Convergence

James 4:17 (New Living Translation)

“Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.”

It’s supposed to get to about a hundred and seven or eight here today. I spent the early morning hours walking northwest of my place, occasionally stopping to talk to folks as I did. Somewhere near the Emporia Surgical Hospital I spent a few minutes with a fellow who was watering his tomato plants. “Better get ‘er done early,” I said. “You too,” he responded. “I been out here since about six and I’m gonna’ git back inside the house directly and won’t come out again till it rains. I highly recommend you do too.”

Our conversation meandered from the state of the wheat crop in western Kansas to the state of local politics, both of which are poor, finally landing on some of the lessons of history. I reminded him of the summer of 1980 in Kansas City and he did me one better, telling me all about his experience as a teenager during the dust bowl days of the thirties in the Great Plains. With that our conversation ended and I was on my way, contemplating the lessons until I got back home.

I was home by nine-fifteen and after a completing a few chores I turned on the news and watched a bit of FOX, C-Span, and MSNBC. The coverage is now almost universally about the Middle-East crisis. Most of the talking heads, particularly those on the left, support a negotiated settlement. I’m not sure what they mean by settlement, but I have a hunch that somewhere in the fine print it would include some provisions favorable to Hezbollah and Hamas. Europe and Vladimir Putin would claim it’s all in keeping with what scholar Thomas Sowell calls the unconstrained vision. On the east coast of the United States they’d call it win-win. Out here we’d call it appeasement.

This all brings me back to something I wrote last September or October when Israel was pulling of the West Bank and Gaza. Looking back on it, it’s hard to believe that it was that long ago. The history of our times, in small and great ways, was converging on the Kansas Flint Hills in much the same way as it is today. I re-read the piece and found that it was also an eerie reminder to me that along with the convergence of events come moral choices.

I re-post it now, hoping that it will converge with you wherever you are:

I get together with a group of guys from church on Tuesday mornings for breakfast at the Commercial Street Diner. It’s a good way for me to get the pulse of Emporia. I like to think of these little excursions as time spent with the “ham and eggers,” the men with barrel chests, ham hock hands, and plain speech.

It’s taken time, but I’ve become a regular of sorts. Almost all of the other guys order biscuits and gravy or eggs and hash browns while I order my usual, a large glass of apple juice, oatmeal, and an English muffin. In fact, I’ve become such a regular that the waitress brings my apple juice even before I sit down. Then, this little cycle of the seasons ends with the rest of the guys having a good laugh at my expense. I’ve come to love and appreciate it.

For most of the guys there is a day of hard work ahead of them, hence the hearty breakfasts. While I sit here thinking and typing Danny Horst is out in some field near here, “thrashing” something or other. Mike Blake is selling cellular phone service and is more than likely on the road to Fort Scott right now. Cliff Allen is either hanging or repairing a door. Steve Quandt is probably pretty close to Kansas City with his wife, Marletta. He’s needing some supplies for the car washes he owns and operates here in town and Marletta is going to be looking for some furniture. That’s hard work if you ask me. Gene Stair is a retiree like me, but I suspect he’s in the middle of some project that’ll keep him busy for the rest of the day. And Mike Stubbs, our pastor, is in all likelihood, preparing a sermon, praying for the flock, or binding wounds. And, as I said, I’m sitting here half thinking, half meditating on the morning, occasionally, in bursts of twenty or thirty words, putting those thoughts down in as concrete a fashion as I can.

One of the things that struck me this morning was on how things so often converge. After breakfast had been ordered this morning Mike Blake shared about some recent experiences he had in Kansas City. He’d been given an exercise to go out into the “marketplace” and find someone to break bread with. It seems that “coincidence” led him to a Jewish woman who worked in a store in the mall Mike had decided would be a good place to break bread. I think if it had been me I’d have chosen a different venue, but “coincidence” is often tailor made. The woman was apparently taking a break from work and that gave Mike the opportunity to strike up a conversation. One thing led to another and the two began to talk about matters of faith, Mike from a Christian world view and the woman from a very nominally religious, albeit Jewish, point of view. It all ended with the woman telling Mike that he seemed to be a very kind, caring man and then offering him a piece of a pretzel she was eating. As I sat listening I was amazed by how closely coincidence and convergence were aligned. It all began with a little exercise and wound up being a profound experience in breaking bread. I’m certain that in the days to come I’ll find out where the coincidence and convergence were leading.

As I ate I listened to the conversation around me. Most of it concerned itself with Israel and the Jewish people. The guys are, to a man, staunch supporters of Israel’s right to exist and are also, to a man, concerned with the pullouts from Gaza and the West Bank. “Where will the concessions end?” was the question of the day.

It’s a really good question. Where will the concessions end? Or will they even end?

The breakfast conversation brought to mind another little “coincidence” Nancy and I had during or recent vacation. We were in Washington D.C.’s Union Station. While Nancy was getting as much information as she could about our final destination, the National Holocaust Memorial Museum, I was buying day passes for the Metro from the most confusing dispensing machine I’ve ever been around. It took me about three or four minutes to decipher what I was supposed to do and another two or three to mash the right buttons, pay, and get the tickets. I finally succeeded and started to make my way over to where Nancy was gathering our intelligence for the day. After about three steps I heard a woman’s voice. “Can you please help me? This machine is so confusing.” Another three or four minutes deciphering, another two or three mashing buttons and the rescue mission seemed complete. By this time Nancy had made her way over to me, wondering out loud, “Are you okay?” “I’m fine,” I responded. “Just helping this woman buy a metro ticket. The damned machine was so confusing it took a genius like me to figure it out.” The woman, understanding the degree of difficulty of the task we’d been through, laughed. “I’m Rachela Dotan. Thanks for helping me.” With that she handed me a business card that read “Rachela Dotan, Licensed Tourist Guide. I scanned down and saw an address – 11 Harel St. Haifa 34555. I put the card in my wallet and asked her, “Where are you going today?” “To the Holocaust Museum,” she replied.
“What a coincidence. My wife and I are going there too. Why don’t you come with us?”

Rachela, probably thinking that the trip might be just as complex as the ticket dispensing machine, agreed.

We only got lost once on our way to the museum, but Rachela didn’t seem to mind. About a couple of blocks from the museum I moved from directions and small talk to the politics and philosophy of the Middle East. “How do people in Israel feel about the pullouts from Gaza and the West Bank?” “Our feelings are mixed,” she replied. “We’ve had to spend billions protecting so very few of our citizens that most of us feel that we can make things safer by pulling out.”
“What about security in the future?
“No Israeli harbors any illusions there. We want peace and secure borders, but we also know that our Arab brothers who surround us really want to destroy us. There’s talk of peace and we make concessions, but we know that we must rely on ourselves alone for our defense. We will never again allow ourselves to have our security placed solely in the hands of others.”

Rachela’s words became more animated as we entered the museum. “This building tells something of our story. It tells a story we don’t want others to forget.” With that, she gave us two of the tickets she had and said her final thanks to us, then made her way to the one exhibit she wanted to see, I assumed in privacy.

The museum tour actually begins on the third floor. I think there’s some symbolism to it, part of the terrible lesson the Jewish people took from the Holocaust. Madness descends; it never elevates. There were other lessons in the ambience as well. The third floor was relatively comfortable and warm, but as we made our way to the lower levels the air became increasingly cold. The message, again, was clear. Evil casts a chill upon the human soul; it never brings warmth or comfort.

I think of our breakfast conversation, though, and sense that there are other lessons as well. Just like the convergence and coincidence overtook Mike Blake at the mall the other day and in the same way that convergence and coincidence overtook Nancy and me in the Washington, D.C. metro a few weeks ago, history and coincidence often converge on all of humanity.

One the second floor of the Holocaust Museum there is a small exhibit tucked quietly in with the more renowned ones. In the mid to late thirties it was becoming increasingly clear to Europe’s Jews, in general, and Germany’s Jews, in particular, that the “final solution,” the Holocaust, had grown from its infancy and was picking up the force of a deadly storm. In September of 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were passed. In October of 1938 it was Kristallnacht. Evil events were converging on the Jewish people. Some Jews, seeing the oncoming evil, tried to emigrate. A few were successful, but most were rebuffed. For those trying to escape to America their need for safety from der Fuhrer was converging with our national need to recover from the depression. Some lawmakers pleaded for increased Jewish immigration, but most, seeing their constituents in need of jobs and security themselves, felt that European Jews were a threat to American labor. In the end, American economic need won the day. The Jewish people had few allies. The rest, as we all should know now, is history.

Convergence. Coincidence. Events and nations and people are woven together, strands of history and circumstance. They come together in the lives of individuals. They come together in the history of nations. They come in our malls. They come while we’re having breakfast at an Emporia, Kansas diner. They come while we’re in the subways. And, they come when evil collides with all that is good in the world. In some cases they only require that we nod, noting that we’ve learned a lesson. Most often, though, they call upon us to act.

In the current circumstance history will either vindicate us for acting on behalf of what is right or condemn us for retreating in the face of evil.

We must not retreat!

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Stop the Presses

“Journalism is the one solitary respectable profession which honors theft (when committed in the pecuniary interest of a journal,) & admires the thief.”

- Mark Twain

The situation in the Middle-East hasn’t escaped the eagle eye of Patrick Kelley and the folks down at the Emporia Gazette. This is what the lead editorial had to say about it last night:

“Israel has demonstrated its intention to protect its people. Hezbollah has demonstrated its ability and determination to oppose Israel. In the process, hundreds of people – many of them non-combatants have been killed.”

“More fighting will just kill more people and risk wider war and more decades of misery.”

“It’s time for diplomacy. Both sides have indicated that they are ready to stop the shooting and negotiate. The rest of the world – including the United States – must do all it can to support the negotiations process.”

Once you strip out the one thing we all agree with – that peace is the desired state of international affairs – it becomes pretty clear that even here in the Kansas Flint Hills moral relativism is the order of the editorial writer’s day.

I’m beginning to think that every left-leaning American journalist gets his or her marching orders every day on an early morning conference call from the big boys at the New York Times. It’s a way of enabling them to do their work without the thinking normally required to try to make sense of the world. “This will be the approved take on things.” “Puff Hezbollah.” “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish you Israel as the Middle-East aggressor.”

Just a half an hour of early morning indoctrination and they’re ready for the day.

A while ago I fired off the following letter to the editor of the Emporia Gazette:

The Gazette’s editorial “Wider War” came hot off of the rhetorical presses suspended in mid-air, somewhere in the grand universe of moral relativism. What the Gazette needs to do is to pull them down from the ionosphere and put them back on the earth where they belong.

Try as they might to split hairs, they didn’t succeed. The Hezbollah/Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel’s response to the provocation are not morally equivalent acts.

What does the Gazette think would happen to Israel, in the near and long term, if they were to cease fire unilaterally? Perhaps this excerpt from Hezbollah’s founding manifesto will give them a hint:

“Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.”

As Bob Dylan once wrote, Israel is not the neighborhood bully in this twisted equation. The Jewish nation was provoked, its sovereign territory invaded, and now it’s responding. Just what did the Gazette expect Israel to do?

The Gazette’s problem is that they’re holding Israel to a standard they would never live by themselves. Do the good folks down at 517 Merchant think I’m naïve enough to believe that if a burglar or rapist started kicking down their doors that they’d welcome them with rose petals and fine wine or negotiate the terms of the rape and theft?

While the Gazette might like a solution in which all parties get what they want, the overwhelming majority of us hope this crisis will end on Israel’s terms, not Hezbollah’s.


Phil Dillon
Emporia, Kansas

It’s probably been an act of futility. To paraphrase Texas populist Kinky Friedman – “You can lead a left-leaning journalist to water, but you can’t make him think.”

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Same Song, Different Verse

“What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, the say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits for feed.
He’s the neighborhood bully.”

“What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
He’s the neighborhood bully.”

- Bob Dylan – “Neighborhood Bully” (1983)

On Monday of this week the press took the President to the woodshed for his use of the dreaded “s” word. Now this is the same press and mass media that serves up soft core pornography, violence, and other assorted mayhem to America on a daily basis. Amazing!

Back in 1968 I was stationed in Panama. One of my friends was a devout and unassuming as a man could get. Squeaky clean couldn’t begin to describe the guy; he was as good as good can be. One of his great pleasures other than church was being a bench-warmer on a squadron intra-mural basketball team. There came a time in one game for the bench-warmers to get their thirty seconds or so of Canal Zone fame. About ten seconds into his tour on the hardwood he got the chance to make a meaningless, breakaway lay-up, which he proceeded to miss. As soon as his feet hit the floor the pounded his hands together and shouted, “Ssssshhhhhh.” The crowd assembled sat in silence, waiting for more. He pounded his hands together again and let it rip for all it was worth. “Sugar cakes…..Sugar cakes.” The gymnasium erupted in laughter, which I recall, took about a minute and a half to subside.” After the game I went and talked to him. “Man, everyone in that place knew exactly what you were thinking and wanting to say. You’d have been better off to just go ahead and say it. Everyone knew you were thinking “shit” when you said “sugar cakes.”

To tell you the truth, I think the President of the United States is perfectly within the bounds of decency and morality to suggest that Syria insist that its surrogate in Lebanon cease and desist from the “shit.”

If our American press were around today in King David’s time they would have had a real field day. They’d have been absolutely mortified as soon as they heard the man who would one day be the king of Israel utter these words in response to having been rudely treated by the head of a family of sheep shearers (today we call them journalists, drug dealers, or used car salesmen).

The inspired transcript of David’s statement, from the un-sanitized King James version of the Bible, follows for your edification and enlightenment:

I Samuel 25:21-22 (King James Version)

“Now David had said, Surely in vain have I kept all that this fellow hath in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that pertained unto him: and he hath requited me evil for good. So and more also do God unto the enemies of David, if I leave of all that pertain to him by the morning light any that pisseth against the wall.”

The Almighty, in His infinite wisdom, had a habit of calling this often intemperate leader “a man after My own heart.” I figure that if David’s colorful use of language was good enough for God, it’s good enough for me.

Of course, the press complaints have little to do with language. This is principally about ideological agendas, particularly the press’s hope to destroy George Bush, even if it means lionizing terrorists and excoriating America’s friends, especially Israel. If George Bush supports Israel, then they are against Israel. The best way they can accomplish their goals, they rightly believe, is to destroy him and Israel rhetorically. There’s no other weapon in their quivers. That’s where the language used becomes important.

I spent some time this afternoon going through some old archives of Neville Chamberlain and Adolph Hitler statements along with some more contemporary stuff. I found one statement by Chamberlain, the great appeaser, that compares quite favorably with something Richard Cohen wrote in the Washington Post yesterday. I also found something from der furher himself that compares quite favorably with the Hezbollah manifesto of 1985.

Read them, if you will, and I think you’ll see that words can sometimes be crafted in many ways to achieve a common end:

“I can well understand the reasons why the Czech Government have felt unable to accept the terms which have been put before them in the German memorandum. Yet I believe after my talks with Herr Hitler that, if only time were allowed, it ought to be possible for the arrangements for transferring the territory that the Czech Government has agreed to give to Germany to be settled by agreement under conditions which would assure fair treatment to the population concerned.”

- Neville Chamberlain (Radio address to the people of Great Britain – September 27, 1938)

“The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.”

- Richard Cohen – “Hunker Down With History” (As cited on Real Clear Politics – July 18, 2006)

“If I am ever really in power, the destruction of the Jews will be my first and most important job. As soon as I have power, I shall have gallows after gallows erected, for example, in Munich on the Marienplatz-as many of them as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged one after another, and they will stay hanging until they stink. They will stay hanging as long as hygienically possible. As soon as they are untied, then the next group will follow and that will continue until the last Jew in Munich is exterminated. Exactly the same procedure will be followed in other cities until Germany is cleansed of the last Jew!”

- Adolf Hitler (in a 1922 interview quoted in John Toland, Adolf Hitler. London: Book Club Associates, 1977, p.116)

“We see in Israel the vanguard of the United States in our Islamic world. It is the hated enemy that must be fought until the hated ones get what they deserve. This enemy is the greatest danger to our future generations and to the destiny of our lands, particularly as it glorifies the ideas of settlement and expansion, initiated in Palestine, and yearning outward to the extension of the Great Israel, from the Euphrates to the Nile.”

“Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.”

“We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Therefore we oppose and reject the Camp David Agreements, the proposals of King Fahd, the Fez and Reagan plan, Brezhnev's and the French-Egyptian proposals, and all other programs that include the recognition (even the implied recognition) of the Zionist entity.”

- The Hezbollah Manifesto (February 16, 1985)

A respected journalist can say that Israel’s existence itself is a “mistake.” A British prime minister can feel great empathy for people he’s abandoning to Nazi terror. Or an un-requited Austrian lunatic and his latter-day admirers in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran can use language as a blunt instrument. The bottom line to it all is that someone has to go for the sake of peace. In the 1930’s it was the people of Czechoslovakia and eventually the Jews of Europe; today it’s the people of Israel and eventually America, the Great Satan.

With that in mind, I have something to say to Richard Cohen and the folks at Hezbollah headquarters – “I ain’t buying the shit you’re sellin’.
Adolph Hitler

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Hezbollah's Golden Girls

“On the subject of the liberty of the press, as much has been said, I cannot forbear adding a remark or two: in the first place, I observe, that there is not a syllable concerning it in the constitution of this State; in the next, I contend that whatever has been said about it in that of any other State amounts to nothing. What signifies a declaration that “the liberty of the press shall be inviolably preserved”? What is the liberty of the press? Who can give it any definition which would not leave the utmost latitude for evasion? I hold it to be impracticable; and from this I infer that its security, whatever fine declarations may be inserted in any constitution respecting it, must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of the government.”

- Alexander Hamilton – “The Federalist Papers” (Page 482)

About an hour ago I tuned in to press secretary Tony Snow’s daily briefing. As expected, the line of questioning dealt almost exclusively with the situation in the Middle-East. And, as is their custom, the press took up the cause of the “oppressed.” In this case it was Hezbollah.

The two primary defenders of the terrorist status-quo were Martha Raddatz, ABC News’ chief White House correspondent, accompanied by Hearst columnist and long-time White House gadfly Helen Thomas. Their performances were so good that I’m sure it won’t be long till Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah awards them the Hezbollah medal of merit for their work.

The performances ranged from the inane to the insane. Thomas asked why the President had vetoed a virtually non-existent U.N. resolution demanding that Israel cease fire and stop picking on Hezbollah white-hats in southern Lebanon. Raddatz wanted to know, in no uncertain terms, when the United States was going to “restrain” the Israeli forces defending their homeland.

Ah, freedom of the press, ain’t it grand. Hitler had Axis Sally. Tojo had Tokyo Rose. And, here at the dawn of the new millennium Hezbollah has its Golden Girls – Helen Thomas and Martha Raddatz.

Since I’ve lived here in Emporia I’ve had several rhetorical run-ins with the folks down at the Emporia Gazette. I’ve noticed that almost any time one of us ignorant rubes (as we’re affectionately known to the staff down at 517 Merchant) criticizes something they’ve written, they immediately throw their trump card on the table. “Freedom of the press, you idiots. Freedom of the press! Don’t you get it? We’re running this country, not the President, the Congress, or you. We’re defending your rights, little people, so shut up and just keep drinking your Annie Green Springs and stop bothering us.”

Each time they resort to this last refuge of a practicing journalist I remind them that I’ve read a thing or two about freedom of the press and that if I ever hear the sound of hobnailed boots outside their doors I’ll break out my Louisville Sluggers and come down to defend them with all I’ve got, along with the rest of my fellow rubes. I don’t think it gets through. Their thrones are perched too high for them to really hear what a retired member of the proletariat has to say. But, I’ll keep trying. It’s my cross to bear.

If Martha Raddatz, Helen Thomas, and the U.S. press are so keen on finding a solution to the current Middle-East problem I’ll offer one. I propose that we recommend a swap, the Israeli soldiers for Helen and Martha. I might even be willing to throw in David Gregory and a Jackie Jensen rookie card if it will move the process along.

The deal would give Hezbollah a face-saving way out of the deep weeds. It would also set the world straight, so to speak. Martha Raddatz and Helen Thomas don’t belong in Washington, D.C, savaging America and Israel by day and munching on steak tartare by night. I say that a foxhole next to a battery of katyusha rockets somewhere in the Beka Valley is their real station in life.

I think Hezbollah just might buy it. What say ye?

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How to Deal With Rats, Terrorists, and International Bullies

“Hang on tight, spur hard, and let’er buck.”

- Kinky Friedman

It appears that Israel really has had enough. About a half an hour ago I read a dispatch from HAARETZ.com. In a public address nation Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, among other things:

“Citizens of Israel, there are moments in the life of a nation, when it is compelled to look directly into the face of reality and say: no more,” he said.

“And I say to everyone: no more. Israel will not be held hostage - not by terror gangs or by a terrorist authority or by any sovereign state,”“There is nothing we want more than peace on all of our borders,” Olmert told the Knesset. But he said, “Israel will not agree to live with rockets fired on its citizens,” he added. “Only a nation that can protect its freedom deserves it,” he stated.

Good for Ehud Olmert! Good for Israel! In this world with too many rats, terrorists, and international bullies there comes a time to make a stand

I learned a little bit about rats during my tour of duty in Vietnam back in the sixties. I, like everyone in my barracks, was fortunate enough to have a place to sleep and a footlocker to contain my few worldly goods. Knowing its value, I guarded my space zealously. But not all my barracks mates did. One airman, who I’ll call Foo the Farmer to protect his ignorance, tried the kinder/gentler approach to protecting his goods and it nearly did us all in. It all began for me when I started hearing high pitched squeals and scratching noises during the night, overwhelming even the thumps of air strikes or the light of the flares being dropped in the distance. The sounds came from what I perceived to be close to Foo’s foot locker. They continued for several nights and actually started to increase in frequency and intensity. Then in the mornings it would stop.

I resolved to figure the mystery out. The next time I heard the noise I got up and followed the noise to its source. It was coming from Foo’s foot locker. Having figured out the mystery, the only thing left to do was to let Foo know what was going on. So, in the morning when we got up for chow I approached him. “Hey, Foo, I think I figured out where that noise we’ve been hearing every night is coming from. It’s coming from your foot locker.”
“Oh, that noise,” he replied nonchalantly. “I knew about that already.”
“You did?”
“Oh yeah. It’s a rat that’s gotten into my digs.”
“A rat?”
“Yup”
“Why don’t you kill it?”
“Hey man, every time I open my foot locker that thing just squeals away and gives me the heebie jeebies, so I just throw a candy bar in there to keep him happy.”
“Comeon, Foo, that makes no sense at all. Just kill the damned thing and be done with it.”
“I just figure as long as I keep feeding him he’ll leave me alone.”
“You know what, you dummy, all that rat is going to do is want more and more food. You keep this up and we’ll be overrun by rats soon enough. People will be getting bubonic plague. Take my advice and kill it.”
“How am I going to do that without ruining my locker or without getting bitten?”
I couldn’t believe the stupidity. “Look, you idiot, just shoot him or stomp him to death. Anything. Just get rid of him. And stop worrying about your locker. You can replace that. And if you get him soon enough he won’t be able to bite your fingers or your nose off. Just kill him and be done with it. Besides, if you can’t deal with the rat, the rest of us in the barracks can.”

It took some time to convince Foo to do the right thing, but he eventually did. And, yes, it was a bloody mess. But we cleaned it up in no time and everything went back to being as normal as it could be under the circumstances.

That’s one of the essences of the diplomatic approach that’s so often been applied to Israel. The operating assumption of Israel’s critics is that if the world keeps the rats in the foot locker, feeds them a bit, they won’t bother anyone. The approach makes no earthly sense, but that’s the strategy being recommended.

I also learned there comes a time when one must meet the neighborhood bullies head on. I learned the lesson early in life, during my teenage years. Back then when I wasn’t playing stickball with my brother, I would go to a park near our apartment to play pick-up basketball or football with other guys from my neighborhood. We would have fun till a group of neighborhood toughs would descend on the park like the barbarians on Rome’s gates. In order to keep things from getting ugly we would have to pay tribute to them in one form or another, sometimes a couple of bucks or a box or two of donuts. For a time it didn’t seem too high a price to pay for peace and stability on the basketball court or the football field. But it time the demands escalated. A couple of bucks became three, then four, then five. And so it went.

I don’t know exactly when I’d had enough, but the time did come. I determined I would pay no more tribute.

The next time they came by the approach was familiar. “Make with the bread,” the ring leader ordered.
The rest of the guys started digging for money, but I refused. “You can go to hell. You ain’t gettin’ anything from me,” I snarled.
Their mouthpiece was a teenage tough named Butchie Loder. He was a hulk of a teenager for the late 1950’s, about two hundred and twenty pounds worth. Compared to my one hundred and thirty he seemed absolutely massive. “It’s either the money or a beatin’,” he roared back.
The rest of his gang of thieves stood back, waiting for Butchie to act on his threat.

The stage was set.

Figuring I had nothing to lose, I ran up to Butchie and let loose with a right cross that hit him squarely in the face. Blood spurted from his mouth and nose and he lurched back, feeling the blood with his right hand as he did. He was stunned. I took advantage of my opening and continued my attack. I hit him twice in the stomach and heard him groan as the punches hit their mark. He doubled over and fell to the ground. I pounced on him and hit him several more times. The swiftness of the attack and its ferocity had left him helpless. As I swung away at him I kept repeating, “Your nothin’ but a mocking bird mouth. That’s all you are.” When I sensed that he’d had enough I got up. As I looked around I saw that his allies had fled the scene and I was surrounded only by my buddies. The battle that we had all dreaded to the point of appeasing the neighborhood bullies was over. We won.

I sometimes wonder what might have happened to our neighborhood if we had continued appeasing our tormentors. Where would it have ended? We’d all probably be living in neighborhoods ruled by thugs demanding tribute of us all.

I really don’t need to tell you the moral of these stories, but I can’t resist. It’s simple. Don’t appease the neighborhood bullies, deal with the rats, confront the terrorists before they can take over and rule by terror.

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Dial M for Mugger

“Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease,
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly,
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He’s the neighborhood bully.”

- Bob Dylan – “Neighborhood Bully” (1983)

On Friday I wrote that it wouldn’t be long till Israel would be faced with condemnation for defending itself against aggression. It’s now Sunday and the chorus has already begun to sound.

This is what the New York Times had to say yesterday:

“Even when acting justifiably in the face of aggression, Israel best serves its long-term security interests by acting wisely and proportionately. Its guiding principle must always be to focus military action as narrowly as possible.”

“Surely the repeated lesson of recent history is that inflicting pain and humiliation on Arab civilians does not make them angry at the terrorists who provoked the violence. It makes them angrier at Israel.”

French president Jacques Chirac issued a typically blunt French statement on the crisis:

“French President Jacques Chirac castigated Israel for its military offensive in Lebanon on Friday, calling it “totally disproportionate,” while he and other European leaders expressed fears of a widening Middle East conflict that could spiral out of control.”

“Referring to Israel's attacks Friday on Lebanon's international airport and other transport links, the latest in a three-day offensive, Chirac asked aloud whether Lebanon's destruction was not the ultimate goal.”

“One could ask if today there is not a sort of will to destroy Lebanon, its equipment, its roads, its communication,” Chirac said during an interview in the garden of the presidential Elysee Palace to mark Bastille Day, the French national holiday.”

This morning Fox News reported that Russian president Vladimir Putin, in more muted tones:

“Agreed it was unacceptable for Hezbollah to try to achieve its goal by using force and abductions. But Putin said that while Israel's concerns may be justified, “The use of force should be balanced" and should stop.”

The language, whether muted or blunt, tells the same old story. Israel has the right to defend itself, just not too vigorously. I think it’s just another way of saying that the international community doesn’t really believe that Israel has a right to exist, that the world would be better off without Zionists insisting on holding on to a piece of land far smaller than Kansas where I live. Chirac, Putin, and the New York Times can’t express it directly, of course, but I have no doubt they’re thinking it.

Israel has understood this for over three generations. Their existence as a state and as a people are the things at stake. The latest provocation on the part of Hamas and Hebollah is just one link in the uninterrupted historical chain of Arab provocations. The following exchange between ABC News’ Ted Koppel and Hebollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nsarallah is a mirror image of statements made by Nasser, Arafat, or other Arab leaders since back in the 1940’s:

KOPPEL: “My question to you, though, was somewhat simpler. My question was do you believe that the State of Israel, in any form, whether in reduced size, or otherwise, has the right to exist?”

NASRALLAH [through interpreter]: “I believe that Palestine is an occupied land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and this is the right of the entire Palestinian people, this land. On this land, Muslims, Christians and Jews can coexist together, as they have—as they had for the—for hundreds of years in the framework of a democratic state.”

“However, there is no legal and legitimate state called Israel.”

It couldn’t be much plainer than that, could it?

Several years ago when I was working as an engineer in New Jersey I was assigned the task of mentoring a young Palestinian man who had just been hired by the company I worked for. It was a good relationship; he was a wonderful, bright, charming man. He was a devout Muslim, which made it all a very interesting social experiment. I wasn’t sure how it would all work at first. Would my Christianity and his Muslim faith paired up in a professional setting be problematic?

It turned out not to be a problem at all. We often shared our worldviews and were still able to maintain a good, cordial relationship. There was only one exception – Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign state. We discussed it often. I told him that I supported a two-state solution, that the world needed to find a way to build a peaceful Middle-East. He always listened politely and his response was always the same. “Phil, there is no two state solution. The Palestinian people and the Arab world will never accept Israel. Never! We will never be satisfied until Israel is destroyed and every Jew living in Palestine is driven into the sea!”

I’ve taken some course work in international relations, but that brief period of mentoring in New Jersey was the best education on the subject of how things really work in the Middle-East I’ve ever had.

That’s where we’ve been for generations in the Middle-East. That’s where we are today. The people of Israel harbor no illusions about this fact. The only ones who do are far too many of the leaders in the “civilized” world and their diplomats. Iran and Syria, using Hezbollah and Hamas as puppets, have flagrantly attacked a sovereign nation. Syria and Iran are supporting and exporting terror. Iran is working on developing nuclear weapons and will in all likelihood have one sooner than we all care to think. In the face of that the “civilized” world is offering toothless ultimatums in one hand and incentives in the other to Iran or any other terrorist with his hand out. And, Israel is now being told by men like Vladimir Putin and Jacques Chirac that they’ve over-reacting.

If that doesn't put the lid on the jar, I don't know what will. I’ve heard it said that insanity is trying to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time it’s tried. Israel has been poked and prodded by the “civilized” world for years now to give up land for peace and to accept the reality of a Palestinian state bordering them. They have done all they’ve been asked, with the same result. It must be clear by now that nothing other than the destruction of Israel is ever going to be enough to satisfy the Palestinians or the Arab world. That’s the line in the sand.

Well, I don’t believe that the Israelis are insane. They know what’s at stake – their very existence – and they’re going defend the lives of their people, their homes, their institutions, and their nation vigorously. The real insanity in this twisted equation is in the response of the “civilized” world. Expecting Israel to continue to be a diplomatic doormat is about as insane as it gets.

I wonder how my little world in the Kansas Flint Hills would look if the same rules of international diplomacy being applied to Israel were applied to how things work here. Last night Nancy and I went to see the second episode of the Pirates of the Caribbean series at the Flint Hills mall. We had a good time. Using the current rules of international diplomacy, though, would have made for a different situation altogether. It might have looked something like this here at 919 Neosho about three o’clock yesterday afternoon.

Phil – “What do you think, Coach? Should we leave about three-thirty to make the four o’clock show?”
Nancy – “That’ll work. Just be sure you make security arrangements before we leave.”
Phil – “Good idea. I’ll call right now.”
Phil dials phone and a man with a raspy voice answers.
Alphonse – “M for Mugger – security solutions for the twenty-first century, Alphonse speaking. How may I help you?”
Phil – “Hey, Alphonse, this is Phil Dillon over here on Neosho. My wife and I are wanting to make the four o’clock show at the Flint Hills Eight. Do I still have time to make security arrangements?”
Alphonse – “Can do, big guy. We aim to please. Whattya’ need? Burglarly protection for your car? You need to be mugger proofed?”
Phil – “That’s it. I need both”
Alphonse – “How long you going to be gone”
Phil – “About four and a half hours.”
Alphonse – “It’s a hundred bucks for the first four hours and fifty an hour after that.”
Phil (breathing a sigh of relief) – “Hey, that’s a real bargain. Do you take American Express?”
Alphonse – “Absolutely. We’ll just code the transaction to Sneaky Pete, the guy who would have been out on the street burglarizing and mugging you. American Express will get their ten percent, I’ll get my ten, and Sneaky Pete will get the rest.”
Phil – “I feel like a real public servant, Alphonse.”
Alphonse – “What about your house while you’re gone?
Phil – “I hadn’t thought about that.”
Alphonse – “We’ve got a Saturday anti-burglary special. Just twenty-five an hour on a special rider I can fix up for you.”
Phil – “Alphonse, my bucko, you’re a real godsend. Just add it to my bill.”
Alphonse – “We’re glad to have you as a customer, Phil. Call us anytime.”
Phil hangs up phone.
Nancy: “Did you make the security arrangements, Slick?”
Phil – “Piece o’ cake. I just called ‘M for Mugger’ and everything’s taken care of.”
Nancy – “My hero. It’s about three-thirty. Let’s go. Since you’ve taken care of the security, the popcorn and candy are on me.”

Insane? Of course it is. But that’s the real long and short of the approach the “civilized” world is taking in this situation. They’re just trying to buy off the muggers, pillagers, and plunderers of the Middle-East, thinking that concessions will satisfy the blood-lust. Right now it’s a matter of Katushyas, Qassams, and Shahabs. It all seems pretty harmless in the eyes of the wise men of the “civilized”world. I wonder how they’ll feel in five years when the pillagers have nuclear weapons and ICBM’s. I wonder what it will take to buy them off then?

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Sheep For the Shearing?

2 Corinthians 11:16 (New Living Translation)

“Once again, don't think that I have lost my wits to talk like this. But even if you do, listen to me, as you would to a foolish person, while I also boast a little.”

I stopped by the City Manager’s office yesterday afternoon. Earlier in the week I’d requested some information on the salaries and fringe benefits for the city manager and other city department heads. I even got so bold as to ask for figures on budget versus actual expenditures for the city since the beginning of the new millennium.

When I first made the request I got that suspicious look and a bit of polite stonewalling, but since the information is supposed to be public the City Manager’s executive secretary told me that she would do her best. Yesterday was a different story. I was greeted quite warmly, almost like a long-lost relative. The minute she saw me the “exec” smiled and pulled a piece of paper from her desk. “I’ve got the salary information for you.” I returned the smile and thanked her. “I don’t have the budget information yet, but the City Manager is working on it. He said it was really complex and felt it would be best if he put it into some manageable form for you to see.” At this point I got the eerie sense that I was a bit like a sheep being readied for the shearing. There are those times in life when someone is just being too polite, too nice for comfort. Feigning innocence, I declined her generous offer. “That’s very kind,” I said. “But I don’t want to trouble the City Manager; he’s a very busy man. Just have him give me the raw data and I’ll muddle my way through it.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” she responded.
“No, that’s alright. I’ll be fine with the sani….the raw numbers.”
Hoping that she didn’t catch my almost Freudian slip and come to the conclusion that I was suspicious of getting the sanitized version, I changed the subject. “It’s really hot out there today. Why you could fry an egg on the sidewalk.”
It seemed to work. She smiled and agreed to ask for the raw data and promised she’d get it to me soon. As I turned to go she offered one last piece of good news. “I know I told you the last time you were in that you’d have to pay fifty cents a page for any of the information, but since you’re a candidate for the city commission you’ll get it for free.”
I left the office with the nagging feeling of being prepared for a good fleecing still intact.

Later in the day I went spent about two minutes browsing over the salary/fringe numbers I’d been given. One of the things that caught my eye was that the City Manager has held his position since 1979. That’s twenty-six years! About the only other person I know of who’s been in power longer than that is Fidel Castro.

Early yesterday morning I told a friend about how I became an engineer at FedEx. I was never educated in the discipline, nor had I ever done any professional engineering. But after working for eight years or so as a logistics analyst in New Jersey I decided that, from what I saw, engineering looked like it might be fun. I spent some time talking to the senior manager of the department about it and while he didn’t tell me I couldn’t apply for open engineering positions, he did tell me I’d be a real long shot. With that in mind I began the process. I applied for a position and didn’t make the cut. I applied for a second and didn’t make the cut. And so it went. Each time the hiring manager called me to let me know I didn’t make it I got as much feedback as I could. What was it that I’d missed? What more could I do to qualify myself? The process continued until, after the sixth interview, I got hired. When the manager called me to congratulate me he said that I was the most persistent man he’d ever met. “I never thought the engineering department might have room for a guy with an undergraduate degree in communications and a graduate degree in theology, but I think you’re going to prove that I was wrong.”

So, there it was. It was a classic case of “Yesterday I couldn’t spell the word engineer, and today I are one.”

On my first day of work in the department I was introduced to my mentor, a wonderful guy named Steve Lobell, who I later came to call, affectionately, “Grandfather.” I’ll never forget my first impression. He had one of those round faces that exuded the soul of a cherub. We shook hands and got right down to business. “What’s you’re background?” he asked. “Logistics,” I responded.
“Education?”
“Communications and theology. How about you?”
“Geology and management.”
He turned his head upward a bit, pondering. Then he nodded and smiled. “I get it,” he said. “This is how it’s gonna’ work. I’ll dig and you’ll pray. This is gonna’ be first class engineering.”

The commission election is months away. I still have plenty of time to go over the numbers, plenty of time to dig and pray. If it’s true that the devil can be found in the details, I think it’s even truer that he often meets his match when he butts heads with digging, praying fools.

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Emporia, Kansas

War!

“The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive.
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin,
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He’s the neighborhood bully.

- Bob Dylan – “Neighborhood Bully” (1983)

The New Republic almost got it right; in fact they got it about nine-nine percent right. This is what they had to say yesterday about Israel response to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon:

“There are crises that complicate and crises that clarify. The crisis along Israel's southern and northern frontiers is of the latter sort. Hamas and Hezbollah, in accordance with their lunatic assumption that the worse, the better, crossed an internationally recognized border and killed and have taken hostage soldiers of the neighboring state whose existence they despise. The attacks were unprovoked, except by the attackers' view of the world. Israel has rightly chosen to regard these provocations very seriously, and so far it has earned the sympathy of decent observers everywhere.”

Right now Israel has the upper hand in the court of international opinion, but I doubt that the good will has any staying power. Give it some time and the “decent observers everywhere” will be condemning Israel, Zionism, and all things Jewish. The Arab “street” will soon start ratcheting up to a fever pitch. We’re already getting the dispatches and reports, like this little Beirut gem from Fox News:

“I have huge debts and now my store is damaged,” said Fadi Haidar, 36, cleaning away broken glass at his appliances shop, which he said had taken up to $15,000 in damage from the airstrikes.”

“Still, he supported Hezbollah and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, in their decision to snatch the soldiers. “Israel is our enemy and every Muslim must make a sacrifice,” he said. “As time goes by, they will all realize that Sayyed Nasrallah is right and is working in the interest of Muslims.”

It’s been that way as long as I can remember. I was stationed at Lockbourne Air Force Base in Columbus, Ohio in 1967 when the Arab world was attempting to put the noose around the necks of millions of Israelis. Then, like now, Israel was being blamed. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the father of pan-Arab nationalism, was revving the Arab world up to a fever pitch:

“The armed forces’ responsibility is now yours. The armed forces yesterday occupied Sharm el-Sheikh. What is the meaning of the armed force's occupation of Sharm el-Sheikh? It is an affirmation of our rights and our sovereignty over the Aqaba Gulf. The Aqaba Gulf constitutes our Egyptian territorial waters. Under no circumstances will we allow the Israeli flag to pass through the Aqaba Gulf.”

“The Jews threatened war. We tell them: You are welcome, we are ready for war. Our armed forces and all our people are ready for war, but under no circumstances will we abandon any of our rights. This water is ours.”

“War might be an opportunity for the Jews—for Israel and Rabin [Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Rabin, the Chief of Staff]—to test their forces against ours and to see that what they wrote about the 1956 battle and the occupation of Sinai was all a lot of nonsense.”

Once it all began it took only six days. In that short period of time Israel had occupied Sinai, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and the Wailing Wall. From that point on Israel has existed on a treadmill. They claim a right to exist. The international community agrees. Islamic terrorists crawl out of their holes like cockroaches. Suicide bombers ply their deadly trade on innocent Israelis. Hezbollah and Hamas lob rockets across the border. Israel responds. The international community condemns Israel.

It’ll be no different this time.

The Lebanese seem powerless, probably unwilling to do anything about Hezbollah and their cross border attacks on Israel:

“Wracked by divisions over relations with Syria, the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora has yet to muster the political will, or the courage, to disarm the guerrillas of the Shiite Hezbollah, allowing them to continue to operate with almost total autonomy in southern Lebanon.”

“Successive Lebanese governments have maintained that replacing the guerrillas by Lebanese army troops would be tantamount to offering Israel a free service — protecting its northern border from guerrilla attacks.”

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Hezbollah, operating with impunity in southern Lebanon, crossed the border into Israel, killed several Israeli soldiers, then took two back across the border as hostages. Hezbollah fired rockets into Israeli cities along and south of the border. And, all the sovereign government of Lebanon can say, in effect, is, “Do you Jews seriously expect us to give you a free security service?”

I realize that I live in Kansas and tend to simplify things, but if I were in Israel’s shoes I’d be saying, “You damn betchya!” Let me really simplify this international dilemma. If the folks in Nebraska started lobbing rockets at Atchison, Topeka, Overland Park, or Emporia you’d better believe we here in Kansas would be engaging in a bit more than table talk with our northern neighbors. And if the governor of Nebraska told us that he was powerless to stop what his citizens were doing we’d be telling him in no uncertain terms that he was so full of crap that his shoes squished when he walks.

Let me simplify it even further. I’m a peaceful man. I like my neighbors. I mow my lawn on a regular basis and my wife, Nancy, spends a lot of time in the garden. We often sit on our front porch and watch folks walk by. As they do we exchange pleasantries with them and they say “Howdy do” to us. Occasionally some come with their dogs in tow. We haven’t had the problem yet, but there may come a time when one of their Fidos does his business on our freshly mowed lawn. If that time ever comes I believe I’d be justified to suggest politely that my neighbor clean up the mess. If my neighbor tells me something clever like “You shouldn’t worry because the deposit was bio-degradable,” I think my next move might be to buy an elephant, take it over to his place, and have it place a fresh deposit on his neatly manicured lawn and tell him that the deposit my elephant made is every bit as bio-degradable as his.

That’s about as simple as I can make it. Israel is not the provocateur in this situation. Israel isn’t the Middle-East’s neighborhood bully. Hezbollah and Hamas have sent their dogs across the border and Israel is now responding by sending its elephants. That seems eminently fair and reasonable to me. All the Lebanese and Palestinians need to do to defuse the crisis and end the war is to call off their dogs.

That’s how I believe things should work. However, that’s not how they will. Israel is on the treadmill. They’ve gotten to the response stage. The next step is international condemnation of Israel, Zionism, and all things Jewish.

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Heating Up

“Treat children like adults and adults like children”

- Kinky Friedman

Things are heating up here in Emporia, Kansas. According to Gary Lezak up in Kansas City it’s going to be over a hundred for the next few days. It’s all been preceded by rain, which we desperately needed. Last Saturday, our pastor had us pray for the rain and it was answered in spades, a couple of inches worth at least. As I peek out my window right now I see that everything looks soggy, including our privacy fence and the mulberry tree. By the end of the day, though, it’ll all be frying in the prairie heat.

The City Commission met this past Wednesday to discuss the 2007 budget. Bobbie Agler, the only one of ‘em who seems to be able to count the beans, said that the “proposed $1.2 million increase in the general fund just didn’t make sense.”

As Scott Rochat reported:

“Agler wanted to see more detail to explain the general fund’s runaway growth. Since 2000, he said, the general fund had grown by more than 30 percent – or by about 40 percent, if the newest budget proposal were adopted. In that same period, he noted, population shrank slightly while household income went up by not quite 8 percent.”

“What needs caused this growth?” he asked. “Why do we have a 40 percent increase? Are we running the most efficient government possible?”

Bobbie knows why it’s been happening, of course. Before he got there every department head and every city entity would come around at budget time with the hats in their hands and the commissioners would all say “Aye,” thinking that money is one of those things we all just crap. Well, this time around Bobbie is saying that there are some department heads who are going to have to do their own crappin’ into their own hats. Good for him! He’s a man after my own heart.

A couple of nights ago a Gazette reader took me to task for what she called “a recent retort by Mr. Dillon.” Which had been published in the Gazette. Having read my response to her letter, she determined that it “deserved a chastening response.”

Her original letter had to do with Thierry Meyssan’s book “The Big Lie” which, for reasons which will become obvious, I won’t provide a link to. At first I wasn’t going to respond to her response, seeing the obvious contest brewing. But, I’m past all my bladder and prostate problems now and feel in fine shape for such a contest of wills. And I’ve also found a way to make it all give me some political capital here in town, assuming the Gazette will publish it. I think it might be a good way to kill one bird and feed another with one stone. King David would be proud.

My response to her response follows:

Last May 26th I wrote “I’m really tired of hearing how New York’s Jews were told to stay home on September 11th, 2001. I’m tired of hearing it was all a Jewish conspiracy. I’m tired of hearing it was a government plot. And, I’m tired of hearing that it was actually U.S. missiles, and not hijacked passenger planes, which took down the World Trade Center towers.”

Yesterday a Gazette reader took me to task for what I wrote.

I remain unchastened; I stand by what I said!

I’ve lived long enough now to have heard many conspiracy/cover-up theories of one kind or another. Some are amusing, like Bigfoot and Area 51. Some are dated like the Kennedy assassination theories or the Pearl Harbor cover-up. But the 9-11 conspiracy theories being concocted these days are of a wilder, more offensive sort. I’ll put in plainly. I find the work of men like Thierry Meyssan offensive. It does grave injustice to the thousands of innocent Americans who died on September 11, 2001.

I do not believe that the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon were the work of CIA operatives, the U.S.Government, the Illuminati, or aliens. I mention these not to be trite, but because these are just a few of the theories actually being sold for profit since those tragic days.

In the early aftermath of the attacks it was clear to me, as it was to the overwhelming majority of Americans, that they were the handiwork of Osama bin Laden. It was also clear to people who reviewed Meyssan’s book, including the review from Der Spiegel, a German center-left publication I cited back in May. It was hardly a “crackpot, right wing, no-doubt-paid for critique.” It was my way of saying that one doesn’t have to be a proponent of the Bush administration’s policy or conduct of the War on Terror and the War in Iraq to be reasonable. Millions of people from the left and right sides of the political spectrum, in this regard, are. They, like me, believe that the 9-11 attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

I stand by what I said!

Mr. Meyssan may be able to get a half a million people to buy lies like the notion that the September 11th attacks weren’t the work of al Qaeda, but were planned and masterminded “from inside the American state apparatus.” (“The Big Lie” – page 133), but I remain resolute. While I support the notion of a free marketplace of ideas, it will never be on any summer reading list I compile. As Holy Writ says, “Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial.”

Forty-five years ago I took the high road when, as a young John F. Kennedy Democrat, I raised my hand and swore to defend the U.S. Constitution at the military induction center in Boston, Massachusetts. I served for eight and a half years honoring that oath, including a one year tour of duty (1965-1966) in Vietnam. I understand, as much as any man, what our Constitution means. I am as willing now, as I was then, to defend it and the rights of people whose views are far from the mainstream of American life. They are as free to express what I believe to be offensive views as I am free to call their views offensive. If they are free to posit the notion that the 9-11 attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government, I am also free to call those views what I believe they are – irresponsible, un-American, and offensive. That’s the American way and I fully intend to live my life with those principles in mind.

In a few months time I’ll be embarking on a shoestring budget campaign for city commissioner. This city is facing some real issues and I’m going to make my case for change. If I’m given the opportunity, people in this city will know where I stand. Then when Election Day comes I’ll leave to the good folks of Emporia to decide whether my views on city government are too conservative or too liberal for them. If there’s any chastening to be done, that’ll be the day for it. That, too, is the American way.



Phil Dillon
Emporia, Kansas

As you can see, I do love to play in the political gravel. I think it comes from my Boston roots where they pump it into you intravenously when you’re born.

I am running a very low budget campaign. The City of Emporia, with its forty percent increase in the general fund, has me tapped out so I can’t afford a high-powered political consultant. So, I’d appreciate any comments or sage political advice you might have, particularly local folks. Who knows? A lot can be done on a shoestring. By the time this is all said and done a good man like Bobbie Agler may have another ally with him down at city hall.

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The Flimflam Men

“Jesse Ventura just didn’t realize that wrestling is real and politics is fixed.”

- Kinky Friedman

My reading lately has confirmed the old adage – “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

This morning, as is my habit, I browsed through RealClearPolitics and found three pieces that caught my fancy, John Nichols’ “Hillary Clinton Sees Feingold’s Wisdom,” Harold Myerson’s “Lieberman’s Real Problem,” and Noel Sheppard’s “Is the Daily Kos About to Implode?”

In the Nichols piece, Hillary Clinton is portrayed as having seen the light Vis a Vis her support for Joe Lieberman, Democratic senator from Connecticut, is his primary race against anti-war Democrat Ned Lamont.

Lieberman has recently said that if he loses to Lamont in the primary he will run in the general election as an independent. That, in turn, has created a problem for Hillary:

“Clinton is actually closer to Lieberman on the question of when U.S. forces should withdraw from Iraq - the issue that led to the Lamont challenge after Lieberman emerged as the loudest Democratic support of the occupation in particular and Bush administration foreign policies in general.”

“But Clinton is politically smart. As a potential 2008 presidential candidate, she recognizes that she needs to keep on good terms with the party's base. That base is overwhelmingly anti-war, a fact confirmed by the strength of the Lamont challenge to Lieberman.”

Oh, the agony, the horror!

To solve the problem, Clinton has pledged her support to Lieberman in the primary and to the Democratic Party candidate, whoever it might be, in the general election. Is this a case of Hillary practicing statecraft or is it political triangulation of the worst sort? Given the recent history of the Democratic Party (Al Gore and John Kerry), I’m guessing the latter.

In his op-ed, Myerson puts the blame for the Democrats problem in Connecticut squarely on Joe Lieberman’s shoulders:

“My colleagues also finger those crazy lefty bloggers as the culprits behind the drive to purge Lieberman from Democratic ranks. (The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait recently wrote that in the Los Angeles Times.) They see a self-destructive urge for party purification sweeping over Democratic liberals, to the detriment of Democratic prospects.”

“Lieberman himself certainly does. My Post colleague Ruth Marcus recently spent some time on the campaign trail with Lieberman and reported on a talk he gave in Danbury. “Are the extremes going to dominate?” Lieberman asked. “Do you have to be 100 percent in agreement with an elected official or it's not good enough?”

“Well. I don't blog; I columnize. But count me with the bloggers on this one. No great mystery enshrouds the challenge to Lieberman, nor is the campaign of his challenger, Ned Lamont, a jihad of crazed nit-pickers. Lieberman has simply and rightly been caught up in the fundamental dynamics of Politics 2006, in which Democrats are doing their damnedest to unseat all the president's enablers in this year's elections.”

To compound matters, the “crazy lefty bloggers,” most notably Daily Kos, have issues of their own:

“It appears that the post-Yearly Kos month from hell is continuing for Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the proprietor of the Internet’s premier liberal blog Daily Kos. After receiving some extremely negative press from major publications such as the New York Times, The New Republic, and Newsweek immediately following his seemingly successful bloggers' convention in Las Vegas, Kos is now faced with an even greater challenge: dissension within his ranks.”

At the heart of the problem are potential conflicts of interest, intimidation, and money, the stuff of politics these days:

“As reported here on June 30, revelations about Kos's friend and former business partner Jerome Armstrong - from stock fraud allegations to accepting consulting fees from not so liberal candidates - have cast a cloud over the blog and its leader. This pall has also undermined the stellar relationship Kos has had with the traditional media up to this point.”

“Yet, maybe more important, these revelations - along with the way Markos and his Kossacks reacted to them - have caused some prominent DKos bloggers to question the behavior of Zuniga and his devotees. Such a civil war within the liberal blogosphere certainly has the potential to further discredit it, while likely making the mainstream media as well as the candidates they revere less apt to associate with this developing train wreck.”

In one case, Richard Silverstein and Maryscott O’Connor, Kos regulars, questioned:

“The propriety of a blogger accepting funds from a political candidate. His honesty was not well received by the Kossacks, and it appears their response has been eating at O'Connor ever since:

“Increasingly, I have begun to feel intimidated or wary about writing my thoughts and doubts about these issues, lest I be set upon by a pack of Defenders of the Kos.”

I rarely read the Daily Kos, and when I do I go directly to the comment threads. It’s these comments, and not the blog content, that are most instructive. To say they’re overflowing with hate is an understatement of the first order. Having read them occasionally has given me a great deal of empathy for folks like Silverstein and O’Connor. When Silverstein wondered aloud, for example, that being a member of Kos was akin to being a member of a cult he wasn’t kidding:

“But I have to say that behavior like what I've described above-not just behavior by members, but apparently behavior aided and abetted by the site administrator/s-allows me to understand some of the criticism of Kos and his site flung at him by his critics. My treatment made me feel more like I was participating in a cult in which I'd insulted the chief leader and was receiving the deep six treatment in response.”

It all started innocently enough. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga started a blog. One visitor hit became another and pretty soon he found himself the leader of a large army. One comment became two and pretty soon you’ve got thousands of “Kossacks” preaching the party line. One day you’re a lonely soul expressing your point of view. The next, you’re a king and a king-maker. One day you’re a man of principle. The next, you’re the king and the rules you make don’t apply to you. One day your followers advance ideas and principles. The next, they’re fearful of insulting the great leader or departing from the party line. Like the false prophets of Daniel’s day, these latter day seers must now parade around proclaiming, “O king, live forever,” denouncing anyone who refuses to bow before the throne.

Historically it’s all too often has been the case that movements launched in “statements of principle” eventually disintegrate into cults of personality and fear. It’s the reason pipe fitters like Nikita Khrushchev rose to power in Stalin’s court. It’s the reason we’ve had fuehrers, ayatollahs, baathists, and North Korean fruitcakes. At the movement’s birth the faithful are told that wealth will be re-distributed, that the trains will run on time, or that the fundamentals of faith will become the order of the day. Then, once in power, the great leaders build the gulags, the concentration camps, and the ovens.

Now the Kossacks have the Democrats scrambling. They’re sticking their fingers into the political wind so they can figure out what they stand for. They’re terrified. The party’s base has shifted to the far left and they feel the need to appease them. Hence, Hillary’s hedging her bets on Joe Lieberman. It won’t be long till she triangulates herself into a rabid anti-war position. It’ll have as little to do with principle as Markos Moulitsas Zuniga's views have to do with ethics.

And that is the Democrats problem. They stand for whatever the loudest and most strident voices stand for. As Joe Klein observed in “Politics Lost – How American Democracy Was Trivialized By People Who Think You’re Stupid” –

“McKinnon could easily imagine his old colleagues hunkered down and sweaty, arguing over the precise details of Gore’s position on global warming – labor needed this, the tree huggers wanted that. Democrats had trouble seeing the forest for the tree huggers.”

This all brings me back to where I started. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The Democrats are acting like flimflam men, triangulating and desperately trying to figure who has the longest coattails. By the time the mid-terms this year and the presidential election in 2008 roll around, fear and intimidation are going to be the order of the day for the Democratic Party. Any Democrat who doesn’t comply with the wishes of the left might just wind up in some political gulag, or worse yet thrown to the wolves at the Daily Kos.

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Duck and Cover

“The liquidation of colonialism is a trend of the times which no force can hold back.”

- Kim Jong-il

“The North Korean side will participate as scheduled in the fifth round of six-nation talks. North Korea is committed to the denuclearization of the (Korean) peninsula.”

- Kim Jong-il

Last night Nancy and I sat in across the street from the fairgrounds and watched the July 4th fireworks display. And what a show it was, perhaps the best we’ve seen in our seven years here in Emporia.

We got home and found out that Kim Jong-il had given the folks in North Korea and the rest of the world a really big show. By the time Nancy and I went to bed at about eleven three scuds and a Taep’o dong II had been launched from the belly of the communist beast into the Sea of Japan. This morning I turned on C-Span and discovered Kim had launched another three. That makes the current count seven.

It’s now 8:35 in the morning here in the quiet Kansas Flint Hills and I’m wondering what’s next. The pundits are telling us not to worry too much. After all, the big one was a real disaster, only managing to fly for less than a minute after launch. Well. I feel better already! So do the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Singaporeans, the Filipinos, and the rest of the folks in Asia.

The Bush administration is considering options, including bringing the crisis to the United Nations Security Council. The Japanese are already applying sanctions. The South Koreans are outraged.

Democrat Joe Biden seems unfazed by it all, as the following blurb from Reuters demonstrates:

“Asked on CBS’ “The Early Show” whether Washington should have destroyed the missiles before launch, Biden said, “I would rather have seen it do exactly what it did, demonstrate to the whole world that it is in fact a paper tiger.”

Well, that puts the lid on the jar, doesn’t it? Let’s just all go back to sleep and stop worrying. Thanks, Joe!

Maybe I’m missing the big picture here. I can guess that some of my fellow Christians or the few talking heads that might be reading this post are thinking that I’m getting a bit overworked about the situation. Let me reassure my Christian brothers and sisters that I take great comfort in the fact that heaven awaits, and let me reassure the talking heads that I take great comfort in their superior wisdom. If I could genuflect to them I would. But, the thought of my children, grandchildren, the children of South Korea, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, and yes, even North Korea, being incinerated in a nuclear conflagration does trouble me more than a little bit. I find the notion of thousands and thousands of North Koreans starving while Kim blithely launches missiles quite troubling indeed. It may not bother Joe Biden, the pundits, or Kim at all, but it does bother me.

I grew up in the era of Bert the Turtle. How well I remember the weekly exercises when I and my classmates would crawl under our desks. It was a Cold War rite of passage for my generation of Americans. I doubt Joe Biden remembers those times. I’m sure the pundits and talking heads of today don’t. And Kim Jong-il? He couldn’t care less. He eats steak tartar, drinks Johnny Walker and giddily fires missiles one after another while his people are starving on a diet of field grass.

I’m sitting here against the backdrop of a beautiful Flint Hills morning trying to triangulate it all. I’d like to paint an imaginary picture of diplomatic and nuclear roses, but all that seems to be coming off the easel right now are mushroom clouds and Bert the Turtle. The more I think about the situation the more insane it seems. In fact, I don’t know right now who’s more insane. I know Kim is a real fruitcake, but I’m beginning to think that men like Joe Biden and the talking heads don’t have a real firm grasp on sanity either.

I did a little one man Q&A a while ago, trying to make sense of it all. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

Q. Is Kim Jong-il a madman?
A. Yes!

Q. Would he use nuclear or chemical weapons on South Korea, Japan, the United States, or any other enemy of the people?
A. Absolutely!

Q. Is he working the back channels with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Council of Guardians and the Assembly of Experts?
A. Yes!

Q. Do you think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Council of Guardians, and the Council of Experts are fruitcakes?
A. Yes!

Q. Do you think they would use nuclear or chemical weapons against Israel, the United States, or any other enemy of the People’s Revolution?
A. Without a shadow of a doubt!

Q. Do you think that Kim and Mahmoud are in cahoots?
A, Of course they are!

Q. What can we do about it?
A. Not much.

Q. Are you insane? We’ve got to do something, don’t we?
A1. No, I’m just a guy in the lonely Flint Hills waiting for the sirens to sound.
A2. We should have done something a long time ago.

Q. What are the options?
A. They aren’t pretty. We can add more sanctions and more North Koreans will starve to death. We can go to the United Nations and China will block any international effort to bring Kim to account this provocation and the daily atrocities he commits against his own population. We can take military action and the North Koreans will attack South Korea and Japan and thousands, possibly millions, will die. Or we can do nothing (the preferred option of talking heads) and wait for the inevitable attack from the two remaining points on the Axis of Evil.

Rosy scenarios, one and all, aren’t they? And Joe Biden is basically telling us to go back to sleep. Thanks Joe! And, thanks to the Democratic Party of my youth. Thanks to them, and Jimmy Carter in particular, we’ve now got ourselves stuck in the tar pit.

It’s all eerily reminiscent of the fifties and “duck and cover.” The only thing missing is Bert the Turtle. But I suspect as this all unfolds he’ll soon be coming back into fashion.

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The Fourth of July

Ordered Liberty

George Washington once called America’s grand experiment “ordered liberty.”

Today we celebrate not only the wisdom and sacrifices of our Founding Fathers, but also the grand revelation that the rights we hold to be true and self-evident are God breathed, given to us to live by, nurture, defend, and share with all mankind.

The voices that follow are not only echoes of the distant past, but also the chorus of loud “Amens” of those who have served in freedom’s cause. It’s that chorus, codified not only in word, but in grand deeds, that has, and will, I pray, sustain this great nation and the truth that brought it into being.

Happy Fourth of July!

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

- The Declaration of Independence – July 4, 1776


“The Founding Fathers of the United States asserted their claim to freedom and independence on the basis of certain “self-evident” truths about the human person: truths which could be discerned in human nature, built into it by “nature’s God.” Thus they meant to bring into being, not just an independent territory, but a great experiment in what George Washington called “ordered liberty.”…

“The American democratic experiment has been successful in many ways; millions of people around the world look to the United States as a model in their search for freedom, dignity, and prosperity. But the continuing success of American democracy depends on the degree to which each new generation, native-born and immigrant, makes its own moral truths on which the Founding Fathers staked the future of your Republic.”

“I am happy to take note of your words confirming the importance that your government attaches, in its relations with countries around the world, to the promotion of human rights and particularly to the fundamental human right of religious freedom, which is the guarantee of every other human right. Respect for religious convictions played no small part in the birth and early development of the United States. Thus John Dickinson, chairman of the Committee for the Declaration of Independence, said in 1776: “Our liberties do not come from the carters; for these are only declarations of preexisting rights. They do not depend on parchment or seals; but come from the King of Kings and the Lord of all the earth.” Indeed it may be asked whether the American experiment would have been possible, or how well it will succeed in the future, without a deeply rooted vision of divine Providence over the individual and over the fate of nations.”

- Pope John Paul II to the American Ambassador to the Vatican (1998)

“So in times of difficulty and trial, it is the man of piety and inward principle, that we may expect to find the uncorrupted patriot, the useful citizen and the invincible soldier. God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable, and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one, may in the issue tend to support the establishment of both.”

- John Witherspoon (1723-1794)

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Odds and Ends

“When your leadership is demonstrably weaker than it should be, you don't then point at the people and say, ‘It's your problem.’ If you want the people to move, you move them the way Roosevelt moved them, or you exhort them the way Kennedy or Johnson exhorted them. You don't say, “It's your fault.”

- Historian Roger Wilkins commenting on Jimmy Carter’s “Great Malaise” speech delivered on July 15, 1979

It’s hot here in Emporia, Kansas, in more ways than one. It’s about ninety-six outside my house here at 919 Neosho right now. Just a few blocks away at 522 Mechanic I think it might be a hundred and twenty-five or so. As reported by the Emporia Gazette this past Friday, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation has opened up an investigation of Emporia’s city government. According to Lyon County attorney Marc Goodman:

“This office was requested to initiate an investigation into certain irregularities alleged to have occurred in city government.”

Then on Saturday the Gazette reported that a batch of financial records had been turned over to law enforcement in April.

So, the city’s “kitchen” is hotter than things at the Orangemen’s Lodge on fish and brews night. It’s one fine kettle of fish.

I’m sure the forensic accountants have been poring over the books since they were turned over, casting keen eyes on the city’s doins.” Before long they’ll be reporting their findings. Until that happens, I suspect City Manager Steve Commons and other city officials will be sweating buckets of bullets.

The old time weather forecasters are saying that today’s weather is hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. I haven’t tried it since Nancy’s busy cooking some new potatoes and meat loaf for supper. Maybe some other day. I can only imagine, though, what they’re frying downtown where it’s about thirty degrees hotter than it is here. I don’t think it’s meat loaf and new potatoes. From here it smells a lot like roasting flesh.

I went to an early Fourth of July celebration last night and a lot of folks, knowing that I’m a candidate for the 2007 commission race, asked me about the investigation. All I could say was that the professionals will let us know. But, as I watched the meat turning on the spit I couldn’t help but wonder what might be in store when they’re done.

We’ll see.

On the national scene, the Washington Post ran a Jimmy Carter op-ed this morning. I won’t bore you with the details since it’s typical Jimmy Carter Stuff – castigating the current administration over secrecy or the conduct of the war in Iraq.

Of course, we all know what a roaring success Jimmy’s administration was, don’t we? It was during his time that I crossed my political Rubicon. Back in seventy-six while I was attending seminary I worked to get out the vote for him. And, I worked hard, as hard as any of Tip O’Neill’s precinct captains did when they would make their once every four years foray into the government housing project where I lived when I was an impressionable young Democrat. I was a true believer. I suspect there are thousands, if not millions, of other disillusioned souls out there who got themselves sucker punched by this peanut farmer turned President turned huckster. If any of you lived through those days you’ll understand. It’s a shining example of the Peter Principle in action. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan and Jimmy, in a fit of righteous anger, punished the United States Olympic team by not allowing them to compete with the bullies from the east. I suppose under the circumstances it was the best that could be done. He and his cronies had set about de-fanging the U.S. military and had succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. So, with no power option available, it became to clear to him and his brain trust that punishing American athletes was the best option available. Now, that’s what I call leadership! I well remember OPEC putting the screws to us too. I remember the odd/even days for getting gasoline rations. I remember the long lines at the gas stations. I also remember that annoying speech he made in the cardigan. “Just turn the thermostats down ten degrees and put on a sweater like me and everything will be just fine.” Then there was the inflation and the double digit mortgage loan rates that the Carter administration presided over. I remember that too. And last, but not least, I remember the days from November of seventy-nine when all of America finally saw through this buffoon. Sixty-six Americans were held hostage by the Iranian militants for close to a year and a half while Jimmy flopped around like an out of water fish. The Ayatollah and his militant following projected power while we flailed helplessly around like a giant with its feet nailed to the earth.

And here, today, we have the spectacle of Jimmy Carter criticizing our current leadership. It’s the absolute height of hypocrisy.

Yes, I remember Jimmy Carter well. I was once a true believer. But, the events of the seventies showed me and the rest of unsuspecting America what he was really made of. We were looking for a leader and what we got instead was a Howdy Doody. One of the real tragedies of the times was that the Soviets, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and OPEC all knew before us that he was nothing more than a weak, vacillating fool. They knew it and they took full advantage of it. It took us close to a full term in office to finally see the light and we’ve been paying the price for what he did to us even since. Thanks Jimmy!

This does all tie in somehow. I’ll leave it to you the reader to tie it all down. It has a lot to do with primrose paths.

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