SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
January 2007
Volume 14, Number 1
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
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CONTENTS
Features
-> President Clinton?
-> The Abolition of "Man"
Sobran's Forum
-> The Seige of Belgrade
Nuggets (plus electronic Exclusives)
Cartoons (Baloo)
"Reactionary Utopian" Columns Reprinted in This Issue
FEATURES
President Clinton?
(page 1)
The U.S. Constitution dooms us to have a
presidential election in 2008, whether we need one or
not, and the media are trying to create excitement about
the grim prospect. NEWSWEEK has run a breathless cover
story pitting Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama with
the big question, "Is America Ready?" A historic choice
indeed! Will it be the First Woman President or the First
Black President? Be still, my heart!
The other day I awoke with a groan to find Hillary
being interviewed about her plans. She was trying to be
coy, but nobody was fooled. A new edition of her classic,
IT TAKES A VILLAGE, has just been published, and she was
droning on about "child poverty" being "up," as if this
were an issue convulsing the electorate. Still barely
half-awake, I was seized with a conviction: "No way is
this tiresome old woman going to win."
In the endless presidential horserace this former
republic has become, Barack Obama is the frisky young
colt, and Hillary is the old nag. We've already had to
put up with her far too long. We've heard everything she
has to say, and we don't need four (let alone eight) more
years of it. Nearly half the voters say they will never
vote for her, and the Democrats doubt that she's
electable. Besides which, many Dems are disgusted with
her for failing to oppose the Iraq war. She'll never be
exciting again. She belongs in a rest home.
All this may sound as if Obama is a shoo-in to take
the nomination from her, but Dick Morris, who hates her,
isn't so sure. He thinks her lead is still too big for
any Dem challenger to overcome. Paradoxically, he argues,
Obama is actually helping her. He's creating so much
excitement that he is making it hard for the party's
other hopefuls to get any attention or traction. Yet he
himself is young and unproven.
Not to mention black and liberal. Amid the general
cooing over this amazing phenomenon, Peggy Noonan,
writing in the WALL STREET JOURNAL, has gently pricked
the bubble with her usual presence of mind. When you blow
away the froth, she points out, all you find is a routine
left-Democrat without the usual abrasiveness. Over time,
this will sink in with the voters.
At least I hope so. Starting with 1968, it seemed to
be an iron law that the Republicans won the presidency
whenever the Democratic nominee seemed clearly the more
left-wing of the two; the Democrats won only when they
managed to blur the difference, as Carter and Clinton
did. We will see whether that still holds true in 2008.
If Morris is right, Hillary gets the party's nod by
default and then loses the election to whichever of the
GOP's sorry lot opposes her: McCain, Romney, Giuliani, or
some other political cadaver. Obama seems to me the
Democrats' answer to Giuliani. Whether he will similarly
flare out is the question.
The Abolition of "Man"
(page 2)
Once again TIME magazine has made me its Person of
the Year. Well, not just me personally, but a category to
which I belong: "You." ("Yes, you. You control the
Information Age," the caption explains.)
I believe the first time this happened was in 1967,
when the entire baby-boom generation was named Person of
the Year. Only it was "Man" of the Year in those days. I
was 21 then. A few years later, feminist propriety
dictated that the virile "Man" be changed to the
androgynous "Person." But so what? The honor is so great
that I don't mind sharing it with tens of millions of
others.
You can fairly hear the ghost of Henry Luce wailing.
The magazine's founder always made it clear that the
title "Man of the Year" was actually not an honorific; it
meant the year's biggest individual newsmaker, whether it
was a Roosevelt, a Stalin, or a Hitler -- and now and
then it was a woman.
TIME hit bottom in 2001, when it picked Rudy
Giuliani, New York's popular demagogic mayor, as its POY.
This was clearly a feel-good choice, because the biggest
newsmaker of 2001 was clearly Osama bin Laden. It wasn't
even close. All the media had been obsessed with him
since September 11. Until then, Giuliani had been a
washed-up politician with a sordid marital record, and
escaped a sound drubbing by Hiilary Clinton only because
prostate cancer forced him to pull out of the Senate
race. Today, for no good reason, he is being touted as a
Republican presidential hopeful for 2008, despite his
liberal stands on abortion, gun control, sodomy, and so
forth. Even his fervent support for the Iraq war is no
longer a clear political plus.
Sic transit gloria mundi. And by 2008, who will
remember that I was Person of the Year in 2006?
SOBRAN'S FORUM
The Siege of Belgrade
by Thomas Fleming
(pages 3-4, 12)
(The following is excerpted from a speech at the 12th
annual SOBRAN'S Charter Subscribers' celebration,
December 9, 2006.)
The desire for truth in America today is rarer than
the spotted owl and more necessary even than the rite of
exorcism in Washington. Nowhere is contempt for truth
more obvious than in discussions of foreign policy. The
Bush administration began lying to us even before it took
office. Even after the much-needed Republican electoral
defeat and the long-desired dismissal of Don Rumsfeld,
the lies continue to fly thick and fast.
To reassure us that we are not involved in a
religious war, neoconservatives sometimes speak of a
"clash of civilizations." This blatantly anti-Christian
expression, which divides us from our Orthodox brothers,
pits the secularism and hedonism of the West against an
imaginary East dominated by bigotry (by which they mean
religion) and ignorance (by which they mean tradition).
By the terms of debate set up by Samuel Huntington and
Bernard Lewis, decent Christians would all be rooting for
the Muslim side. The struggle cannot be about religion,
because, as our president has told us over and over,
Islam is a religion of peace. Like most things said by a
politician, this statement is not only false; it is
diametrically opposite to the truth. Islam is
preeminently a religion of war, and it is war that has
always defined Islam's relationship with the Christian
world. Of course there are many Muslims who like the
West, but the true believers regard them as turncoats. We
do not wish to acknowledge the religious basis of the
conflict, primarily because, from the beginning of the
Renaissance and Reformation, Western man has been
learning to think of himself as anything but Christian.
Pick up any history book, watch any news program on TV,
and you will hear about European aggression against the
Middle East and of the crimes committed by Crusaders. Of
the insane Islamic terrorism that preceded and provoked
the Crusades, there is not a word.
We say we are fighting a war against terrorism. We
are not. The fact of the matter is that Islamic
terrorists have always been supported by the United
States. In Afghanistan, we armed and trained Osama bin
Laden's boys and provided them with militant Islamic
preachers who taught them it was always right to kill
non-Muslims. When bin Laden went to Bosnia, where he was
given citizenship, we continued to support and fund
terrorism against Christians. When the gang members went
down to Kosovo to exterminate the Christian remnant there
and dynamite 500-year-old churches, we went to war on
their behalf and bombed a European city, a thing that
even the Soviets had not dared to do.
Belgrade has been built up, destroyed, and rebuilt
40 times. The two most recent bombings both involved the
U.S. Air Force: First, on April 17 -- coincidentally
Orthodox Easter 1944 -- by English and American planes,
and second for several days in April 1999 that --
coincidentally again -- included Good Friday and Easter.
The purpose of the bombing was to support the Albanian
Muslims in the jihad against Christians in Kosovo, the
heartland of Christianity in the Balkans. Belgrade, of
all the cities of the world, is among those that are most
symbolic of Christendom's struggle with Islam.
I go to Belgrade at least once a year. A few years
ago I was having drinks in a terrace cafe on the slope of
Kalamegdan, the ancient fortress that overlooks the
confluence of the Danube and Sava Rivers. It was spring,
and as the sun was setting we began to shiver in the
shadows. Answering some historical questions put by
American friends, I began telling the story of the siege
of Belgrade in 1456. We were not too far from the very
spot where the Turks almost rolled over the defenders,
whom they would have slaughtered to the last man. The
Hungarian and Serbian defenders had few allies, but young
Prince Vlad of Wallachia was guarding the passes into
Romania to prevent an end run. I have always imagined
that Vlad Tepesh had visited Belgrade right before the
siege, and just as I was mentioning his family history
and why he was called "Dracula," the moon rose above the
trees and we heard an unearthly cry from over the slope.
First one voice, then another, then what must have been a
chorus of a dozen wolves greeted the Queen of the Night.
Several of the Americans said in unison, "Children of the
Night. What music they make." I had forgotten that the
Belgrade Zoo was just over the crest of the hill on a
plateau beneath us.
The siege of Belgrade, which took place 550 years
ago in 1456, is one of the most significant battles that
has taken place in Christendom's 1300-year fight for
survival against a religion that was its enemy from the
beginning. In the 15th century, only the pope and a few
brave peoples in Eastern Europe were willing to stand up
to the Turks. The rest had already begun the West's long
retreat.
The 100 years between 1450 and 1550 were an almost
unmitigated disaster for the West. During those 100
years, Constantinople was lost forever, the Serbian state
annihilated, and Hungary -- the bulwark of the West --
disastrously defeated at Mohacs in 1526. The Ottoman
attack on Europe had been stalled in 1402, when Tamurlane
defeated the Turkish army and captured Sultan Bayezid.
Two energetic sultans, Mehmed I and Murad II, reforged
and expanded the Ottoman Empire. When in 1451 Mehmed II
ascended the throne, he was determined to finish off the
Byzantine Empire and conquer as much of Europe as he
could.
After writing "finis" to the Eastern Empire, which
he did in 1453, Mehmed turned to the West. His plan
required him to absorb what was left of autonomous
Serbia, eliminate Hungary as a threat, and seize control
of Albania and the Dalmatian Coast from which he
apparently intended to launch an invasion of Italy. To
conquer Hungary, though, Mehmed would have to subjugate
what was left of Serbia and take control of the Danube,
which was guarded by the Hungarian-held fortress of
Belgrade, a city that both he and his father regarded as
central to their strategy.
By the summer of 1455 Mehmed had fixed the doom of
Belgrade and vowed that he would storm the citadel,
conquer Hungary in two months, and eat his dinner in
Buda. The Hungarians, although they were supported by
some Wallachian, Serbian, and Christian Albanian allies,
faced the coming onslaught with little support from the
West. No one heeded Pope Nicholas V's call for a Crusade
to save Constantinople in 1453. Though his successor,
Callistus III, took an oath that "by war, maledictions,
interdicts, and all other means in my power I will pursue
the Turks, the most cruel enemies of the Christian name,"
the best he could do was to grant a plenary indulgence to
any soldier who took the cross against the infidel. That
would prove to be enough.
For several hundred terrifying years, the frontier
between Islam and Christendom ran through the Balkans.
Greeks, Bulgars, and Serbs were the first victims. The
Serbian Empire, which also included much of Greece,
Albania, and Bulgaria, was dissolved, and only a rump
state was presided over by Despot Djurad Brankovic. In
Wallachia (western Romania) Prince Vlad led the
resistance. The Holy Roman Emperor had enrolled Vlad's
father in the order of the dragon (Drakul); hence the
young prince went by the honorable name "Dracula." Vlad
knew what his people were up against. He and his brother
had been hostages at the Turkish court, his brother had
been raped by the future sultan Mehmed II, and the
Wallachian princes had more than once betrayed the people
to the Turks. As his nickname, "the Impaler," suggests,
Prince Vlad was not especially nice in his methods, but
there is an old saying in the Balkans: "He who would not
be a slave of the Turk must become a savage."
During the 15th century the powerful Hungarian state
was bogged down in civil wars, but the Madyars found a
true statesman in Janos Hunyadi, who, like Vlad, was a
Wallachian. Hunyadi, who had spent his adult life
crusading against the Turks, enjoyed little support from
the Hungarian nobility. One of his few reliable allies
was Prince Vlad, who agreed to guard the passes into
Romania, where a turncoat prince had made a deal with
Mehmed. Hunyadi also expected support from the Serbs, who
remained a powerful military force in the northern
Balkans. The Serbian despot Djuradj Brankovic had fought
campaign after campaign -- with the Hungarians against
the Turks and with the Turks against Hungarians -- to
keep his despotate alive.
Brankovic, although he had been driven from his
country by Sultan Murad II (his own son-in-law!), was
also one of the most powerful dynasts in Hungary. Backed
by a large part of the Hungarian nobility, Brankovic had
tried to persuade the widowed queen to marry his son
Lazar, but her reply foreshadowed the coming centuries of
religious strife between Catholic Hungarians and Orthodox
Serbs: "Better to marry a Hungarian peasant than a
schismatic prince."
On the eve of Mehmed's invasion, the despot had
given up all hope of help, but when he attended a special
meeting to consider the emergency in June 1455, John of
Capistrano informed Brankovic that he would receive help
only if he became Catholic (as Prince Vlad of Wallachia
was to do). The 80-year-old despot was disgusted: "I have
lived a long life and acquired a reputation for wisdom.
People would think me a fool if I renounced the religion
of my ancestors that I have practiced for 80 years." In
despair, Brankovic once again acknowledged the sultan as
his sovereign.
Belgrade's tiny Hungarian garrison waited anxiously
to see who would arrive first, the Turks or the
Hungarians. Although the citadel was off-limits to Serbs,
they were the dominant population of the town. On June 13
Mehmed ended the suspense, arriving before Belgrade with
the vast army he had assembled -- the lowest Western
estimate was 150,000. Before the sultan could seal off
the fortress, St. John had brought in five boatloads of
his Crusaders, mostly Hungarians and Serbs, although
Germans and even Greeks joined them. Because his Turks
were still primitive in military technology, the sultan
relied heavily on foreigners. Germans, Hungarians,
Bosnians, and Dalmatians manned his principal cannons,
all of which had been constructed by Western Christian
craftsmen: North Italians, Germans, and Hungarians.
Janosh Hunyadi arrived with 40 ships filled with
Serbian archers, who broke the blockade on the Danube,
and the ragtag Hungarian army made its way into the
citadel. In the succeeding days, the defenders were
hard-pressed, although the Turks must have been surprised
and somewhat discouraged by the resistance. On March 21,
the Ottoman army tried to take the fortress by storm. One
brave Turk was in the midst of planting the sultan's
banner on Kalamegdan, when a Christian Slav named Titus
Dugovich tackled him and the two rolled down the slope
toward the river. Hunyadi's son, Mathias Corvinus, king
of Hungary, later ennobled the bold Titus.
Maintaining discipline over the Crusaders must have
been difficult; on the next day, four or five of
Capistrano's peasants left their bunkers, contrary to
orders, and began insulting the enemy, who ignored them
until their numbers increased. Hunyadi, in the hope of
restoring order, asked St. John to bring back his men; he
did his best but to no avail. Finally, the 70-year-old
priest was infected by their enthusiasm. He raised the
cross he was carrying and cried out, "What God has
started, we shall finish."
The Turks, who were not used to this sort of zeal,
panicked, then ran. Hunyadi, seeing what happened, sent
his soldiers into the fray and, along with the pilgrims,
they slaughtered thousands of Turks and seriously wounded
the sultan himself. On the long retreat to Adrianople,
the Serbs killed thousands more.
After the repulse, the defenders discovered two
Venetian ships, out of a contingent of six, that had been
outfitted and manned by the Venetian Republic and sent to
aid the Turkish invaders. This was only the latest
instance of Venetian treachery. Greed certainly was one
motive for the indifference displayed by the Western
Powers toward the Turkish invasion of Europe. The vanity
and rivalries of European princes were another. While
Serbia, Constantinople, and Hungary were under attack,
England and France were fighting the Hundred Years' War;
even after expelling the English, French kings were
occupied with expanding their power, and their successors
would do their best to frustrate any Crusade to recover
the Balkans. In the 16th century Francis I joined with
Sultan Suleyman against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in
the infamous alliance of the Crescent and the Lily.
France agreed to attack Austria -- thus aiding and
abetting Suleyman's campaign to conquer Vienna -- and
received northern Italy in payment. Southern Italy, as
former possessions of the Eastern Roman Empire, would be
handed over to the tender mercies of the Turks. This
French-Ottoman alliance also prevented the Hapsburgs from
recovering the Balkans in 1683, after the Polish king Jan
Sobieski drove the Turks from the gates of Vienna.
Louis XIV invaded Germany at the very time his nephew
Prince Eugene was reconquering the Balkans with the
support of the oppressed Ottoman subjects.
Underlying these pragmatic motives lies another. The
Renaissance had begun, and educated Europeans were
turning with revulsion from the "Dark Ages" and embracing
neopagan atheism that viewed the Ottoman Empire as the
lesser of two evils. The real enemy was a Church that
preached a constrictive morality taught by that greatest
of scandals, the God-who-became-Man. At the time of the
siege of Belgrade, Cosimo de' Medici was setting up the
Florentine Academy, whose agenda was the reestablishment
of paganism. Cosimo and his young friend Marsilio Ficino
had been inspired by the Greek pagan George Gemistus
Pletho, when he attended the Council of Florence in 1439.
Some of these enlightened intellectuals dreamed of
rebuilding imperial Rome to be ruled by anyone but the
pope or a Christian emperor. There were even Italian
intellectuals who wrote to Mehmed, advising him that, as
the conqueror of Constantinople, he was the heir of the
Caesars with the right to reclaim the Western Empire.
From Florence the contagion spread to France (under
Medici queens) and to Elizabethan England. It was
inevitable that a Europe that had repudiated its
spiritual foundations could not defend itself against the
Muslims, just as Europe today, whose Constitution
mentions all the religions in Europe but one,
Christianity, cannot resist the Islamic advance. It may
be only a matter of time before Turkey, which continues
to persecute Orthodox Christians, is welcomed back into
Europe.
Thomas Fleming, Ph.D., is president of the Rockford
Institute, editor of CHRONICLES: A MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN
CULTURE, and author of THE MORALITY OF EVERYDAY LIFE and
MONTENEGRO: THE DIVIDED LAND. He is a frequent lecturer
at universities in the United States and Europe.
NUGGETS
IN BARELY A GENERATION, birth control (assisted by
abortion) has nearly achieved something approaching what
nuclear weapons never achieved: the destruction of the
West. Hundrends of millions of whites who should have
existed, don't. (page 9)
-- REGIME CHANGE BEGINS AT HOME by Joe
Sobran; $5 postpaid or free with a new
subscriptions to SOBRAN'S
CARTOONS (Baloo)
http://www.sobran.com/issue_cartoons/2007-01/2007-01-
cartoons.shtml
REPRINTED COLUMNS ("The Reactionary Utopian")
(pages 5-11)
* Last Laugh (December 21, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/061221.shtml
* Logic, Anyone? (December 18, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/061218.shtml
* The Magician (December 14, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/061214.shtml
* Yes, It's a Cheney -- or Something (December 11, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/061211.shtml
* How Lincoln Gave Us Kwanzaa (December 7, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/061207.shtml
* In Praise of Bush (December 4, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/061204.shtml
* Science, Religion, and Hate (November 13, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/061113.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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