Sobran's --
The Real News of the Month
June 2001
Volume 8, No. 6
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
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FEATURES
The Moving Picture
(pages 1-2)
George W. Bush's first hundred days are getting
mixed reviews. Most conservatives are happy with him; the
NEW YORK TIMES isn't, barking that he has displayed "a
deep-rooted, unnuanced, and sometimes almost truculent
conservatism." If only it were so! George Will finds Bush
more truly conservative than (gasp!) Ronald Reagan,
because he has come to terms with the (liberal) political
culture. With conservatives like this, who needs
liberals?
* * *
The TIMES is also fretting that Bush will fill the
federal judiciary with "ideologues." That apparently
means people who may interpret the U.S. Constitution too
literally.
* * *
Just as the word "liberal" was long ago hijacked by
people who don't want to liberate anything, the word
"conservative" is now claimed by many people who don't
know what's worth conserving.
* * *
Former Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska (now living in
New York), decorated for heroism after losing part of his
leg in Vietnam, has denied a charge that he deliberately
slaughtered more than a dozen women, children, and old
men in a Vietnamese village in 1969. He admits that the
people were killed, but only, he says, when his seven-man
Navy SEALs team was fired upon in the dark and returned
the fire, inadvertently killing unarmed people. He says
the memory of finding their bodies has haunted him ever
since. But one member of the team, Gerhard Klann, insists
that Kerrey rounded the people up, ordered them
massacred, and even helped Klann cut an old man's throat.
Other members of the team vaguely support Kerrey's
version, but they are reluctant to talk about the
incident, and Klann's vividly detailed testimony, unlike
theirs, can hardly be called self-exculpating. For these
and other reasons, I find Kerrey's story hard to believe.
Be that as it may, *every* war produces countless stories
too ugly to relate. A sufficient reason to avoid war.
* * *
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed, 252 to
172, a bill making it a federal crime to harm an unborn
child during an assault on its mother. Abortion advocates
oppose the act as a backdoor attempt to ban abortion.
Maybe so, but the fact remains that what it really bans
is *involuntary* abortion. Once again we behold liberal
hypocrisy: those who say they are "pro-choice" rather
than "pro-abortion" should (but don't) oppose the violent
deprivation of an expectant mother's "reproductive
choice" -- just as they should (but don't) protest forced
abortion in China. They aren't just "pro-choice." They
*love* abortion. But we knew that, didn't we?
* * *
At the same time, we must ask, where does the
Constitution authorize the federal government to
legislate in the area of violent crime? Nowhere -- any
more than it authorized the federal judiciary to strike
down abortion laws in the first place. Are we now reduced
to fighting usurpation with usurpation?
* * *
I see that a new biography of Ulysses S. Grant
contends that he wasn't nearly so bad a president as has
been assumed. Not that I plan to read the book, but a
laudatory review set me to thinking. In all these
presidential ratings games, it's assumed that a "great"
president is one who usurps as much power as possible --
or "uses the office creatively," as they say. Those who
merely adhere to the oath of office, confining themselves
to their constitutional powers and duties, are ranked
mediocre.
* * *
A must for every reference library, I guess: THE
HOLOCAUST ENCYCLOPEDIA (Oxford University Press), edited
by Walter Laqueur. Some Jews are so proprietary about
"The Holocaust" (see "Voracious Victims," page 3) that
one almost feels that "denying" the Holocaust is more
offensive than defending it: that Holocaust-obsessors
would be acutely disappointed if it could be proved not
to have occurred, or even if, as I suspect, "The
Holocaust" turned out to be something of a misnomer for
what actually happened.
* * *
Did the Jews kill Christ? This old question has
flared up again, thanks to provocative remarks by the
conservative Paul Weyrich and a basketball player named
Charlie Ward, both of whom have been duly denounced by
All Decent Folks. To answer the question affirmatively is
of course to affront "pluralism" and "tolerance," but it
should be faced. The Gospels make it clear that both the
Jewish authorities and the Jewish mob hated Christ and
demanded his death. It is, however, a perversion to blame
today's Jews for the Crucifixion. The tragedy is that the
Son of God was rejected by his own, by God's Chosen
People; a prophet honored except in his own country,
weeping over Jerusalem. The tragedy continues in the
perennial Jewish hatred of Christianity; but I think it
also implies that if Christ were here today, he would be
denounced and persecuted by the nominally Christian. The
Gospels also tell us that his Apostles -- the twelve men
personally chosen by him -- abandoned him, and even St.
Peter denied him. We Christians should always ask
ourselves if we really would have been stronger at the
moment of truth. The worst mistake you can make about the
Gospels is to suppose that they refer to other people:
Jews, Pharisees, and assorted sinners from whom we may
safely separate ourselves. Christ's real message is:
*This means you.*
* * *
One reader, alas, took my wry declaration that
"lapsed Catholicism is the faith of my fathers"
(SOBRAN'S, April 2001, p. 11) to mean that I'm a lapsed
Catholic. No, I meant just what I said: I was *raised* a
lapsed Catholic by my lapsed Catholic parents. When I
rejoined the Church, I became, so to speak, a *lapsed*
lapsed Catholic.
* * *
Do you get as weary as I do of PBS Radio reports on
Buddhist monks trying to quit smoking?
Voracious Victims
(pages 3-5)
<< Material appearing in double angular brackets was
dropped from the hard copy for reasons of space. >>
Norman Finkelstein's book THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY,
published by Verso, is barely more than a pamphlet -- 150
small pages. But it's creating a sensation in Germany and
Switzerland, two recent targets of Holocaust shakedowns.
It deserves attention in this country too.
<< Such a book is long overdue. The Holocaust has
become a racket, and its constant exploitation is so
coarse as to remind one of Mel Brooks's movie (now a
Broadway musical) THE PRODUCERS, in which a pair of con
men, clearly though implicitly Jewish, deliberately
produce a flop so that they can pocket their investors'
vastly oversubscribed money: they sell their dupes a
total of 1000 per cent interest in the loony
extravaganza, SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER, confidently
expecting it to close on opening night. Disaster strikes
when the play turns out to be a smash. >>
The book's very title is an audacious affront to
today's secular pieties, and especially to modern Jewish
chauvinism. Until now, few have dared to say publicly
what many know or sense: that the Holocaust has been
turned into a big and lucrative business, run by skilled
con men. << Despite their animadversions against
"Holocaust denial," they would be less offensive if the
whole thing had been a hoax; it's the very fact that they
are willing to milk real horror for profit that makes
their enterprise so appalling. >>
Finkelstein, whose parents' relatives perished
during World War II, loathes the transformation of what
he calls "the Nazi holocaust" (small "h") into "The
Holocaust" -- supposedly the defining event of modern
Jewish experience, but actually, in his view, an
ideological construct and a propaganda and blackmailing
tool for organized Jewish and Zionist interests.
In his third, longest, and final chapter, "The
Double Shakedown," Finkelstein shows how a cynical
alliance among Jewish agencies (the World Jewish
Congress, the Anti-Defamation League, the Simon
Wiesenthal Center, and others), American politicians, and
gullible journalists blackmailed Swiss bankers into
coughing up $1.25 billion in "reparations," allegedly to
compensate Holocaust victims whose assets in Swiss banks
had gone unclaimed for more than half a century. Though
an audit had found that the actual amount of such assets
was less than $1 million in today's values, the bankers
paid up in order to avoid threatened class action suits,
economic boycotts, U.S. Government sanctions, and really,
really bad publicity. The Swiss, neutral during World
War II, were being portrayed as heartless accomplices of
the Nazis, ruthlessly exploiting the victims. (Bill
Clinton heartily endorsed the campaign.)
Finkelstein calculates that the number of alleged
Holocaust survivors, as claimed by the Jewish groups,
would mean, actuarially, that there was no Holocaust! He
quotes his mother's earthy question: "If everyone who
claims to be a survivor actually is one, who did Hitler
kill?" In other words, the Holocaust Industry virtually
endorses the "Holocaust denial" it execrates.
During the vilification campaign against the Swiss,
Finkelstein further notes, it transpired that there were
far more unclaimed wartime assets in *American* banks
(about $6 million) than in Swiss banks. An independent
commission found that the Swiss had kept strict and
honest records. Such facts, however, got almost no
publicity. (Regrettably, Finkelstein says nothing about
the Industry's efforts to smear and blackmail the
Catholic Church.)
The Jewish groups who claimed to represent Holocaust
survivors argued the urgency of reparations on grounds
that those aged survivors were dying off rapidly. The
American news media little noted, nor long remembered,
that a full year after the Swiss settlement not one dime
of the "Holocaust booty," as Finkelstein calls it, had
been paid out to the survivors. But the lawyers,
including New York's former senator, Alphonse D'Amato
(credited with "a moral victory and a triumph of the
spirit" by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu),
had collected their fees -- in the millions. And much of
the booty was earmarked not for survivors, but for other
Jewish causes, such as "Holocaust education."
Such is the power of the Holocaust Industry. It has
little to do with actual Jewish suffering. As Finkelstein
notes, "The Holocaust" became a going concern only
decades after World War II -- specifically, after Israel
became a full client of the United States in 1967. Until
then, he points out, "Not only Americans in general but
also American Jews, including Jewish intellectuals, paid
the Nazi holocaust little heed. In an authoritative 1957
survey, sociologist Nathan Glazer reported that the Nazi
Final Solution (as well as Israel) 'had remarkably slight
effects on the inner life of American Jewry.' In a 1961
COMMENTARY symposium on 'Jewishness and the Younger
Intellectuals,' only two of thirty-one contributors
stressed its impact. Likewise, a 1961 roundtable convened
by the journal JUDAISM of twenty-one observant American
Jews on 'My Jewish Affirmation' almost completely ignored
the subject. No monuments or tributes marked the Nazi
holocaust in the United States. To the contrary, major
Jewish organizations opposed such memorialization."
The same was true of Israel. The record from 1948 to
1967 shows very little interest in the Jewish state among
American Jews. But Israel's stunning victory over the
Arabs in the June 1967 Six-Day War changed all that. That
victory seemed miraculous to the general public,
including Jews, but it came as no surprise to military
experts. Be that as it may, Israel and the Holocaust
together became enormously important symbols to Jews in
the West. The Holocaust justified Israel's existence, and
Israel could justify everything it did, however lawless
and inhumane, as part of its mission to prevent "a second
Holocaust."
Furthermore, criticism of Jews and Israel could be
squelched by smearing it as "anti-Semitism." According to
the emergent ideology linking the Holocaust to Israel,
anti-Semitism was a perennial trait of gentiles
(especially Christians) and explained all conflicts, past
and present, between Jews and non-Jews. In a new twist on
the doctrine of Original Sin, gentiles were intrinsically
anti-Semitic. The Holocaust was merely the culmination of
millennia of irrational gentile hatred of the Jews.
The great spokesman for this new ideology has been
Elie Wiesel, the histrionically mournful Auschwitz
survivor, whom Finkelstein regards, with sheer contempt,
as a hypocrite and intellectual huckster. Nobody would
call Wiesel a master of understatement. He once recalled
that as a youth, "I read THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON --
don't laugh! -- in Yiddish." (Finkelstein: "THE CRITIQUE
OF PURE REASON was never translated into Yiddish.")
Wiesel has also recalled having been hit by a taxi in
Times Square: "I flew an entire block. I was hit at 45th
Street and Broadway, and the ambulance picked me up at
44th." "The truth I present is unvarnished," he says, "I
can do no other." Wiesel discourses on the unspeakable
tragedy of the Holocaust for a standard fee of $25,000,
plus a chauffeured limousine.
"Indeed," Finkelstein writes, "the whole field of
Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense, if not sheer
fraud." He cites several widely hailed Holocaust memoirs
that turned out, under examination, to be fabrications,
notably Jerzy Kosinski's PAINTED BIRD and Binjamin
Wilkomirski's FRAGMENTS. The Jewish establishment,
including Wiesel, continued to defend both books even
*after* their exposure. (Wilkomirski, whose real name is
Bruno Doessekker, not only wasn't a Holocaust survivor;
he wasn't even Jewish. He spent the entire war in
Switzerland.)
Another recent Holocaust hit was Daniel Jonah
Goldhagen's historical study, HITLER'S WILLING
EXECUTIONERS, a comprehensive indictment of Germans as
murderously anti-Semitic throughout their history. When
Finkelstein himself co-authored A NATIONAL ON TRIAL, a
book exposing Goldhagen's shoddy scholarship and gross
illogic, the entire Jewish establishment denounced him;
Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League joined
others in demanding that Finkelstein's publisher halt the
book. It comes as no surprise that Wiesel praised
Goldhagen (for a "tremendous contribution to the teaching
and understanding of the Holocaust") and that Goldhagen
championed Wilkimorski. Birds of a feather.
<< As for Finkelstein, Leon Wieseltier of THE NEW
REPUBLIC told Finkelstein's publisher: "He's poison, he's
a disgusting self-hating Jew, he's something you find
under a rock." In reply Finkelstein merely notes, "A
NATION ON TRIAL received endorsements from the leading
historians on the Nazi holocaust, including Raul Hilberg,
Christopher Browning, and Ian Kershaw. These same
scholars uniformly dismissed Goldhagen's book; Hilberg
called it 'worthless.'" >>
Finkelstein asks why there should be a tax-supported
Holocaust Museum in this country, which has no comparable
museum to memorialize the sufferings of black slaves and
Indians: "Imagine the wailing accusations of hypocrisy
here were Germany to build a national museum in Berlin to
commemorate not the Nazi genocide but American slavery or
the extermination of the Native Americans."
But not everyone qualifies for commemoration at our
Holocaust Museum: "Count Folke Bernadotte is not honored,
[and] although he ... rescued thousands of Jews, former
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir ordered his
assassination for being 'too pro-Arab.'" When it was
debated whether the Gypsies murdered by the Nazis should
be commemorated, resistance (led by Wiesel) was fierce.
Finkelstein explains that "acknowledging the Gypsy
genocide meant the loss of an exclusive Jewish franchise
over The Holocaust"; and besides, "if the Nazis
persecuted Jews and Gypsies alike, the dogma that The
Holocaust marked the climax of a millennial Gentile
hatred of the Jews was clearly untenable." Result: "In
the museum's permanent exhibition, non-Jewish victims of
Nazism receive only token recognition."
Finkelstein, a liberal, seems sympathetic to black
demands for reparations for slavery. Here his keen eye
for the fake fails him. Just as Jews seem to have
discovered the horrors of The Holocaust belatedly, blacks
have said little about the legacy of slavery until
recently. Otherwise shrewd, Finkelstein doesn't perceive
that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are in the same racket
as Elie Wiesel. It's all highly suspicious, rather as if
white Americans should suddenly decide that Great Britain
owes them heavy monetary damages for generations of
colonial rule. (I know *my* wounds haven't healed; how
about yours? And do you know a good lawyer?)
Gentile attitudes toward Jews can't be reduced to
"anti-Semitism" and its absence. They also include
"philo-Semitism" -- which in turn embraces sympathy,
admiration, affection, and delight. More-negative
attitudes may be compounded of suspicion, disapproval,
resentment, and the simple refusal to be bullied. But the
most widespread gentile attitude toward Jews today is
simply fear -- fear of Jewish power, fear of being
smeared as "anti-Semitic."
If Jews were really helpless victims, this fear
would truly be irrational. But it isn't. Journalists,
politicians, and businessmen all know perfectly well that
they can be ruined if organized Jewish power targets them
for destruction. Much of what sounds like philo-Semitism,
when examined closely, is really a desperate effort to
anticipate charges of anti-Semitism. Many gentiles who
praise the Jews are actually terrified of the Jews. (I
forbear to name names here.)
There is also such a thing as disillusionment and
disappointment with the Jews (and especially with
Israel). Some people who begin by admiring Jews
inordinately wind up feeling let down and betrayed. This
was my own experience. During the 1967 war, and again
during the 1973 war, I was passionately pro-Israel. More
than that, I was strongly pro-Jewish. I regarded the Jews
with awe as the only ancient nation that had survived
into modern times; I thought they were still devoted to
the divine revelation of the Old Testament, if not the
New, and I believed in what is commonly called "the
Judaeo-Christian tradition."
After going to work for NATIONAL REVIEW in New York
City in 1972, I became confused and puzzled. Growing up
in Michigan, I'd had fairly little contact with Jews. In
New York I learned that my naive notions of what Jews
were applied to very few modern Jews, chiefly observant
Orthodox Jews; most modern Jews were secularized,
liberal, irreligious or anti-religious, bound together by
the triadic ideology of the Holocaust, Zionism, and
anti-anti-Semitism, with a deep and disturbing hostility
to Christianity.
Despite constant Jewish complaints about "Christian
anti-Semitism," I found much more anti-Christian feeling
among Jews than anti-Jewish feeling among Christians, and
in fact "anti-Semitism" came to seem to me a code word
for Christianity itself. On the whole, Jews apparently
hated Christianity far more than they loved Judaism. Even
the neoconservative COMMENTARY magazine, regarded as an
ally by Christian conservatives, ran long articles
blaming the Holocaust on Christianity. Enmity to
Christianity almost seemed to *define* modern Jews.
My philo-Semitism pretty much ended in the early
1980s. Israel waged a terrible war on Lebanon, madly
bombing Beirut and killing countless innocent people; at
the same time I became aware of Israeli treachery to the
United States, long before it surfaced in the Pollard spy
case. In the midst of this, Prime Minister Menachem Begin
bitterly accused the Catholic Church of complicity in the
Holocaust. Meanwhile, my own sons were approaching draft
age, and Israel's Amen Corner in this country, as Pat
Buchanan would later dub it, was egging this country to
war with the Arabs. No thanks. (I got to know Pat during
this period, and he and I were becoming disillusioned
with Israel at the same time; a few years later we would
both be assailed as anti-Semites; and we would both find
friends among Orthodox Jews who despised the secularized
Jews who were smearing us.)
Today's Jews, left and right, have become whiners.
The Hebraism of the Old Testament has none of this; even
its lamentations have dignity and grandeur. The ancient
Jews were a virile race who knew that God's favor also
entailed human enmity as a matter of course. The Law set
them apart from a fallen world, and they segregated
themselves from its seductions. Their identity depended
on keeping the Law, not on "being Jewish" -- such talk
was alien to them, just as the concept of "anti-Semitism"
is alien to the Hebrew Scriptures. Even some Orthodox
Jews today are infected with the new, subjective ideology
of "Jewishness"; but basically they regard the Law as
divine and objective.
Nothing about the ancient Jews is more striking than
their preservation, as Holy Writ, of the divine rebukes
of them as "a stiff-necked people." Unlike self-
glorifying nations, always the norm for humans, the Jews
recorded the history of their sins and the tribulations
they brought on themselves by forgetting the Lord; and
they have survived long after the vaunting Romans and
Persians have dissolved like clouds.
This remarkable capacity for ruthless self-criticism
is more evident even in an honest secularized leftist
like Finkelstein than in the "mainstream" Jewish
chauvinists who dismiss him as a "self-hating Jew." And
whether or not he believes in God, I can't help feeling
that God believes in him.
The Loose Leaf
(page 6)
The divorce of TOM CRUISE and NICOLE KIDMAN
dominates the tabloids, and I'd forbear comment except
that Nicole takes exception to Tom's Scientology. She
wants their kids to be raised as Catholics. From what I
know of her career, I'd never have guessed that
promulgating the Faith ranked high among her priorities.
Glad to know I was mistaken. +++ One of the tabs says
MARLON BRANDO, at 76, weighs in at 375 pounds, with a
photo making this estimate all too plausible. And to
think he won his first Oscar for playing a middleweight!
Is anyone praying for poor old Marlon? +++ Speaking of
supplication, Senator HILLARY CLINTON -- the New York
Democrat, you know -- has been attending prayer
breakfasts with Republican senators. They say her manners
have been impeccable. +++ MUHAMMAD ALI has finally
apologized for his cruel remarks about JOE FRAZIER, whom
he likened to a "gorilla," inter alia, during their epic
rivalry in the early 1970s. Ali says he was just trying
to hype their fights -- a pretty lame excuse for three of
the most exciting ring combats of all time, which needed
no hype to boost their intrinsic interest. In his later
years Ali has been so good-natured that we forget how
graceless he could be in his prime. He was indeed The
Greatest, but also, too often, The Meanest. +++ TED
TURNER says his divorce from JANE FONDA is due in large
part to her conversion to Christianity. No wonder he
sneered at his Catholic employees -- who showed up for
work on Ash Wednesday with smudged foreheads -- as "Jesus
freaks." Anyone who is still hated by the rich after two
millennia must be divine. Like Nicole Kidman, Turner is
an odd minor witness to the Faith.
I've fallen in love with MARGARET MITCHELL, best
known as the author of the novel GONE WITH THE WIND. Next
month I'll defend this book against my own
preconceptions. For now let me say only that the movie
gives a false impression of the novel, largely because of
the lavish, bombastic, bathetic, cloying musical score by
MAX STEINER. +++ Far from sentimentalizing the Old South,
Peggy Mitchell, a brainy Smith College graduate,
punctured its illusions through Rhett Butler -- played to
perfection by CLARK GABLE, as if the role had been
written for him. The Oscar that year (1939) went to
ROBERT DONAT for his worthy performance in GOODBYE, MR.
CHIPS, but only Gable (or, just maybe, ERROL FLYNN) could
have endowed Rhett with such memorably virile wit. +++
You can say that Gable only played himself, but playing
oneself on the screen with real power is an underrated
achievement. Most of the great Hollywood stars "only
played themselves" -- CAGNEY, BOGART, JAMES STEWART, and
BETTE DAVIS, to name a few -- and they did it movingly.
Versatility isn't everything; just creating a durably
interesting and attractive persona takes a rare kind of
talent. If Rhett Butler had been Gable's only filmed
performance, it might have gotten the praise it deserves.
Sometimes the popcorn-munching fans are wiser than the
critics. +++ The rest of the casting would be hard to
improve on. VIVIEN LEIGH (the mistress and future wife of
LAURENCE OLIVIER, though still unknown in Hollywood)
played Scarlett O'Hara to perfection, maturing subtly
from catty teenaged coquette to canny middle-aged
survivor. +++ And one can hardly imagine anyone but
LESLIE HOWARD as Ashley Wilkes or OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND as
Melanie, let alone HATTIE McDANIEL as Mammy. +++ The test
of an epic film is whether it makes you feel the passage
of years, and this test GONE WITH THE WIND passes
superbly. Can it be reissued without that awful music?
I always enjoy seeing CASABLANCA again, except for
the pro-war propaganda and the cartoonish nasty Nazis.
(And I can't imagine a cause worth giving up INGRID
BERGMAN for.) It's a ravishing love story, with great
atmosphere and wit -- and music. But the film's director
and screenwriter, MICHAEL CURTIZ and HOWARD KOCH, went on
to make MISSION TO MOSCOW, an explicitly pro-Stalin
stinker unredeemed by any of the charm of CASABLANCA. The
later film, you'll recall, was made at the urging of the
Evil One, FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT, who must have been
delighted with the result: Stalin never looked more
cuddly. +++ Watching another old movie recently, I was
reminded of the late comic STAN FREBERG's great line
about the Roman who goes to the Coliseum with a hot tip:
"Put a bundle on BEN-HUR in the fifth." I once met
CHARLTON HESTON and told him how much I'd enjoyed the
chariot race -- bet he'd never heard *that* one before!
This is an actor who's done SHAKESPEARE and worked with
ORSON WELLES, and all anyone wants to tell him is how
they loved him in that damn chariot.
NUGGETS
FAREWELL: I made my little joke about Perry Como (page
11) before the sad news of his death at 88. Modest,
grateful, and gracious, he was a fine singer and a dear
reminder of the prelapsarian days when television felt a
moral responsibility to the public. (page 8)
THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT? Maybe I'm old-fashioned and narrow-
minded, but I find today's rap stars hard to figure. No
doubt yesterday's entertainers weren't perfect either.
Still, I don't recall Perry Como trying to shoot Bing
Crosby. (page 11)
QUERY: Why don't we build a National Memorial to the
Victims of Liberalism? (page 11)
TOLERANCE UPDATE: In deference to "gay" sensibilities, a
Manhattan private school has decided not to observe
Mother's Day this year. The principal explains that
"families in our society are now diverse and varied." And
they say the Sixties were crazy! Today's fanatics make
Abbie Hoffman look like Robert Taft. And their
fanaticisms are so *timid.* (Remember when "gays" said
they just wanted to live and let live?) (page 12)
Exclusive to the electronic version:
ABOMINATIONS: The only kind of person I really hate, and
I mean *hate,* with utter loathing and contempt, is the
sort who assumes that keeping abreast of today's fads is
a moral imperative. By the same token, I respect anyone
who puts up the least resistance to those fads and
refuses to be bullied by the Latest Thinking, which is
always unthinking. I honor the courage of the Orthodox
Jew, the fundamentalist Protestant, the diehard
Confederate -- in short, any man who adheres to a
tradition, however disreputable in contemporary opinion,
rather than peer pressure. I can even admire a
"progressive" -- George Orwell, Christopher Hitchens,
Gore Vidal -- who has the guts to stand alone. I'm
thinking of you too, Taki.
ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO SPIN: A study by Dr. Robert
Spitzer of Columbia University has found that homosexuals
of both sexes can indeed change their "sexual
orientation," the most helpful methods among his 200
respondents (143 men, 57 women) being therapy and prayer.
Naturally Spitzer, a self-described "atheistic Jew," came
under fire at once. The NEW YORK TIMES noted that
Spitzer's "results conflict with another study of gays
who try to change." Observe the implications of the
phrase "conflict with." Why not "challenge"?
REPRINTED COLUMNS (pages 7-12)
* Me and My Family and China (April 3, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010403.shtml
* Taxes and the Modern State (April 10, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010410.shtml
* Washington, D.C. -- Tax Haven? (April 12, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010412.shtml
* The Great "Gay" Racket (April 19, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010419.shtml
* Reparations Now! (April 24, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010424.shtml
* War Hero (May 1, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010501.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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[ENDS]