Sobran's --
The Real News of the Month
May 2001
Volume 8, No. 5
Editor: Joe Sobran
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FEATURES
The Moving Picture
(pages 1-2)
The insufferable John McCain is pushing his pet project
again: campaign finance reform. He can't see, or doesn't
care, that it's unconstitutional on several grounds (see
the First and Tenth Amendments). Worse yet, letting the
government control its own opposition is a giant step
toward tyranny. Happily, Democrats are losing enthusiasm
for McCain-Feingold -- not on principle, of course, but
because they've learned to beat Republicans in raising
soft money. Thank you, Bill Clinton!
* * *
After correctly pointing out that McCain-Feingold is
unconstitutional, Rush Limbaugh is arguing that the
federal government should stimulate the slowing economy
by inflating the currency. And just where does the
Constitution authorize that, Rush? The government is
supposed to maintain the value of a dollar, not debase
it. Arbitrarily increasing the quantity of paper money is
sometimes called counterfeiting; and it's even worse when
the government does it.
* * *
According to new census figures, Hispanics may now
outnumber blacks in the United States. Just one
interesting result of the disproportionate number of
abortions performed on black women.
* * *
The neoconservative gadfly David Horowitz is giving
the whole notion of reparations for slavery the
disrespect it deserves. He's been placing hard-hitting
advertisements against the idea in college newspapers
across the country. Student editors, while grudgingly
running the ads, are denouncing them for "bigotry." The
charge is absurd, of course; but because Horowitz's
arguments are hard to answer, the children use the time-
tested method of smearing rather than refuting. By the
way, how would reparations apply to mulattos? Would they
be required to pay reparations to themselves?
* * *
The idea of term limits for politicians seems to
have been pretty well killed off, but as a reactionary
utopian (yearning to return to a better world that never
quite existed) I find myself liking it better and better.
It used to be called "rotation in office," but it didn't
quite make it into the Constitution. Too bad. It might
have prevented the existence of the career politician.
I'm convinced that nobody should ever be reelected to
*any* office. Not only would this limit the mischief
officeholders could do; it would attract an entirely
different breed of men to public office -- men content to
serve briefly and go home.
* * *
Scientists are feeling new qualms about cloning
humans. It turns out that cloned animals are subject to
unpredictable defects: gross obesity, heart and lung
problems, erratic development, malfunctioning immune
systems. The NEW YORK TIMES reports that "fewer than
3 per cent of all cloning efforts succeed." Human clones,
anyone? Having given us the hydrogen bomb, science should
be content to rest on its laurels.
* * *
Have you noticed that the media refer to homosexuals
as "gay and lesbian Americans"? What a phrase! How about
"pedophilic Americans"? Or "necrophilic Americans"? Then
too, we should remember the "white separatist Americans,"
such as Abraham Lincoln.
* * *
Speaking of Honest Abe, some bright high-school boys
in Maryland have discovered that the state anthem,
written during the Civil War, refers to the Great
Emancipator as a "tyrant" and "despot." In fact the whole
song expresses strong Confederate sympathies. I knew
that, but I hoped nobody would notice. I suppose it was
only a matter of time before "Maryland, My Maryland" was
ratted out.
* * *
And in Cleveland, the Cuyahoga County Public Library
offers a brochure listing -- uh-oh -- "Diversity
Resources." As you might guess, these are books and
videos designed to raise your consciousness on such
themes as "cultural diversity," "multicultural
awareness," "strategies to defeat homophobia," "cultural
stereotypes," "outdated notions of race and ethnicity,"
"lessons of bigotry," "gay teenagers," "environmental
responsibility," and "young lesbian women." Sounds
fascinating! Zzzzzz. In one animated video, PEACOCK IN
THE LAND OF PENGUINS, "Perry the Peacock, his co-workers,
and the penguins learn the value of diversity in the
workplace." This would have to be a cartoon, because in
the real world, with rare exceptions, neither different
cultures nor different species can mix with others.
People and animals alike instinctively preserve their own
identities. Just try putting a peacock among penguins
sometime; they'll either ignore it or peck it to death.
Except in liberal fantasies, man and beast prefer their
own kind.
* * *
When I visited the Soviet Union many years ago, I
was struck by the way our Communist tour guide kept
bragging about all the churches that had somehow been
spared by the revolution that razed so many others and
murdered so many Christians. Of course, no new churches
had been erected since that revolution; but the Soviets
took a curious pride in Russian cultural achievements
that pre-existed their regime and fortunately managed to
survive in spite of them. It took decades for me to
notice a parallel at home.
* * *
This just in, as we go to press. THE NATIONAL
ENQUIRER scores again with a report that Jesse Jackson's
latest child's mom is writing a tell-all book, revealing,
inter alia, that at his request she'd aborted an earlier
child she'd conceived by him. Taking a leaf from Monica
Lewinsky, she also saved one of his used condoms (in her
freezer) in order to gather DNA for a paternity test. And
a furious Mrs. Jackson aimed a pistol at him in their
home but a guest who was present grabbed it before she
could fire. All in all (see "The Loose Leaf," below),
Bill Clinton's spiritual advisor has had an exciting
month. And this clown thinks *we* should be paying
reparations!
Exclusive to the electronic version:
The case of the accused spy Robert Hanssen has
caused much comment because he was apparently a devout
orthodox Catholic, going so far as to become a
supernumerary of Opus Dei. Liberals shouldn't gloat. The
very incongruity of Hanssen's front merely underlines how
hard it is to be at once a Catholic and a Soviet agent.
By contrast, nobody finds anything incongruous in a
Commie posing as a liberal, because liberalism provides a
natural camouflage for Communism. Liberals hotly denied
that Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent, but they couldn't
pretend that there was anything outlandish about
supposing that a Franklin Roosevelt liberal might be
working on the sly for FDR's pal, "Uncle Joe" Stalin.
Score one for McCarthyism.
Kidnapped?
(page 3)
An Albuquerque man has been charged with a 1980
kidnapping in New York. The 22-year-old victim is trying
to save him from prison.
In April 1979 Barry Smiley and his wife adopted an
infant boy, three days old, in New York. In June 1980 the
child's mother, whose parents had forced her to put him
up for adoption against her will, got a court order that
he be returned to her. Instead of complying, the Smileys
fled to New Mexico, lived under the names Bennett and
Mary Propp, and raised the boy in ignorance of the true
story. But the New York authorities recently tracked
Smiley down, and he turned himself in. The young man,
Matthew Propp, says movingly, "I'm concerned about what's
going to happen to my dad." That's how he thinks of
Smiley: "my dad."
There's another moving story here. Back in 1978,
Matthew's real mother had become pregnant by her fiance,
to the fury of her parents, who kept her under lock and
key until she gave Matthew up for adoption. After doing
so, she married her fiance, and they eventually spent
more than $100,000 trying to find their son. They had two
other children before they divorced.
The Smiley story also reminded me of other
situations I've read about. In parts of Africa some
tribes used to raid other tribes' villages by night to
steal their children, who were then raised as slaves.
(Yes, slavery existed in Africa before the white man got
into the act, and long afterward. It's still there.)
Imagine growing up not knowing who your parents
were, who *you* were. But were the slaves resentful and
restive? On the contrary. They accepted their masters as
their virtual fathers, even as benefactors. Among the
slaves themselves it was considered disgraceful and
ungrateful to run away from one's master; those who did
so were shunned. There was no Marxian "class
consciousness," let alone solidarity, among the
oppressed. They exemplified what has been called "the
captive mind."
A new book I've seen reviewed shows that slavery in
the Muslim world was firmly entrenched, as it was in many
societies. The very thought of abolishing so enveloping
an institution rarely crossed anyone's mind. (One
fabulously rich caliph owned more than 11,000 slaves.)
Certain slaves, especially eunuchs, even rose to
positions of considerable power.
Like Matthew Propp, though with much less apparent
reason, slaves often feel love and loyalty for their
captors, especially when they remember no other life.
During the Civil War Northerners marveled when slaves
fought for the Confederacy; one of the purposes of the
Emancipation Proclamation was to incite what was called
"servile insurrection," but it never happened.
In the same way, modern man seldom rebels against
the modern state. He has learned to regard it with awe,
gratitude, and hope, as the source of his safety, rights,
and benefits. And no wonder, since it educates him and
teaches him that everything he has, including his
religion, exists by its benign sufferance. Without it, he
is nothing. And he believes this implicitly. Thanks to
state education, he remembers no other world, and he
knows no other way of imagining the world. He may have
read the Declaration of Independence in school, probably
a state school at that, but the only lesson he derives
from it -- or more precisely, from what he was told about
it -- is that a good government (his) originated by
throwing off a bad government (King George's). Certainly
those who declared their independence from that good
government in 1861 were traitors who got the whipping
they deserved. After all, they believed in slavery!
Yes, we have a Constitution, and modern man properly
venerates it, but we also have a government to tell us
what it means -- which passages authorize the government
to take our income, which passages penumbrally guarantee
the right to abortion, and which passages may be
disregarded. He could never have figured this out for
himself. It's a job he leaves to his masters. If it
weren't for them, as they have patiently explained to
him, he wouldn't be free. He has no suspicion that he and
his country have been kidnapped.
I suppose the lesson, on the evidence of history and
our senses, is that man, with rather few exceptions, is a
servile creature. Aristotle thought most men were slaves
by nature. Even the cranky Socrates, according to Plato's
CRITO, thought he owed it to the state, which had raised
and educated him, to accept an unjust death penalty
rather than flee when he had the chance. "He loved Big
Brother."
Shakespeare's Odds and Ends
(pages 4-5)
"How many children had Lady Macbeth?" a Shakespeare
scholar once asked, mocking the tendency of other
Shakespeare scholars, notably A.C. Bradley, to take the
plays as if they were literal historical accounts of
their characters. The Macbeths seem to be childless, yet
at one point Lady Macbeth recalls nursing a child:
I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.
The point is that Lady Macbeth, in this horrifying
speech, is scolding her husband for his qualms about the
regicide they have agreed on; she's not supplying us with
biographical information. We never learn whether she had
once borne a child, nor do we need to. The play never
explains whether the child had died, whether she had
borne it by another man before she met Macbeth, or indeed
(whoever the father) whether it is still alive. If we
insist on an explanation, the likeliest would be the
first; in an age when infant mortality was common, no
audience would find the child's absence baffling. But
there's really nothing here for us to "know"; the
impression this speech makes doesn't indicate a "fact"
beyond itself. The playwright seems to want us to be
uncertain about Macbeth's progeny, because Macbeth
himself is tortured by the question whether he will
become "father to a line of kings," as the Weird Sisters
prophesy that Banquo will.
The Shakespeare plays are notoriously full of loose
ends, and such questions may suggest the whimsical game
of Sherlockiana: reading the Sherlock Holmes stories in
the spirit of Holmes himself, with ingenious "deductions"
to explain such anomalies as the fact that Watson's
Christian name is, at various times, John and James. The
joke, of course, lies in the playful presumption that the
imaginary world of Holmes is an actual and coherent
world, in which everything must fit. The premise of the
game is that no inconsistency may be ascribed to the
obvious real cause: the occasional carelessness of Arthur
Conan Doyle.
A delightful new book,HENRY V, WAR CRIMINAL? & OTHER
SHAKESPEARE PUZZLES (Oxford World's Classics), takes up
dozens of minor mysteries in the plays with great style
and humor, unmarred by academic jargon. The authors, John
Sutherland and Cedric Watts, don't, however, treat the
subject as a mere joke; for all their lightheartedness,
they raise serious questions and offer thoughtful
answers. In some cases -- the famously anachronistic
clocks in JULIUS CAESER -- it's clear that the dramatist
goofed, whether because of ignorance or inattention or
simple indifference. But other seeming inconsistencies --
Othello's clashing explanations of the fatal handkerchief
-- may be deliberate clues to the character's nature and
motives: Watts thinks the noble Moor is, in his creator's
mind, a bit of a con man. This touch is subtly present in
the play, but the effect would be spoiled if it were too
explicit. The cynical Iago is not altogether wrong in
saying that Othello has wooed Desdemona with "fantastical
lies"; yet this is not the way Shakespeare wants us to
perceive his hero. He wants us to see Othello chiefly as
Othello sees himself. To reduce his romantic self-
portrait to braggadoccio would spoil the tragic effect.
In the title essay, Sutherland notes that Henry V
twice orders his soldiers to cut the throats of their
French prisoners -- a war crime under the code of
chivalry. Why twice? Wasn't it done the first time? It
seems not. In fact it seems not to have been done the
second time either. Why not? The play seems to glorify
Henry, a national hero; the Chorus keeps praising him
lavishly (the "mirror of all Christian kings," et
cetera). Yet this official adulation is constantly
undermined by Henry's own brutality. These touches are
too subtle to destroy the dominant feeling of Henry's
heroism, but they give him a depth and reality he would
otherwise lack. And they make it clear that the Chorus
isn't necessarily speaking for the author.
In a complementary essay, Watts asks whether Henry's
legalistic claim to the French crown is legally valid. He
concludes that even Henry's unchallenged claim to the
*English* crown is invalid, since his father usurped the
throne from Richard II -- and Henry himself knows it, as
witness his own order that prayers be said for Richard's
soul. Watts is especially observant about Henry's
tendency to pass the buck at every turn.
The most exhilarating thing about this book is the
way Sutherland and Watts notice details that nearly
everyone else has overlooked. Some of these "Shakespeare
puzzles" are well known -- the ages of Juliet and Lear,
the nature of the Ghost in HAMLET, Lady Macbeth's
apparent faint spell when the murder of Duncan is
discovered. But most have eluded previous scholars. If,
for example, Hamlet was studying at Wittenberg until his
father's sudden death summoned him home to Elsinore, when
could he have found time to court Ophelia? Polonius has
learned that she has seen a good deal of Hamlet "of
late," and she acknowledges his extravagant "vows"; when
did all *this* happen? I've known the play almost by
heart since my teens, but these questions had never
occurred to me. It says much for Shakespeare's artistry
that he can make us overlook so much.
Another example: "Cleopatra -- deadbeat mum?"
Sutherland reminds us that ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA makes
several distinct allusions to Cleopatra's children: her
son Caesarion by Julius Caesar and several others (three,
to be historically precise) by Antony. But we never think
of her, nor does the play encourage us to do so, as a
mother. She is always the enchantress, the seductive
serpent, the witch, even the whore. As soon as we focus
on her as a mother, she seems heartless, irresponsible,
repulsive -- which is why Shakespeare, using all his
legerdemain, never lets us see her in that light. By
killing herself, she exposes her children to the tender
mercy of Octavius Caesar, who has threatened, credibly,
to kill them unless she submits to him. (The historical
Octavius did kill Caesarion, but seems to have spared her
children by Antony.) But her maternal duty is the
furthest thing from her mind, and from ours. As with
Othello, we are, as it were, tricked into seeing her as
she sees herself.
Not least among Shakespeare's gifts is his
management of the illusion of passing time. Watching
OTHELLO, we forget that Desdemona hasn't even had time to
commit adultery with Cassio once, let alone (as her
hysterical husband charges) "a thousand times." But I
think Sutherland is the first to deal with the curious
fact that in RICHARD II Bolingbroke -- later Henry IV --
is "young" in Act I yet by Act V has a son (the future
Henry V) old enough to be carousing with Falstaff & Co.
This is no mistake by the playwright, but on the
contrary, Sutherland argues, a case of his marvelous
craft in controlling the audience's attention. There is
time, and there is Shakespearean time. Likewise Lear
gives his age as "fourscore and upward," but he's still
vigorous enough to hunt, to kill Cordelia's hangman, and
to carry her corpse. He also seems to revel long o'
nights with his unruly retinue, as Goneril complains.
Thanks to Shakespeare, we never bat an eye at all this.
I hate to cavil with so charming a book, but I do
bridle when Watts calls LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST "for its
times, a strikingly feministic play." In the first place,
it's no more "feministic" than any other Shakespeare
play. No writer has ever loved women more profoundly, or
created such a variety of great female characters: it's
staggering that the same man could imagine women as
different as Juliet, Cleopatra, Cordelia, Beatrice,
Rosalind, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Cressida, Desdemona ...
Does Watts think he's adding a cubit to Shakespeare's
stature by congratulating him on anticipating the fads of
our own time? A generation ago the dramatist was hailed
as an existentialist (remember existentialism?) in a
trendy book called SHAKESPEARE, OUR CONTEMPORARY. If you
rummaged through an old library you'd no doubt run across
musty volumes enthusiastically titled SHAKESPEARE THE
VEGETARIAN or SHAKESPEARE THE PROHIBITIONIST.
And Sutherland goes out of his way to take a whack
at the Oxfordian theory, which "rests on ignorance [and]
a deplorable and unpleasant snobbery." If he'd read the
Sonnets with the same care as he reads the plays, he'd
have noticed a lot of odd details that don't jibe with
the Stratfordian story, but do match what we know of the
17th Earl of Oxford. The poet is aging and worried about
death, he's preoccupied with his own disgrace, he hopes
his name will be "buried where my body is," he wants to
be "forgotten" when he's gone. He also describes himself
as "lame," the same word Oxford used of himself in
several of his surviving letters of the 1590s, when the
Sonnets were probably written. And if the "lovely boy" he
addresses is, as seems most likely, the young third Earl
of Southampton, there is an obvious reason why he should
urge him to marry: in the early 1590s Southampton was
being pushed by Lord Burghley to marry Oxford's daughter
Elizabeth Vere. I hope I haven't just said anything
ignorant, unpleasant, and snobbish.
But never mind. This is one of those rare books that
make you see Shakespeare in a new way, and with increased
respect.
The Loose Leaf
(page 6)
The CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE has won one in Ohio,
where a federal appeals court has ruled that the state
motto -- "With God all things are possible" -- doesn't
violate the U.S. Constitution. +++ Hoping to "bring all
Virginians together," Governor JAMES GILMORE has replaced
the state's traditional tribute to Confederate History
Month with a bland salute to both sides in the Civil War
(with a pious denunciation of slavery, of course). +++
STEVEN SPIELBERG's people dent reports that he's planning
a movie showing ABE LINCOLN as a manic-depressive racist.
How about showing Honest Abe as a war criminal?
My old friend TAKI, who writes for the London
SPECTATOR, is the most hilarious gossip columnist alive.
In fact I once went out on a limb and called him the
greatest Greek writer since AESCHYLUS (a judgment I see
no reason to modify, with all due respect to SOPHOCLES,
EURIPIDES, and ARIANNA STASSINOPOULOS). Well, the
SPECTATOR's publisher, CONRAD BLACK, has accused Taki of
"anti-Semitism" and even a "blood libel" for his recent
remarks about BILL CLINTON, MARC RICH, and crooked
Israeli officials like EHUD BARAK. Taki's comments were
in fact eminently reasonable, though phrased in his
inimitably flamboyant style. That's probably his real
offense: when you write about Jewish matters, you're
supposed to walk on eggshells, and I can only pity the
eggshell that gets under Taki's shoes. Sometimes I think
he's the only free spirit left in the modern world. Soon
it will be illegal to possess a personality. +++
Meanwhile, Black's Jewish wife, BARBARA AMIEL (who admits
that she speaks no Hebrew), has written that Judaism
without Israel is "pointless." This strikes me as an
absurd libel on an ancient religion, which has sustained
the Jews for millennia with and without a Jewish state.
Not that her husband is apt to complain.
Just in case you think I'm not hip, I note that the
hip-hop celeb SEAN (P. DIDDY [formerly PUFFY]) COMBS has
beaten the rap (no pun intended, though it's the same pun
everyone else is making) on gun possession and bribery
charges, leaving us to wonder how a woman on the scene of
the Alleged Incident got shot in the face. The episode
cost P. Diddy (who was represented by JOHNNIE COCHRAN)
one prized possession: his girlfriend JENNIFER LOPEZ
(J-LO, as we hip folk refer to her) has called it quits.
+++ Ever the selfless public servant, HILLARY CLINTON has
rented a New York office suite at $514,149 (that's your
money, not hers) per annum. It's more than any other U.S.
senator spends on office space. +++ Her EXECRABLE SPOUSE,
meanwhile, has received an award from a student group at
Cardozo Law School. He can't practice law for the next
five years, but that doesn't say he can't accept honors
from law students. Back in Arkansas, he has created a
furor by seeking to having "living quarters" (which,
being interpreted, is "bachelor pad") built into his
presidential library. +++ Guess who our most peripatetic
president was? The same Bill Clinton, who spent 229 days
abroad, many of them while facing impeachment. Estimated
cost: more than half a billion dollars. (And they griped
about the $50 million KENNETH STARR spent!) +++ In the
wake of the Clintons' latest scandals, I'm having second
thoughts about my recent book, HUSTLER: THE CLINTON
LEGACY. Its chief flaw is the glued binding. It should
have been loose-leaf, so it could be updated every few
weeks. +++ Speaking of Clinton: if you have a reputation
as a good liar, you're probably not *that* good.
One man's opinion: Conservative columnist CAL THOMAS
may have taken historical revisionism too far when he
wrote in March that the Roman emperor CONSTANTINE was
succeeded by NERO. +++ The best-movie Oscar to
GLADIATOR,the only one of the five nominees I saw, is
reassuring. If that was the best film of the year, I'm
not missing anything +++ The silly-gory movie HANNIBAL is
inspiring more deep-thinking palaver than any film since
FORREST GUMP. +++ Yours truly just saw ALFRED HITCHCOCK's
NORTH BY NORTHWEST for the umpteenth time. What a
preposterous story! And thanks to Hitchcock and CARY
GRANT, what a joy! (If you listen carefully, you'll even
hear a mention of my home town: YPSILANTI, MICHIGAN.)
The NEW YORK TIMES describes California's Governor
GRAY DAVIS as a "cautious Democratic centrist" -- pretty
much what the TIMES used to call STALIN and CASTRO. +++
JESSE JACKSON is getting lots of critical press attention
-- at last! -- for his shakedowns of corporations. As a
blackmailer, he could give ABE FOXMAN lessons. But if the
IRS checks him out, he may wind up losing his chauffered
pimpmobile -- a sad indignity for a man of the cloth.
Exclusive to the electronic version:
Much speculation on whether Bill and Hill will
finally split. She once said she was no little ol' TAMMY
WYNETTE, standing by her man. Maybe now that she doesn't
need him, she'll adopt another Tammy hit:
"D-I-V-O-R-C-E."
NUGGETS
<< Material dropped from features or changed for reasons
of space appears in double angular brackets. >>
WHEN IS A STORY "NEWS"? -- SOLDIERS IN THE ARMY OF GOD
(see below) typifies the way the media try to discredit
conservative causes by focusing on their wilder fringes.
On the other hand, they avoid giving any attention to the
fringes of "progressive" movements -- e.g., the
pedophiles who are welcomed by the homo-lesbo movement.
The major media harped for months on the murder of a
single homosexual by a pair of thugs, but haven't even
reported the murder of a 14-year-old Arkansas boy by a
pair of sodomites. News stories are increasingly selected
for the ideological messages they convey. << If they
don't serve the right causes, they ain't news. >> It's as
if the mailman decided which letters to deliver. (page 5)
STRAWS IN THE WIND: Do I detect a quiet decline in
Hitler-bashing lately? Maybe it's subtly sinking in that
Der Fuehrer wasn't radically different from other modern
rulers, including his nemeses, Roosevelt and Stalin. Like
them (and many others), he stood for teleocracy -- the
state-directed society -- as against nomocracy -- neutral
government, impartially applying the rule of law. He
assumed the state's sovereignty over all a nation's
wealth. He made war on civilian populations. Among his
peers, he was a pretty regular guy. (page 8)
CREDO: I'm strongly inclining toward anarchism, on
pragmatic grounds. The way I look at it, if the
government can't protect property rights, outlaw
abortion, and burn heretics, what's the point of having
it at all? (page 11)
THOSE DEADLY PRO-LIFERS: HBO has just produced a
documentary, SOLDIERS IN THE ARMY OF GOD, showing anti-
abortion extremists who kill nice abortion doctors.
<< That was the intended impression, anyway. >> Actually,
the "extremists" came across as conscientious people who
don't like resorting to violence, but don't know what
else to do when the government licenses the slaughter of
the innocent. The "abortion doctors" were shown as kindly
humanitarians who only want to serve others. No mention
of whether they accept money for their benefactions.
(page 12)
Exclusive to the electronic version:
COME HOME, AMERICA! An American spy plane has collided
with a Chinese jet off the coast of China, forcing the
American plane to land on China's Hainan Island. As I
write, the details are unclear and the dust hasn't
settled, but the massive U.S. military presence in and
around Asia reminds us that the Monroe Doctrine isn't a
two-way street. The Western Hemisphere is "our backyard,"
off-limits to the powers of the Eastern Hemisphere. But
"we" are entitled to interfere everywhere on earth,
whether it be in the name of our "vital interests" or
universal "human rights" or the "international
community." Just imagine if Chinese reconnaissance planes
were buzzing around Los Angeles and Miami, with huge
Chinese fleets floating off the coasts.
REPRINTED COLUMNS (pages 7-12)
* Can We Afford a Tax Cut? (March 6, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010306.shtml
* Shakespeare and DNA (March 8, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010308.shtml
* A New Beethoven (March 15, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010315.shtml
* The Hanssen Shocker (March 20, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010320.shtml
* Beware of "Reform" (March 22, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010322.shtml
* Conquering Israel (March 29, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010320.shtml
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