Religion

If already depressed, skip this post

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Reader Aitchmark forwarded me this link to a perceptive column Tony Blankley wrote for the Washington Times. I agree with him that it nails the precise conceptual difference between the Left and the Right on the war (no doubt there are people who oppose the war for better reasons, but I think the view Blankley analyzes probably motivates the Democrats in power).

…the great divide is between those, such as me, who believe that the rise of radical Islam poses an existential threat to Western Civilization; and those who believe it is a nuisance, if episodically a very dangerous nuisance.

Those who believe in nothing higher than “personal spirituality,” I think, are incapable (without some kind of psychic “whack upside the head”) of understanding that there are people out there who really believe in things outside themselves. To them, Christians must be either incredibly stupid or they’re running a confidence game when they speak of doctrines and absolute moral truths. And Muslims… well, they’re inscrutable. But in their hearts they must be just like us. If they do… regrettable things, they must have been driven crazy by some evil force. Like Republicans.

I’d like to say that good Christian fiction—not preachy CBA fiction that preaches to the choir, but gutsy, smart, well-crafted Christian books like Andrew Klavan’s Damnation Alley, are one way to open people’s minds and fight back against the darkness. And books like that can’t hurt. Maybe I’ll find a publisher myself again someday.

But I think good Christian movies and TV would probably have more impact. Unfortunately, though some progress has been made recently, that’s still a major challenge and I suspect progress, if it happens, will occur slowly.

The bottom line is, I wonder if the remnant of Christendom can be saved. I wonder if the West has declined too far. Perhaps we’re entering a new period of worldwide tribulation. Maybe that’s God’s plan for the Last Days.

It’s all in His hands, of course. Our brothers and sisters have suffered persecution throughout history, and they still suffer today. There’s no reason we should think of ourselves as exempt. In fact, we are instructed to rejoice in it.

The Press

Belated, Misdirected Shock Over Political Label

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Last month, I almost wrote a post about a column on Barack Obama by David Ehrenstein, which I heard on Rush Limbaugh’s show. Ehrenstein called Obama a “magic negro,” meaning he is a nice black man who doesn’t have the harsh characteristics white people dislike so they, the racist whites, can accept him and assuage their guilt for disliking the undesirable black people they may or may not know. Limbaugh read through the column, arguing that it was evidence of a widespread liberal view that Obama was not black enough to be . . . I don’t know . . . real or acceptable, I guess. I had thought last month to say that “white negro” was worse than another term in the news at that time, tar baby. But today, I’ll put that aside and just report that Limbaugh says he is getting some flack this week (as he predicted) from people who have just heard the parody song on “Barack, the magic negro” and believe Limbaugh came up with the label himself.
Thank you for reading. I hope you feel edified.

Reviews

Promise Me by Harlan Coben

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I don’t often laugh out loud (for those of you under 20, that’s an antique term for “lol”) at anything I read online, but Lileks cracked me up today with his deconstruction of a set of postcards from China in the days of the Cultural Revolution, describing an opera called “The Red Detachment of Women.”

I’m always looking for new favorite thriller writers. Klavan, Connelly, Tanenbaum, Kellerman and Lehane can only put out so much product per annum. So when I saw Harlan Coben’s new novel, Promise Me, in a grocery store rack, I figured I’d give him a try.

It was close, but he didn’t make the cut.

Not that the book’s bad. I enjoyed it and read it with interest. But… well, let me lay out the particulars.

The main character is Myron Bolitar (full points for audacity in choosing a character name), a sports and entertainment agent who divides his time between New York City and his suburban home town. Bolitar, it appears, was the hero of a series of earlier Coben novels, though he hasn’t appeared in a new book in about seven years. During those years, we are told, Bolitar has been concentrating on his business. Never married, he has recently begun dating a local widow.

One evening, during a party, he overhears his girlfriend’s daughter talking to a friend (Aimee, a girl he has known all her life, the daughter of friends of his own). They mention parties and drinking. Bolitar decides to talk to them. He gives each of them his card, asking them to promise him that if they ever find themselves in a situation where they’re faced with driving drunk, or riding with a drunk driver, they will call him. He promises to drive anywhere and pick them up, no questions asked.

It’s an admirable act, but the results aren’t what he planned on. He gets a call one night from Aimee. She’s in Manhattan and needs a ride. When he shows up, she’s not drunk at all, only troubled. She directs him to a residential address in the suburbs, then goes to a dark house that she says is a friend’s. Her friend will let her in, she says.

After that she disappears.

Myron is the last person to see her, and his story sounds thin. Also another girl from the same town has disappeared in similar fashion. Her father is desperate to find her, and not particular how he gets the information. He’s also a gangster.

Fortunately Myron has his own resources. He has a good record with the police. He also has a friend named Win Lockwood.

Many of today’s mystery heroes have psycho killer friends—scary, dangerous guys devoted to the hero for some reason, who are useful in the situations of extreme violence such stories tend to involve. We don’t like our heroes to be killing machines, I suppose, so we need the psycho killer friend to keep the hero alive.

I found Win Lockwood a kind of unconvincing PKF. He’s supposed to be the scion of very old money. As a boy, after a serious incident of bullying, he devoted his life to learning all the killing arts. Now, apparently, he just enjoys his wealth and watches Bolitar’s back for fun.

I think I was supposed to like him. Maybe I would have if I’d read the earlier novels. But in this book I found him sort of a flat, amoral deus ex machina.

I liked the book a lot in some ways. The theme overall is how much parents love their children, and the lengths to which they’ll go to protect them.

I wasn’t sure, though, whether Coben was willing to make moral distinctions. He seemed to conclude (I may have misunderstood him) that there is no real difference in kind between any child-protective acts, even including murder.

And the ending was troubling for any Christian conservative.

So I don’t think I’ll go back to Coben. Too bad. There was much to commend the book.

Non-fiction

Hitchens, Fighting the Bad Fight

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I like this review by Bruce DeSilva of Christopher Hitchens’ latest book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. DeSilva writes, “Christopher Hitchens is an essayist and pundit who loves a good fight and is never afraid to pick on someone his own size; but this time he’s outdone himself. He’s picked on God. . . . Hitchens has nothing new to say, although it must be acknowledged that he says it exceptionally well.”

Goofing

The Sixth Weirdness

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A few days ago, the Maverick Philosopher linked to us in connection with an Andrew Klavan post he wrote, primarily pointing out this article from The Weekly Standard.

So, now I have to confess what’s wrong with me, eh? Well, one man’s weird is another man’s social obligation. I should ask my sister what is truly weird about me. Take for example:

1. I always carry a pocket handkerchief. I’m sure some people think that’s weird.

2. I can’t break the habit of falling asleep while praying, bent double on the floor with the circulation in my legs (and sometimes my arms) cut off.

3. For all the joking I do about beer, the closest I’ve come to drinking one is a sip of someone else’s O’Doul’s.

4. Despite #3, I confess I have consumed almost an entire bottle of Cognac on my own. Over several months, but still without any help from the sweet wife, who avoids alcoholic and caffeinated beverages like stagnant pond water.

5. From memory, I can sing a few songs from the American War of Independence.

Tags: I’d like to see Blestwithsons and Lintefiniel take this up, if they haven’t already.

Goofing

Nothing tough about this one

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Andrew Klavan has this essay up over at City Journal today.

That high-pitched noise you hear in the distance is me, screaming, “I wish I’d written that!”

Michael at The Euphemist has come out of hibernation long enough to tag Phil and me with a “Six Weird Things About Me” meme.

Now there’s a challenge.

If he’d asked for six normal things about me, I might have had some trouble.

OK, where do we start?

I have heterochromia iridis. This is not a rare, debilitating genetic disease. It’s the condition where a person has bi-colored eyes. A famous instance is the rocker David Bowie, who has one blue eye and one brown. My H. I. comes in a different form, where the two colors are mixed in the eyes, in a pinto pony combination of brown and gray (or blue, depending on the light and who’s looking).

I like folk music.

I don’t like cheese of any kind, except in pizza.

I actually much preferred the second Conan movie to the first one.

I have no good memories associated with any sport (except for live steel combat).

I can read Norwegian in the old, Gothic Fraktur typeface.

I shall now take my hat and cane and go.

Fiction

Alternative History Named Evil

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Author Orson Scott Card calls a thriller he read “evil.”

At the beginning of the book, we are shown a Palestinian during the 1948 war over the creation of the state of Israel. . . . [Steve] Berry sets this scene against a background in which Israelis are systematically driving all the Palestinians out of Israel; the Israelis are heavily armed by the British while the Palestinians have no weapons to counter them; and the Israelis have rounded up whole villages of Palestinians and slaughtered them, men and women alike. . . .

This is the kind of thing that readers — especially ones who don’t know anything about history — are likely to assume the writer has researched, so that it can be trusted. . . . So when a novel like Berry’s The Alexandria Link treats such events as background, as if everybody knew that this is how Israelis act, what it is really doing is furthering the propaganda of one side in a desperate war.