Sunday, April 25, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Defend Civilization Itself
The following speech was delivered to the graduating class of Hillsdale Academy, Hillsdale College's K-12 model school, on May 24, 2002.
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, but 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.
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, but 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.
Mark Helprin, a novelist and a contributing editor of the Wall Street Journal, was raised on the Hudson and in the British West Indies. After receiving degrees from Harvard College and Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, he did postgraduate work at the University of Oxford, and he has served in the British Merchant Navy, the Israeli infantry, and the Israeli Air Force. He was published in The New Yorker for almost a quarter of a century, and his stories and essays appear in the New York Times, Commentary, American Heritage, Forbes ASAP, and many other publications here and abroad. Translated into more than a dozen languages, his books include Refiner's Fire, Winter's Tale, A Soldier of the Great War and Memoir from Antproof Case.
-- Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College. --
Friday, April 23, 2010
The Passion of Pope Benedict. Six Accusations, One Question
Pedophilia is only the latest weapon aimed against Joseph Ratzinger. And each time, he is attacked where he most exercises his leadership role. One by one, the critical points of this pontificate
From Chiesa
By Sandro Magister
The attack striking pope Joseph Ratzinger with the weapon of the scandal posed by priests of his Church is a constant of this pontificate.It is a constant because every time, on different terrain, striking Benedict XVI means striking the very man who has worked and is working, on that same terrain, with the greatest foresight, resolve, and success.
* The tempest that followed his lecture in Regensburg on September 12, 2006 was the first of the series. Benedict XVI was accused of being an enemy of Islam, and an incendiary proponent of the clash of civilizations. The very man who with singular clarity and courage had revealed where the ultimate root of violence is found, in an idea of God severed from rationality, and had then told how to overcome it.
The violence and even killings that followed his words were the sad proof that he was right. But the fact that he had hit the mark was confirmed above all by the progress in dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam that was seen afterward – not in spite of, but because of the lecture in Regensburg – and of which the letter to the pope from the 138 Muslim intellectuals and the visit to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul were the most evident and promising signs.
With Benedict XVI, the dialogue between Christianity and Islam, as with the other religions as well, is today proceeding with clearer awareness about what makes distinctions, by virtue of faith, and what can unite, the natural law written by God in the heart of every man.
* A second wave of accusations against Pope Benedict depicts him as an enemy of modern reason, and in particular of its supreme expression, science. The peak of this hostile campaign was reached in January of 2008, when professors forced the pope to cancel a visit to the main university of his diocese, the University of Rome "La Sapienza."
And yet – as previously in Regensburg and then in Paris at the Collège des Bernardins on September 12, 2008 – the speech that the pope intended to give at the University of Rome was a formidable defense of the indissoluble connection between faith and reason, between truth and freedom: "I do not come to impose the faith, but to call for courage for the truth."
The paradox is that Benedict XVI is a great "illuminist" in an age in which the truth has so few admirers and doubt is in command, to the point of wanting to silence the truth.
* A third accusation systematically hurled at Benedict XVI is that he is a traditionalist stuck in the past, an enemy of the new developments brought by Vatican Council II.
His speech to the Roman curia on December 22, 2005 on the interpretation of the Council, and in 2007 on the liberalization of the ancient rite of the Mass, are thought to be the proofs in the hands of his accusers.
In reality, the Tradition to which Benedict XVI is faithful is that of the grand history of the Church, from its origins until today, which has nothing to do with a formulaic attachment to the past. In the speech to the curia just mentioned, to exemplify the "reform in continuity" represented by Vatican II, the pope recalled the question of religious freedom. To affirm this completely – he explained – the Council had to go back to the origins of the Church, to the first martyrs, to that "profound patrimony" of Christian Tradition which in recent centuries had been lost, and was found again thanks in part to the criticism of Enlightenment-style reason.
As for the liturgy, if there is an authentic perpetuator of the great liturgical movement that flourished in the Church between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Prosper Guéranger to Romano Guardini, it is precisely Ratzinger himself.
* A fourth terrain of attack runs along the same lines as the previous one. Benedict XVI is accused of derailing ecumenism, of putting reconciliation with the Lefebvrists ahead of dialogue with the other Christian confessions.
But the facts say the opposite. Since Ratzinger has been pope, the journey of reconciliation with the Eastern Churches has taken extraordinary steps forward. Both with the Byzantine Churches that look to the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople, and – most surprisingly – with the patriarchate of Moscow.
And if this has happened, it is precisely because of the revived fidelity to the grand Tradition – beginning with that of the first millennium – that is one characteristic of this pope, in addition to being the soul of the Eastern Churches.
On the side of the West, it is again love of Tradition that is driving persons and groups of the Anglican Communion to ask to enter the Church of Rome.
While with the Lefebvrists, what is blocking their reintegration is precisely their attachment to past forms of Church and of doctrine erroneously identified with perennial Tradition. The revocation of the excommunication of four of their bishops, in January of 2009, did nothing to the state of schism in which they remain, just as in 1964 the revocation of excommunications between Rome and Constantinople did not heal the schism between East and West, but made possible a dialogue aimed at unity.
* The four Lefebvrist bishops whose excommunication Benedict XVI lifted included Englishman Richard Williamson, an antisemite and Holocaust denier. In the liberalized ancient rite, there is even a prayer that the Jews "may recognize Jesus Christ as savior of all men."
These and other facts have helped to feed a persistent protest by the Jewish world against the current pope, with significant points of radicalism. And it is a fifth terrain of accusation.
The latest weapon of this protest was a passage from the sermon given at Saint Peter's Basilica on Holy Friday, in the pope's presence, by the preacher of the pontifical household, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa. The incriminating passage was a citation from a letter written by a Jew, but in spite of this the uproar was aimed exclusively at the pope.
And yet, nothing is more contradictory than to accuse Benedict XVI of enmity with the Jews.
Because no other pope before him ever went so far in defining a positive vision of the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, while leaving intact the essential division over whether or not Jesus is the Son of God. In the first volume of his "Jesus of Nazareth" published in 2007 – and close to being completed by the second volume – Benedict XVI wrote splendid pages in this regard, in dialogue with a living American rabbi.
And many Jews effectively see Ratzinger as a friend. But in the international media, it's another matter. There it is almost exclusively "friendly fire" that rains down. From Jews attacking the pope who best understands and loves them.
* Finally, a sixth accusation – very current – against Ratzinger is that he "covered up" the scandal of priests who sexually abused children.
Here too, the accusation is against the very man who has done more than anyone, in the Church hierarchy, to heal this scandal.
With positive effects that can already be seen here and there. Particularly in the United States, where the incidence of the phenomenon among the Catholic clergy has diminished significantly in recent years.
But where the wound is still open, as in Ireland, it was again Benedict XVI who required the Church of that country to put itself in a penitential state, on a demanding path that he traced out in an unprecedented pastoral letter last March 19.
The fact is that the international campaign against pedophilia has just one target today, the pope. The cases dug up from the past are always intended to be traced back to him, both when he was archbishop of Munich and when he was prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, plus the Regensburg appendix for the years during which the pope's brother, Georg, directed the cathedral children's choir.
* The six terrains of accusation against Benedict XVI just referred to bring up a question.
Why is this pope so under attack, from outside of the Church but also from within, in spite of his clear innocence with respect to the accusations?
The beginning of an answer is that he is systematically attacked precisely for what he does, for what he says, for what he is.
__________
English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.
Did Porn Cause the Financial Crisis?
From The Atlantic
By Daniel Indiviglio
The above headline might seem like a joke. It isn't. Senior staffers at the Securities and Exchange Commission were surfing Internet pornography when they should have been policing the financial system. A deeply disturbing SEC memo to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) exposing this problem was reported Thursday night by ABC News. Here are some highlights via the Associated Press:
_A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office. He agreed to resign, an earlier watchdog report said.
_An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as "Sex" or "Pornography." Yet, he still managed to amass a collection of "very graphic" material on his hard drive by using Google images to bypass the SEC's internal filter, according to an earlier report from the inspector general. The accountant refused to testify in his defense and received a 14-day suspension.
_Seventeen of the employees were "at a senior level," earning salaries of up to $222,418.
_The number of cases jumped from two in 2007 to 16 in 2008. The cracks in the financial system emerged in mid-2007 and spread into full-blown panic by the fall of 2008.
On one hand, two cases in 2007 means that either it wasn't that widespread of a problem or it hadn't yet been detected. On the other hand, the fact that this behavior seems to have been so prevalent among senior level employees is particularly troubling. They're the ones who should have been closely watching the financial industry and leading the way to help prevent the system from collapsing.
A few things should be concluded from this revelation. First, government computers must need better firewalls to block out this content. Second, this is a pretty grim verdict on the effectiveness of regulators. When on the verge of the most major economic crisis in around 80 years, they were watching porn instead of the financial system.
This certainly isn't the kind of publicity the SEC needs as it begins to prosecute its high-profile case against Goldman Sachs. This memo damages the credibility of the regulator. Though, it does begin to explain why it took the SEC more than three years to bring the complaint against Goldman: its employees had other things on their minds.
Daniel Indiviglio is a blogger and staff editor. Prior to joining The Atlantic, he wrote for Forbes. He also worked as an investment banker and a consultant.
Obama Regime Threatens Critics
From Pajamas Media
By Ron Radosh
As readers of The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal know, last week Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and World Jewish Congress head Ronald S. Lauder purchased full page ads challenging President Obama’s policies on the Middle East and Israel.Lauder’s ad appeared on April 15th. “We are concerned,” Lauder began, “about the nuclear ambitions of an Iranian regime that brags about its genocidal intentions against Israel. We are concerned that the Jewish state is being isolated and delegitimized.” He continued:
Our concern grows to alarm as we consider some disturbing questions. Why does the thrust of this Administration’s Middle East rhetoric seem to blame Israel for the lack of movement on peace talks? After all, it is the Palestinians, not Israel, who refuse to negotiate.
Israel has made unprecedented concessions. It has enacted the most far reaching West Bank settlement moratorium in Israeli history.
Israel has publicly declared support for a two-state solution. Conversely, many Palestinians continue their refusal to even acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.
The conflict’s root cause has always been the Palestinian refusal to accept Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Every American President who has tried to broker a peace agreement has collided with that Palestinian intransigence, sooner or later. Recall President Clinton’s anguish when his peace proposals were bluntly rejected by the Palestinians in 2000. Settlements were not the key issue then.
They are not the key issue now.
“Appeasement,” Lauder wrote the President, “does not work.” The real threat was not Israeli settlements, but “a nuclear armed Iran.”
One day later, Wiesel issued a statement to the press assuring them that his ad was not coordinated with Lauder’s WJC statement. Wiesel said that Jerusalem must remain the spiritual capital of the world’s Jews, and should serve as a symbol of faith and hope – not as a symbol of sorrow and bitterness. He wrote: “Jerusalem is the heart of our heart and the soul of our soul.” Jerusalem, Wiesel said, “is above politics…It is mentioned more than 600 times in Scripture – and not a single time in the Quran… Its presence in Jewish history is overwhelming.”
He continued to point out that the old city of Jerusalem would still be Arab if Jordan had not joined Egypt and Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. Unlike when it was in their hands, however, “for the first time in history, Jews, Christians and Muslims may all worship at their shrines…And contrary to certain media reports, Jews, Christians and Muslims are allowed to build their homes anywhere in the city.” He noted that while Jews would be willing to die for Jerusalem, they would not kill for it.
Both men are prominent leaders of the American Jewish community, with wide influence. They are accustomed to speaking out when they feel the interests of world Jewry and Israel is being threatened. Yet, “unnamed” official representatives of the U.S. Government evidently released the following statement to both Haaretz and other news media: “United States administration officials have voiced harsh criticism over advertisements in favor of Israel’s position on Jerusalem that appeared in the U.S. press with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s encouragement. ‘All these advertisements are not a wise move,’ one senior American official told Haaretz.”
Am I incorrect to think that this little item, buried at the end of a story in the Israeli paper Haaretz, is more than unusual? American citizens, a category that include both Lauder and Wiesel, have the right to speak out, and to exercise their First Amendment rights to disagree with administration policy, and even to spend their own money to advertise their views. What right does any unnamed official- one must ask whom they are- have to publicly chastise them and release a statement to that effect in Israel and to the world press?
In a matter of hours, the Haaretz story spread all over the world on the internet. We must ask what this says about the Obama administration, which seems to find any criticism extremely threatening. In acting to stifle those with the courage to take them on, the Obama team demeans itself, and again shows how it is seeking to tilt our traditional Middle East policy in a new direction.
Franklin Graham Disinvited...27 Anti-Jesus Quotes by Weinstein...Sign FREE Petition
The anti-Christian complainer once described by a Pentagon spokesman as "a rabid anti-evangelical," Mikey Weinstein has duped Pentagon officials into disinviting Franklin Graham, leader of The Samaritan's Purse and son of legendary evangelist Billy Graham, from praying with our troops on the National Day of Prayer (NDOP), because Graham is Christian and opposes Islamic terrorism."We are at war with a sub-set of evangelical Christianity...how many? Roughly 12.6% of the American public or 38 million people," admitted Mikey Weinstein, who has repeatedly sued the military (and lost in court) to demand punishment of any troops who talk openly about their faith in Jesus Christ.
But in a breaking news expose, The Pray In Jesus Name Project has published 27 violent, profanity-laced, and bigoted anti-Christian comments made by Mr. Weinstein himself, who was reportedly paid with our tax-dollars to defame Christianity to our troops, and should be disinvited far more quickly than Franklin Graham.
SELECT HERE TO SIGN THE FREE PETITION TO SECDEF ROBERT GATES to re-invite Franklin Graham to pray with our troops at the National Day of Prayer, and stop paying the violent, profanity laced, and bigotted anti-Christian Mikey Weinstein who blasphemes Christianity to our troops.
"Never did Franklin Graham threaten profanity-laced violence or declare war against 38 million Americans because of their faith, like Mr. Weinstein has," said Chaplain Klingenschmitt, who is launching a FREE national petition drive to SECDEF Robert Gates, to re-invite Franklin Graham and disinvite Mikey Weinstein.
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