaus argues that we may hope that in the end all will be saved. A reader writes to ask whether Neuhaus would say that even those who actively reject Christ are saved. (Neuahaus, by the way, is the editor of First Things magazine. He is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of New York who was formerly a Lutheran minister and social activist. For more on Neuahaus' view, see Cardinal Avery Dulles' article, "The Population of Hell," in First Things.) Here's a preliminary answer. To begin, Neuhaus draws a distinction between hoping that something is true and affirming that it is true. For example, everyone hopes that he himself will be saved--in fact Catholics are commanded to do so and not to despair of their salvation--yet one sins by presumption if one affirms that one will in fact be saved. Neuhaus, therefore, does not believe that we can affirm as a matter of faith that everyone will be saved. On the other hand, he also makes it clear that by hope he means something much stronger than desire. For example, this writer desires that he could fly like Superman. But given the practical impossibility, it is useless to hope for this power. Hope, according to Neuhaus, is something in between affirmation and desire. It is, in his words, "faith directed toward the future." He takes this definition in part from Hebrews 11:1: "Faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see." In this writer's view, it is in Neuhaus' strong definition of hope combined with other statements he makes about the universality of God's salvific plan that lead him quite close to universalism, i.e., the affirmation that all are saved. Universalism contradicts a number of statements of various Popes, Church councils, catechisms, and, it would appear, the Bible. Now, as to the specific issue of whether Neuhaus would say that we can hope that even those who actively reject Christ will be saved, the answer is a qualified no. Even Neuhaus would affirm that those who actively and definitively reject Christ cannot be saved. However, Neuhaus would be open to the possibility that in ways known only to God, everyone may have the opportunity to know Christ. Perhaps at the moment of death, for example, everyone has the opportunity to encounter the Risen Lord in his glory. Who, upon encountering the Risen Christ in his majesty, would remain unrepentant and hard-hearted? It's a rhetorical question; perhaps some or even many people would still reject the Lord, out of an insane spite or pride. But Neuhaus makes clear his own belief that in the end all will accept Christ and all will be saved. He cites a number of passages in St. Paul's letters for support. For example, "Every knee shall bend and every tongue proclaim, to the glory of God the Father: Jesus Christ is Lord." Thus, Neuhaus would not affirm that those who reject Christ will be saved, but he would question whether, in the end, anyone will still reject Christ since Scripture seems to indicate that in the end all will accept Christ. As mentioned above, Neuhaus's argument comes close to contradicting teachings of the Church that have traditionally been understood to be infallible. One wishes that he had sought an imprimatur before publishing Death on a Friday Afternoon. In Ludwig Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, the propositions that those who die in a state of mortal sin go to hell and that hell lasts forever are both defined as de fide. These propositions were unanimously taught by the early Church fathers; they were affirmed by several ecumenical councils; and there is ample support for them in the Bible. Neuhaus would probably deny that he denies these propositions, yet he surely comes quite close to it. All that said, Neuhaus can cite on his side of the debate no less a figure than John Paul II. JPII stated in Crossing the Threshhold of Hope that we do not know if hell has anyone in it. One wishes that the Holy Father would explain in depth positions he takes that appear to contradict centuries of Catholic teaching--on universalism, on the death penalty--before he publishes them. Anyway, Neuhaus can also add to his side St. Augustine's mentor, St. Ambrose. Ambrose taught that God's mercy is so great that in the end God's plan to save the whole human race cannot be thwarted. Part of the difficulty of the Neuhaus/JPII/St. Ambrose view is that it appears to limit human freedom, which the Church has always understood includes the possibility of definitively rejecting God and his plan. Perhaps the notion of a final chance at the moment of death helps to solve this difficulty. All things are possible with God, and many who are first will be last, and the last first. Books14949@blogcritics.org Wed, 21 Apr 2004 10:12:24 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/03/22/195836.php Kieran DickinsonThe first of several types of bad homilies one often hears in Catholic churches is the excessively pious, excessively credulous homily. The priest speaks about private revelation (visions, locutions, apparitions) as if it is gospel truth. He tells pious stories about the saints that were told in the Middle Ages, again as it they were gospel truth. For example, last Friday was the Solemnity of St. Joseph. Our priest--a very holy young man who celebrates the Eucharistic sacrifice with great devotion, and who is also an excellent confessor to whom this writer owes a debt of gratitude--explained why statues of St. Joseph often depict Jesus' foster-father with a wooden staff that ends in a lily. The story goes that St. Joseph was one of many suitors for the hand of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Virgin's father asked all the men to give him their staffs and resolved to choose the man by choosing a staff from the pile. Over night a lily--a symbol of purity--grew on Joseph's staff. Mary's father took this as a sign from God that he should choose Joseph. Granola Conservative has no complaint with the retelling of this story as an explanation of why statues of St. Joseph often depict Joseph holding a staff that ends in a lily. The problem is with the retelling of this story as an explanation of why our Mother Mary married St. Joseph. Let's stipulate that we do not really know the answer to this question. It is not discussed in the Bible, and, to our knowledge, there are no other reliable contemporaneous accounts. The lily story could be true--Catholics are not materialists, we do not reject a priori accounts of miracles. But is it likely? Do accounts of courtship and marriage practices in Palestine at the time evidence that it was common for a girl's father to choose her husband by choosing the staff of one of the suitors? Are there any trustworthy accounts of this practice? Do lilies sprout from staves? Again, a Catholic cannot reject out of hand the possibility of such a miracle, but he certainly can and should assert that such an event is truly extraordinary. Moreover, if there is a non-miraculous explanation of the event, such explanation ought to be presumptively preferred. Perhaps the lily story is harmless. Yet there are a few reasons to believe that in fact it is harmful. First, it must be a turn-off to many non-Catholics who might be interested in converting to Catholicism. If a story like this one that seems so far-fetched is preached as truth, should not one also take with a grain of salt other truth claims made by the Church? That question leads to a second harm: the lily story and others like it dilute the deposit of faith. In other words, when stories like this one are preached as truth, it becomes difficult in the minds of many listeners (those without an excellent Catholic doctrinal formation) to separate what the Church actually teaches is revealed by God and what are mere opinions and speculations. When people discover holes in the opinions and speculations, they are led also to question authoritative Church teaching. A third harm: stories like this one separate us today from the saints and thus impoverish our devotional life. When was the last time that your walking stick sprouted flowers? Imagine you are a father today and there are several men interested in dating or marrying your daughter. How does the lily story help you help her make the right decision about which to choose? Imagine you are a man trying to choose the right woman to marry. How does the lily story help you decide? It doesn't. St. Joseph, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mary's father--in the lily story they all come off as characters in a fairy tale. How can we relate to figures out of a story book? As stated above, no one really knows why Mary and/or her father chose Joseph. But is it not much more helpful and credible to believe that it was because of some good qualities that he possessed, rather than because God caused a flower to grow from his staff? We know Joseph was not a wealthy man. Is it not likely that he was chosen for his virtue? Why not believe that Joseph had to struggle to win Mary's hand, just as a man struggles today to win a woman's hand? Do we know for sure that Mary never met Joseph before they were betrothed? Maybe Our Lady liked St. Joseph's looks! She was a teenage girl. Do you think teenage girls don't care what their future husbands look like? Maybe our Blessed Mother found St. Joseph cute. Maybe she liked the strong frame he had developed working as a carpenter and craftsman. Maybe he had a nice smile or eyes, or a great sense of humor. Maybe Mary knew that Joseph always tried to follow God's will by faithfully keeping the law of Moses. Joseph probably had a talk with Mary's father, and Mary's father probably discovered in the course of that conversation that Joseph was a very upright man, a man to whom he could confidently entrust his daughter.What must some of Joseph's virtues have been, and how can we today work to develop those qualities in ourselves? Do you see the difference in the piety expressed in this paragraph compared to the piety of the fairy tale? One is real, living, relevant; the other artificial, dead, irrelevant.Our Catholic faith is not a fairy tale, and this is the basis for a fourth objection to the lily story: not only does it mislead people who are not well-formed and separate us from the saints, it even twists our notion of who God is. The Catholic faith is grounded in historical events--God's revelation to the Jewish people, the birth of the Savior, the scourging and crucifixion of Our Lord, His glorious resurrection, the preaching and martyrdom of the eye-witnesses to Christ's life, death, and resurrection. We Catholics believe very strongly, based on our own experiences, that God hears and answers our prayers, loves us immensely, and cares about the real and messy events of our own lives. He is not the God of dead myths but of life as it is lived. Moreover, we know from our experience that God seldom answers our prayers by means of obvious miracles, such as in the lily story. On the contrary, He makes us struggle with decisions, call upon Him fervently, and use all the human means we can to solve problems. The lily story, however, leads us to believe that God works primarily through miraculous events. If God does not work that way in our lives, then we must not be following God's will, or we are not capable of becoming saints, or perhaps we should work ourselves up psychologically and try to imagine that we are seeing visions and signs when in fact we are not: those are misguided thoughts and practices that the lily story and many others like it produce in the poor souls who take them seriously. For that reason and all the others, GC believes that such stories have little place in the life of the Church today, except as explanations of traditional devotional practices and art and always with the caveat that such stories are to be distinguished from Catholic doctrine.The author of this article is the editor of Granola Conservative (http://granolaconservative.typepad.com), which publishes incisive commentary from the crunchy Right on politics, culture, and the Catholic Church. Culture13985@blogcritics.org Mon, 22 Mar 2004 19:58:36 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/03/22/193416.php Kieran DickinsonBy Dan Dickinson Review of: Gulag by Anne Applebaum Doubleday, New York 586 pages, $35.00For at least the last twenty years, there's been a flurry of books, films, and exhibitions about the holocaust, many of them both profound and profoundly moving. Since the holocaust is a particularly singular and horrible chapter in the book of man's inhumanity to man, that's as it should be. Much less remarked upon, though, is that other human catastrophe of man's calamitous twentieth century - those massacres perpetrated for the sake of the Marxist vision of a godless, perfect world. From China, to Cuba, to the Soviet Union, tens of millions suffered disease, destitution and death to build a perfect society on Earth. And while there have been a few good books on this topic by such writers an Solzhenitsyn, Conquest, and Orwell, and a mere handful of movies, the response to these atrocities has been, thus far, muted.In Gulag, journalist Anne Applebaum provides a timely corrective to the world's collective memory lapse. A history of the Soviet system of concentration camps, Applebaum's book is a thoroughly researched, balanced, horrifying, and intensely affecting tale of what men and women will do to each other (in the words of one camp motto) "All for the Greater Good."Just how big were the camps? How many people passed through them? According to Applebaum's research, there were some 476 camps, spread out across the Soviet Union. Altogether, some 18,000,000 Russians, Ukranians, Estonians, and a host of others - including more than a handful of Americans - passed into this Soviet shadow world. While the camps existed, unlike those in Hitler's Germany, to provide cheap labour rather than quick death, many of those who entered Gulag never left it. A combination of incompetence, gratuitous cruelty, executions, and deliberate starvation resulted in millions of deaths. During World War II, for example, one out of four prisoners died in captivity. In the public mind, the camps are mostly closely associated with the Stalin regime. Applebaum gives the lie to that idea. "Gulag," she reports, "started at the beginning, and was always an integral part of Soviet life." Anne relates how Lenin, living in exile in Switzerland, had once savagely attacked the Mensheviks, a rival communist party. A friend said, "Vladimir Ilyich, if you come to power, you'll start hanging the Mensheviks!" Lenin retorted that he'd hang the Social Revolutionaries first, then the Mensheviks. Upon becoming dictator, Lenin did exactly that, eliminating any and all threats to his rule. Gulag was up and functioning within a year of the Bolshevik revolution.Yet while one of the purposes of Gulag was to eliminate opposition to Marxist rule, a larger goal was to provide nearly free services to the State. Camps were situated along the routes of proposed canals, near mines, and in under-developed areas, such as the Far East and the far North. In a conscious aping of the ideas of American productivity expert Frederick Taylor, work standards were set and rations were strictly based on performance. Whereas outside the camps, at least in theory, it was "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs," in Gulag the worst sort of social Darwinism prevailed. In one camp, for example, the dining room was divided into two sections. On one side posters proclaimed: "The best workers get the best food!" The other declared: "Here they get the worse food ... refusers, loafers, lazy-bones!" Gulag was based, in effect, on a nightmare version of capitalism, albeit without private property, entrepreneurship, or choice. It was the capitalism of Marxist dreams, not of reality. Unsurprisingly, it didn't work. Through the Lenin and Stalin regimes, Gulag persisted under the theory that forced labour could and did yield profits. A thorough accounting of costs under Khrushchev showed that, rather than making the state stronger, Gulag was bankrupting it. Accordingly, the camps were scaled down. Nevertheless, when the dissident movement started up in the late 1970s, Gulag ramped up again, achieving a real revival under the mercifully short rule of Yuri Andropov. Gulag ended up expiring with the Soviet state.What was life like in the camps? Rather than simply relying on the memoirs of such noted camp survivors as Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Bukovsky, Applebaum interviewed dozens of ex-zeks, the Russian word for prisoner. She also studied hundreds of Gulag accounts from peasants, priests, and political activists, communist functionaries and common criminals. What emerges is a mosaic of misery.One of the startling things about the Marxist approach to penology was the regime's almost comical devotion to modern criminal mythology. Declaring in its first criminal code that "there is no such thing as individual guilt," Gulag treated real criminals - murderers, rapists, and thugs - with kid gloves. They, after all, were the victims of social injustice. Other sorts of zeks, such as "bad social elements" (the middle classes), political activists, nationalists, religious leaders, and those arrested simply because they had skills needed by Gulag, got consistently worse treatment. As Bertolt Brecht said when told that many of those locked up in the camps had committed no crime, "The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die." If death was a suitable punishment for the innocent, it was meted out in big helpings. Work requirements were stringent, and often impossible to meet. Safety was virtually non-existent, allowing thousands to die in mine explosions or digging near pointless canals with few clothes in brutal weather. Rations were poor in almost all cases, and death by starvation was commonplace. While "cruelty was not required," many guards behaved with unspeakable brutality. Some female prisoners were subjected to rape. Others found that trading sexual favours could lead to better treatment, even, in one case, to marriage to the camp commandant. Children were sometimes raised in the camps. These usually turned into maloletki - a Russian term that translates as "young savages." In this Hobbesian world, life was cheap, friendship rare, and treachery was everywhere. Hardened by almost unspeakable conditions, zeks came to regard the dying with contempt. They were fitili (burnt out wicks) or even more often just dokhodyaga (goners). It was said of them that they were at last "reaching socialism."In the midst of all this agony, Gulag dwellers had to endure endless propaganda campaigns. Posters and slogans extolling the Soviet Union and hard work were everywhere. So were political meetings. Prominent apologists for communism made appearances to extol the enlightened Soviet approach to crime. Maxim Gorky, who had denounced the Tsar's relatively benign exile system, visited the camps and declared that "there is no resemblance to a prison." Later, he became virtually a poster child for Gulag. Vice President Henry Wallace visited Kolyma, probably the most vicious place in the system, in 1944 and didn't even notice he was visiting a concentration camp. Addressing the Soviets he declared "There is nothing irreconcilable in our aims and purposes. Those who so proclaim are ... looking for war ... and that is criminal."Yet despite it all, there were moments when the human spirit soared above its surroundings. Gulag is full of stories of gratuitous acts of kindness, deep friendships formed in stark conditions, and even acts of astounding bravery. These ranged from the pointed attempts to rile the system, such as when a group of Gulag prisoners managed to successfully telegram Ronald Reagan to congratulate him on his Presidential victory, to outright concentration camp rebellions. In the most celebrated outbreak, a string of mining camps known as Vorkuta staged a major uprising in 1953 involving nearly 20,000 inmates. Though the uprising was brutally put down, its suppression proved so costly that the regime was forced to rethink its commitment to forced labour. Over the next decade, the camps were sharply curtailed.Altogether, Applebaum tells a sobering story, a tale she is very afraid is already being forgotten. In the countries that form the ex-Soviet Union, discussions of Gulag are now considered bad form. Applebaum is reproached for bringing the matter up. "Why don't you write about something positive?" an angry Russian asks. Actually, there are plenty of reasons for silence. For one thing, as Applebaum points out, currently 13 of the 15 former Soviet republics have governments headed by communists. "Society is indifferent to the crimes of the past," says Alexsandr Yakovlev, head of the Russian Rehabilitation Commission, "because so many people participated in them."Yet memory is important. For one thing, camps like Gulag still exist, most notably in North Korea. "If we forget Gulag," Applebaum tells us, "sooner or later we will find it hard to understand our own history too. Why did we fight the Cold War...? Was it because crazed right-wing politicians, in cahoots with the CIA invented the whole thing? Or was there something more important happening?"Indeed, there was more something more important happening. Specifically, the Cold War was fought to prevent communism from making a forced labour camp of the world. Anne Applebaum, via this outstanding book, performs a great public service by reminding us of that fact. Books13984@blogcritics.org Mon, 22 Mar 2004 19:34:16 EST