A man of prodigious fortune, coming to add his opinion to some light discussion that was going on casually at his table, began precisely thus: "It can only be a liar or an ignoramus who will say otherwise than," and so on. Pursue that philosophical point, dagger in hand.

--Michel de Montaigne, Of the art of discussion.



Stab back: cmnewman99-at-yahoo.com


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FOR RICHARD STANDS:


You know, as in "and to the republic..." (Don't tell me you used to recite it straight.) Some people seem to be sure that the Ninth Circuit's decision on the pledge is going to provide some sort of godsend political rallying point for the Republicans. God, I hope not. Make that under God. It's already hard enough for the world to keep a straight face when W. lectures Arafat on democratic legitimacy, even if he's right, and it had to be said, and he deserves some credit for being willing to go there despite his own obvious vulnerability. So now what else can we do to enhance our credibility in seeking to rally the world to a fight against theocratic thug rule? Let's see…hmmm…I've got it! Let's take a big stand on how essential to the fabric of our nation it is to start off each child's school day with a quick dose of ceremonial deism.


I actually find the whole pledge, not just the "under God" part, to smack of creepy religionism. Don’t get me wrong—this isn't because I'm against patriotism. I'm all for patriotism. At least, I'm all for it when we're talking about spontaneous, heartfelt expressions of joy and pride about who we are and where we live and what principles we aspire to stand for. I'm all for it when it's a voluntary expression of solidarity and moral support in the face of some threat to all of the above. I'm for it when it's the kind of thing that so floored Oriana Fallaci after 9/11:

I don’t know whether in Italy you saw and understood what happened in New York when Bush went to thank the rescue men (and women) who are digging in the ruins of the two towers trying to save some survivor but only coming up with the occasional nose or finger. In spite of this, they do it without giving up. Without resigning themselves, so that if you ask them how they do it they say: "I can allow myself to be exhausted, but not to be defeated." All of them. The young, the very young, the old, the middle aged. White, black, yellow, brown, purple... You saw them, didn’t you? While Bush was thanking them all they did was wave their little American flags, raise their clenched fists, and roar: "USA! USA!" In a totalitarian country I’d have thought: "Look how nicely organized this was by the Powers That Be!" Not in America. In America you don’t organize these things. You don’t manage them, you don’t command them. Especially in a disenchanted metropolis like New York and with workers like New York workers. New York workers are real pieces of work. Freer than the wind. They don’t even obey their unions. But if you touch their flag, or their Patria… In English the word Patria doesn’t exist. To say Patria you have to put two words together. Father Land. Mother Land. Native Land. Or you can simply say My Country. But they have the noun "patriotism." They have the adjective "patriotic." And apart from France, I can’t imagine a country more patriotic than America. God! I was so moved to see those workers clenching their fists and waving their flags and roaring USA-USA-USA, without anyone ordering them to. And I felt a kind of humiliation.

Would Fallaci have felt that kind of admiration and humiliation at the sight of a roomful of somnolent schoolchildren standing in robotic unison and reciting with hand over heart a litany penned by a socialist utopian and originally intended to be recited with arms outstretched in fascist-style salute? Non credo, caro. Non credo proprio. Talk about organized. Talk about managed. Talk about commanded. Even if technically no one is required to join in, this uninspiring little display has Powers-That-Be written all over it.


Speaking of Powers-That-Be, the one experience of my childhood that closely resembled reciting the pledge was reciting the Profession of Faith at church. Apostate though I am, I was raised Catholic. And though I stopped attending Mass regularly over eighteen years ago, I still remember the words of that credo, drilled into my head by weekly repetition during the formative years of my mind. "God from God. Light from light. True God from True God. Begotten not made. One in being with the Father. Through Him all things were made." Occult epigrams encapsulating the winning side of long-dead theological disputes. Repeated in numbing cadence. Injected like defunct viral cells to inoculate us against the off chance we might run into some second millenium strain of Arianism and our souls thus be imperilled. Had any latter-day son of Valens tried to put the ol' homoiousion story over on me, the words of the broken record would have risen up unbidden to counter him. "One in being with the Father." Anything so automatized has to be true. Just as I will carry to my grave the unalterable conviction that Pete Ellis Dodge may be found at Long Beach Freeway, Firestone Exit, Southgate. (If you grew up in So. Cal., you'll understand.) I remember once coming out of church and overhearing a conversation between a girl who had just attended Mass for the first time and the friend whose family had brought her there. Her comment was, “All those people speaking in unison. It’s really scary.” At the time this surprised me, used to it as I was. “Scary?” How? But upon thinking about it from her perspective I realized that it was. Which brings us back to the pledge.


Put aside for now the part about God, added in 1954 at the urging of the Knights of Colombus to show we ain't godless commies. (If communists believed in God, would their views have any more to recommend them?) What about the rest of it? What about the bizarre inversion in primacy of the flag and the republic for which it stands, the latter mentioned as though it were a mere afterthought? As though anyone holding that flag or invoking it would thereby obtain a moral claim on the speaker’s allegiance though the sheer talismanic force conferred by the pledge. And what about the most insidious incantation of all: "One nation, indivisible." In tone and purpose, this is really the equivalent of "One in being with the Father. Through Him all things were made." Which is pretty much how Bellamy & comrades wanted us to feel about the national government. You see, there had been another soul-imperilling heresy in the dark times of the past. This one was called State Sovereignty. Its adherents had been pretty well put to the sword by St. Athanasius Lincoln, and future efforts at conversion were likely to be hobbled by the infamous crimes in whose service the creed had been invoked. (How tragic that such evil should embrace and besmirch an otherwise righteous doctrine! But then I am a heretic.) All the same, best to inoculate young souls against the heresy that Power and Purpose should ever be predicated of any entity less than the Nationhead. Best not to risk that youthful minds should think it within the pale to find separate meaning in each word of the deity’s title and question what contingencies, what qualifications, might underlie the word “United.” And thus the good Reverend Bellamy bequeathed us a new catechism: In the beginning was the Nation. E uno unum.


Yes, I know it didn’t work, in the long run. I know the heresy has sprung up again, and that its priests now hold sway in the high temple, albeit by the slimmest of margins. How ironic that they are now expected to come to the aid of a credo wrought in opposition to all their works. And that they probably will, if needed. How doubly ironic that the phrase they’ll be called upon to save, the phrase on whose preservation hangs the Moral Compass of the Nation (or so it will be argued) is one that can be saved only by being declared to be meaningless. Not really a prostration before the Divine, just a quaint archaism, a traditional flourish. What, one wonders, would Thomas More have made of such a dilemma? But there are no Mores in this temple. Like his betrayer, they’ve already lost their souls, and for their trouble they gained not even all of Wales. Just the initial.


So you see, I am among those unable to work up much spittle and froth over the unlikely prospect that the pledge will go the way of the cane as an aid to improving the minds and characters of our schoolchildren. Indeed, I would regard the cane as far more likely to be salutary. But my lack of concern at the result need not restrain me from having a stab at the logic being used to achieve it. Or rather, at the conveniently selective employment of that logic.


Let’s begin by reading the language in question: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .” Not merely “Congress shall make no law establishing a religion.” Congress is forbidden to make any law even respecting an establishment of a religion, whether to set it up, tear it down, call it funny names, or regulate the manner in which it functions. This was a clause that prohibited Congress from creating a National Church yes, but that equally prohibited it from telling the states they could not establish religions. The Establishment Clause is not a Disestablishment Clause. It is one that enjoins absolute hands-off neutrality from the national government with regard to whatever church-state relationship the individual states should choose to adopt.


Now fast forward to the aftermath of the holy war, when the nation ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. Some regions did so at gunpoint, but we’ll let that pass. For the Fourteenth Amendment is a wonderful thing. Really. Be not misled by my heretical tendencies: I believe in State Sovereignty not because I fetishize either states or sovereignty, but because I want Power to be kept in check by division and competition. Giving it all to a federal leviathan strikes me as fulfilling Caligula’s wish that all the Romans should have one neck--so he could cut it. If I say states should be sovereign, it is to increase the number of those who may yet flee the knife. But sovereigns, even smaller ones, are never to be trusted. Never to be given free rein. Don’t even get me started about the insane notion of giving them “immunity.” (Even if in truth that was just a back-door way to erect new barriers in the path of a leviathan that had trampled its parchment ones.) So by all means, let us bind them with chains if we can. Let us preserve against their encroachments at least the same dwindling sphere of immunity we have against the leviathan.


The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment did just this. And they did it with what any lay observer might have supposed to be admirable straightforwardness. “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Got that? If you’re a U.S. citizen, and the federal government couldn’t do that to you, then a state can’t do it to you either. Clear enough? Too clear, apparently. There was a reason the church used to keep the Bible in Latin, you know. The priesthood decided that whatever “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” meant, it didn’t mean the obvious things, the rights that Madison had enumerated for us when we declined to accept his assurances that we were safe because leviathan had been given no power to violate them in the first place. (Imagine that !)


So why, then, cannot the states abridge our freedom of speech, subject us to unreasonable searches, take our property for public use without compensation, if these things are not privileges or immunities? Ah, here's where the real theological heavy lifting comes in. To do such things would be to deprive us of liberty, or of property, and while the states can most assuredly deprive us of those things (not to mention life itself), they cannot do so without Due Process of Law. Say it with me: Due Process of Law. Words to conjure by, indeed. This is not the place to explore the scholastic subtleties that go into deciding which processes are or are not duly lawful (or is it lawfully due?). Let’s just note for the record that whatever umbrage certain parties take at certain penumbrae of recent emanation, the field of Constitutional Metaphysics was born not then but the moment it became necessary to cram all of our rights, traditional, enumerated, or otherwise, into a vessel not designed to bear them.


But we were talking about the Establishment Clause. What does it mean, exactly, to say that a citizen has the same privilege or immunity against the state in this regard that he would have against the federal government? As we’ve seen, the federal government was prohibited from weighing in on a state's establishment of religion one way or another. Does it even make sense to think about this structural device as protecting an individual right? It’s not as though individuals could go around “establishing” religions, anyway. Not in the sense they meant it. Only states could do that. So what forbearance vis a vis the individual is enjoined by the Establishment Clause? After all, the Free Exercise clause already tells us that the government can’t interfere with our choice of what or whom to worship, or how. Even without an Establishment Clause, the Free Exercise Clause would prevent the state from requiring us to attend a church, a synagogue, an auditing for engrams. The Free Exercise Clause would prevent the state from making the profession of some faith a prerequisite for public office or public employment, from forcing our children to recite prayers in school that went against their own beliefs. Remember, it was the Free Speech Clause that made it illegal to force children to recite the pledge in the first place, even before that pesky God nod was included. Remember Justice Jackson's stirring astrological pronouncement?

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

Alas, even Polaris proved to be a moving target. The definitions of prescription and force have expanded, while the realm within which they are to be applied has shrunk. This happened I think because of a basic contradiction. No, not between the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. I refer to the untenable proposition that you can have absolute Separation of Church and State without absolute Separation of School and State. Education is nothing if not the inculcation of values, the taking of official positions on matters of right and wrong, the prescription of what shall be orthodox. Suppose Mr. Newdow's daughter were to go to school next year and hear the teacher say the following: "We're not going to recite the pledge anymore, because not everyone believes in God, and we don't want to make them feel bad by engaging in a ceremony that makes them feel left out. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that the only firm basis for morality is belief in God, and while we have to respect atheists' right to believe what they do, I still intend to demonstrate to you children this year as a matter of historical fact that evil and destruction are the necessary results of godlessness."


Would Mr. Newdow have a new claim? Would the school have "sen[t] a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community"? If so, how do we distinguish the experiences of all the children whose families' dearly-held religious beliefs are contradicted matter-of-factly by public school teachers every day? If the Establishment Clause forbids the one, it ought to forbid the other. If my atheist child has a right to a public education that doesn't send any message that atheism is contrary to the values of the political community, why doesn't the fundamentalist child down the street have a right to one that doesn't make him feel an outsider for believing that wives should obey their husbands and that homosexuality is sinful? (Or, for that matter, why don't we prohibit the indoctrination of our children in the secular religion of deep ecology? If the term "property" is capacious enough to include welfare rights, why should not "religion" also include evangelistic moral systems that don't mention God? But deconstruction has always been a tool of very selective application. Words have only relational value, except that no always means no.)


This is why if you take seriously the claim of harm at stake in the pledge decision, I think you have to accept the desirability of the voucher decision. If we are committed to providing all children with a publicly funded education (leave aside for now whether we should be), and we are honest about not wanting that education to denigrate anyone's religious (or irreligious) beliefs, then the only solution is to give people a choice of which educational experience the public will fund for them. If you think it violates your rights to have any of your tax dollars fund someone else's religious views, your only recourse is to call for the abolition of all publicly funded education. Because as long as the government is funding education, tax dollars are being used to cultivate orthodoxy on matters that, to someone, are matters of religious belief. If education must be provided publicly, it should be on the same terms as food. If you can't afford food, we don't set up a government-run restaurant with a government-endorsed menu and send you there to eat. We give you food stamps and you go off to the grocery store of your choosing. Why should education take place in government-run schools with government-endorsed curricula? Indeed, shouldn't liberals be at least as concerned with the government's teaching of civics as with its teaching of religion? Isn't letting the government teach our children the rights and duties of their citizenship rather like letting the fox guard the henhouse? The foxes have certainly always thought so.


posted by CMN at 12:33 PM
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I'm glad to see that Greenpeace has refined its position somewhat.
posted by CMN at 3:48 PM
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THE UNBEARABLE BEING OF ITNESS:

Since this story got a fair amount of play (pun intended), I took the opportunity to interview one of the students from the school in question who just so happens to live at my house. He recently completed third grade, and informed me that to his knowledge tag was never banned completely, only forbidden on and around the playground equipment. On the blacktop and grass field it's still allowed, he says. [Caveat: Despite my source's proximity to the facts on the playground, it is with some hesitancy that I rely on him as an authoritative source, given that he has been known on more than one occasion to exhibit lack of awareness (or highly creative construction) of rules that are supposed to apply to him. Plus he really favors handball over tag. So much so that, if allowed, he would spend hours each day perfecting his killer "slicey."] He also reported that while it is an inevitable fact of life that certain participants in any given game of tag will be endowed with less celerity than others, in his experience there is usually a decent turnover rate with regard to "it" status. At the beginning of the game, this least-coveted of titles is assigned by means of the time honored "one potato" method performed on the feet of the participants, outstretched in a circle for this purpose. (I am informed that the correct term for this procedure is "shoemaker.") Anyone seeking to join the game after it has started is a "newcomer," and is required to assume "it" status as a condition of entry. I am also informed that one of the burdens of "it" status is a certain amount of taunting from those who are not "it," particularly those taking refuge in one of the areas designated as "safe." My source was unaware that this had proven inordinately traumatic for anyone, and while the aforementioned caveats still apply, I note for the record that he is far from being either the fastest or thickest-skinned student at Franklin.

My very tentative conclusions, based not only on this exhaustive field work but on my own personal experience with the administrators in question, are that the story has been rather blown out of proportion, that the safety issues referred to by the administrators most likely were the primary motivation for whatever rule was made, and that whatever mention may have been made of "self-esteem," we are probably not dealing in this instance with quite the virulent outbreak of PC excess some would imagine. (Not that such excesses do not exist, mind you.) As a matter of fact, I recall that tag got banned at my own junior high back in the early 80's, for the simple reason that certain boys (by whose behavior I of course was shocked—shocked!) were using it as a cover for the real purpose of pushing each other so as to result in "involuntary" physical contact with certain girls.

I also note that officious meddling in playground rules is hardly a recent phenomenon, hardly a symptom of Postmodern Ideological Wickedness. Though it may be a symptom of a broader, more insidious type of wickedness, the Dark Side to which PC ideology is merely the teachings of the Sith. Back when I was in fourth grade (those antediluvian days when there was only one Star Wars movie), we used to play a mean game of four square. Fast, fierce, competitive. I remember standing in line, steeling my nerves and summoning every ounce of grim determination my eight-year old soul could muster while awaiting my turn to occupy the entry square of the firing zone. To get in and stay in all recess took the kind of alertness, the kind of dexterity, the kind of intuition of which a Brad Friedel is made. You never knew which square someone would shoot the ball into, or what spin they would put on it. Sometimes they would aim for the center corner, so that the ball would just touch your square and then careen off to the side where you couldn't touch it before it bounced again. Sometimes they'd go long and rifle it back beside you so that even if you managed to make contact you'd send it flying off way out of bounds. If someone who had entered before you got out before you did, you advanced a square. And eventually, if you lasted long enough, you'd become the server. To make it to be server, even if only for a little while before being eliminated again, was an achievement. It made you feel that you'd earned your way into the big leagues. And as in all big leagues, there were rankings. There were even stats. Any kid at that end of the playground could have quantified the relative skills and weaknesses of each four square player just as though Topps had put out trading cards with each of our pictures. Just as my erstwhile interviewee can quantify the relative skills of all the handball players at Franklin now.

But then one day this glorious sport came to an end. They lined us all up outside for a school assembly at which the principal announced that henceforth anyone playing four square on the playground would be required to play according to new rules, what Justice Scalia might have referred to as "administration-approved Platonic four-square". The regulation ball would now be one of those big soft red monstrosities, not the smaller volleyball-sized sphere on which all technique was built. And they went further. Just to ensure that the game was denuded of all nuance, all skill, all possibility of stylistic differentiation, they decreed that the ball could only be struck with flat palms. Both simultaneously. No more English, no more trick serves, no room for cultivated ability at all. Charlie Brown, meet Harrison Bergeron. Apparently some kids had complained. Apparently some kids were upset that the game was too competitive, that they always got out as soon as they got in. I'd been there. I'd been frustrated. I'd gotten back in line and tried again. And slowly, painfully, I'd gotten better. I wasn't one of the best, not by a long shot. But I was in the rankings. I could usually advance a square or two before getting out. And once in a great while, I had earned a brief exhilarating tenure as server. Key word: earned. But then Equality intervened, and Achievement was banned. When it comes down to it, you really can't have both. And the key to your soul is which you'd rather see go.

But again, I'm not convinced that this is really what was going on at Franklin.

posted by CMN at 4:09 PM
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So apparently Ahn "gets" to stay at Perugia. The question, of course, is whether he really wants to now. It looks like he may not have a choice, as the club apparently had an option to buy him for another year. As for the claim that Gaucci had been going to sack Ahn anyway for bad performance, this appears to give the lie to that one. What about the comments Ahn supposedly made after the game about Korean soccer being better than Italian soccer? One would think that a little impulsive patriotic crowing would be forgivable under the circumstances, but in any case I have yet to see any such statements quoted. In fact, the only relevant Ahn quote I've seen is the following one from this Reuters story: 'I should thank Italy,' said Ahn. 'I've learnt a lot and had tough times during my two years in Italy. I think that has helped me play good matches in this World Cup.' So what's Gaucci's problem? Whatever it is, he seems to have been overruled by calmer and wiser heads in Perugia, one of whom called Ahn on the phone to say that Perugia's "esteem and consideration for Ahn had never flagged." All's well that ends well? I think it will depend on what reception the Perugini fans give Ahn when he gets back. Let's hope it's a warm one.

UPDATE: I think it will be. The Italian friend who sent me the "VaffAHNculo" remark asked me to make it clear that it was just a joke, that Italian fans certainly do not hold Ahn's goal against him. I've also heard from other Perugini who are embarrassed by Gaucci's behavior. So let's just send this silly little bit of unpleasantness down the oubliette, shall we?
posted by CMN at 4:20 PM
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THE THIRD RAIL AND THE THIRD REICH:

The other day Paola and I finally bit the bullet and went to see a financial advisor. I think it was the last straw: this means we're actually grownups now. We were of course informed that the thousands of dollars per year that we put into the National Mandatory Pyramid Scheme is money we should regard as having been flushed down the toilet as far as our own financial future is concerned. This made Jane Galt's latest Krugmanwatch particularly piquant. It also reminded me of a telling footnote that leapt out at me just a while back while I was reading Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Shirer is giving an overview of how Bismarckian statism paved the way for National Socialism. Here's the footnote:

To combat socialism Bismarck put through between 1883 and 1889 a program for social security far beyond anythng known in other countires. It included compulsory insurance for workers against old age, sickness, accident and incapacity, and though organized by the State it was financed by employers and employees. It cannot be said that it stopped the rise of the Social Democrats or the trade unions, but it did have a profound influence on the working class in that it gradually made them value security over political freedom and caused them to see in the State, however conservative, as a benefactor and a protector. Hitler, as we shall see, took full advantage of this state of mind. In this, as in other matters, he learned much from Bismarck. "I studied Bismarck's socialist legislation," Hitler remarks in Mein Kampf (p. 155), "in its intention, struggle and success." [p. 141, fn. *]

The other Bismarckian innovation that Hitler really liked and put to effective use was, of course, public schools...
posted by CMN at 8:24 AM
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Lileks does it again. He's so damn good it isn't fair.
posted by CMN at 3:32 PM
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ADVANTAGE VOLTAIRE:
For now. It was this Friday, not next. That is, today. According to the wires, the judge in Paris refused to issue an order banning the book today, but sent the case to another court that will hear arguments in greater detail. Don't know much about French procedure, but it sounds like they went in for a preliminary injunction and lost. Next will come the trial on the merits, the date for which will apparently be set by the court on July 10. Meanwhile, a group of Muslims in Switzerland has brought a similar suit.

posted by CMN at 1:21 PM
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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE U.S. TEAM:

They proved that there was no fluke, that they were worthy to be on the field with Germany and give them a run for their money. Pace Den Beste, Germany didn't crush them at all. They were too busy defending against our attacks. Geopolitically, maybe this was the best of all worlds: we did just well enough to earn the world's respect but not its hatred. (Of course, that's not what I was saying while cheering them on.) And we won't whine about that missed hands call, especially since Mexico regards it as divine justice at work. But something occurred to me while watching. Europeans like to sneer at us when we say we don't like soccer because the scores are too low. The childish Americans, who understand only quantity and not nuance. But there is something good about games with higher scores: the margin of error isn't as likely to be outcome determinative. Yes, there's still always the chance of a Bush v. Gore or Lakers v. Kings, but most of the time it's not so close that a controversial penalty call can make or break the game. When the margin of victory is so often one measley point on the other hand, the subjectivity of the rulings assumes a huge role.
posted by CMN at 10:57 AM
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MUSCADINS, MULLAHS, AND MARIANNE

Apparently a Paris court will be announcing next Friday at 1:30 p.m. whether Fallaci's book must be removed from distribution because of its alleged "islamophobia." In her recent defense of France's reputation, Fallaci said it would be "unjust, wicked" to doubt that France is still the République Française of Marianne and not the République Française of Islam. She said that the Muscadins counted a big nothing, and proclaimed that "in France liberty of thought and opinion still exists." She based this, however, on the fact that her book was on the bestseller lists and the publisher working overtime to print new copies. In a week that may no longer be the case. Not because the people will have tired of her work but because they will have been forbidden to purchase it any longer. La Rage et l’Orgueil may go the way of the Bamiyan Buddhas. Fallaci writes about that episode in her book, and says that what was most monstrous about the Taliban's act was not the destruction itself, but that it was carried out by sentence of law. Not in a fit of spontaneous rage, but calmly, deliberately, after an announcement to the world that the operation of considered principles demanded the obliteration of those artistic treasures. Well, we're about to find out what France's considered principles are. We're about to find out whether France today is made in the image of Voltaire or of Fréron. And if the court announces the latter, will there be demonstrations in the streets as there were to oppose Le Pen? Or will the Peuple docilely accept the verdict, silenced by the Muscadins who will tell them that Fallaci and Le Pen are the same thing? The same smear that allowed them to dismiss the murder of Fortuyn as ugly but somehow deserved. Will the Peuple do anything to give the world a sign that Fallaci's faith in them was not misplaced? Or will it be the sad case that when we ask whatever happened to Marianne they'll tell us with a straight face, "Oh don't worry, she's still here. Right under that burka."
posted by CMN at 10:43 AM
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RAGAZZI, E' SOLO UN GIOCO!
A friend of mine in Italy responded to my question as to what Ahn's reception would be when he went back to Perugia with the pithy phrase, "VaffAHNculo. Looks like he was right. I doubt Ahn will have much trouble finding a job elsewhere. And the Koreans have their own retort to Italian whining.

Update: I just got an email from my friend containing a picture of the Ecuadorean ref with the caption "Dead Man Walking." I sent him this link so he could see how much sympathy the rest of the world has with Italy's sentiments.
posted by CMN at 12:35 PM
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ONLY THINKING OF HER WELLBEING:
So how many guys are going to be passing this very important medical research along to their wives/girlfriends?

And how many of them will swa--I mean, buy it?
posted by CMN at 10:53 AM
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THE FLOWER OF ITALY, CRUSHED TWICE IN AS MANY DAYS:

And both times by bad calls. Well no, it's not really fair to attribute South Korea's victory to Totti's undeserved booting, any more than our victory over Mexico was because they didn't call the hands penalty. (They'd never have scored a penalty kick off Friedel anyway.) South Korea had the eye of the tiger, and their last minute comeback was earned. Although after their game against us, I was wondering whether there were any obscure grudges they were holding against Italy that we'd see pantomimed on the sidelines. I don't know; maybe Ahn's had bad service in an Italian restaurant some time and could have celebrated his goal by pretending to throw pizza dough in the air. (He plays professionally for Perugia, by the way, which is where I lived for a year and my sposa bellissima lived most of her life).


But the other Fior D'Italia… I'm talking about a Supreme Court decision that came down the other day. Now mostly these days you're going to hear civil libertarians complaining about Drayton, the case that said cops who've got you cornered in a bus don't have to say pretty please with by-the-way-you're-allowed-to-say-no on top when they "ask" if you'd mind having your bags rummaged through. And however disturbing that may be, it's at least something people can protect themselves against by the simple expedient of being informed. YOU ARE ALLOWED TO SAY NO!!

The case I'm pissed off about, on the other hand, is much harder for most people to relate to. I was clerking on the Ninth Circuit while it was being argued, and the issue was presented as an excruciatingly technical parsing of various regulations under the tax code regarding the ways in which the IRS can estimate tip income for the purpose of collecting FICA tax from employers. Yes, I know; be still my heart. But here's what it really boils down to, what's really at stake: Federal agencies like the IRS effectively combine legislative, executive, and judiciary powers, thus meeting Madison's definition of tyranny. The Supreme Court's (inadequate) justification for allowing this is that as long as Congress keeps the agencies on some sort of leash by setting out parameters within which the agency can regulate, it hasn't "really" delegated its legislative power to the executive. So if that leash is our purported protection from tyranny, how long do we want it to be?

Here, the agency in question is arguably the most powerful of them all. The one that implements what Justice Marshall called "the power to destroy." And the result in this case seems relatively trivial if you look at its direct practical effects—probably all it means is that restaurants will wind up having to pay more or less the FICA taxes they'd owe if wait staff actually reported their tips the way they're supposed to. To see why this result is disturbing, you have to restate what happened as a matter of principle. The IRS decided that since there was a lack of evidence sufficient to ascertain what certain taxpayers owed the government—a lack of evidence, mind you, that was not the taxpayers' fault—it was entitled to invent a method of estimating how much these taxpayers should owe. In other words, the IRS invented out of whole cloth a method for deciding how much of their livelihood certain citizens could be required to hand over to the government under threat of prison.

Nowhere did Congress give the IRS authorization to use this method. Congress has given the IRS authorization to do something similar when collecting income taxes, but there any lack of accurate evidence is obviously the taxpayer's own fault. When it came to FICA, Congress didn't say "just go ahead and estimate," the way it had with income tax. Instead it said, "if there's a problem, make a regulation about it." Now, the IRS could certainly have made a regulation allowing it to use its handy dandy estimation method, and had it done so, most likely there would have been no lawsuit going up to the Supreme Court. But making a regulation involves some procedural hurdles: the IRS actually has to submit for public scrutiny the method it wants to use, it has to engage in some consensus building, it has to get its feet a little dirty. It's so much easier, so much more convenient, to act by unilateral fiat. And now the Supreme Court has approved the IRS's decision not to bother jumping through the (entirely too) modest hoops that keep its power in check. Instead of enforcing what ought to be the bedrock premise of constitutional government—"If they don't have expressly granted authority to do it, they can't."—the Supreme Court took the position of "Well, it doesn't say anywhere that they can't do that, so why not?" And thus the leash was loosened again. And the dog was trained that the right way to get slack isn't to beg, but to tug.

posted by CMN at 2:47 PM
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WHY HIM?:
Here's a first-hand account from Tom Veal, the guy who suffered for linking to my sins. Scroll down to his entry of April 9.
posted by CMN at 12:21 PM
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YES, I TOOK IT DOWN. Once the Google cache runs out, it's gone. I told you, limited time only.
posted by CMN at 3:23 PM
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NOTHIN' TO DO WITH THE TIME DIFFERENCE...
Hate to say it, but this sounds like a pretty accurate descrption of why nobody here (except those of us with Europeans in the family) is following the World Cup.
posted by CMN at 2:53 PM
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THANKS TO THE IDLER for updating with a corrected reprint of my little comment on that Guardian piece. I'm not sure about the title, since really I was only responding to one critic. On the other hand, the Great White Survivor (who appears to lack permalinks) seems to think I'm one of her critics. I wouldn't say that. I'd say I'm the best kind of admirer--an objective one. But thanks for the attention.
posted by CMN at 9:29 AM
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THANK YOU SOUTH KOREA!: Well, it would have been nice to finish the first round in a blaze of glory, but given that France, Portugal and Argentina are on their way home, we really can't complain---no-one expected us to get this far. And while it would have been fun to play Italy, I guess we have slightly better odds to survive against Mexico. Come on people, let's support these guys! So the games are at 2 in the morning. It's fun to root for the U.S. in a sport where we're the long-shot underdogs.
posted by CMN at 9:17 AM
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And we have a winner, scant nanoseconds after the post went up, by none other than Dave Tepper, who by the way used this blogger template long before I did. Pretty on the ball for someone who supposedly fears sleeping through the apocolypse.
posted by CMN at 11:10 AM
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THE LUMINOUS PARALLELS:

You know, I've found myself thinking a lot lately about the similarities between la Fallaci and another woman writer whose work I greatly admire while having some serious reservations about. Let's see if anyone can guess who I'm thinking of. Here's a list of descriptions that work equally well for either of the two:

* She was born outside the U.S., and lived as a child through one of the cataclysmic political events of the 20th century, an experience that left her with an implacable sense of good and evil that would animate her thought for the rest of her life.

* She worships the virtues of courage and integrity and regards "manliness" as the highest of compliments even though she is also a principled feminist.

* She regards left and right as being ultimately two sides of the same coin and has both criticized and been savagely attacked by each side throughout her career.

* She developed her own highly idiosyncratic writing style that people either love or hate.

* Her writing includes commentary on current events, sprawling novels, passionate and devastating polemics, and an unfortunate tendency to adopt the ex cathedra tone of assumed moral authority.

* She wrote books that became huge sellers while being disdainfully dismissed by reviewers.

* She was an avowed atheist.

* She remained childless.

* She ultimately adopted New York as home.

And the prize for the first person to write in and tell me the obvious answer is... Well, I don't know. What would you like?
posted by CMN at 10:08 AM
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SOCCER ON THE BRAIN:
So France went home and Italy just barely squeaked by to earn the honor (most likely) of playing the U.S. And if they don't get a lot better and we don't get a lot worse, we could conceivably even beat them. And how many people here are even aware this is going on?
posted by CMN at 8:04 AM
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Erratum (mine, this time): I should have said North Vietnam, not North Korea. (I think Korea crept in because I've got soccer on the brain...) That's the real peril of this medium: the instant gratification of posting makes it too easy to fail to do the careful proofreading and revision that good writing requires. On the other hand, the edit function allows you to fix things even after you've published.
posted by CMN at 7:51 AM
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DOTH THE LADY PROTEST TOO MUCH?: I have posted an update below that discusses the lawsuit Oriana filed against Il Foglio. Much as I hate to say it, I'm starting to wonder whether the "death threats" she's talked about are real or inferred.
posted by CMN at 1:10 PM
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CRITICIZING ORIANA
Mind you, I do not think Oriana is above criticism. But here is an excellent example by Rana Kabbani (from the Guardian, of course) of how not to criticize her constructively. Let's give it the ol' blog once over, shall we?

A controversy has convulsed Italy and France with the publication of a rabidly Islamophobic book, La rabbia e l'orgoglio, by leading Italian publisher Rizzoli and the mainstream French publisher Plon, which has just brought out a translation. Its author, Oriana Fallaci, made a name for herself in the 70s with her vicious interviews with heads of state. Veering violently from left to right, as many Europeans have in recent years, she now pens this diatribe against Muslims, perhaps to cash in on Europe's newest xenophobia: "They breed like rats, and they piss in baptismal fonts."

It's true, she did get Henry Kissinger to admit on tape that he saw himself as a cowboy figure. Ooh, how vicious! More importantly, to describe Fallaci as "veering violently from left to right" tells us precisely nothing about the content of her ideas and ignores the rather lengthy portion of her book addressed to this issue. To hear Fallaci tell it, she has always espoused precisely the same principles, called attention to the violation of those principles wherever she saw it, and been abused for doing so by whichever side of the political establishment she happened to be exposing at the time. In a recent interview in Panorama she talked about how she had been lionized by the "left" for her harsh scrutiny of America's actions in Vietnam, and then been abruptly villified by them when she went up to North Vietnam and denounced what she saw--go figure!--as a Stalinist dictatorship. (I'm currently reading her book on Vietnam, by the way: "Nothing and so be it." It is harrowing stuff, and ought not to be out of print in this country.)

Fallaci has always been a liberal in the true sense of the word: she stands for liberty. She's always had the clarity and guts to see and state that totalitarianism is what it is regardless of what ideals it pays lip service to. That this is now seen as placing her on the "right" rather than the "left" means not that she is veering but that those doing the labeling have become what they were supposed to hate. As for her diatribe against Muslims, it is true that her rhetoric and descriptions are often unsettlingly visceral. She is angry, the title of her book announces the fact, and when one is angry one says unkind things. But her anger is ultimately based on principles as well. She is a liberal, and Islamism undeniably wishes to destroy liberal civilization. She is an Italian and a lover of Italian culture, and the Somalians undeniably used the Baptistry as a urinal. Kabbani doesn't deny that anything Fallaci said here is true, but merely holds it up as self-evidently impermissible to say.

Had this book's victims been anyone other than Muslims, it would not have been published, and certainly not by any self-respecting house. But Muslims are fair game now and to defame them en masse has become not only respectable, but highly profitable. The defamer has nothing to fear, as there are no laws to check such vitriolic prejudice, nor do Muslims have the organised self-defence groups that Jews have formed so successfully to silence would be anti-semites.

I see. Only books that say mean things about Muslims are allowed to be published in France. They would never dare to publish, for example, something accusing a powerful white U.S. politician of conniving at the slaughter of thousands of his fellow citizens. And if defaming Muslims en masse is so respectable, why is Fallaci getting so much flack for it? Why isn't she basking in the warm adulation of her fellow intellectuals for doing her part to bag the fair game? How is it exactly that she's being sued over her book if there are no laws to check her vitriolic prejudice? As for organized self-defence groups to silence those who criticise Muslims, I admit I don't know much about the topic. I've heard there's a fella who does, though. Rushdie something.

One can dismiss Fallaci's rantings as those of an enraged has-been who, even in her heyday, communicated her ego in her writing. Like that other ageing beauty, Brigitte Bardot, now the sun-wizened pin-up of the south of France's National Front, Fallaci's hatred and fear of Muslims is both visceral and hysterical - no doubt exacerbated by the fact that she lives in New York and seems to have swallowed wholesale the US government's denomination of Arabs and Muslims as synonymous with "terrorists".

Yup, them docile New Yorkers. Swallowing up everything the U.S. government has to say with nary a belch. That the same U.S. government whose chief executive made a point of going to a mosque right after the bombing and has said umpteen times that we have nothing against Arabs or Muslims--huge numbers of whom are our fellow citizens--but only against idiots who think being a good Arab or a Muslim means trying to see how many people you can blow up? Did any French Muslim leaders visit French synagogues a while back to assure people that they didn't condone the new French sport of beating up Jewish soccer players? And the really funny thing, Kabbani, is that here you have it backwards when the truth might have served your intended rhetorical purpose better. Fallaci didn't swallow anything the goverment said. She cursed them out for incompetence and pooh poohed Bush's inclusive statements as nothing but a sop to get the American-Muslim community to turn in the terrorists in their midst. As for the personal barbs, whatever. Sure, she's got an ego. She's quite a character, and quite likes the character she is. For a has-been though, she sure has a lot of people interested in what she has to say.

In contrast to her anti-Muslim hysteria is her equally hysterical fervour for Jews, as though to damn the former were somehow to help the latter. It is interesting that in France, high-profile Jews like Bernard-Henri Levy have been among the few to send her packing. If I were Jewish, I would run screaming from such an exploitative and ultimately demeaning espousal of my people's suffering.

Fallaci's accolade of Ariel Sharon as a "Shakespearean figure" would have left the bard himself cursing in quatrains. Our great modern-day dramatists - Harold Pinter most notably, or Ronald Harwood, both Jewish - would cringe at such a comparison and at the sinister political sentiments lurking behind it. They would instantly see a betrayal of humanity in taking sides so cheaply.

She said he was "tragic and Shakespearean." And this is an accolade? Let's just take a gander at the list of tragic Shakespearean figures and see which ones we'd feel real special about being analogized to. Let's see...there's the guy who murdered his house guest because he couldn't stand up to his wife's career ambitions, the guy who managed to mope long enough to ensure that instead of the one person he wanted dead just about everyone in the neighborhood wound up on the rushes, the guy who manages to get himself manipulated into murdering a wife he loves and who isn't really cheating on him... Yeah, I'd really like to be a member of that club. Where do I sign up? I think what the Bard would be cursing at is the idea that anyone was dim enough to sit through his plays and think they were meant to be inspiring tales of self-improvement. As for what you'd do if you were Jewish, well, the ones who can really answer the question seem to have outvoted you by inundating Fallaci with love mail.

One cannot help but suspect that, having veered so violently from left to right, Fallaci must hate having once been in love with Alexander Panagoulis, the Greek "terrorist" who, in 1967, tried to blow up his country's dictator and was captured, imprisoned, tortured and finally freed in a general amnesty in 1973, only to be murdered by the colonels' henchmen. His life story (as recounted in Fallaci's novel, A Man, in which she glamorised herself as Bonnie to his revolutionary Clyde) is identical to that of thousands of Palestinians, whose attempts to liberate their country have now met with an outpouring of Fallaci's most virulent, pro-military bile.

Let's repeat that just once: "tried to blow up his country's dictator..." Not "tried to blow up thousands of people sitting at their office jobs." Not "tried to blow up people out buying a pizza." Not "exhorted children to strap bombs to themselves so they could die killing as many people as possible." Yup, Panagoulis is just like Arafat. The other point here, of course, is whether there is any valid analogy between the behavior of the military dictatorship in Greece and that of the democratic goverment in Israel. To justify violence one needs to say more than that one sees himself as "liberating his country." From what, exactly?

My intention, however, is not to attempt a deep psychoanalysis of Ms Fallaci, nor to give extra oxygen to a rant that would have embarrassed Benito Mussolini. It is to expose this drivel as an example of the now fashionable polemic - another weapon in the western arsenal, along with cluster bombs and missiles, with which to do battle against Muslims of every nationality and political belief.

I guess the now fashionable polemic is taking over for the now declassé tactic of insinuating but then refusing to substantiate the notion that your opponent has psychological flaws that render her opinions unworthy of serious examination.

White western Europe sees itself - wrongly, as research illustrates - as besieged by "hooded hordes" in the guise of thieving immigrants or asylum seekers. The recent, well-orchestrated campaign alerting opinion to the rise of anti-semitism in Europe camouflages the fact that Jews are not the foremost victims in the carnival of hatred. That dubious honour goes to Muslims, Europe's largest religious minority, numbering over 20 million.

They are the continent's poorest and most badly housed citizens. Their unemployment rate - double, often treble, the average - is the direct result of the increasing prejudice of employers, unchecked by any legal constraints. It is also the result of neglect, over a long period, by governments that did nothing to redress the festering sense of injustice among the young in Muslim ghettos.

Step right up, folks, to the carnival of hatred. See them fellers over there? Well, we hate em! Yes we do. And ya know what we're going to do about it, fer your thrills and entertainment? Hold onto yer seats, folks, this is gonna be good! We're gonna restrain our government from redressing their festering sense of injustice!! Whoa, nelly!

Many Muslims in Europe are poor, badly housed, and unemployed. As the most recent wave of immigrants invariably is. And as they invariably remain for a period inversely proportional to the extent to which their native culture inculcates values and skills that enable them to offer something of value to those around them. That degree from the madrassas just ain't gonna cut it on the job application. "Let's see now, Mr. Assad. I see that you excelled in denouncing the Great Satan and justifying the stultifying poverty of your home country by reference to the western imperialist exploiters. I have just the position for you." (There are, after all, only so many spots on the Guardian editorial staff available.)

I have a friend in Italy who works for a northern European company that makes cured meats, prosciutto and so forth. He's one of those guys who used to be a fashionably radical commie back in college, and even though he thinks ol' Berlusca might have a point now and again, on a gut level he still identifies with the other camp. He can't stand Fallaci; thinks she's insufferable. Died in the wool pacifist who thinks (unlike Fallaci) that the Muslims should be allowed to build mosques in Italy regardless of whether they allow Christian churches in their countries. He told me about the problems his firm has had in making efforts to hire these victims of the carnival of hatred, and believe me he's made a point of trying. He looked at me and sighed in resignation. Nine times out of ten, once hired these individuals simply seek to get away with not working. This is a factual observation, based on a cultural reality. It's not a question of race. There is a disconnect there between what makes a European society and economy work and what these people from a different world regard as the premises of social and professional interaction, what they regard as permissible, honorable, reasonable behavior. The other name for this phenomenon, of course, is "the increasing prejudice of employers, unchecked by any legal constraints." The problem in Europe is that the legal constraints work to make it almost impossible to fire someone once you've given him a job. This makes it even harder for those immigrants who would actually make good employees to be given a chance to prove it. But I doubt Kabbani will be calling anytime soon for these constraints to be loosened. After all, we wouldn't want to veer from left to right.

Though it is hardly ever reported in a media that has few Muslim writers, the vast majority of racially motivated maimings and killings across Europe over the past decade have been directed at Muslims - not at the asylum-seeking "aliens" shoved into insalubrious camps, but against second and third-generation Europeans such as my own children, whose continent this is, at least as surely as it is Oriana Fallaci's.

I'm not sure who exactly "shoved" the asylum seekers Fallaci has described into the Piazza del Duomo, but I'm sure she'd like to know so she can write him an angry letter. Please do tell. I don't doubt that there has been violence directed at Muslims in Europe. How this qualifies as "racially motivated" escapes me, but that's really beside the point since I don't think violence is any worse just because it is based on racial as opposed to any other kind of animosity. Nor, I think, does Fallaci, who I'm sure would be horrified at any violence committed against Kabbani's or any other children. I note that Kabbani refers to them as "second and third-generation Europeans." And here is the point where the discussion should really begin: How did that occur, exactly? What does it take to construct an identity that is European and liberal while at the same time being ethnically Muslim? Obviously, it can be done. Nowhere does Fallaci seem to acknowledge this, and that I think is where she is at fault. She seems unable to conjure the image of a Muslim-Italian family who goes to services at the local mosque and then goes into the centro to buy a gelato without ever having the faintest desire to blow up the Duomo or piss on the cathedral. No doubt her personal experience makes that image hard to picture. I'd have hoped that living here for so long would have made it easier. But that's the image the Europeans need to strive for. And even if she's unable to believe in that image, Fallaci has an undeniable point: you don't get there by conferring social welfare rights on huge influxes of illegal immigrants who exhibit no respect for or desire to become part of European culture. As a matter of fact, we know what you get when you do that. You get a festering sense of injustice and a cushy breeding ground for terrorists. And terrorists don't care whether your children are second or third generation European. They just want them dead.

Kabbani's reaction to Fallaci is understandable. She sees only a powerful writer whose rhetoric could easily lead to animosity toward her children, even though her children have nothing to do with the threats that exercise Fallaci's anger and pride. Fallaci needs to learn to make finer distinctions among the sons of Allah. And Kabbani needs to learn that being a European Muslim has to mean not only defending Muslims from being wronged by Europeans but defending Europe from being wronged by Muslims.

posted by CMN at 5:05 PM
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Well, according to this article, we can expect a U.S. edition in September. Why it takes four more months to translate into English than French, God only knows. Geez guys, I told you I'd do it for free! She'd be on amazon by now! I hope the delay is because she has something particular she wants to say to an American audience. That's the only thing that would justify it.
posted by CMN at 3:48 PM
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Here's a new piece in Panorama by Piero Ostellino, Fallaci's most ardent supporter in the Italian press, talking about the threats and abuse to which she's been subjected in Italy while receiving messages of support from all over the world. I'll try to post a summary soon, but work calls. For now, click on the link whether you read Italian or not--there's a great photo of her. Italian "rap" singer Jovanotti recently found space among the various muddleheaded can't-we-all-just-get-along-and-save-the-world-from-rampant-capitalism sentiments in one of his "songs" to throw in a slam against Fallaci, describing her as "the journalist who loves war because it reminds her of when she was young and beautiful." I'd say she's looking pretty damn good in the present, thank you very much.



UPDATE: Oops, the article isn't by Ostellino, it just has a bolded citation of his name. Now that I read it, I see it's by Mauro Anselmo. The piece was written over a month ago now, and compares the attacks on Fallaci in the Italian press to the favorable comments she had received in the Wall Street Journal and New York Post after the publication of her piece on antisemitism. Now, of course, she's been savaged in the French and English press as well. Since Mauro's article, one of the attacks in the Italian press prompted a libel lawsuit by Fallaci. The offending article appeared in Il Foglio, which subsequently reproduced on its front page the entire complaint filed by Fallaci's lawyers, under the sardonic headline "I FIND IT ACTIONABLE: A Foglio exclusive of new text inspired by Oriana Fallaci."

The article Fallaci sued over was by Pietrangelo Buttafuoco (whether he's a distant relative of Joey I can't say, but he seems to exhibit a similar level of intellectual acumen) in response to the antisemitism piece. There, you may recall, Fallaci had this to say about (and to) a certain unnamed individual:

(There’s someone in Italy who, since the appearance of Anger and Pride, would like to do the same to me. Citing verses of the Koran he exorts his “brothers” in the mosques and the Islamic Community to chastise me in the name of Allah. To kill me. Or rather to die with me. Since he’s someone who speaks English well, I’ll respond to him in English: “Fuck you.”)

Now, it seems rather obvious on reading this that she's speaking about a specific individual who made direct threats against her, and that her profane gesture is for him alone. Here's how Buttafuoco reported on this passage:

Since I speak English, maybe not well, but well enough to understand a thing or two, Oriana Fallaci has sent a message to everyone who doesn't see things the way she does: "Fuck you." Since someone has to respond, with all due respect, in the name of all the mosques and all the naughty boys and girls, to this person who seems to have become the nation's Supreme Court (she's even worse than Enzio Biagi), we say to her, "Thanks, same to you."

The gravamen of Fallaci's complaint is that he misrepresents her as having expressed absolute intolerance for difference of opinion rather than having merely insulted an individual who had threatened her life. That individual, by the way, is named Adel Smith, and he is the President of the Muslim Union of Italy. He wrote a book called "Islam Chastises Oriana Fallaci," which I saw in the stores last time I was there. I picked it up, because I would have been interested in reading a thoughtful response by an Italian Muslim to the issues Fallaci had raised. I quickly realized that this was not that response. Here are some of the eloquent excerpts cited in the complaint:

[From page 18 of the book:]


Woman, you shouldn't have told lies! I'm not [...]. You'll get the lesson you deserve. A powerful slap. But not a slap of the kind that you really deserve, so much as a moral slap that will, maybe, make you go back to your crying.


Prepare yourself for a strong and just punishment: to be stripped nude. Denuded. Undressed. Not of your clothing as, perhaps, you might have desired [...] But denuded of your strength--of that tenuous strength that you draw from your despicable lies.


Prepare yourself! I'm going to unmask you.


Prepare yourself! I'm going to inflict punishment on you.


You deserve it, and how.


Woman! Ugly or beautiful as you are, prepare yourself for the chastisement of man; the divine one, much more abundant and painful, you'll have later, in good time. That's a promise. "Those who injure Allah and His Messenger, Allah has condemned whether in this life or the next and has prepared for them humiliating torment."


[And later, toward the end of the book:]


The choice then is yours: either do as we Muslims do and stop drinking alcoholic beverages or continue to die; to die together with Fallaci.

Now I have to say that none of these particular quotes from the book strike me on their face as constituting an actual threat of violence. (In fact, I'm fairly confident that the Ninth Circuit would regard them as protected speech even if they were directed at abortion providers...) They use violent--and sexually demeaning and violent--imagery, but make it clear that the only "chastisement" the writer intends to dole out is moral, by rebutting her writings. Even the line about dying with Fallaci, as far as I can make out without context, sounds like he's exhorting people in general to adopt Muslim practices to avoid the bad end to which all infidels like Fallaci will come. Yet Fallaci clearly reads it as a direct exhortation to violence. Her bravado response, according to Piero Ostellino, was as follows: "Die with me how? With a load of explosives? God what a waste! Wasting a whole kamikaze and a whole load of explosive that costs a ton of money on little old me?" Well, who was it that first said anything about explosives? Given Oriana's various experiences with (and at the hands of) Islamic fundamentalists, she may have reason to believe that this is a reasonable inference for her to make. Unless she has other examples though, I wonder whether she'd win if Smith followed suit and charged her with libel for saying he'd made actual death threats against her.


posted by CMN at 11:50 AM
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For French readers, here are two reviews from Le Monde, one of Fallaci's book, and one of her antisemitism piece. (Thanks to Ed Fenton for the latter.) Commentary to follow.
posted by CMN at 10:11 AM
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I've joined a yahoo club of Italian speakers who admire Fallaci's work, through which I should receive some worthwhile intelligence on her doings from time to time. The latest is that there is a recent edition of La Rabbia e L'Orgoglio that includes a CD on which you can hear Fallaci reading her "I find it shameful" article on European antisemitism (in Italian, of course).
posted by CMN at 10:16 AM
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Thanks to Meryl Yourish for noting and properly eviscerating a review of Fallaci's book in Foreign Policy. I often wonder whether the term "fascist" has any conceptual content at all for many of the people who use it. It seems rather to be a term of general opprobrium used by certain people on the "left" for anything they don't like on the "right." The indispensible Mr. Lileks did an unparalleled bleat on this a while back specifically responding to the equation one so often hears from pro-Palestinian demonstrators of Israelis with Nazis. Unfortunately, I can't find it in his archive now to link to it.

Nor is the equation of freedom (at least certain forms of it) with fascism limited to European intellectuals. It's implicit in the way the term "right-wing" is used every day by "left wingers" to describe those who espouse laissez-faire economics or decentralization of political authority (i.e., constitutional federalism, deregulation, etc). I've never understood how this makes any sense when the paradigmatic "right-wingers"--those whom you are supposed to run into if you go far enough in that direction--are Benito and Adolf, both of whom practiced absolute centralization of political power and espoused (though with less thorough implementation) economic collectivism as well. But why bother arguing when you can label?

UPDATE: Still can't find the Lileks link, but here's the money quote:

When the citizens of Israel are told daily by their press and TV that the Arabs are subhumans who must be destroyed, then Sharon will be like Hitler. When Arabs must wear crescents on their shirts, Sharon will be Hitler. When stadiums full of Jews bay for the blood of the Arabs, and pour out in a torchlight parade to kick and beat and shave the beards of devout Muslims, Sharon will be Hitler. When the organizing principles of the Jewish state are war against neighbors, territorial conquest and the extirpation or subjugation of all non-Jewish peoples, then Sharon will be Hitler. When the mosques are burned and the minarets toppled and the babies thrown in the air and speared on bayonet point, Sharon will be Hitler.

posted by CMN at 6:51 PM
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