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"Fortune does, in the end, favour the brave"

"Fortune does, in the end, favour the brave," said Margaret Thatcher yesterday in a speech marking the 25th anniversary of victory in the Falklands War. Baby the Brave -- above attempting to liberate a piece of chicken from Tuck's plate -- would agree.

"The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship," Terence Jeffrey quotes President Reagan in a lesser known passage from the Great Communicator's "Tear down this wall" speech -- delivered 20 years ago last Tuesday -- that resonates. The totalitarian instinct runs dark and deep in our species, as we are forever blogging, but "something there is that doesn't love a wall":

Pondering what sustained Berliners, surrounded as they were by the Soviet menace, Reagan concluded: "Perhaps this gets to the root of the matter, to the most fundamental distinction of all between East and West . . ."

Even as Reagan spoke that day in Berlin, the forces of faith and reason were laying siege to Gdansk, Poland. On one side were Polish police, on the other, a Polish priest. The former came to intimidate the masses; the latter to say a Mass . . .

The Protestant president and Catholic pope won the Cold War in Eastern Europe without ever firing a shot there because Christianity had a more powerful and enduring grip on the soul of that region than communism could ever have.

We're reminded of Oriana Fallaci's spiritual kinship with John Paul's successor, blogged here early and often. As we wrote last year:

It's not faith vs. rationality [as some fundamentalist atheists like Sam Harris would have it], but intolerance vs. tolerance. Render unto Caesar, as we've blogged before. It doesn't require religious faith to believe in something worth fighting for. The shining city upon a hill shimmers in our mind's eye. As Oriana Fallaci wrote -- and we are forever quoting -- "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true."

Moral codes -- whether religious, non-religious or anti-religious, red in tooth and claw or metaphorical -- are our species' default mode, the glue that bonds persons related by DNA or by ideology for mutual physical and/or psychological survival. As anthropologist-turned-psychologist Pascal Boyer's brain-scan studies suggest:

When the evidence is pieced together, it seems that evolution prepared what society later moulded: a brain to believe.

As well as providing succour for those troubled by the existential dilemma, religion, or at least a primitive spirituality, would have played another important role as human societies developed. By providing contexts for a moral code, religious beliefs encouraged bonding within groups, which in turn bolstered the group's chances of survival, says Boyer . . .

"What I find more plausible is that rather than religion itself offering any advantage in evolutionary terms, it's a byproduct of other cognitive capacities we evolved, which did have advantages," says Boyer.

Tiny in foreground watches as Baby achieves a victory in the latest suppertime skirmish.

The predisposition to believe is there. The standard model -- you're either a member of our group or we'll marginalize you or kill you -- is alive and well all over the world in what we have called "fear societies heavy and lite," wherever totalitarianism -- in President Reagan's words -- thwarts " the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship." Moral relativism notwithstanding, some cultures ARE better than others because they bring out the best in us, while the worst, unable to face life's dark side in themselves, encourage their citizens to stew in their own juices and project their all-too-human faults onto "the other."

Serendipitous double-exposure screen shot from live EWTN coverage of President Bush's historic audience with Pope Benedict XVI Saturday.

Let's give Margaret Thatcher the last word, in a speech yesterday "praising Britain's armed forces to mark the 25th anniversary of victory in the Falklands War":

There are in a sense no final victories, for the struggle against evil in the world is never ending. Tyranny and violence wear many masks. Yet from victory in the Falklands we can all today draw hope and strength.

Fortune does, in the end, favour the brave.

Fortunately, ours is not only the land of the free, but the home the brave.

Update: Modulator's Friday Ark #143, now boarding, is the home of all things bright and beautiful.

Update II: The News Junkie at Maggie's Farm has our number: "Maggie Thatcher, Reagan, fear, and cats."

Update III: For more Manichean musings, be sure to visit Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities, where "the insane, the bizarre, the ridiculous, and the completely absurd are highlighted for all to see!"

The long-lost survival skills that are our species' birthright

"Pope Benedict would like this photo [of a] cat with the dome of St. Peter's as background -- perfect :)" blogs Gerald Augustinus of The Cafeteria is Closed. We're still dreaming of a photo or two of the Holy Father himself cat whispering. Anybody out there know of any?

"There seems to me a sort of broad national diminution of common sense in our country that we don't notice in the day-to-day but that becomes obvious after a story like this," wrote Peggy Noonan in the wake of last week's "school shooting." While everyone with a soapbox -- ourselves included -- had something all-important to read into the entrails, two primal All-American stories rose to the surface after a decent interval:

1. The wounded student, trained in Boy Scout survival techniques, who prevented himself from bleeding to death by tourniqueting his own leg.

2. The beloved, venerable Holocaust survivor professor who put himself between the killer and his own students to save them, even as he lost his own life.

Both were heart-stopping examples of not only the American spirit -- the shining city upon a hill -- but more deeply the long-lost survival skills that are our species' evolutionary birthright:  recognizing danger and acting to avert death -- of oneself and/or those in one's care. As we said in Laura Lee's comments:

I'm thinking that guns or not, we should be requiring our students -- and ourselves -- to take at least one scout-like survival course that attunes them/us to clues in the environment and develops defensive skills. No cell phones allowed!

Then there are our fellow Americans on the left side of the aisle who continue to wonder why we can't all just get along, even as they -- like "Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi, the Muslim Brotherhood cleric who has gone on the record many times supporting jihad, suicide bombing, and especially the murder of Jews" [via Little Green Footballs] -- attempt to get themselves off the hook by blaming America/George Bush/Israel for all the evil in the world. The Sheik, in a fascinatingly all-about-me Friday sermon aired on Qatar TV, DOES have a way with words:

The thing I detest most is unjustified bloodshed. I even felt great pain at what happened in America. An armed student killed 33 fellow students. What is this? This is the philosophy of violence, the outcome of violent films, the outcome of the violence used by America. America has made force the decisive factor in everything, and it uses its power to force peoples to do as it wishes. [Projection happens.] This philosophy has left its mark. We see in the schools of America . . . Even in high schools and junior high schools, we see youth who kill their fellow students. In that university, we saw that someone killed all those fellow students of his -- and for no comprehensible reason. What is this? It is the philosophy of violence, which was instilled in these people. This philosophy of materialism and permissiveness does not instill in them religion, faith, moral values, compassion, or brotherhood. Instead, it instills in them selfishness and violence, and makes the rifle or the machine-gun rule supreme. This is the philosophy of American civilization, which it bequeaths to its sons.

But even as the forces of darkness close in, a glimmer of light from a most unexpected corner of academia: "One wonders if it might be the seemingly decrepit old Church that will once more guide the fate of the West," writes a strange-new-respect Alex Copulsky of Harvard Political Review, admitting his belated discovery of the Pope who loves cats and Mozart and found common cause with firebrand atheist Oriana Fallaci:

The columnist Andrew Sullivan wrote that Benedict XVI is "immune from reasoned inquiry." He could not have been more wrong. Benedict XVI is best understood as an "Enlightenment Pope" in an era in which reason has few defenders. The Pope is acutely aware of the oppression brought about by irrationality: In his childhood, it was Nazism; until the collapse of the Soviet Union it was Communism; today it is, as he puts it, the "dictatorship of relativism," the rejection of absolute norms, and radical Islam.

I happened to pick up the New York Times Sunday Magazine and found myself totally absorbed in the cover piece about Pope Benedict and his simultaneously deeply religious and utterly secular attempt to position the church to deal with the question of Islam. Pope Benedict has a barbarians-at-the-gate mentality that seems preposterous and alarmist at first, but begins to sound more and more rational.

We've been saying the very same thing re Papa Ratzi for ages, 'course. Nice to see it echoed in both the Times and the Harvard Political Review for a change. Best quotation of the day comes from Christopher Hitchens's must-read City Journal "Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates." You're a better man than I am, Rudyard Kipling:

We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!

Honor/shame is where it's at, from the most cut-throat, corrupt Barbary Coast pasha to our own business-as-usual corrupt American Congressmen of today. Arrrgggghhhh!

"He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness"

Nobody's perfect, but the brilliant and visionary Papa Ratzi's heart and soul are in the right place, and that covers for a multitude of sins (see below for our secular objections to recent pronouncements of the Holy Father on non-faith-related topics). Above a screenshot from a live EWTN broadcast of Pope Benedict XVI on Divine Mercy Sunday this morning in St. Peter's Square.

"It may even be that it indicated that Benedict has given up hope that Islam will reform; that he now wants to take on Islam in Europe in the same way that his predecessor took on Communism," writes Nigel Farndale in "What happened to 'God's rottweiler'" in the UKs Sunday Telegraph. That has been our take on the Holy Father's vision from Day One, the main reason -- besides his love of cats and Mozart and the left's initial apoplexy when he ascended the Throne of Peter -- why we believe Benedetto is the right man at the right time and place to fend off the forces of darkness -- always just beyond the campfire -- that threaten to extinguish the light of truth and freedom in our day. Farndale continues:

As a highly distinguished academic he read philosophy as well as theology, and it is this that informs his belief that true religion is the exploration of metaphysics by the power of reason -- and that the absence of reason is what is fundamentally wrong with Islam.

There were those who dismissed his comments on Islam as a diplomatic blunder. Others think that, given his formidable intellect and his considerable knowledge of the Koran, he must have anticipated what reaction he would get. His lecture, moreover, represented a deliberate departure from the Vatican's previous policies on dialogue with Islam, away from promoting harmony at all costs towards more reciprocity. It may even be that it indicated that Benedict has given up hope that Islam will reform; that he now wants to take on Islam in Europe in the same way that his predecessor took on Communism.

Papa Ratzi doesn't know everything, of course, as two recent forays into fields beyond his areas of expertise reveal. Too bad the best and brightest among us never seem to know when to stop pontificating and listen to those who know more about the subject at hand:

1. Re Darwin's theory of evolution -- which the Holy Father seems to embrace as part of God's plan, much to the dismay of the proselytizers of Intelligent Design -- Papa Ratzi nevertheless revealed his ignorance of the scientific method:

Benedict added that the immense time span that evolution covers made it impossible to conduct experiments in a controlled environment to finally verify or disprove the theory. “We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory,” he said.

"Is the pope really this dense?" asks The Carpetbagger Report rhetorically. "Doesn’t he know that the theory of evolution is supported not by laboratory experiments but by millions of years of fossil and DNA evidence?" The scientific method isn't about proving but trying to disprove theses, Your Grace. Sigh.

2. Then there was the Holy Father's apparent moral-equivalency argument re capitalism vs. Marxism the other day. The Anchoress wisely advises we read the whole thing whenever reporters with agendas -- are there any other kind? -- like the devil quoting scripture start finding support for their own godless worldview in the Pope's speeches:

For cryin’ out loud -- people should know better, by now, than to ever, ever, ever accept media spin on what the pope has said. Just as the press inflamed many Muslims by mischaracterizing the pope’s remarks last September, they’re doing it again here. When it comes to popes, the only way to be fair is to read the full texts of a pope’s remarks. Otherwise, you’re just being played.

The Anchoress was referring to the "nothing positive comes from Iraq" clause of Papa Ratzi's "Ubi et Urbi" speech -- blogged here -- shamelessly taken out of context by the unholy warriors of the anti-war left last week. But back to the Holy Father's moral-equivalency argument re capitalism vs. Marxism:

Pope Benedict XVI offers a personal meditation on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ in his first book as pontiff, criticizing the "cruelty" of capitalism's exploitation of the poor but also decrying the absence of God in Marxism.

In "Jesus of Nazareth," released Friday, Benedict touches on themes that have begun to emerge in his 2-year-old papacy: the spiritual weaknesses of modern materialistic life, in which people seem to think they can do without God.

What's with this "cruelty" of capitalism's exploitation of the poor? It sounds like Benedetto is stuck in Marxism's long-since discredited oppressor/oppressed analysis of the way of the world. Doesn't he realize that a rising tide lifts all boats? "You should send him a reading list," quips Tuck. Papa Ratzi could start by reading Fred Thompson's Opinion Journal piece yesterday re-explaining for those who still refuse to get it that cutting taxes increases revenues.

Note: Blog title taken from John 8:12, King James Version.

"Power is only as good as the perception of power"

Baby contemplates his next move atop the soon-to-be-decorated Easter table down Goomp's, where he and his sister can come and go at will untethered. We temporarily forgot that we always feature the green-foiled faux chocolate bunny in a nest of excelsior surrounded with colored eggs and went ahead and ordered the awesome Park Florist centerpiece, above. An abundance of riches.

"Awake, thou wintry earth. Cast off thy sadness." If only. Even as the snows of early spring desert Goomp's fields and rocky outcrops Down East this clear-skied Easter morning -- and the robins, bluebirds, cardinals, crows, sparrows and all of God's creatures bright and beautiful who make it their business to continue the bloodline in these parts start selecting mates and nest sites and gathering leaves and feathers for their nests -- the same old, same old forces of darkness and/or benightedness keep on keeping on. Yes, you, Nancy Pelosi, among so many others. Plus one beacon of light in Vatican City who disappointed us big time this morning. First the same old, same old:

1. Same old, same old, Part a. "There are two Iraq wars being waged, according to military officers on the ground and defense experts: the one fought in the streets of Baghdad, and the war as it is perceived in Washington," writes WaPo staff writer Thomas E. Ricks, summarizing most expertly what a lot of us out here have known in our bones for some time:

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who took over as the top U.S. commander in Iraq in February, cited the disparity last week. "The Washington clock is moving more rapidly than the Baghdad clock," he said in a television interview. "So we're obviously trying to speed up the Baghdad clock a bit and to produce some progress on the ground that can, perhaps . . . put a little more time on the Washington clock" . . .

An official in Iraq warned that executing the new approach will take time -- perhaps more than Washington is willing to give. "Early signs are very encouraging -- huge drop in sectarian killings in Baghdad, return of thousands of refugee families," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity so that he could be candid. "But there is no way we can defeat this insurgency by summer. I believe we can begin to turn the tide by then, and have an idea if we are doing it. To defeat it completely is a five-to-10-year project, minimum -- and rushing it along to meet a D.C. timeline is rushing to failure."

Same old, same old, Part b. "Even if it were true (which it's not) that Valerie Plame's crack commando units are rappelling down the walls of every presidential palace from Sudan to North Korea, in a media age what matters is not only what's going on behind the scenes but the scenes themselves," writes Mark Steyn:

And scenes of British servicemen fawning on Ahmadinejad along with scenes of a headscarved Nancy Pelosi doing the same to Bashir Assad project a consistent message.

Even if there is more going on than meets the eye, what meets the eye is so profoundly damaging to the credibility of great nations that no amount of lethal special ops could compensate for it. Power is only as great as the perception of power.

2. Beacon of light blinks. "Nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees," said Papa Ratzi during his otherwise inspiring "Urbi et Orbi" Easter message "to the city and to the world" in St. Peter's Square this morning -- we caught it, as usual, live early morning on EWTN -- breaking our heart in two as he seemed to draw moral equivalency between what we consider a "just war" in Iraq vs. the everyday tribalist sandbox wars of the third world from Darfur on down/up. We can only assume the Holy Father hasn't been keeping up with his reading of Iraq the Model, Michael Yon, General Petraeus and others on the ground who keep on keeping on even as Pelosi & Company try to put out the homefires.

"Hands that are not sullied by corruption and bribes"

"Innocent hands are hands that are not used for acts of violence," Papa Ratzi told the reverent crowd in St. Peter's Square this morning during Palm Sunday services. "They are hands that are not sullied by corruption and bribes." Thanks to Mother Angelica, EWTN is out there on cable, sending images [above screen shot] and words from Vatican City live to us here stateside in the wee hours. Just for fun, note the blue and orange stripes of that Swiss Guard soldier in the background. Nothing surpasses the visual -- and musical -- splendor of the traditional Catholic Church display. And those Prada shoes that Papa Ratzi favors: Wonderful!

"Look to the 23rd Psalm" advises our imail correspondent in response to our quest for guidance as to what to say in a Palm Sunday post. Herewith, the King James [Is there any other worth it's salt?] version:

1The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

3He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

4Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

5Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

Even as we were brought up in the least-liturgical of Christian churches -- the Unitarian, once a brave, truth-seeking New England faith, now way beyond the pale in the aftermath of its engobblement by the left -- we did memorize the 23rd Psalm way back when, and rereading it today, with its poetry and understanding of the human condition restoring our soul, our cup ranneth over. Thanks, Miss Suzanne, for reminding us.

"Sexy for the intellectuals: A Pope for the Melancholy Modern Age"

Human sacrifice to appease the gods is as old as the hills, and no wonder, considering how terrifying it all is.  Oh, Lord, how large is thy ocean, and how small my boat. Even to this day, beheading and self-flagellation are huge amongst the more primitive remnants of our Islamicist brothers (above left), not to mention -- 'wish we didn't have to -- our Gorist brothers and sisters who want us to believe that sacrificing our economic hegemony will save the earth (above right, an energy-depleting dimming of the Eiffel Tower's light).

"Man approaches God through the Word, not through fasting and wearing a crown of thorns," writes Alexander Smoltczyk in a totally fascinating take on Papa Ratzi in "Sexy for the intellectuals: A Pope for the Melancholy Modern Age" at Spiegel Online:

Ratzinger has mulled all his life over these unequal siblings, faith and reason, which explains the leniency and interest with which German cultural critics have received this pope. He is one of us. He refuses to be defined in terms of the laical trinity, i.e. the triple threat of condoms, women priests and abortion [cute, huh?] . . . Man encounters the self at the level of thought. That is why believers can communicate with non-believers.

Egad. It sounds like at least some German intellectuals are finally getting what Italian free thinker Oriana Fallaci got years ago -- often blogged here -- that "if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true." More soundbites -- so many tasty ones that it's hard to choose -- from Spiegel Online:

Or could it just be that times have changed? German feature journalism, in particular, has undergone a seismic shift. Columnists are yearning blithely for the good old Latin liturgy and meeting with approval. The editor-in-chief of a new intellectual magazine has composed a "creed": "Why the return of religion is a good thing." Highbrow newspapers like Die Zeit and Frankfurter Allgemeine carefully analyze every utterance from the Apostolic Palace. All the German pundits worth their snuff are hanging on the pontiff's every word . . .

Pope John Paul was into images; Benedict is a man of words. He sympathizes with the nonbelievers. He does not say, as his predecessor did: Kneel down and say the rosary. He says: Enlightenment must be enlightened. He is an intellectual who does not replace reason with mysticism, but instead deploys it in the service of God.

Good God. Atheistic Catholic that we are, we are in a swoon. More from Spiegel Online:

Benedict is the right pope for an age in which people have strayed from the path of faith but still yearn to arrive at a destination -- even if that destination is ultimately faith. He is the right pope for a melancholy, modern age. Benedict's surprising charisma is due in part to the differentiated attitude this German has brought to the papacy in particular and Roman Catholicism in general . . .

The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves -- thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth." [See also our own transcendent Mayflower and shining city upon a hill.]

"Having a clear faith" was being perceived as fundamentalism, he proclaimed. As hopelessly passé under a "dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain and which has, as its highest goal, one's own ego and one's own desires." That sounded like a parting shot, but it backfired. The popemakers in Italy elected the German professor -- despite his advanced age. They believed he alone was capable of lending the truth-seeking Church an audible voice in a Europe cacophonized by transcendental illiteracy.

Neo-neocon's "Outdated political definitions: conservatives and liberals unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains" comes to mind. She asks her readers today in a most thoughtful post "So what do you think," and here's what we offered in her comments:

Friedrich A. von Hayek's individualism vs. collectivism says it all:

The Road to Serfdom

Today's "liberals," our friends on the left side of the aisle, are the totalitarianist collectivists -- the Hillary Clintons who know better than you what is good for you -- while "conservatives" and others on the right are for the most part the champions of individual freedom.

How sad that the powers that be in charge of the edification of the younger generation of this land of the free and home of the brave don't take the teaching of history, geography, science, math and all the grand old Aristotelean philosophies of the ages seriously. More mind food from that Spiegel Online article:

The library is the Holiest of Holies. The professor pope pens page after page: letters, sermons, speeches, epistles, books. Several hundred theological works already make him the most published pontiff in church history.

Ratzinger's appointment as head of the church has not really interrupted his lifelong mission. He toils away at his basic conflict, pitting "truth" against the "relativism" of the modern age: The focus must be on the human being as God's creature, not as a substitute for God.

Worldly promises of salvation have always led people to their doom, be they the promises of the Nazis at home in Traunstein and elsewhere - or those of the Marxists and their disciples with their liberation theology. There is no freedom in this life.

Notwithstanding the smiles, the imputed Prada shoes and his new collection of headgear, Ratzinger has not backed away an inch from his rigid stance on socio-political issues. Marriage is forever; abortion is a crime; women are not entitled to follow the Apostles. Modern society must abide by God's word. Period.

Uh, oh. For us, as a woman who started out as a girl in the Fifties yearning to breathe free, we've always been horrified over men's need to put down their helpmeets. When men start trying to hobble women, we feel wicked sorry for men's insecurity and even sorrier for our sisters' sorrows that result. That shall remain a sticking point with our beloved Papa Ratzi, but Sharia law's take on women is so far beyond the pale that Papa Ratzi's putdown of women pales by comparison. Pale and paler. Not to mention the adored Mary, Mother of God, a personage we never learned much about in our well-intended but bloodless Unitarian upbringing. Nothing like that in Islam. The only woman we're aware of in the Muslim narrative is a preteen bride of Mohammed.

Since you went away

Our darling blogfriend MB of Miss Kelly made our day yesterday, presenting us at the meeting of our sub rosa cabal at Jill's enchanted hideaway with Papa Ratzi's Castel Gondolfo calendar, a thing we had stumbled upon a couple of months back, told her about, and then she, having a connection in the heart of the beast, was able to purchase copies for ourselves and a few other select personages.

"Since you Went Away" is the name of the 1944 WWII-era tearjerker we were watching this afternoon as we were imailing with our sis. She -- who, like Cosmo in "Moonstruck" knows everything -- alerted us that this old-fashioned sob story was one of the original sources of Airplane! containing the scene where the love-struck young woman -- Jennifer Jones in the full glory of her radiant youth -- ran after the train that would take her soldier boy off to his death, catching his heirloom watch in her hands as the choo choo pulled away from the station. Teenager Shirley Temple played Jones's kid sister, and Claudette Colbert was their mom. Joseph Cotten was the man in uniform who tried to turn Claudette's head as she nobly kept the homefires burning for her soldier husband -- never seen in the movie -- at the front. You've heard of Hollywood endings, and this one ended with a telegram telling the pure-as-the-driven-snow Colbert her hubby was coming home. As our sis suggested: 

BUT . . . tell me this . . . do you think Claudette and Joseph could have resisted such temptation?

Cat prints in the light snowcover animate the stoop his morning. What if we could read our own comings and goings and thereby our intentions in some similarly black-and-white medium?

No.

"For every one that doeth evil hateth the light"

The dandelion in winter. Even as cherries blossom inside the Beltway during these El Nino-induced days of faux spring in the Northeast, in Chelsea-by-the-Sea a dandelion -- cum opportunistic ant -- shows its colors on the twelfth day of Christmas -- Epiphany in the Christian calendar.

"The light came into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were wicked," Papa Ratzi quoted The Gospel of John (3: 19) in his Epiphany homily, broadcast live from the Vatican into our own studio in the wee hours this morning via EWTN. Once up and about and seated at our computer, we hurried on over to Bible Gateway to get the full monty -- King James Version -- on John's gospel and couldn't help but think of congressional earmark doubletalk when we came upon the very next line to the above:

For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

Self-avowed "most powerful woman" in the universe, newly anointed Speakerette of the House Nancy Pelosi claims she's going to make this House "the most honest, ethical, and open Congress in history." Unfortunately for truth, justice and the American way, she knows she can count on the cluelessness of the history-free sector of our fellow citizens -- the mushy "masses" who "form their political beliefs with little regard for facts or logic" as Arnold Kling writes in "Two Strategies for Avoiding Truth" at TCS -- to swallow her snake oil without a thought. Polls, after all, reveal not what most people "think" but the latest thing they heard on TV. Kling continues:

The elites also have a strategy for avoiding truth. Elites form their political beliefs dogmatically, using their cleverness to organize facts to fit preconceived prejudices. The masses' strategy for avoiding truth is to make a low investment in understanding; the elites' strategy is to make a large investment in selectively choosing which facts and arguments to emphasize or ignore.

Not that we are immune to selective choice -- we found ourselves doing the very thing yesterday while attempting to shape a response to the latest exudation of "global-warming" hysteria prompted by cherry blossoms in January in the nation's capital. In our view, forces far more awesome than the Promethean overreaching of this thinking reed account for weather and climate change: El Niño for Mother Nature's latest mood swings -- from record snows in Colorado to our own sighting of a dandelion in full bloom in the lower forty -- and sun spots for the larger swings between global cooling and warming. We've been down that road many times before and soon tired of going over the same arguments. Then came our epiphany.

Amidst the leaves of fall -- ailanthus, oak, black cherry -- a vigorous harbinger of spring "cometh to the light" on the Twelfth Day of Christmas.

Amidst an underwhelming laundry list of grandstanding 100-hour legislative wonders, Nancy & Company have passed a bill that combines good sense and nonsense. The good sense part:

The measure, adopted 280-152, also requires that legislation containing pet projects and narrowly targeted tax breaks - known as "earmarks" -- include the names of the lawmakers who requested them . . . The new rules replace weaker ones on earmarks approved last September by Republicans.

The nonsense part:

The House voted Friday, its second day back under Democratic control, to block future tax cuts or benefit increases from being financed with dollars that swell the national debt. Republicans protested that the change would imperil GOP-sponsored tax cuts that expire in four years . . . The drive to restore the "pay-as-you-go" rule has long been a priority for moderate-to-conservative Democrats.

Counting on our economics-challenged "masses" -- including the majority of our journalist class, who, like most persons of the left, seem to have never met a tax hike they didn't like -- "pay-as-you-go" ignores the well-proven fact that lowering taxes results in increased revenues. But that, of course, doesn't fit the left's "preconceived prejudices." For an antidote to "the most powerful woman in America, head on over to our blogpal, the most powerful woman in the blogosphere, Pamela at Atlas Shrugs. She's got Nancy's number, big time.

"Now that the media's paying attention"

Up at the crack of dawn as usual, thanks to Tiny and Baby, who let us know with gallops across our chest, nose bites and hard-paw tactics that it was time to feed the kitties, even as Papa Ratzi was delivering a message of hope and love to a small flock of Turkish Catholics at Mary's House, "a small stone building among the woods above Ephesus. Tradition has it that this is where the Mother of Jesus spent her last years on earth." TV screen shot of the Holy Mass from the House of Mary via EWTN above.

Mid morning, Father Jonathan Morris, covering the Pope's visit to Turkey, tells the Fox News anchor that Papa Ratzi is saying that in order for us to be a civilized society, we have to reject violence in the name of religion, and we have to be tolerant of other religions:

If the Vatican had hired a high-profile Manhattan pr executive, it couldn't have done better. Now that the media's paying attention [thanks to Regensburg] his message of brotherhood and a bridge to peace is being heard.

A crazy-hour mad dash yesterday up the front stairs, across the hall and bedroom and then down the back stairs, ends with Baby pausing, wild eyed, atop the downstairs shower stall.

According to on-the-scene Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin, the Turkish headlines are gushing with admiration for Papa Ratzi's message of respect and outreach to the people of Turkey and the followers of Islam. "Turkish leaders appear to have been won over when the Prime Minister reported that the Pope is no longer opposed to Turkey's being admitted to the European Union," she reports. Didn't we just say?

His mission accomplished, Baby heads back down to floor level via the backside of the shower.

Why can't we all just get along, indeed. What if we get through this papal visit without a single deadly Muslim tantrum? Is this the miracle we have prayed for?

Turkey's moment to shine

The photography (above) at CNN was superb, but the coverage of the early hours of Pope Benedict's historic visit to Turkey at EWTN soared above CNNs facile on-air coverage in terms of both historical context and objective assessment (natch). That pure white, double-breasted, floor-length camel-hair (?) overcoat is to die for.

Behold, I tell you a mystery . . .

We're watching today's events in Turkey unfold on EWTN (Evengelical Eternal World Television Network -- thanks for the correction, Ruth Anne) early morning here in Chelsea-by-the-Sea. Before switching channels, we checked in with Fox News and CNN, who were covering the Pope's historic visit to the predominantly Muslim country sporadically. CNNs on-the-scene correspondent summed up the MSMs grasp -- or non grasp -- of the gravity of the situation when she observed that had Papa Ratzi not made that memorably misread statement about Islam and violence at Regensburg last fall, no one would have been paying much attention. Little does she realize the irony of her words. Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do. Meanwhile, from EWTN, a rumor that Papa Ratzi has reversed his stand on Turkey's entry into the EU . . . What if it were so? Would that be the miracle to totally disarm the enemy? A little background about what Turkey wants, from Hugh Hope at the WSJ:

Rudyard Kipling's old saying that "East is East and West is West" -- or its modern incarnation, "the clash of civilizations" -- is not the right paradigm for Turkey, which feels increasingly confident as part of both. The West is now all over the East and the East is firmly camped in the West. Indeed, Turkey's republican founder Kemal Atatürk believed that the "East is East" idea was fostered by Western powers to justify clinging to power over their former colonial subjects.

You'd have to be better informed than the average American or else subscribe to Google's list for news about Pope Benedict XVI to know what we just learned this morning about those flag-waving Pope-haters that have been all over the MSM of late. Ever heard of Turkey's "Happiness party"? We hadn't, either:

The Happiness Party has no representation in the Turkish national legislature even though it has become a stronger force in Turkish politics in recent years. To that extant the visit of Pope Benedict could be seen as a litmus test for the party. If planned protests are not as popular - as their weekend demonstration - as had originally been hyped, that could be a sign that the population at large is rejecting the Happiness Party's radical platform, which in turn could be a positive sign for EU observers.

Interestingly, "Prime Minister Erdogan was once a member of the Happiness Party, but broke with it to form the currently ruling Justice and Development party." Given Turkey's westophilic history in the last period of time -- if accurately portrayed in that WSJ essay -- we'd say without knowing much beyond this morning's reading and listening/viewing that this is Turkey's moment to shine. You go, whirl.

Update: According to Reuters, "Pope Benedict backed Ankara's EU entry bid and said Islam was a religion of peace on Tuesday, according to Turkey's prime minister, in a bid to soothe rows over his views in the mostly Muslim state."

We still don't get this "religion of peace" shtick, but the EU entry-bid thing sounds promising.

Update II: The Anchoress reads poetry into our screenshot of Benedict XVI in his awesome, full-length white coat descending to Turkish soil after touchdown Thursday morning (above):

I am in love with this picture of Benedict disembarking from his plane, which Sissy Willis captured. He looks like The Man in White (even White Hair!) Come to Dodge City! I like the fact that the picture is a little fuzzy and the face is indistinct. I like the way it emphasizes that the man, Joseph Ratzinger, is not the focus here and not recognizable . . . all that is recognizable is “The Vicar of Christ.” Sissy also points out that Benedict is now encouraging Turkey’s admission into the EU, which -- like Sissy -- I think is a good thing and long overdue.

Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.