Our Cosmopolitan President
Do the Wrong Thing: Obama’s War on Giving
The Centrist President
Burning Down Detroit
The End of Starbucks
Don’t Stop Believing
The War on Philanthropy

Hope you enjoy these.

I have the feature today, on The Right and the Challenge of the Environment. I hope you’ll check it out - I’ll be editing the Conservation section of the site going forward.

It’s true that the free market is, oftentimes, the enemy of the environment. It’s one of the greatest forces for freedom in the world, yes – but when it comes to many of the issues, I believe the marketplace espouses a view that is focused on the short term, not the long. It often makes perfect financial sense to operate at the narrow edge of irresponsibility, to stamp your feet about government ignoring property rights and bureaucracy passing ridiculous regulations, because it’s true that such things are often fundamentally unjust. Yet the actors in the market don’t usually evaluate land or sea in terms of stewardship – they evaluate it in terms of the immediate bottom line.

But that’s only half the story. The other half is the fact that overwhelmingly, the vast number of nations that can afford to make the decisions to protect and conserve land and sea, and be good stewards of the resources and creatures within them, are those that are thriving members of the global marketplace.

I have been asked by many who knew that I went up to New York City for the events to share an account of Father Neuhaus’s wake and funeral, and so here it is.  Excuse the rambling nature of it - there was too much shared over these two days to recall it all, and my memory isn’t as good as it used to be.

On Monday night at Father Neuhaus’s wake at Immaculate Conception in New York City, there were (by my estimate) roughly 1,200 people in a church that could hold about 800. I arrived far too early and not wanting to conflict with the evening service, went across the street to wait in one of the thousand dirty basement Irish bars there seem to be in that city, listening to the Brooklyn vowels of some angry Jets fans discussing personnel moves made and unmade.  New York is such an odd place.

After it got really packed I let an old woman have my seat and stood in the back.  The church was packed to the brim and every New York Catholic of note was there, it seemed like, interspersed with people who just knew him as “Father Richard, who baptized my son or my daughter,” and had no knowledge of his other work.  They seemed amazed to learn what he had achieved.

There were three eulogies after the homily. George Weigel’s was good, Jody Bottum’s was powerfully personal, and Robert Louis Wilken’s was inspired.  Of the three, Jody’s was the most political – at one point noting that, when the regime of abortion in America is finally ended, Father Neuhaus will be hailed rightly as a mighty champion for the cause of life, without whom it could never be achieved.  There were letters from the President, and not just of this country, and hundreds from around the world, filled with sorrow and prayer.

There were stories of his time at the church he described as “St. John the Mundane.”  There were stories of his conversion from Lutheran to Catholic, from liberal to conservative, but in both cases, it seemed more that the world turned around him than that he changed.  There were recitations of his favorite quotations – perhaps one of his favorite being one of Alexander Hamilton’s remarks, that “I will not amuse you with an appearance of deliberation when I have decided.” There were notations on his favorite words – “Winsome.” “Egregious.” And favorite of all, “Convivium.”

When invited to “Convivium” at Fr. Neuhaus’s house, one was expected to arrive promptly by seven PM, in order to stand together and sing the evening prayer.  The discussions over his dinner table, usually surrounded by young Catholic men and women, were the stuff of legend.  His house was always a mess, but a mess with unique stories hidden in it, and some excellent wine.  Perhaps the oddest furnishing was his bathroom wall that was papered with photographs of all these young people, so that he could see them while he shaved, and be reminded to pray for them as he walked – or jaywalked, which he was famous for, with a Calvinists’ sense that those cars would do what they would do – during the day.

There were many, many tales of his addiction to cheap liquor (Jack Daniels at its finest) and good cigars (two a day on average), and more tales of his long friendship with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who would always stay with him once a year. Rabbi Heschel always said that he would bring the liquor if Father Neuhaus brought the opinions, but in truth, he brought both.  Neuhaus called him “Father Heschel” – and Heschel called him “Rabbi Neuhaus.”

He made terrible coffee, but it motivated him to stay up later and talk more, so everyone always encouraged him to make it.  He wrote 12,000 words a month for print, on average, and near the end, confided from his deathbed that he only wished he had the time to write more. He was motivated always by a longing for “prudence, justice, courage, wisdom, holiness,” and his mantra of “fidelity, fidelity, fidelity.”

Father Neuhaus once confided that the secret to his prodigious ability was to make sure he said his morning prayer every day before he read the newspaper.  Putting God first, he could get to the work God asked of him with a mind set to the right purpose.

The next morning, the day of the funeral mass, the church was even more packed – I would estimate as many as 1,600.  I stood in the back behind what seemed like the entire editorial board of National Review, First Things, and the bevy of priests who were there.  I missed a small amount of the mass, as there was an elderly woman who had come out with a cane who I ended up helping around quite a bit.  But I heard the whole of the homily first, by Father Raymond de Souza.  Fr. de Souza began by saying “Cardinal Ratzinger once said…” and had a quote that seemed relatively minor.  He then explained that he thought Fr. Neuhaus would have approved of any funeral homily that began, “Cardinal Ratzinger said,” because it was one of his favorite things to begin any conversation with in life.

Fr. de Souza’s remarks focused on this verse from Isaiah, one of my personal favorites which apparently was one of Fr. Neuhaus’s favorites as well, and its description of what he called “the eternal Convivium” of believers.  It is the Convivium that begins at the Altar, and ends in the Kingdom of God.

We recited the RSV translation instead of the NAB (to avoid, they said, setting the Father to spinning before he was in the grave):

The loss of Fr. Neuhaus, Hadley Arkes said, “For his friends this is the kind of loss that tilts the world on its axis; for so many things marking the world around just cannot be the same.”  But having been to this vigil and this mass, I feel like this is not true.  It may seem the case to us – it may seem wrong, unjust, unfair.  But I think now that it is right, and good, and the way things ought to be.

He once wrote of the cross: “This is the axis mundi, the center upon which the cosmos turns.”  He liked that phrase.  And now he knows it in full.  I have no doubt of that.

For this is the way the story should end: a sinner becomes a man of God, a man of God becomes a great warrior for God, and a warrior for God, triumphant in his work, goes now to be with God - welcomed as a champion.

Soon there was a growing pile of pictures of newer Christmases, but fewer and fewer from home. These were images from distant lands, small trees propped up with small ornaments in his drab quarters in Korea, Vietnam, Panama. My grandmother was in more of them, pale and smiling next to his tanned features. A handmade book from the end of their first year of marriage, full of notes and doodles drawn for her benefit, told how much time they’d spent apart and how much he loved her. A blurred picture of the two of them entwined and smiling in their old trunks on some unnamed Caribbean beach showed more heartfelt affection than I ever recalled seeing them demonstrate in public. In another, she posed against one generous gift, a gray Studebaker parked on the dusty road of a military base, her arms outspread with pride.

I hope you’ll take the time to read it.

Slingin Sammy Baugh - the greatest two-way quarterback who ever lived - has died at age 94.

The only quarterback to ever lead the league in touchdowns, defensive takeaways, and punting (he still holds the NFL record for highest career punting average), Sam Baugh once threw four touchdowns and intercepted four passes (he was the first to ever do that) in the same game. The skinny Texan (6′2, 175) with a heavy drawl had famous tilts running the double wing against the Bears - he once left the Championship Game with a concussion after a particularly brutal tackle of Sid Luckman - was the sports rivalry of the forties. He played for 16 years, all without a facemask. He won the passing title six times, a record that has only been tied once, and never beaten.

After returning home in 1952, he got a few coaching jobs, then retired to his 6,000 acre ranch. His wife Edmonia died in 1990, after 52 years of marriage. In the years since, he welcomed hundreds of passersby to his home, regaling them with tales of the old days of the gridiron.

Sam Baugh’s number, 33, remains the only one the Redskins have ever officially retired.

(Read an on-scene account of Baugh’s style from 1937 here.)

I also have a post over at RedState on Rod Blagojevich and President-Elect Obama’s short honeymoon, which happens to be today’s AOL Political Machine poll question (the poll isn’t live yet as I’m sending this out, but it will be later).

It is not all Mr. McCain’s fault - supporters of small government and the free market have simply failed to make their case to voters. It took a plumber from Toledo to make even a dent in Mr. Obama’s leftist pleasantries, prompting right-leaning voters old enough to remember the Soviet Union as more than an ironic fashion statement to recoil in shock with a cry of “Why, that’s, that’s socialism!” Yet on Election Day, these voters found themselves outnumbered, and not by small margins. They were outnumbered not just by young voters attracted to Mr. Obama’s celebrity or minority voters attracted to his historical nature - though they are legion - but by voters who are tired of the status quo, who have heard no case for the free market on the national stage in a generation, and who want to give Mr. Obama’s policies a shot, and see what happens.

Read the rest of it here.

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

-Rudyard Kipling

I n every Presidential election, it’s my experience that reports of fraud tend to be a bit exaggerated. Yes, there will always be a degree of problems - but most of those are of the human error variety, not purposeful lawbreaking. With so many millions voting, and so many election officials who are really just volunteer librarians, mistakes are bound to happen. The Electoral system helps guard against these things mattering, and I am fairly confident that outside some isolated incidents in big cities, voter fraud won’t change who wins the Presidency tomorrow. Corrupt as they are, I doubt very much that ACORN will provide the margin of victory.

Now, when it comes to local elections, I think the story is the reverse. Voter fraud can have a huge impact on a local level, and yet it’s almost always underreported. ACORN can’t make a difference in the presidential stakes, but they can make a difference in who becomes the next mayor, commissioner, or Congressman. And it’s surprisingly easy for that to happen in an environment where election laws and regulations are shockingly lax.

Consider where I live - Loudoun County, Virginia, arguably the swing county in a swing state, and one Obama is absolutely certain to win if you’re keeping score. Here in Virginia, you can go in and vote absentee early - a slightly different arrangement than other states, but quite straightforward in practice. An enormous number of people, more than 450,000, have taken advantage of this so far. All you have to do is go to your local office, stand in line for about 30-45 minutes, fill out a form, and vote.

At the Loudoun location on Saturday, they weren’t requiring picture ID - not even a Federal one, just any ID. Turns out you don’t need one. How convenient.

But if, in theory, Virginia decided to require that you present an ID as opposed to just sign a piece of paper (which will only matter if there’s a lawsuit, of course, which costs money and time and is politically dangerous), it’s awfully easy to get ahold of a Virginia voter card with someone else’s name on it (perhaps one of these fun creations). Especially if you rent rather than own.

You see, in a state with more than 400,000 newly registered voters since the last election, polling places have changed a lot. The Volunteer Firehouse location where I’ve voted all but once in the past 8 years can’t contain the polling place this year, so it’s moved. So have the polling places for much of Loudoun. The local Election Board was kind enough to send out a mass mailing informing every voter effected by this change a few months back.

And they were also kind enough to include a new voter card, with your name, address, and local polling place printed on it.

Personally, I received five voter cards in the mail. One was mine - four others were for people who have not lived in the house I rent for more than three years. Five different names. Same address. They sure do make it easy.

Useful, that. If you were interested in helping your guy, whoever it is, win.

It’s really quite easy to do a bit of DIY Election Fraud in an age where they send the Voter Card, info and all, direct to you. But hell, you won’t even need it in the Old Dominion - there’s no ID required. Just sign the paper promising you’re cool, and your vote matters just as much as everyone’s.

It’s like leaving the front door wide open for days, and being surprised that the TV is gone when you come back.

Democracy: you’re doing it wrong.

Update: More here and here.