“Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals.”

- Edmund Wilson

"As a ring of gold in a swine's snout,
So is a lovely woman who lacks discretion."
Prov. 11:22 (NKJV)

The imams say they were removed from the Phoenix-bound flight because they were praying quietly in the concourse. They had been in Minnesota for a conference sponsored by the North American Imams Federation.

But other passengers told police and aviation security officials a different version of the incident. They said suspicious behavior of the imams led to their eviction from the flight...

...The passengers and flight crew said the imams prayed loudly before boarding; switched seating assignments to a configuration used by terrorists in previous incidents; asked for seat-belt extensions, which could be used as weapons; and shouted hostile slogans about al Qaeda and the war in Iraq.

Flight attendants said three of the six men, who did not appear to be overweight, asked for the seat-belt extensions, which include heavy metal buckles, and then threw them to the floor under their seats.

Will they mention Shahin's admitted ties to Osama bin Laden and denial of the 9/11 al Qaeda plot?

Or his connection to a Hamas-linked terror charity front?

Will they mention Mahdi Bray's terror-sympathizing statements and stances?

Or the Muslim American Society's radical embrace of sharia and faux pose as the "moderate" front for the Muslim Brotherhood? (My debate on Laura Ingraham's radio show with one of the double-talking MAS spokesmen here.)

Or will they mindlessly play along with the grievance-mongers, lazily echoing the cries of "Islamophobia" and joining in self-flagellation?

Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men’s belief that they “own” their bodies - those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!

C.S. (Clive Staples) Lewis (books by this author) was born in Belfast, Ireland (1898). He said of his childhood, "I am a product ...[of] books. There were books in the study, books in the drawing-room, books in the cloak room, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents' interests, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books most emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves."

Lewis's parents were Anglicans and took him to church as a boy, but he found religion cold and boring. He preferred pagan mythology: Irish, Norse, and Greek myths he read in storybooks. He created an imaginary country called "Boxen" and wrote stories about it. He said, "My early stories were an attempt to combine my two chief literary pleasures — 'dressed animals' and 'knights in armour.' As a result, I wrote about chivalrous mice and rabbits who rode out in complete mail to kill not giants but cats."

He began teaching philosophy at Oxford, where he met J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien was a devout Christian and Lewis was an atheist, but they shared a love for mythology. They took a long walks around the Oxford grounds, debating the existence of God. Tolkien tried to persuade Lewis that the story of Jesus was a myth but that it had also actually happened.

The morning after one of those walks, Lewis went with his brother to the zoo. He said, "When we set out [for the zoo] I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion." He became the most prominent Christian apologist in the world. He recorded a series of lectures for radio, which were broadcast in England during World War II, and many people gathered around their radios to take comfort from his ideas in the midst of bombing raids. The lectures were collected into his book Mere Christianity (1952).

But he is best remembered for the seven books in the Chronicles of Narnia, which he started publishing in 1950. Lewis decided to write for children, even though he never had any children himself and had never had any strong relationships with children. He wanted to give children what he had gotten himself from fairytales when he was a child.

C.S. Lewis said, "You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me."

Emily: Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?

Stage Manager: No. (pause) The saints and poets, maybe they do some.

— From "Our Town," by Thornton Wilder

Wednesday morning we follow my father and my two nephews out to Ficke where we meet up with Rich Williams, who's grandparents are buried somewhere on the grounds, though he's not sure where. Standing at the gate of the cemetery we peer into the brush, just able to make out the more prominent stones through the now-leafless foliage. Rich has a chainsaw and my dad and I have long-handled clippers, so we step inside the gate and start expanding our beachhead, with the youngsters dragging the cut branches and trunks out to a place where the farmer has said we can pile the brush; he said he'll come back this winter when there's some snow on the ground to burn it himself.


The day, and the job, lies before us.

Slowly but surely the ground begins to clear, revealing the smaller stones, many of which are nameless due to wear. The cemetery is in Franklin County, and the county's on-line records actually include a incomplete listing of names and dates for those buried here. According to these, the first burial was an unnamed McCallister daughter, three and a half months old, placed here in 1867. Three more McCallisters under the age of one are also buried here; in fact, of the 36 entries in the records, thirteen are children. The last person buried here was Cecil Blankenship, in 1962.


One of three Ficke children, buried in the cemetery that bears their family name.

By the morning's first break I've just made it to my great-great-grandfather's headstone, so I finish clipping around it before joining the others. I'm a little surprised at the location of the stone; the brush was so thick and disorienting when we discovered it in the summer that I had pictured the grave as being deeper in and more to the north.


We cut the brush and carry it out, revealing the cemetery row by row.

By the time we knocked off work on Wednesday Rich had found his grandparents and just about everything had been cut down and drug over to a brush pile about 25 feet long, six or eight feet deep, and piled as high as we could throw it. When we returned on Friday the Mall Diva and my mom's brother had joined the crew and so had Rich's son, Kevin. They ran a brush-cutting mower over the grounds knocking down anything we didn't get on Wednesday. One thing we hadn't expected was the profusion of yucca plants that covered the ground. The tropical-looking thick green leaves, or fronds, were tough and resilient and the tuberous roots were sometimes as thick as my wrist. We hacked with machete and mattock to cut these off at ground level; the farmer said he'd come back in the early spring with a certain spray that hopefully will discourage their coming back.

The revealed ground was very uneven. In some places it had heaved up and in others the graves had obviously sunk. There were several broken and/or toppled stones and some that appeared to be missing. There were a couple of places where I'd be clearing a line of headstones and find a gap between two stones where there should have been a third. I worked the ground around there with a rake but couldn't find a trace. In the very center of the cemetery we uncovered several flat stones piled together. At first we thought these were headstones because of their size and shape, but they had no trace of markings. As we pulled more undergrowth and dirt away they appeared to be the foundation for something, perhaps a monument or decoration of some sort. A low spot next to these stones, and out of line with the rows of graves, made an ideal spot to rake the leaves and smaller pieces cut by the brush mower for burning. The collection, along with a low-walled enclosure toward the back of the cemetery that was filled with yucca but contained no markers, stimulated my archeological curiosity as I tried to picture what the place might have looked like 100 years ago.


The Mall Diva took this photo of my dad, me and Tiger Lilly clearing and burning on Friday.

While I'd like to know more about the construction and physical history of the place, I spent a lot of time as I worked thinking about the people who had lived and died and been brought to this place. When you see the names and dates and relationships carved into the stones, the families grouped together, or you clear the ground between two particular lines of headstones and suddenly realize they are only four feet apart — well...

It's hard not to dwell on the body-breaking and dangerous labor, the capriciousness of disease and infirmity, the hardscrabble existence gouged from this earth. And yet I also picture the bond of community and common cause that united them, even as each grim gathering returned to this ground to stand around the just-turned earth that is now packed and sunken before me. I see some weeping, because that is expected, and I see some that are stoic, because it is what they expected, but they grip the arm of their neighbor and walk away from that place because tomorrow they will plow another furrow, or create another child, because what else is there but the hope and the faith that this crop will prosper, that this child will live to make a difference, and that the next generation or even the one after that, will not have to suffer like this, and maybe, just maybe, they'll appreciate it.



It's a very sunny day, and unseasonably warm for late November. My long-sleeved denim workshirt is sweaty and I wish I had brought a tee-shirt or something lighter along to work in, but who expects 70s at Thanksgiving in Missouri? Poor me. Oh well, I just unbutton my sleeves and roll each one up to the elbow, and retake my grip on the mattock, and as I do so it occurs to me that that's what those around me would have done. I take another hack at a yucca and imagine I hear my great-great-grandpa snort.

"Let it rest, George," I say, under my breath.

(hide)

Update:

My wife also made it home from her chaperone assignment without falling asleep, largely due to the startling effect of watching what passes for dancing these days. You see, there's this thing called "freak" dancing - because it "freaks" parents out, I think - that involves a young lady(?) placing her fundament against her escort's crotch and both of them vigorously gyrating (music optional). It appears that girls have finally found a way to get the boys out on the dance floor. My wife felt as if she should get out on the floor as well, but with a bucket of water or a garden hose. She settled for prayer instead. It kind of makes the old notion of a guy hoping for a goodnight kiss seem a bit quaint, doesn't it? I mean, after three hours of something like that with teenaged nerve endings a peck on the cheek would be - oh, shall we say - anti-climactic?

For students at Central High School in St. Paul, this fall's homecoming was nothing like the dances of years past.

It was held in the vast space of the school's gym rather than the cafeteria, the lights were kept on, and administrators walked around shining flashlights to separate couples who got too close.

"It's really awful," said junior Laura Mohn of the new rules. "It's not right. It's not fun."

"This is not how it's supposed to be," complained junior Daniel Chahla.

Central is one of several schools in the metro area cracking down on dance behavior that some administrators say has become borderline obscene.

Inspired by popular music and videos, "grinding" or "club dancing" or "twerking" — in which girls swivel their buttocks into boys' crotches — has been around for several years. But it's become so blatant and widespread at school dances, officials say, that they're having trouble lining up adults willing to chaperone any more.

"The dancing's got so overtly sexual that we have to address it," said Tim Wald, principal at White Bear Lake High School's south campus. He described the movement as "a rhythmic grinding that … really appears to be sexual behavior."

"Now it applies to a lot of our students," Wald said. "We can't just pick out those who are misbehaving."

Roseville Area High principal Connie Nicholson said the homecoming dance this fall drew about a third the crowd it usually does after the school said it would "not be allowing dancing that simulates sexual activity."

Apple Valley High School has gone from nine dances a year to three — homecoming, Sadie Hawkins and prom — after students objected to new rules last year forbidding grinding. Students essentially boycotted the "smaller, sort of come-as-you-are dances," said principal Steve Degenaar. "Kids are OK with the rules as long as it's a major theme dance," he said.

On the one hand, it's less of a headache for administrators if students who aren't prepared to follow the rules stay away from dances.

On the other, dances can be a way to bond students to their school and create camaraderie. And some worry that pushing students to find their own fun on a Friday night will encourage risky behavior.

As Amy Knutson, secretary of the student council at Central, put it after watching classmates bail out on her school's homecoming dance: "I don't think it's a healthier alternative to go to clubs."

Update:

Already a pariah and pop-culture punch line, O.J. Simpson plans a book and TV interview to discuss how, hypothetically, he could have killed his ex-wife and her friend

... Denise Brown, sister of Simpson's slain ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, lashed out at publisher Judith Regan of ReganBooks for "promoting the wrongdoing of criminals" and commercializing abuse...

(Snip)

... Regan refused to say what Simpson is being paid for the book but said he came to her with the idea.

"This is an historic case, and I consider this his confession," Regan told The Associated Press...

"Health care is coming back," Clinton warned, adding, "It may be a bad dream for some."

Not surprisingly, some of those out of power have been trying to repackage their memes in "value" oriented terms, confident (or at least hopeful) that their recent failures were merely a matter of poor communication and not a faulty philosophy. Others on that side, however, shout "Theocracy, booga booga!" as if this were a nation of vampires horrified at the sight of a crucifix. Yet their own One True Faith compels them to react to judicial nominees in the same way the Taliban greeted reliefs of Buddha.

Or perhaps these are the vampires, fleeing the dawn and being cornered in a crypt - be it the Senate Cloak Room or the faculty lounge at a University. Hissing at the rabble that have pursued them, they draw themselves up in as fierce a manner as can be mustered to demand imperiously that no one touch that window shade.

They know the day must have its turn, but if they can hold out long enough then night, too, will again have its way.

Jedidiah 1777
(Eliza Gilkyson)

Jedidiah out in the snow
Walkin' the frozen trenchlines
Wet boots and his wool coat comin' apart at the seams.
Rations of hard-baked dough,
Handfuls of melting snow
What else can a man live on but his dreams?

Not twenty miles away,
in the mansions of Philadelphia,
Loyalists lay their money down on the king.
We've provision enough for the day,
but if victory were just for the wealthy
Our noble cause wouldn't be worth the hardship we're suffering.

Send the cloth for a good waistcoat,
I dream of your hearth and the fields of oat.
I awake to the drum and the trembling note of the piper.
May it please God in His great mercy,
To shelter our friends and our family.
I remain your son most faithfully,
Jedidiah

I have seen a man, who has seen a man
who has heard the king,
Tell of his intention our independence to declare.
The peace will undoubtedly bring
A great revolution in commerce;
May it be our rightful fortune to come in for a share.

My regards to a certain Miss Moore,
I've stated my honorable intentions for her;
That upon my return from this necessary war she'll be my wife.
May it please God in His great mercy
to restore the joys of domesticity.
Salutations to the family,
Jedidiah

I rejoice that the cause we're engaged in
is in the hands of an Almighty Sovereign;
Who I doubt not is accomplishing the ends of His desire.
My love to you and the fair Miss Moore;
Spare me a bottle from the cellar store,
and in my name let the contents pour,
Jedidiah

I hadn’t come to Nicaragua prepared for such joy. Like most readers of papers and watchers of newscasts, I thought the Sandinistas were supposed to win this one. I’m a member of the working press; you’d think I’d know better than to listen to journalists. But there’s a little bit of the pigeon in every good confidence man. I even believed the February 21st ABC-Washington Post poll that had Ortega leading Chamorro by sixteen percentage points. That is – I blush to admit this – I accepted the results of an opinion poll taken in a country where it was illegal to hold certain opinions. You can imagine the poll-taking process: “Hello, Mr. Peasant, I’m an inquisitive and frightening stranger. God knows who I work for. Would you care to ostensibly support the dictatorship which controls every facet of your existence, or shall we put you down as in favor of the UNO opposition and just tear up your ration card right here and now?”

REPUBLICAN ATTACK AD
Soft, lilting female voice. Because voters worry that Republicans are too right-wing, the voice-over in Republican attack ads is always a sweet, reasonable-sounding woman.

"Did you know that Jim Webb reads novels? That he thinks about sex? Jim Webb has never denied thinking about sex! Jim Webb has been known to receive money. The exact amount of money he has received has never been disclosed! Many drug dealers drive their cars on highways, and Jim Webb drives his car on highways. So what's the difference between Jim Webb and a drug dealer? While serving in the Vietnam War, Webb frequently used profanity, and is rumored to have thought about sex. When five brave firefighters died trying to stop the California wildfire, Jim Webb did nothing to rescue them -- nothing! As a Democrat, Jim Webb advocates mandatory homosexuality, tax-funded Cadillacs for welfare recipients, the abolition of religion, surrendering our country to the United Nations and letting Saddam Hussein out of jail on a technicality. If Jim Webb is elected, Osama bin Laden will be placed in control of the United States military. Why won't Jim Webb release the details of his thoughts?"

DEMOCRATIC ATTACK AD
Booming, macho voice. Because voters worry that Democrats are too squishy, the voice-over in Democratic attack ads always sounds like a steroid-swilling bodybuilder.

"Maybe George Allen is no longer a Satan-worshipper, but many Satan-worshippers are skilled at hiding their true allegiance. The postman, the school principal -- can you be sure they are not Satan worshippers? Can you be sure George Allen is not? As a Republican, George Allen favors mandatory pregnancy, nuclear war against Canada, and the resumption of the Atlantic slave trade. George Allen never has explained adequately where he was on May 23, 1983. Investigators have found many documents related to George Allen. George Allen has been observed leaving meetings. Some of these meetings occurred in private! If George Allen is re-elected, major oil companies will charge for gasoline. George Allen has never denied that George W. Bush is President of the United States. George Allen, George Bush. Powerful insiders don't want you to know that both have the same first name!"

Washington, D.C. -- Nov. 7: Former president Jimmy Carter leads a team of international observers that will monitor elections in the United States today. Observers from Nicaragua, Guatemala, North Korea, Mexico, Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan and the West Bank will watch polling places for signs of fraud or suppression of the vote. In recent years, Carter has led many international teams to monitor elections in fledgling democracies plagued by voting scandals. This is Carter's first election-monitoring mission to the United States itself. International observers wearing blue armbands will be stationed at polling places across Florida, Ohio, Illinois and Nevada. "We hope to help the American people vote freely and see their votes counted," Nicaraguan team member Daniel Ortega told the Associated Press. Observation team member Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria said, "Once America learns to hold elections without irregularities, further intervention by the international community should no longer be necessary."

Related point: Jodi Rudoren and Aron Philhofer of the New York Times recently reported that 1,421 state and local governments have hired Washington lobbyists, who in 2004 spent $110 million on lobbying in order get more than $60 billion designated as "earmarks," or special budget favors to specific places or programs. That is to say, $110 million in state and local tax money was expended to divert $60 billion in federal tax money -- most of which came from people who live in states and cities, state and local taxpayers being the sources of most federal taxes. To get these favors, state and local governments hire as lobbyists former members of Congress or former congressional staffers, who then use their insider status to fleece the taxpayer. This is a classic "sliver strategy" -- Congress hands out $60 billion in favors so that cronies of members of Congress can rake in $110 million in lobbying fees. Because what goes directly into the cronies' pockets is only a small sliver of the overall waste, the sliver goes unnoted. I bet there is bipartisan consensus that Republicans and Democrats alike both don't want this investigated, either!

Wouldn't taxpayers come out way ahead if the salaries of members of Congress were raised to, say, $1 million per year, but in return all forms of outside income were banned for senators and representatives while retired members were permanently banned from lobbying? Raising congressional salaries to $1 million per year would cost the federal taxpayer $535 million -- a bargain compared to $60 billion in earmarks and other wasteful spending that Congress approves for reasons of cronyism.

Dear, the Garage Enhancement Truck Is Here: Recently TMQ included an item about fancy garage appliances as the new frontier in suburban acquisitiveness. How soon, I asked, until garage renovation strikes? Answer: not long! Many readers, including Jayne Mulholland of Charleston, S.C., alerted me to this new company, Premiere Garage, which calls itself "The Leader in Garage Enhancement." Let's hope that's natural garage enhancement! Check the company's photos, which showcase spotless garages unlike any that have ever existed in human history. These garages remind you of car ads that feature a guy in a convertible roaring down the open road with not one single other vehicle anywhere for miles around. The Premiere Garage FAQs page has this exchange:

"Q. My garage is full of stuff. What do we do with it while the floor is being coated?"

"A. It is the homeowners' responsibility to remove all possessions from the garage."

Being an Evil Overlord seems to be a good career choice. It pays well, there are all sorts of perks and you can set your own hours. However every Evil Overlord I've read about in books or seen in movies invariably gets overthrown and destroyed in the end. I've noticed that no matter whether they are barbarian lords, deranged wizards, mad scientists or alien invaders, they always seem to make the same basic mistakes every single time. With that in mind, allow me to present...

The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.


2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.


3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.


4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.


5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.


6. I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.


7. When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."


8. After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.


9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.


10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum — a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.


11. I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.


12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.


13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.


14. The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.


15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.


16. I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."


17. When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.


18. I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.


19. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.


20. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.