RESPITE FROM LUNACY

I just returned from ten days on the Nile in Egypt. It was a special experience to see it once again, this time through the eyes of my 12 year-old son Jackson:

34 years ago, back in 1971, I bribed an Egyptian Army guard at the end of the day when no one was around, and climbed the Great Pyramid (in the background behind the Sphinx). I sat on the top (it’s a small flat square, not a point) to watch the sunset and read Aristotle’s Metaphysics. It was a moment I’ll never forget as long as I live. Now I get to give Jackson his own set of memories.

A wonderful side-benefit to such an experience is that you get to ignore newspaper headlines and all the general craziness of the world, if only for a few days. I didn’t read a single paper or magazine while I was gone. So when I arrived back home to wade through those that had piled up in my absence, one lunatic event after another kept popping out at me.

The first was about a poll of the French taken by TV channel France 2, as to whom they considered to be the greatest French man or woman in their country’s history. Napoleon finished number 16, but in the top ten were two comedians, Coluche and Bourvil (who??) and singer Edie Piaf. Socialist crook Francois Mitterand came in 22nd, well ahead of Joan of Arc, who placed 31st. At least the Maid of Orleans beat out pop singer Johnny Hallyday at 34th. The Sun King himself, Louis XIV, had no such luck, placed at number 50.

No matter how bad you think the American school system is, it isn’t miseducating kids to be such historically illiterate morons as are the French. The Brits, however, could give the Frenchies a run for their idiot money, as the story also revealed a similar poll taken by the BBC. It started out not so bad, the British believing Churchill to be the greatest individual in their history. It then quickly degenerated, with Princess Diana rated above Shakespeare, Darwin, and Newton, and John Lennon above Queen Elizabeth I.

Some 45,000 IQ-challenged products of British education showed up in London’s Hyde Park last week to chant such insights as “George Bush, Uncle Sam, Iraq will be your Vietnam,” obviously oblivious of Iraq’s elections and the current rollup of the terrorist “insurgency.” The funniest picture was of this angry young girl carrying a sign demanding “No War On Iran,” and wearing a button of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She evidently thinks the way to achieve nuclear disarmament is to allow Iran to have nukes.

My laughing fits continued with stories here in the US. 59 former State Department diplomats have written a letter demanding the Senate not confirm John Bolton as Ambassador to the UN. Among the signers were Princeton Lyman, Monteagle Stearns, and Spurgeon Keeny.

These weirdo first names are not made up inner city jive monikers like Paluja Ratoomba. Only Ivy League ultra-blue-blood aristocrat pansies get names like that. I’m sure Bolton is worried sick that a bunch of over-the-hill Little Lord Fauntleroys are scared he is going to explain reality to the representatives of Third World dictatorships.

This was followed by a WaPo (Washington Post) piece on how US “arms control advocates” are condemning “the Bush Administration’s push for military superiority in space.” The WaPo, of course, never thought to ask these “advocates” if they preferred the Chinese to have military superiority in space rather than us. The Pentagon has about the same concern for these folks as Bolton has for Zimbabwe’s UN ambassador. Just more WaPo anti-military propaganda posing as news.

But then the lunacy stopped being funny.

At about the same time President Bush was hosting Mexico’s Vicente Fox in Texas and condemning participants in the Minuteman Project as “vigilantes,” the US soccer team was playing Mexico’s in Mexico City, with Mexican spectators booing the US national anthem and chanting “Osama! Osama!” when the US scored a goal.

It’s as if Bush has willfully blinded himself to the war Mexico’s intellectual and ruling elite are waging upon American sovereignty. The Minuteman Project people are patriots, Mr. President, and deserve our – and your – admiration and gratitude, not your insults. They are heroes volunteering to do a job – protecting our borders from illegal invasion – that you refuse to do.

Grimmest of all is the lunacy of Terri Schiavo’s murder by Florida Circuit Judge George Greer. Read Nat Hentoff’s guest author essay Judicial Murder , and you’ll come away convinced that George Greer and Michael Schiavo should be prosecuted for homicide.

The Bush Brothers’ refusal to prevent Terri’s killing will do lasting political damage to them both. As John Fund of the Wall Street Journal points out, if Janet Reno could override a court order and have Elian Gonzalez kidnapped at gunpoint to be returned to Communist Cuba, either Jeb or George Bush could have overridden Greer to save Terri’s life. Her death will be an ineradicable stain on GW’s presidency and Jeb’s chances for the White House.

If any good is to come of this tragedy it would be to catalyze the recognition among Americans that America is no longer a democracy. It has become a krytocracy, a government of judges. We no longer have a government of, by, and for the people. America today is ruled not by elected representatives, but unelected judges, governed not by law but by the arbitrary – and in the case of George Greer, homicidal – whims of people in black robes.

The struggle for freedom and against lunacy is never over. Any respite is very brief. The Anti-Communist RENAMO guerrillas in Mozambique, fighting to liberate their country from Soviet colonial tyranny and with whom I spent a lot of time in the 1980s, had a motto: A Luta Continua, Portuguese for The Struggle Continues. No matter what tragedies befall us and insanities beset us, we must never give up fighting for life and freedom, and against the forces of death and oppression.