Sobran's --
The Real News of the Month

July 2001
Volume 8, No. 7

Editor: Joe Sobran
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CONTENTS
Features
  -> The Moving Picture
  -> The Great American Novel (with out-takes)
  -> From Federation to Monolith
The Loose Leaf
Nuggets (plus Exclusives to this edition)
List of Columns Reprinted



FEATURES

The Moving Picture
(pages 1-2)

     Senator James Jeffords of Vermont, long a 
Republican, has effectively switched to the Democratic 
Party. Well, why not? Are the two parties all that 
different? The Republicans are writhing because Jeffords 
has shifted the balance of power in the Senate, giving 
the Democrats a 51-to-49 majority; but how can they 
really complain? If our major parties were really opposed 
on principle, this sort of conversion would be 
impossible. Imagine (say) a Libertarian toying with the 
idea of becoming a Communist. Democrats are praising 
Jeffords's "conscience" and "courage." Just what has this 
shrewd career move cost him? By exploiting his leverage 
he's become the instant pet of the media and his new 
party.

*          *          *

     Somehow -- call it prophecy, call it clairvoyance -- 
I *knew* the execution of Timothy McVeigh would be 
postponed. It just couldn't happen without a hitch, could 
it? He gloated to the end that the final score would be 
in his favor, 168 deaths to 1. It becomes narrower when 
you count the 93 people of Waco he was avenging. And 
numbers aside, his atrocity has actually made Waco seem 
less fiendish in comparison. Most people vaguely excuse 
anything done in the name of law enforcement (even if 
they don't know what law was being enforced), whereas 
they are shocked by *unauthorized* mass murder.

*          *          *

     Speaking of which, Mother Waco herself -- Janet Reno 
-- says she may run for governor of Florida. How would 
she go about wooing Miami's Cuban vote? One wag suggests 
that she adopt this campaign slogan: "Reno -- She'll Get 
the Kids out of Your House."

*          *          *

     The love life of New York's Mayor Rudy Giuliani is 
getting to be like THE SOPRANOS you can't help knowing 
about it even if you're trying not to pay any attention. 
Donna Hanover, the estranged Mrs. Giuliani, has won a 
court ruling that, for the children's sake, Rudy's 
mistress, Judi Nathan, may not shack -- er, visit -- him 
in Gracie Mansion. Rudy's lawyer Raoul Felder has blasted 
Donna (on Mother's Day!) as an "uncaring mother." Details 
of Rudy's impotence have been leaked to the press. New 
Yorkers are longing for the sobriety, dignity, and 
decorum of Ed Koch.

*          *          *

     Over the past few years, William Kristol and David 
Brooks of the neoconservative WEEKLY STANDARD have become 
media-ubiquitous apostles of something they call 
"national greatness conservatism." Their progress has 
been noted by Franklin Foer, who writes in THE NEW 
REPUBLIC that they now "champion campaign finance reform 
and environmental protection. They oppose the Bush 
administration's proposed repeal of the estate tax 
because, as Brooks puts it, 'We should be concerned with 
the widening income gap.' They attack corporate power 
with Naderesque ferocity." And they favor a militarily 
aggressive foreign policy, with full U.S. support for 
Israel and hostility to China. Foer observes that they 
also want to detach the Republican Party from the 
Christian Right (last year they backed John McCain's 
candidacy against George W. Bush). So what's 
"conservative" about all this? Or any of it?

*          *          *

     The renewed, endless violence in the Middle East has 
inspired all sorts of analyses and think-pieces on how to 
get the "peace process" going again. I've yet to see an 
explanation of the benefits to ordinary Americans of U.S. 
involvement in that hopeless mess. Neither the Zionist 
nor the Islamic (or other Arab) cause is linked to any 
interest of most Americans. The Jews aren't grateful for 
our support, as Ariel Sharon, like his predecessors, has 
made clear enough, and Muslims, especially Arabs, hate us 
bitterly for it. The fanatics on both sides have one 
thing in common, though: they are more rational than we 
are. They are at least fighting for things that are holy 
to them. Just what are *we* hoping to get?

*          *          *

     Actually, I can answer that last question: "we" are 
going to get reelected. What we are pleased to call our 
"elected representatives" are bought and/or intimidated 
by the Israeli lobby. (The Israeli journalist Ari Shavit 
has remarked, with no more than modest realism, that the 
U.S. Congress is "in our hands.") So there will be no 
sanctions against Sharon for his defiant use of American 
F-16s to strike Palestinians in the occupied territories; 
just as there have never been sanctions against Israeli 
espionage and technology theft, or against the 1967 
Israeli assault on the U.S.S. Liberty that killed 34 
American sailors. By an interesting coincidence, 
Congressman James Traficant, an outspoken Ohio Democrat 
who is one of the very few members of Congress to 
criticize Israel, now faces federal criminal charges for 
something or other. The Zionist WEEKLY STANDARD (see 
above) is cackling with amusement at his plight. Another 
chapter in the relations between our "reliable ally" and 
our prostitute Congress.

*          *          *

     We're told that we live under a system of democratic 
self-government -- We the People rule ourselves -- so 
that when we pay taxes we are actually taxing, and 
paying, ourselves. And the federal debt doesn't really 
matter, because, as Franklin Roosevelt taught us, "we owe 
it to ourselves." I suppose it follows that when the 
Internal Revenue Service menaces us with prison for 
failing to cooperate in the confiscation of our wealth, 
we are only threatening ourselves.

*          *          *

     A friend of mine can recall his awe, as a boy, at 
meeting living veterans of the Civil War. Which prompts 
me to reflect that no living American is old enough to 
remember living under the U.S. Constitution, and few if 
any can recall living before the income tax and the 
replacement of the real dollar by the Federal Reserve 
Note. Thus living memories become ancient history, people 
can hardly imagine what they can no longer remember, and 
the customary evils that have replaced sound traditions 
come to seem natural, inevitable, eternal.



The Great American Novel
(page 3)
{{Passages in double curly brackets were cut from the 
print edition for reasons of space.}}

     Time has been unkind to the reputation of Margaret 
Mitchell's novel GONE WITH THE WIND. Since the late 1940s 
liberal critics have derided it for creating a falsely 
glamorous picture of the Old South; a black woman 
recently created a stir by rewriting the story from (what 
else?) the slaves' point of view. Yet in 1936 GONE WITH 
THE WIND was as much a critical as a popular success, 
winning rave reviews and a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

     Typical of the currently fashionable derision is the 
Princeton historian James M. McPherson, who in DRAWN WITH 
THE SWORD writes scornfully of "the moonlight-and-
magnolias GONE WITH THE WIND image of the Confederacy," 
its "distortions and romanticizations." The book 
"glamorized the Old South and romanticized the 
Confederacy."

     Yet GONE WITH THE WIND is anything but a 
glamorization of the Confederacy; just the opposite. The 
story unfolds amid bitter war and vindictive 
Reconstruction. Its hero and heroine are a pair of 
scalawags who share none of the illusions of their 
compatriots. Rhett Butler, who makes a fortune as a 
blockade runner, openly ridicules the notion that the 
South can defeat the North in war. Scarlett O'Hara cares 
little about the war or the cherished myths of Southern 
patriotism; during Reconstruction she, like Rhett, incurs 
social contempt and ostracism by shamelessly doing 
business with the occupying Yankees. She and Rhett are 
bound together by their frankly cynical realism {{amid 
the prevailing folly. They have nothing in common with 
Robert E. Lee.}}

     Their romance itself is hardly romantic. Rhett 
treats Scarlett with infuriating mockery; she insults him 
in reply, but he laughs it off. Her real love through 
most of the book is Ashley Wilkes, who, for all his 
Southern gentlemanliness, knows that the South is doomed 
to defeat; his code of honor proves archaic, and, unlike 
Rhett and Scarlett, he is clearly ineffectual in coping 
with war's aftermath. The world has passed such people 
by; they're no longer fit to live in it. {{The slaves 
have both dignity and individuality: Mammy and Uncle 
Peter are quite unafraid to tell Scarlett off. True, they 
speak in Negro dialect rather than the king's English; 
but then, a surprising number of Negroes did. Mitchell 
had merely discovered Ebonics before its time.}}

     Far from creating stereotypes, Mitchell (1900-1949) 
is the victim of stereotyping. She has been typecast as 
the champion of the ancien regime, when she was anything 
but. In fact she belonged to a generation of Southern 
rebels who rejected Confederate mythology, though they 
weren't buying into Northern mythology either. After an 
unhappy year at Smith College, she did an enormous amount 
of research on her own for the big novel she was writing 
during her late twenties. The bulk of the book was 
written in three years, but she kept reading history and 
economics and correcting tiny details even after the book 
was accepted for publication in 1935. Her biographer 
Darden Asbury Pyron notes that she anticipated the 
iconoclastic economic interpretations of the war later 
advanced by Charles and Mary Beard. Rhett's jaunty 
debunking of Confederate shibboleths springs from her 
research.

     {{She was compulsive about getting minutiae right. 
"I worry if I don't have ten references for each fact," 
she told one correspondent. "Even if I made an error, I 
suppose few people would realize it. No one outside of 
north Georgia would know. But I would know and would 
probably wake up screaming in the night about it."

     But}} Mitchell was above all a masterful 
storyteller. Her research never upstages the tale or the 
characters. And Rhett and Scarlett are two of the most 
riveting characters in fiction. Rhett's mockery of 
respectable hypocrisies, his cheerful willingness to 
accept his reputation as a scoundrel, and his seeming 
indifference to Scarlett's rejections all make him 
fascinating both as romantic hero and as ruthless social 
commentator. Scarlett's more furtive contempt for 
respectability as she scrambles to survive makes her 
nearly as irresistible.

     After selling the film rights to David O. Selznick 
of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Mitchell actually worried that 
Hollywood would convey a falsely romantic picture of the 
Old South, with opulent mansions featuring Greekish 
marble columns. And some of her fears were realized. A 
screenwriter's corny prologue informs the viewer, in 
cloying terms totally alien to Mitchell, of a vanished 
land of "cavaliers," "knights," and "ladies fair"; Max 
Steiner's relentlessly gushing music reinforces this 
false impression; and the Wilkes mansion, Twelve Oaks, is 
everything Mitchell warned against.

     Yet even the movie is short on moonlight and 
magnolias, and its virtues are largely due to its literal 
-- often literal-minded -- fidelity to the novel. The 
studio was afraid to offend countless devoted readers 
(and Mitchell herself) by altering the sacred text.

     And rightly so. GONE WITH THE WIND is a superb and 
mature novel, one that makes everything Hemingway wrote 
about war and manhood, not to mention women, seem puerile 
by comparison. If, while puncturing Confederate 
illusions, it also clashes with today's liberal pieties, 
that is because it exposes their hollowness too. Like all 
great novels, it offers a richly realized world, defying 
every narrow philosophy.



From Federation to Monolith
(pages 4-5)

     I'm always grateful when liberals come clean about 
what they're really up to. A few years ago I praised a 
scholar named George P. Fletcher for acknowledging, in an 
article in THE NEW REPUBLIC, that we no longer live under 
the U.S. Constitution. He argued that this is a good 
thing, because the Constitution sustained an obsolete 
social order; but at least he didn't pretend, as most 
liberals do, that the present political regime is an 
organic development of the "living" Constitution.

     Now Fletcher (who teaches at the Columbia University 
School of Law) has expanded that article into a book. I 
regret to say that the book, OUR SECRET CONSITUTION: HOW 
LINCOLN REDEFINED AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (Oxford University 
Press), has left me considerably less elated than its 
seminal article did. Still, it leaves no doubt that the 
liberal agenda, as I've always insisted, has no 
connection with the Constitution that is still, 
officially at least, on the books.

     Fletcher states his thesis right up front: "The 
Civil War called forth a new constitutional order. At the 
heart of this postbellum legal order lay the 
Reconstruction Amendments -- the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, 
and Fifteenth Amendments, ratified in the years 1865 to 
1870. The principles of this new legal regime are so 
different from our original Constitution, drafted in 
1787, that they deserve to be recognized as a second 
American Constitution. The New Constitution established, 
in fact, a Second American Republic." Again, "we have 
undergone a major disruption in our constitutional 
history, which we try to camouflage as a single evolving 
Constitution." But the emergence of a second Constitution 
after the Civil War "was a historical necessity, and 
there is no turning back from the course we then 
adopted."

     Fletcher faults American historians who "overlook 
the consolidation of the United States as a nation in the 
mid-nineteenth-century sense of the term." We have, he 
says, "experienced a major rupture in our supposed two-
hundred-plus years of continuity under the same legal 
order. The lawyers who rarely look beyond our borders 
employ a methodology of 'original intent' that can only 
make Continental Europeans smile at our simple-
mindedness." We can't have those sophisticated Europeans 
smiling at us, can we? The consolidations of Germany and 
Italy, one might observe, were followed by National 
Socialism and Fascism, along with two world wars; the 
appropriate lesson may not be the one Fletcher intends. 
Perhaps the Framers of the first Constitution were 
correct in their suspicion of "consolidation."

     The appeal to "original intent," moreover, is not a 
naive plea for archaism. It's a recognition of the need 
for stability in law, and therefore in the language of 
law. The historical understanding of the Constitution's 
meaning is, as Madison said, the only rational foundation 
for its proper interpretation. Otherwise, we are at the 
mercy of the fanciful notions of modern justices who want 
to superimpose their own pet policies on the document 
under the guise of constitutional imperatives.

     The principles of the two Constitutions, Fletcher 
stresses, are "radically opposed to each other." The 
first established a limited federation among the 
*states*; the second established a monolithic *nation* 
"dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
equal," and empowered, moreover, to *make* them equal. 
As his use of Lincoln's words indicates, Fletcher 
believes that this second Constitution was actually 
founded, not in the postwar amendments, but in the 
Gettysburg Address. And he thinks we should finally 
acknowledge our "secret" Constitution.

     How can this be, when the Gettysburg Address had no 
legal force at all, but was merely one man's 272-word 
rhetorical performance? Fletcher has a woolly notion that 
the "nation" somehow gestated within the forms of the 
original Constitution until it was ready to be "brought 
forth" at Gettysburg in 1863. The Civil War established 
it as a fact that the United States were a single entity, 
from which no state could withdraw.

     Like other champions of Lincoln, Fletcher gives him 
credit for doing precisely what he denied any intention 
of doing; he also overlooks Lincoln's hardly liberal 
views on race. Far from seeking a revolutionary 
transformation, as his more hysterical enemies charged, 
Lincoln consistently professed to be "preserving the 
Constitution" and "saving the Union" -- the Union "as of 
old," slavery and all, until he decided to emancipate 
slaves in the seceding states. Even then, he conceived 
this emancipation narrowly, as a war measure, which he 
might order for the purpose of suppressing rebellion, but 
which Congress had no power to enact under the 
Constitution. (He thought it likely that the courts would 
strike down, as unconstitutional, the Emancipation 
Proclamation.)

     Lincoln did say, at Gettysburg, that "our fathers" 
had "brought forth a new nation" in 1776, never mind that 
the Declaration of Independence spoke only of 13 "free 
and independent states," not a single monolithic 
"nation." Still, it was the original "nation" he said he 
was trying to save; he didn't say or imply that he was 
transforming it. The founding generation, which adopted 
the Constitution, was hostile to the very idea of a 
single "consolidated" government of the kind Fletcher 
prefers (and falsely projects onto the past).

     Needless to say, Lincoln never suggested that a new 
Constitution was being enacted; even if he had wished it 
(and there is no evidence that he did), he could never 
have proclaimed it publicly. Nor did those who framed and 
ratified the postwar amendments suggest that they were 
doing any more than adding a few clauses to the one and 
only Constitution. These clauses did give the federal 
government new powers over the states, but the 
Constitution was otherwise intact.

     Later rulings by a liberal U.S. Supreme Court vastly 
expanded the reach of these amendments, especially the 
Fourteenth, which has become an all-purpose battering ram 
against state and local laws the Court dislikes; but 
those rulings are clearly untenable. If the Fourteenth 
meant everything the Court has said it means, then later 
amendments -- ensuring Negroes and women the vote, for 
example -- were superfluous. Nobody in 1865-70, or long 
afterward, thought the Fourteenth Amendment virtually 
repealed the Tenth, which reserves to the states and the 
people all the powers not delegated to the federal 
government. It was generally agreed that a federal income 
tax, a national prohibition of liquor sales, and 
expansion of the franchise required formal changes in the 
Constitution. Otherwise, the Fourteenth Amendment would 
have been an omnibus measure, granting limitless power to 
the federal government -- and, incidentally, abolishing 
federalism.

     Lincoln himself opposed amending the Constitution at 
all in 1848, on grounds that "it can scarcely be made 
better than it is." Even when taking gross liberties with 
it during the Civil War -- liberties that amounted to 
blatant violations -- he retained odd scruples against 
loose interpretation. He also consistently opposed 
allowing the judiciary to usurp the political and 
legislative processes, as in the Dred Scott decision. 
Though he favored the Thirteenth Amendment, he might have 
had reservations about the Fourteenth and Fifteenth -- 
and certainly about the later misapplication of the 
Fourteenth.

     But Lincoln isn't the point here. We tend to forget 
the rest of the dramatis personae of the period; and what 
Fletcher is tacitly admitting is that the Confederacy was 
essentially right, and the Union forces wrong, about the 
real meaning of the original Constitution. Since the 
"new" Constitution was only made manifest at Gettysburg 
in 1863, the South, in 1861, was fighting, just as it 
claimed to be, for the old Constitution, an order of 
confederated sovereign states. The North was fighting, 
whether it knew it or not, for a novel and as yet 
unarticulated principle of monolithic nationhood. Under 
that principle the states would be reduced to mere 
provinces, holding their powers only by sufferance of the 
almighty Union. This is what Fletcher is saying, without 
quite realizing it.

     Of course many Northerners sensed what was at stake 
and hoped the original Constitution would be preserved. 
Some caviled at the Gettysburg Address on grounds that 
the war was (as Lincoln himself had at first avowed) a 
war to save the Constitution, not to induce "a new birth 
of freedom," whatever that might mean. But the 
Constitution itself became a casualty of the war.

     To put it even more plainly, the Constitution is 
dead. We may, if we like, say that we now live under a 
"new," a "secret," or a "living" Constitution, but that 
doesn't change the fact. It merely tries to disguise it. 
To live under a Constitution whose meaning may be changed 
at will by those it is supposed to restrain is like 
having a butcher who can redefine ounces and pounds at 
his own whim: it rather defeats the purpose.

     Lawless rulers usually plead that they are obeying a 
"higher law." Fletcher not only admits this -- "Those who 
fight in the name of the higher law allow themselves to 
sidestep the rules" -- but approves of it: "The faith in 
principles of higher law explains why Lincoln, in the 
aftermath of war, was committed to articulating a new 
foundation for the Union. It accounts as well for 
Lincoln's casual [!] attitude toward formal 
constitutional institutions, such as the writ of habeas 
corpus. It also explains why, after Lincoln's 
assassination, the radical Republicans in Congress used 
allegedly [sic!] illegal means to coerce the South to 
accept the Fourteenth Amendment." Allegedly? If it was 
necessary to "coerce" ratification, that ratification was 
contrary to every principle of law. No agreement signed 
under duress is valid. So the very basis of the "new" 
Constitution is void.

     If Lincoln and the Unionists have to be defended 
this way, it's hardly necessary to indict them. Still, it 
would be suicidal for the current regime to undercut its 
own legitimacy by acknowledging that the old Constitution 
died long ago, with the Confederacy. The "secret" 
Constitution must remain secret.



THE LOOSE LEAF

     It occurs to me that if the late TIMOTHY McVEIGH had 
performed 168 abortions, the federal government would 
have gone out of its way to protect him. +++ GEORGE 
STALLINGS, formerly known as Father Stallings, before he 
became founder and self-installed archbishop of the 
renegade African American Catholic Congregation, has 
taken another step away from mainstream (or, as he would 
say, white racist) Catholicism: he has married a Japanese 
woman, in a ceremony conducted by the REVEREND SUN MYUNG 
MOON. +++ Among many others united in wedlock in the same 
extravaganza was the 71-year-old Archbishop (for real!) 
EMMANUEL MILINGO, an eccentric African who had already 
been stripped of his archdiocese by the Vatican for his 
erratic behavior. He and the missus plan to have kids. At 
least he doesn't appear to reject HUMANAE VITAE.

     A newly discovered alleged portrait of SHAKESPEARE 
at 39, transparently inauthentic, is causing excitement 
in the press. Who is the subject, really? Dunno. But the 
labeling, which not only names him as Shakespeare but 
gives his dates of birth and death, is anachronistic and 
must have been added long after the picture was made. +++ 
Inspired by JIM JEFFORDS, JOHN McCAIN is flirting with 
defection from the GOP too. He says he has no intention 
of doing so. You don't have to like the Republicans to 
feel their pain as these media-coddled "moderates" have 
opportune attacks of "conscience" (aka ego). +++ Why did 
it take Jeffords so many years to figure out that he was 
a liberal Democrat? It was obvious long ago. +++ The 
DEMOCRATS' Senate edge may be short-lived: New Jersey's 
BOB TORRICELLI, who lives in the fast lane, is said to be 
on the verge of indictment on bribery and corruption 
charges.

     The critics have been unkind to the new flick PEARL 
HARBOR, but it seems to be a TITANIC-scale hit with young 
viewers, who don't seem to mind a scene in which 
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT displays his determination to win 
the war by miraculously rising from his wheelchair and 
standing unassisted. Naturally, the movie features a love 
story. No, it doesn't involve FDR and JOE STALIN. +++ 
Former CBS reporter BERNARD GOLDBERG, a reformed liberal, 
writes in the WALL STREET JOURNAL that DAN RATHER once 
described the NEW YORK TIMES to him as "middle of the 
road." Sure, if the road is in North Korea. That explains 
a lot about Dan's slant on the news.

     O.J. SIMPSON has been offering advice to fellow-
widower ROBERT BLAKE, who must be very grateful for help 
from such a quarter in his hour of need. +++ BILL CLINTON 
has been spending a lot of time in Ireland lately. After 
ST. PATRICK went to all that trouble to rid the Emerald 
Isle of snakes! +++ The NATIONAL ENQUIRER reports that 
Bill's spiritual counselor JESSE JACKSON is trying to 
dump his wife, ever so gently, so he can marry mistress 
KARIN STANFORD. +++ The tabs are also saying that TED 
KENNEDY and current wife VICTORIA REGGIE are more or less 
finished. But remember, he's still good on women's 
issues. +++ The eternally delightful BOB NEWHART, in a 
commencement speech at Chicago's Loyola University, 
offered this tip on how to appear intelligent: "You don't 
actually have to be intelligent, if you can just create 
the perception. This can usually be accomplished by a 
reference to KAFKA, even if you have never read any of 
his -- or her -- work." You have to admire the comic 
artistry that can get a howl out of a pronoun. +++ In 
some of this year's other commencement addresses, BRYANT 
GUMBEL bemoaned "the plight of people of color," MARIO 
CUOMO bemoaned poverty, and TONI MORRISON bemoaned most 
everything. Sounds exciting, eh? Guess you had to be 
there. +++ Former senator BOB KERREY is still being 
treated as a victim because some people want to know if 
he's a murderer. Someone (I forget who) has asked whether 
NEWSWEEK would have sat on the story as it did if the 
subject had been PAT BUCHANAN.

     The JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, so-called, is renewing its 
disgraceful efforts to strip JOHN DEMJANJUK, now 81, of 
his citizenship. Last time, you'll recall, the old man, 
after an ordeal of several years, was ultimately 
acquitted -- in Israel! -- of being an infamous Treblinka 
concentration camp guard known as "IVAN THE TERRIBLE"; it 
later transpired that the government had hidden some 
documents contradicting its own charges. Now he's accused 
of being someone else at a different camp. Nearly half a 
century after Joe McCarthy was discredited, anti-Nazi 
hysteria marches on. +++ The fourth ALI-FRAZIER fight 
ended with Ali winning by a decision -- only this time 
the fighters, LAILA and JACQUI, were the daughters of the 
two former champs. A chip off the old block, Laila called 
her opponent "ugly" and "ignorant." Civilization marches 
on.



NUGGETS

TACIT ADMISSIONS DEPT.: Noticed how many liberals demand 
the death penalty for those who kill abortionists? They 
thereby admit that the death penalty *does* deter after 
all: they know it deters doctors from performing 
abortions, and they also expect it to deter anti-
abortionists from deterring doctors from performing 
abortions. You never hear them say: "If we kill anti-
abortionists, we're no better than they are." Or maybe 
they just want revenge. (page 8)

CALLING ALL LOGICIANS! The media are devoutly observing 
the twentieth anniversary of the emergence of AIDS. 
Unlike lung cancer, which has been used to justify a 
government crackdown on tobacco, AIDS isn't even causing 
second thoughts about the sexual revolution. On the 
contrary, it's still being used to legitimize 
homosexuality (and, of course, new "humanitarian" tasks 
for the government). Go figure. (page 11)


Exclusive to the electronic version:

ENDLESS EMERGENCIES: Being ignorant of the physical 
sciences, I have no idea whether global warming and other 
alleged environmental dangers are for real. All I do know 
is that environmentalism has been eagerly embraced by the 
Usual Suspects as warrant for expanding the role and 
power of the state -- their favorite "solution" to 
everything they define as a "problem." Has Al Gore ever 
discovered a problem whose solution would require *less* 
government? Has he ever seen government itself as a 
problem?

CLARION VOICE OF TYRANNY: California's Attorney General 
Bill Lockyer has come right out with it: he *favors* 
homosexual rape in prisons. Denouncing Kenneth Lay, 
chairman of Enron Corporation, who hasn't even been 
charged with breaking any law, Lockyer told a press 
conference: "I would love to personally escort Lay to an 
8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who 
says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey.'" Lockyer doesn't 
just admit the reality of prison rape; he sees it not as 
a horror, but as part of the punishment he can inflict on 
enemies of the state. Even if they're not criminals. 



REPRINTED COLUMNS (pages 7-12)

* Pedophilia and Hypocrisy (May 8, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010508.shtml

* Hate Mail (May 10, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010510.shtml

* Finding Evil (May 15, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010515.shtml

* Dylan versus the Sixties (May 24, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010524.shtml

* Casey at the Court (May 29, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010529.shtml

* Slavery in Perspective (May 31, 2001)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/010531.shtml

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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