Good Friday

All we like sheep have gone astray, every one hath turned aside into his own way: and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 53:6

The Islamification of France

From The Brussels Journal
By Tiberge

The French website 5 Years Later has posted maps that illustrate the advance of Islam in France. I’ve taken the latest one from 2008 showing through shades of green the areas of implantation of the religion of peace and tolerance. The numbers on the map are those of the departments and have nothing to do with numbers of Muslims. The chart at the bottom runs from fewer than 5 to more than 30 mosques, prayer rooms or meeting houses. So we see that, in the southwest, department 33 has more than 30 while department 40 has fewer than 5.

For a complete list of all places of Islamic worship in France, click the link above. Even if you don’t know French you will find the listing impressive.

You will note also the inset in the upper left showing Paris (75) and its three surrounding suburbs. The name for that whole region is Ile-de-France, but someone has chosen to emend it to Êl-de-France.

McCain Must Resist Increasingly Surreal Hubris of GOP Elites

From TownHall.com

By Gregg Jackson

This week Fred Barnes wrote an article in which he suggests that McCain's best VP choice is Mitt Romney.

Wow!

Mr. Barnes is correct that McCain's VP selection is vital because of McCain's age (71) and because McCain needs to select an authentic conservative with widespread appeal to the GOP base-Evangelical and Catholic Christians, millions of whom have started to gag on the regularly scheduled forced doses of the GOP's shut-up-and-do-as-you're-told concoctions.

Mr. Barnes believes Mitt Romney is exactly the man to get them to swallow yet another bitter dose.

Such a claim could only issue forth from the increasingly bizarre, even surreal, consensus in which the "conservative" elites -- pundits, consultants, lawyers and self-styled "pro-family" power brokers -- swim.

First, Mr. Barnes writes that McCain's VP should be acceptable to conservatives-especially social conservatives. Perhaps Mr. Barnes does not quite understand how right he is on this. It has long been apparent that among the conservative elites "pro-life" is merely a uniform that one puts on like a free agent ballplayer joining a team in search of a championship.

"You're now ‘pro-life,’ Mr. Romney? Why should we believe that?"

"Because I said so, and that ought to be proof enough. And only a fool would turn away a convert to the pro-life cause."

"Maybe so, Slick, and maybe not. But the question remains, why should we believe that?"

"Well, after my conversion to the pro-life side, with every bill that came across my desk I came down on the side of life."

"Hmmm. Well, does that include your massive government health care plan with which you delighted Ted Kennedy by establishing taxpayer-funded abortion on demand at fifty dollars a pop?"

"I thought Jay Sekulow, James Bopp, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, Tom Minnery, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham and the kids running the National Review had taken care of all that for me."

Mr. Barnes, like most of the chattering "conservative elites," has missed the glaring lesson of a Republican presidential primary in which millions of social conservative and constitutionalist voters just said no to all the RINOs the party nomenklatura stubbornly forced on them, preferring to pick from among the diverse options of Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, and Duncan Hunter. Does Barnes not grasp how much intellectual credibility and moral gravitas the "conservative" mandarins have squandered -- outside the beltway and away from the studio lights of Fox News?

McCain must select a running mate who is a credible opponent of abortion and who sees where we are being taken with the endless progression of political and constitutional concessions being made to appease the militant strategists of the obscenely overfunded global sodomy revolution. Behind the relentless waves of propaganda from the "conservative" political elites, the actual record of Willard Mitt Romney's record is that of a man who is best described as the GOP's Barak Obama.

Not only does the new, improved "pro-life" Willard Mitt Romney oppose a Federal Human Life Amendment, but as I've noted in numerous exposes here at townhall.com , he handed the abortion industry what no Democrat has by establishing abortion on demand with a $50 co-pay (after his stage-managed pro-life "awakening") as a "healthcare benefit". For those who have done the homework and know the Romney that Barnes dutifully (or naively?) whitewashes, it is no shock that his socialist healthcare plan was endorsed not only by Ted Kennedy but also by Hillary Clinton and Planned Parenthood.

The deeper one looks into the Romney closet the more disturbing the skeletons one finds. Notwithstanding an Orwellian cover-up by "conservative" mercenaries bribed and otherwise recruited to Romney's stable, the former governor also imposed homosexual "marriage" as governor in brazen violation of multiple articles of the Massachusetts Constitution, the exclusive authority of the Legislature and the marriage statutes. Lacking a constitutionally required enabling statute, he illegally ordered justices of the peace to perform homosexual "marriage" ceremonies or resign. In violating his oath to faithfully execute the statues and uphold the state constitution, he fulfilled a secret 2002 campaign promise to the homosexual Log Cabin Republicans.

Moreover, then Governor Romney unconstitutionally forced Catholic Charities, the nation's oldest adoption and foster care agency, to place children with homosexual couples or go out of business (which they eventually were forced to do). As even liberal Democrat former governor Mike Dukakis pointed out, the state law Romney claimed forced him to do this does not even exist! He similarly forced Catholic Hospitals to issue abortafacients, pretending again to be merely executing the law. Again Dukakis caught him lying red-handed.

Romney supports homosexual scout masters and sexual orientation non-discrimination laws that would penalize religious organizations and private businesses for not hiring transsexuals and cross dressers. The list of Obama-esque social policy decisions goes on and on, and is matched by aggressive lying about the law as governor in order to turn the social, moral and constitutional ratchet far to the left, while ruthlessly using Mormonism as a cloak to pass himself off as a reluctant conservative caught in one difficult position after another. In fact he became a master of creating elaborate smokescreens to cause conservatives to believe that he was fighting the radical policies he was pushing.

Does Mr. Barnes really believe that a Barak Obama in Republican clothing is acceptable to social conservatives? If so he needs to formulate a plan to break himself out of the surreal intellectual ghetto that three decades of hubris and brutally enforced consensus have created among the "conservative" elites. The grassroots increasingly see where we're headed and they’re getting off the train.

Barnes states that Romney would "shore up McCain's weakness on economic issues." He is correct that many economic conservatives who, despite McCain's recent support for making the Bush Tax Cuts permanent, reducing the corporate tax rate, and government spending, are wary of McCain's past opposition to the Bush Tax Cuts and support for carbon emissions "cap-and-trade" tax regimes.

But again, Barnes writes from the ghetto. Romney's actual record as governor shouldn’t instill confidence among fiscal conservatives. Romney did not support the Bush Tax Cuts (earning him praise from Massachusetts' neo-Marxist congressman Barney Frank). As governor, Romney increased taxes by $800 million (he cleverly called them "fees") which have truly harmed the Massachusetts economy. Romney's healthcare plan, in the words of the Wall St. Journal, is in "intensive care "with inflated costs that are estimated to double -- a plan he has said would serve as a model for a national plan.

Moreover, the absurd claim that a businessman has experience and expertise that directly applies to reforming by far the largest national economy on earth is not something that grownups ought to take even half-seriously. Romney has built vast personal wealth by cutting workforces, off-shoring jobs and aggressively marketing struggling firms as revitalized in order to sell them off to investors. This is known as short-term micro-economics. It has little if any relevance to macro-economics or long-term health of an economy or an industry -- which is exactly why Romney had to promise Michigan voters to rob taxpayers across America to prop up their dying manufacturing base, a promise that could just as easily have come from Barak Obama. As an "economic conservative" -- as much as a "social conservative"-- Slick Willard Romney is a snake oil salesman.

There is no doubt that McCain must choose an authentic fiscal conservative with a consistent track record of cutting taxes and spending, and implementing free market consumer-driven initiatives. Romney has no such record as governor. What McCain doesn't need is to select is a tax hiker whose signature economic "achievement" was an Orwellian pro-abortion healthcare plan endorsed by the Clinton-Kennedy- Planned Parenthood triumvirate.

Finally, Mr. Barnes argues that Romney has the support of many in the "Bush wing of the Republican Party" including Karl Rove and the Bushes themselves.

Like his friends over at the National Review, Fox News and other such lofty locations in the conservative ghetto, Mr. Barnes seems to have learned nothing at all from the last year. I don't know if he's noticed yet, but there seems to be a significant breakdown in communications between the GOP establishment and grass roots conservatives. Romney spent a king's ransom (100 million dollars, plus bribes and hush money for "conservative" and "pro-family" mercenaries) attempting to convince voters he was the second coming of Ronald Reagan. But many conservative voters rejected the screaming instructions from the self-appointed ghetto leadership, having figured out that Willard Mitt Romney is nothing more than Barak Obama in a Reagan costume. Candidates (McCain and Huckabee) adamantly opposed by the GOP elites, though vastly outspent, won the gold and silver respectively.

Voters have repudiated the "conservative" elites. Romney's support among the Bush nomenklatura is reason enough, all by itself, to reject him.


Gregg Jackson is a radio talk show host on WRKO in Boston and author of "Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies: Issue By Issue Responses to the Most Common Claims of the Left from A to Z."

A Reflection on Holy Week

By Saint Josemaría Escrivá

The tragedy of the passion

The tragedy of the passion brings to fulfillment our own life and the whole of human history. We can't let Holy Week be just a kind of commemoration. It means contemplating the mystery of Jesus Christ as something which continues to work in our souls. The Christian is obliged to be alter Christus, ipse Christus: another Christ, Christ himself. Through baptism all of us have been made priests of our lives, "to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." Everything we do can be an expression of our obedience to God's will and so perpetuate the mission of the Godman.

Once we realize this, we are immediately reminded of our wretchedness and our personal failings. But they should not dishearten us; we should not become pessimistic and put our ideals aside. Our Lord is calling us, in our present state, to share his life and make an effort to be holy. I know holiness can sound like an empty word. Too many people think it is unattainable, something to do with ascetical theology — but not a real goal for them, a living reality. The first Christians didn't think that way. They often used the word "saints" to describe each other in a very natural manner: "greetings to all the saints"; "my greetings to every one of the saints in Jesus Christ."

Take a look now at Calvary. Jesus has died and there is as yet no sign of his glorious triumph. It is a good time to examine how much we really want to live as Christians, to be holy. Here is our chance to react against our weaknesses with an act of faith. We can trust in God and resolve to put love into the things we do each day. The experience of sin should lead us to sorrow. We should make a more mature and deeper decision to be faithful and truly identify ourselves with Christ, persevering, no matter what it costs, in the priestly mission that he has given every single one of his disciples. That mission should spur us on to be the salt and light of the world.
Christ is Passing By, 96

Symbol of the Redemption

Let us not forget that in all human activities there must be men and women who, in their lives and work, raise Christ's Cross aloft for all to see, as an act of reparation. It is a symbol of peace and of joy, a symbol of the Redemption and of the unity of the human race. It is a symbol of the love that the Most Holy Trinity, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit had, and continues to have, for mankind.
Furrow, 985

Thinking about Christ's death

So, in thinking about Christ's death, we find ourselves invited to take a good hard look at our everyday activities and to be serious about the faith we profess. Holy Week cannot be a kind of "religious interlude"; time taken out from a life which is completely caught up in human affairs. It must be an opportunity to understand more profoundly the love of God, so that we'll be able to show that love to other people through what we do and say. ...

That's the key. Jesus says we must also hate our life, our very soul — that is what our Lord is asking of us. If we are superficial, if the only thing we care about is our own personal well-being, if we try to make other people, and even the world, revolve around our own little self, we have no right to call ourselves Christians or think we are disciples of Christ. We have to give ourselves really, not just in word but in deed and truth. Love for God invites us to take up the cross and feel on our own shoulders the weight of humanity. It leads us to fulfill the clear and loving plans of the Father's will in all the circumstances of our work and life. In the passage we've just read Jesus goes on to say: "Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:27)

Let us accept God's will and be firmly resolved to build all our life in accordance with what our faith teaches and demands. We can be sure this involves struggle and suffering and pain, but if we really keep faith we will never feel we have lost God's favour. In the midst of sorrow and even calumny, we will experience a happiness which moves us to love others, to help them share in our supernatural joy.
Christ is Passing By, 97

An Urgent Request from Christian Solidarity Worldwide

Dear Friends,

This week marks the fifth anniversary of Cuba’s “Black Spring” when 75 civil society activists, including independent journalists, human rights defenders, pro-democracy activists, and independent librarians were arrested. Today, human rights groups inside Cuba put the total number of prisoners of conscience at around 230. Many of these men and women are Christians.

CSW is particularly concerned by reports that prison authorities consistently violate the religious rights of political prisoners across the country. Political prisoners and their families have reported the repeated confiscation of bibles and other religious literature, the denial of the right to receive visits from a pastor or priest, and a refusal to allow Christian prisoners to meet together for prayer, worship or study, even in the presence of a member of the clergy. This is in violation of the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, adopted by the United Nations in 1955, which guarantees all of the above rights. The fact that these violations are repeatedly reported as occurring in prisons across the country also indicates that this is not a matter of local prison authorities abusing the rights of their prisoners, but a general policy instigated at government levels.

Interestingly, according to information received by CSW, prisoners who do not consider themselves to be religious report that they are able to exercise most of the rights listed above. This suggests that prison authorities recognise the importance of their faith to the Christian prisoners and that they are specifically targeting their faith in an effort to break them down psychologically.

For Christian prisoners, their faith is often the one thing they can cling to in an otherwise hopeless situation. Many former prisoners have told CSW how their faith encouraged and strengthened them in the darkest of moments. It is also vital for their families, as we were reminded by Elsa Gonzalez, the wife of political prisoner, Victor Roland Arroyo, who said,. “Faith is what has made all of this possible. If it were not for my faith in God and the strength He gives me, I would not have been able to endure any of this. Faith is also of the utmost importance for Victor,”

The following represent just a few of these cases:

• Dr Oscar Elias Biscet is a human rights defender who is serving a 25-year sentence. He had already served a three-year sentence and was free for less than a month between his release and his second detention. He is a devout Christian and has frequently had his Bible confiscated and has been arbitrarily denied the right to meet with a priest. He is in very bad health.

• Alfredo Rodolfo Dominguez Batista is a member of the Christian Liberation Movement, a pro-democracy organisation, and is serving a 14-year sentence. His Bible and other religious books were confiscated last summer and they have not been returned to him. He has been visited by a priest in the past but he and his wife have had to ask for this repeatedly, the last time they were refused. Generally, Alfredo has been allowed to meet a priest only once every four or five months. The priest also visits other prisoners but cannot hold services. According to his wife, Melba, although the prisoners cannot meet together for worship, Alfredo meets with them individually to share his faith.

• Normando Hernandez Gonzalez is 38-years old, an independent journalist, serving a 25-year sentence. He is in extremely poor health and Costa Rica has offered to grant him a visa if the Cuban government will release him for humanitarian reasons but thus far this offer has been refused. According to his wife, Yarai Amparo, he is a very strong believer and he has been allowed to keep his Bible but he cannot receive the visit of a priest and is kept in isolation, away from the other prisoners.

• Victor Rolando Arroyo is an independent journalist and a devout Christian. His prison sentence, 26 years, is one of the longest stemming from the 2003 crackdown. He is allowed to keep his Bible but the prison officials confiscated the other religious books brought by his wife for him. He is allowed a visit every three months from a priest chosen by the government. He is not allowed any type of spiritual fellowship with other prisoners and they do not allow the priest to hold a group mass for the prisoners to attend.

• Alexander Aguilar Sosa is serving a six-year sentence for “disrespect.” On January 22, 2008, a Cuban human rights organisation reported that the prison authorities at the Agüica Prison in Matanzas would not allow him to meet with other prisoners to pray or read the Bible. Alexander told the group that the prison “Chief of Interior Order,” a man named “Aramis”, had broken up the small worship service that he was celebrating on a regular basis with other prisoners.

• Dr Jose Luis Garcia Paneque is a medical doctor and independent journalist serving a 24-year sentence. His wife, Yamile told CSW that the doctor takes great comfort from his Bible which he has been allowed to keep with him in prison and which he reads every day. For some time, the prison authorities refused to allow him to meet with a priest, but have now changed the policy and are allowing a meeting once every two months. He is not allowed to meet with other prisoners for worship and prayer. He is in extremely poor health.

Pray

Please remember these men and their families in your prayers. Pray that their religious rights will be respected and that God will give them strength and comfort.

Protest

Please also consider writing to the Cuban embassy in London (address below) to ask that the religious rights of all prisoners, regardless of the reason for their imprisonment, be respected in accordance with the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. In your letter you may mention these prisoners by name but please refrain from criticising the Cuban political system or Fidel or Raul Castro.

His Excellency Rene Mujica Cantelar
Embassy of the Republic of Cuba167 High Holborn
London
WC1V 6BA, Fax: (020) 7836 2602

McCain: How To Lose The White House

From WorldNetDaily
By Janet Folger

It doesn't really matter how "honored" Mitt Romney would be to be chosen as Sen. John McCain's running mate, because if Sen. McCain wants to be president, he won't pick Romney. In fact, the very best way to lose the White House is to pick Mitt Romney for vice president. Here are just a few reasons why.

1. Mitt Romney did two "post conversion" things the Clintons and Obamas only dream about:
   
   a. He ORDERED homosexual marriage, and

   b. He made abortion a tax-funded "health care benefit" in his state mandated socialized medicine plan.

2. On life and marriage, there is no one worse than Mitt Romney.

3. He's billed as "Mr. Money," but he had to loan himself millions because he couldn't raise enough to run. Romney outspent Mike Huckabee by about 20 to one. If you want to spend 20 times more than you would if you picked Gov. Huckabee, Romney's your guy. According to the Los Angeles Times, he spent $98 million dollars ($42.3 million of his own money) and only won three primaries: Utah, Massachusetts and Michigan – his three "home" states.

   In a cost/delegate analysis, there is no one worse than Mitt Romney.

4. According to Rasmussen, Romney has "the least core support" and "the most core opposition of all the leading candidates, Republican or Democrat." Nearly half of Americans, 47 percent, find Romney so politically repugnant that they say they will vote against him "no matter who else is on the ballot." Gallup Guru put it this way: "Romney is the 'only candidate with a more negative than positive ratio.'"

   When it comes to popular support, there is no one worse than Mitt Romney.

5. The one who attacked John McCain in the campaign the most was none other than Mitt Romney. If you want a guy that will attack you in an effort to get ahead, Romney's your pick. McCain's response to that attack is seen on video, speaking of "One of a number of [Romney's] attacks." McCain himself points out: "As we've gone up in the polls the attacks have grown more … hysterical." By the way, it was Huckabee during the race who defended McCain, calling him a "true … American hero" and calling the Romney attack "desperate and dishonest."

   When it comes to a record of personal attack against Sen. McCain, there is no one worse than Mitt Romney.
   
   If you want to lose, there is a sure fire way to do that: Pick Mitt Romney or someone else who can't be trusted to defend the right to life and the institution of marriage. Someone who can't be trusted, period. As the Myths of Mitt Romney point out, Romney has trouble with the truth. Here are a few that have been documented:

1. Romney said his father marched with Martin Luther King Jr. He didn't.
2. Romney said he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. He didn't.
3. Romney said: "I have a gun of my own." He doesn't.
4. Romney said he was endorsed by the National Rifle Association. He wasn't.
5. Romney said he's been a hunter "all my life." Well, he hunted exactly "Twice." Once every forty years. In fact, according to public officials in four states where Romney lived, he never took out a license.
   
   Not only did he flip on every major social issue just before running for president, he wasn't even honest about it: Romney said both: "I wasn't pro-choice." and "I was pro-choice."

According to Rasmussen, the candidate of either party with the least hard-core opposition among American voters besides John McCain (at 33 percent) is …Gov. Mike Huckabee (at 34 percent). Rasmussen reports the only candidate (of either party) with as much hard-core opposition from American voters as Romney is Hillary Clinton (tied at 47 percent).

The numbers don't lie. Sen. McCain, there is one sure-fire way to lose the White House: Pick Mitt Romney.

I'm not telling you whom to pick, but if you want the vice presidential candidate who in addition to winning the "must win" states in the primary, who has the best cost/vote ratio, who has proven he can energize the base of the party, who defended (not attacked) you even before you won the nomination, who is honest, consistent and according to Rasmussen, has the least opposition among American voters, Mike Huckabee is your guy.

Ask him, I'm sure he would be honored to be your vice president, and I'm sure millions more would be honored to vote for you if you do.

An Australian View: "Why US Is The Great Democracy"

From The Australian

By David Burchell

A few years ago I joined some colleagues on an academic conference jaunt to a large private university in the American northeast. The approved conference itinerary was to take us directly from our swish Chicago hotel to the campus gates, in the hygienic manner of the modern business traveller.

For reasons too complicated to retell, on the return trip we found ourselves becalmed in a village in the backwaters of rural Indiana, in the old American heartland. The streets we strolled down were lined with wooden bungalows, and there was a flagstaff with the Stars and Stripes in every other front yard. We ate in rural diners by the highway with orange-tinted windows, stained wooden cubicles and waitresses with chequered aprons.

Much like Columbus, we had voyaged in search of streets paved with gold, and instead we had accidentally discovered America.

It's a pity more Australian observers don't discover heartland America in this fashion, especially in this historic election year. Because we have more to learn from the rambunctious drama of American democracy than we are prepared to admit.

Many Australians believe they know all about America. On business trips they sidle through the galleries of New York, or amble down the boulevards of Los Angeles, and imagine that they have gained some essential insight into the American character. Back home they watch American TV and movies, and teach themselves that American society is gaudy, individualistic and lacking in decorum.

On the whole, though, most Australians' knowledge of American politics remains limited to a series of crude, child-like stereotypes of the type another generation may have attributed to deepest, darkest Africa.

It's true we have lately become fascinated by the Democratic Party's nominating process. At least to the extent that it reduces itself to the neat identity politics equation of White Woman versus Black Man.

Yet this vantage point obscures much of the substance of the contest. If Barack Obama is a historic figure, it's on account of his determination not to be the nation's first black president but rather an American migrant of mixed heritage who just happens to have a year-round suntan.

And while Hillary Clinton is undoubtedly a woman, her rancorous, grievance-based style of campaigning seems to belong to feminism's paleolithic era. If Clinton's campaign narrative were a movie, it would be called Thelma and Louise Go to Washington.

Look behind the identity politics drama, however, and the 2008 contest reveals a democratic culture which -- for all its excesses, irregularities and antiquities -- is still living, and even vibrant. Unlike the sad parody of democracy to which we once world-leading democrats often seem reduced.

One of our favourite fictions about the US is that its citizens, disillusioned by a lack of choice, don't bother to vote. And yet Americans vote, up hill and down dale, for everything and everybody that moves. For school boards, for precinct committees, for police chiefs, for judges, for district attorneys.

Like Australians, they vote because it's necessary to keep the wheels of organisation turning. But there's another reason. Somewhere underneath those layers of post 1960s cynicism, many of them still believe in their hearts that the act of voting is the consummation of the spiritual equality of Americans. How many of us could say that?

In the early 1800s, the French observer Alexis de Tocqueville -- who never settled for the business traveller itinerary, or confused a gallery tour with a social insight -- investigated the American predilection for local political association.

As a citizen of a frontier society, Tocqueville observed, an American "learns from birth that he must rely upon himself to combat the ills and obstacles of life".

Yet this didn't simply cause Americans to become hardy individualists: it also enforced upon them the importance of friends, neighbours and local community. And so it impelled them outwards as well as inwards, bonding in local associations to form clubs, organise festivities, or provide mutual aid.

Received wisdom has it that the old American impulse towards local association and community has withered. Television, the internet, the suburbs, even mass prosperity are all variously blamed with sending Americans back into the loungeroom.

The events of this election year have cast doubts on that fashionably gloomy hypothesis. Given at last some candidates who are attempting to address some of the complexities of mainstream opinion, Americans have been flooding out of their homes into voting halls and caucusing centres.

By nomination time, the better part of a hundred million Americans will have involved themselves, not infrequently standing in queues in the winter wind for several hours. Or they will have gathered in draughty community halls to be lobbied and harangued in the archaic yet quintessentially democratic caucus system.

Last week in New Republic magazine a young Texan journalist gave a worm's-eye view of his experiences in the Precinct 426 caucus in the city of East Austin. It reads like a chapter out of Tocqueville, suitably updated and digitised.

There are more than 8000 precinct conventions in Texas. They will elect some few dozen of the 4000 delegates at the Democratic National Convention in August. They are, in other words, the merest tip of the electoral iceberg.

Yet this year, when the Precinct 426 chair arrived with her sheaf of manila folders, more than 250 people were lined up outside the doors of the local elementary school. Most had never caucused before; some were old enough that they remembered voting for John F.Kennedy.

But there they all were, white, black and Hispanic, college-educated and high-school graduates alike, forming lines and making impromptu, hesitant speeches.

Australia's party system still echoes with the dying call of the old European class wars. Too many ALP branches are private clubs dedicated to the production of endless resolutions deploring everything (or expressing woolly solidarity with phoney liberation movements). And many Liberal party meetings, so rumour has it, resemble masonic lodges dedicated to the interests of local small business people.

No wonder most Australians (other than property developers and union functionaries) avoid the parties like the plague.

We could do much worse than to institutionalise our political parties, as the Americans have done. Give every citizen a voice in the selection of candidates, so long as they're willing to register in the name of one of the parties for the purpose. Encourage them to manifest themselves physically in the proceedings, and to make those impromptu, hesitant speeches.

The ends of democracy are vital. But as Tocqueville understood, the processes of democracy have profound significance, too. We ought not only to be enfranchised by our democracy: we should feel dignified by it as citizens, as Precinct 426's members did. I'd wager most Australians don't feel that way.