Watchman in the Wilderness

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” 

• George Orwell 

Early this morning I read something from N.S. Lyons that hit a chord with me: “A nation is a particular people, with a distinct culture, permanently bound together by shared relationship with place, past, and each other.” 

For the past three days I’ve been reading quite a bit about the precipitous decline in British culture and government. Just this morning, for example, I read a depressing piece about England penned by a man named Tom Mctague, a sample of which follows: 

“Right now, it feels particularly difficult not to harden our hearts to the governments of our recent past. Layer upon layer of political failure has consolidated into a deep rock of mismanagement which grows more obdurate by every passing generation. Britain is just so bleak: the sense of decay and neglect is palpable across the country. Everyone knows something is fundamentally off; that things are out of kilter.” 

What the hell is going on in England right now. England, the home of the Magna Carta, Is now the home of rights like freedom of speech and expression being eroded. Recently a British man was arrested for publishing something on WhatsApp critical of a local governing council. In another case, a British citizen was arrested for praying silently outside an abortion clinic. He was interrogated and the police wanted to know what he was “silently” praying about. They didn’t ask expressly whether his prayer was “ani abortion,” but it was clear that they felt he was engaging in some sort of “thought crime,” the sort of crime that George Orwell predicted in his dystopian novel “1984”: 

“The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed — would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper — the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever.”  

The words are eerie enough on paper, but to see them played out in real time on a British street is absolutely hair raising! 

In another freedom of expression case, a man was arrested for flying the Union Jack in front of a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Pro-Palestinian protestors, on the other hand, seem to have the approval of some local police forces, “who seem more lenient toward pro-Palestinian demonstrators than other groups.”  

I find all this news from England sad and depressing. It is not the England that I’ve seen as i was growing up, nor is it the England I’ve read about in history.  

Lest I be understood, I need to let you know that I’m Irish American, and I’ve not always felt a great sense of kinship with the British people, for what I believe are good reasons, like the way William of Orange crushed the Irish at Athlone on the River Shannon in 1690. The castle at Athlone was owned by a man known as “Count Dillon,” hence my kinship with him. I’m also well acquainted with the Irish potato famine of the nineteenth century or the brutal way the British crushed Irish patriots who had declared Ireland’s independence from Britain in 1916. 

So, before I proceed with my defense of the England I’ve known and learned about, I’ll admit to a few prejudices that have gotten me in troubles over the years. In the 1990’s I was employed as a logistics analyst at FedEx. I have vivid memories of one business trip to England during those years. After a long day of going over an inventory we had conducted at regional warehouse near Coventry, I sat down for dinner at a local pub with the group manager and three or four of her employees. Things seemed to be going well until I started overhearing a couple of young Brits at the other side of the long table. They were making jokes about the Irish, who in their mind were Ignorant fools. I tried to ignore them, but as things proceeded, I began to silently wince with each punchline. One of the two saw me wincing and asked, “So, Phil, what nationality are you, anyway?” I tried to maintain my composure. “I’m American,” I responded. The answer didn’t seem to satisfy him. “I know you Yanks over in the colonies are all hyphenated something or others. Which one are you?” By now my blood was boiling. “I stood up looked across the table. “I’m Irish American and I’d be happy to discuss British social policy when Irish peasants were starving during the potato famine or about 1916.” I stopped and took a deep breath. “There’s one more thing. You called us your “colony.” In our history books in America, we understand things a bit differently. We learn about how we kicked your rear ends at Yorktown and won the Revolution and kicked your butts once more in the War of 1812. Now, I need to let you know that no self-respecting American is cringing in terror at the prospect of you Brits coming back for more.” I turned around to walk out, issuing a challenge born from equal measures of over-zealous pride and stupidity as I did. “I’ll be outside if you two want to play in the gravel to settle this if you’d like.” 

A few minutes later the young manager of the group came outside and apologized for the behavior of her underlings. Somewhere in my innards I wanted to refuse the apology, but a bolt of common sense overtook me, and I accepted the apology. The business we conducted after that was quiet and, believe it or not, cordial. 

My wife, Nancy, and I have visited England a few times. On one memorable visit I incurred her justified wrath at the Tower of London as we were circling around the crown jewels on a moveable walkway. As people on the walkway marveled at the sight, I muttered, “Look at this. You know the bastards stole everything they could get their hands on to get this rich.” Nancy glared at me. “Stifle it, Slick….Stifle it!” Later that same day we visited the Imperial War Museum. It became a real turning point for me in terms of attitude about the British. As I walked around Churchill’s wartime cabinet rooms i was amazed at how the British had succeeded against Nazi Germany with such primitive supporting tools. Click on this link and you’ll see what I mean. I saw very clearly that it wasn’t technology that saved the day for Britain in World War II. It was oure courage and determination. The following from an address Winston Churchill made to the British Parliament in 1940 is proof positive of that courage and determination: 

“I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many long months of toil and struggle.” 

“You ask what is our policy. I will say, it is to wage war with all our might, with all the strength that God can give us, to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.” 

• — Winston Churchill, from his first speech as Prime Minister, House of Commons, 13 May 1940. 

The British, no doubt, have their flaws, but they have made some significant contributions to the world over the centuries. Earlier in this essay I mentioned the Magna Carta, which was a monumental advance in civil and political rights that became a template for the Constitution, civil rights, art, and literature. 

The debt of gratitude we have, or should have, to the British is especially true in the field of literature. While there have been many great poets and writers from around the world who have graced history, few can compare with the British. When I was in high school, I remember reading the poetry of William Blake. The vivid descriptions he painted were beyond compare: 

The Tyger (1794) 

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,  
In the forests of the night;  

What immortal hand or eye,  
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 
 

In what distant deeps or skies.  
Burnt the fire of thine eyes? 
On what wings dare he aspire? 
What the hand, dare seize the fire? 
 

And what shoulder, & what art, 
Could twist the sinews of thy heart? 
And when thy heart began to beat. 
What dread hand? & what dread feet? 
 

What the hammer? what the chain, 
In what furnace was thy brain? 
What the anvil? what dread grasp. 
Dare its deadly terrors clasp? 
 

When the stars threw down their spears  
And water’d heaven with their tears: 
Did he smile his work to see? 
Did he who made the Lamb make thee? 
 

Tyger Tyger burning bright, 
In the forests of the night: 
What immortal hand or eye, 
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? 

This essay was preceeded by another Blake masteroiece – “Jersalem.” It has served as an unofficial hymn of the British since Blake wrote it. This essay started with a YouTube video of the great poem being performed. I highly recommend it, 

I remember being stirred by the words about self-sacrificial love from Sidney Carton in CharlesDi Dickens “A Tale of Two Cities” 

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” 

I’ve thought many times of Shakespeare’s words from Henry V as I sat in a bunker with my uddies as flares and 20 milimeter rockets filled the night sky above us in Vietnam; 

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he to day that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother.” 

I loved reading J.R.R Tolkein’s “Lord of the Rings.” He was  British Citizen who served in World War I. He had a deep understanding of what it took to stand with courage against overwhelming odds, as seen in this brief YouTube link. Arargon is speaking as tbe final battle is to begin.  The words are stirring; they ring true : “There many come a time when the courage of men will fail, but it will not be this day.” 

The British have their faults, as all of us do, but they have contributed much to Wesern Civilization over the centuries. It was especially at critical points in history, when civilizaton was on the verge of collapse, that the British stood in the gap and held firm against tranny. I’ll close with these words from Winston Churchill’s words to the world as the Nazis were steamarolling their way through Europe: 

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” 

England today is on the brink of collapse. The possibility of losing all that the British have done to foster civilization is very real. We must not let that happen. They, and we, must summon the courage to breathe fresh life into that civilization. 

I ran across an interesting op-ed about abortion posted on the “National Review” yesterday, citing Democrat Colorado House Speaker Julie McCluskie. A short snippet from that op-ed follows:  

“Colorado Democrats are touting a new reason why the state’s taxpayers should pay for low-income women’s abortions. Not only would it support “equity and fairness in health care,” they say, but aborting more babies is good fiscal policy, too.” 

“A birth is more expensive than an abortion,” Colorado House Speaker Julie McCluskie said at a committee hearing this week, touting a legislative fiscal analysis that claims taxpayer-funded abortions could save the state a half million dollars or more annually.” 

Ms. McCluskey’s logic is as stunning as it is evil. And, sadly, it’s aimed at something we’re all concerned with right now – our purses and wallets and the plight of the poor among us. If we are to accept that grisly logic it would then follow that the solutions to many of our societal problems could easily be solved by eliminating huge swaths of our population. We could “humanely” euthanize our elderly, our chronically infirm, Downs Syndrome children and adults, or those suffering from incurable diseases. 

Ms. McCluskey makes it all seem to easy and so cost effective. As Bob Dylan put it in 1983, “In order to deal in this game, got to make the queen disappear. It’s done with a flick of the wrist.” 

The problem with twisted logic the illuminati peddle is that it hits its intended target is some targeted sweet spot. The people of France and Iceland, for example, have almost eliminated Downs Syndrome with campaigns aimed at expectant mothers touting the virtue of aborting Downs children. Dylan’s “flick of the wrist” has been replaced by a simple snip of the surgical scissors.  

That twisted logic has been around for a long time. In 1924, for example, eugenics was all the rage. The Commonwealth of Virgina had passed a law that legalized he involuntary sterilization of Virgina citizens deemed to be “feeble minded.” One of the early targets of the law was a seventeen-year-old woman named Carrie Buck, who had been involuntarily sterilized under the Virginia law. By the time she was twenty-one, her case had made it to the Supreme Court. The decision in the case was monumentally important. Was the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck legal? 

In one of the most infamous Supreme Court decisions in our history, the high court upheld the Virginia statute that had legalized involuntary sterilization. Justice Olliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most respected justices who has ever held a Supreme Court seat, ratified the decision with these now infamous words: 

“We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. […] Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

As terrible as the Buck versus Bell decision was, it can’t compare with the 1857 Dred Scott decision. Dred Scott, the plaintiff, sued for his freedom from slavery, claiming that his owner had sent him to a state where slavery had been outlawed and that by rights he should be liberated. His case made it to the Supreme Court, in a stunning seven to two decision, ruled, with only justices McLean Curtis dissenting, that Scott was not Constitutionally entitled to his freedom. When all was said and done, the high court had done Dred Scott a grave injustice. The majority decision was framed in what I believe was a mind-boggling display of corrupt legal language: 

“ And upon a full and careful consideration of the subject, the court is of opinion, that, upon the facts stated in the plea in abatement, Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States, and not entitled as such to sue in its courts; and, consequently, that the Circuit Court had no jurisdiction of the case, and that the judgment on the plea in abatement is erroneous. . . .” 

In a more recent case, Kelo v. New London (2005), the high court ruled that the plaintiff, Suzette Kelo, was not entitled to Constitutional protection under the fifth amendment. The city of New London and a private contractor (Pfizer) had made an eminent domain claim on her property. Up until this case, the takings clause of the Constitution had always held that government could only take privately owned property to build a road or some other project like power lines that would benefit the entire community. In the Kelo case, Pfizer wanted Suzette Kelo’s property to develop a business and profit. from it.  

It was a bad decision on judicial, and moral grounds. 

This brings me back to the Colorado decision to codify abortion and have Colorado’s citizens pay for abortions. The twisted logic of cost savings used by the Colorado legislature and moral bankruptcy at the heart of the legislation beggar belief.  

I’ve been pro-life my entire adult life. I’ve done the things pro-lifers like me can legally do. I’ve carried a sign that read “Abortion stops a beating heart.” I’ve been whacked around cursed, and spit on. I’ve joined with thousands of other pro-lifers at the annual “March for Life” in Washington, D.C. I’ve debated this issue on college campuses in New Jersey as member of an organization called “The Center for Bioethical Reform.” I’m proud of the things I’ve done to advance the cause of life. I believe the things I’ve done comport well with sound reasoning and logic, as well as sound morality. 

I understand that the politicians and judges are increasingly antagonistic to pro-lifers like me, but I will continue to speak out against abortion. I owe it to my conscience, and I owe it to those who have spoken out in the public square. I’m thinking now of Mother Teresa, one of those I consider to be a hero. 

In 1994, she addressed the National Prayer breakfast. Her words, some of which follow, were powerful and prophetic. They cry out for your attention and consideration. I’ll close this essay with them:   

“But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.” 

“And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.” 
 
By abortion, the mother does not learn to love but kills even her own child to solve her problems.” 
 
“And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion.” 
 

“Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.” 
 
“Many people are very, very concerned with the children of India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about all the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions who are being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today – abortion which brings people to such blindness.” 

Last night my wife, Nancy, told me about an essay that was published on Substack, under the byline “Postcards from Barsoom.” The author of the essay is the pen name John Carter, and the title of the published essay is “The Involution of the Liberal Mind.” 

I read the essay and saw immediately that he is a good writer and a deep thinker, I highly recommend his work. You can find it on Substack under the byline “Postcards From Barsoon.” 

The subject matter he tackled in the essay is the modern liberal mind and its unwillingness to enter meaningful dialogue with those outside their community. Worse yet, they will cling to their positions even when the facts of a particular case are stacked against them. 

Years ago, when I was employed by FedEx, met with an account manager who wanted me and my engineers to justify hiring additional personnel for her account. We looked at the data, which showed that her account was operating at about twelve percent efficiency and I couldn’t justify additional personnel.. “I don’t care,” she responded. “I want more people.” I tried reasoning with her. “The math doesn’t support additional people.” My logic didn’t seem to sink in. “What math are you talking about?” she asked. 

“Like two plus two equals four.” 

She dug her heels in. “Not always!” 

“Trust me, it’s universal.” 

“I need an example. 

“Okay, you have two apple pies, and you add two apple pies do you have?” 

“Four” she responded. 

I thought I’d convinced here, but she insisted on another example. 

“Okay,” I responded. “You have two garter snakes, and you add two garter snakes. How many garter snakes do you have?” 

Her response absolutely stunned me. “You’ve got four garter snakes, but they just may eat the apple pies. Now give me my damned people!” 

She didn’t get her “people,” but I can assure you I was a very confused man when I got home that night. I told my wife that the day’s experience had left me wondering whether I was addled. “I went to work this morning, convinced that I was living in a universe where reason prevails. After my earlier adventure I was not quite as sure as I was when I left home this morning.” 

I think that same insane mindset infects many liberals today. 

Now, business operations are one thing, but that liberal mindset can go to dangerous extremes. I wrote the following essay in 2013, when Barack Obama was President of the United States. The essay is titled “Megalomania os Contagious.” Read it and I think you’ll see that involution and megalomania are birds of a feather. 

Megalomania is one of those incurable diseases that has afflicted kings, generals, dictators, and politicians throughout history. Some historians have recorded that near the end of his young life Alexander the Great lamented that “there are no more worlds to conquer.” Caesar invaded Gaul in 58 B.C. to further his political ambitions. Napoleon was so anxious to become the emperor of France in 1804 that he snatched the crown from the Pope’s hands and crowned himself. Near the end of World War II, Winston Churchill tried to convince Joseph Stalin to cease repressing the Soviet Union’s Roman Catholics. Stalin’s reply was an example of unbridled megalomania – “How many divisions does the Pope have? 

The old idiom, the bigger they are, the harder they fall, has also proven to be true throughout history. Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world before he was thirty. He died when he was only thirty-three. Julius Caesar was assassinated on the ides of March in 44 B.C., six years after his conquest of Gaul. A bit too much Gaul, perhaps? Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 with an army of half a million men. By the time 1813 rolled around, 22,000 French survivors of the campaign limped back home in defeat, done in by the Russian army and what some historians have called “General Winter.” Stalin didn’t live to see how many divisions the Pope had, but the world did. In June, 1987, Pope John Paul, a son of Poland, celebrated mass in the city of Gdansk with its citizens and a small band of steel workers who had bravely defied communist tyranny. Over a million people, or about fifty divisions, attended. The movement for freedom grew from there. In 1989, the communists left Poland, defeated by the fasting, prayer, faith, courage, and resolve of the Polish people.  

Megalomania seems to be a historical constant. It’s in the air right now and it’s contagious. Its focal point seems to be Syria, but when the layers are pulled away the current world situation boils down to a contest of two competing wills and visions. To the east, Vladimir Putin has set his sights on a new and vigorous Russia. In a 2012 address to the Russian people, he unveiled a vision of geopolitical relevance that would once again place Russia in a prominent place on the world stage.  He said, “We must not only preserve our geopolitical relevance, we must also increase it.” What did Mr. Putin mean by geopolitical relevance? He put it this way. “Geopolitical relevance means the ability to build different relations with different centers of power in the multipolar world, offering them what they need.” 

This clearly puts him at odds with the west and Barack Obama, who also has a grand vision and what appears to be supreme confidence in his ability to make it happen. It’s a vision of a unipolar world with him as its unelected President. He’s made it clear wherever he’s been. In June, 2008 he told adoring throngs in Berlin, “This is the “moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it….” “This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons…” “This is the moment when every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday…” This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably…” “This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East…” “This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet…” People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time.” When he accepted the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination later that year the theme repeated itself – “This was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.” 

If that isn’t megalomania in full bloom I don’t know what is! But, we decided to believe him and the flowery rhetoric got him elected and then re-elected. As the years have passed, the megalomania has become more pronounced. He has convinced himself that his intellect and charm are the trump cards in the high stakes bridge game of politics and international diplomacy. He’s decided that he, by executive decree, can “tweak” laws he doesn’t like. And in the recent debate and sabre rattling about military intervention in Syria he referred to America’s sons and daughters as “my military.” Some say it was a Freudian slip of the tongue and meant nothing. I don’t believe that for a moment. 

About all that’s left for Barack Obama to do is to snatch the crown and drape the ermine robe of rule around his shoulders. 

So there you have it. One man is advancing a vision of a renewed, relevant Russia. The other is trying to lay claim to the title of boss of the world.  

Who’s going to win? If recent events are any indication, Vladimir Putin has a substantial lead in this race to the top. 

How did that happen? Here in America we’ve been led to believe that Mr. Putin is crude, calculating, and manipulative. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has created and fostered the image of himself as the smartest man in any room at any time. The answer is clear. Appearances can often be deceiving. 

To be sure, Vladimir Putin is an autocrat. He’s also ambitious, calculating, and manipulative. But he’s also an extremely intelligent man. While it’s true that he served in the Soviet Union’s K.G.B., it’s also true that he earned a law degree from Leningrad State University with an emphasis on international relations. His doctoral thesis – “The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources under the Formation of Market Relations,” is far from being the work of a village idiot.  

Barack Obama does have his credentials. He graduated from Harvard Law School. He was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He worked as a community organizer and as a civil rights attorney. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. Not too bad. 

Unfortunately for us, the bloom has come off the rose of Barack Obama’s superiority.  Vladimir Putin has taken the measure of him. It started with Edward Snowden. Mr. Obama mismanaged that affair with what poets sometimes call the greatest of skill. When Snowden sought refuge in Moscow, Putin let the President twist in the wind before giving Snowden a year of breathing freely. In the end, Vladimir Putin, the autocrat, became a champion of free expression and Barack Obama became a K.G.B. like despot. Now we’ve got Syria. The President has been banging on the war drum (a tin one at that) for weeks. Then, thanks to a slip of the tongue from our Secretary of State, Vladimir Putin stepped into the gap, offering a peace proposal. The opening was wider than the hole the Kansas City Chiefs line opened with the sixty-five toss power trap in the 1970 Super Bowl. So, in addition to being a champion of free speech, Vladimir Putin, the cold, calculating autocrat, can now lay claim to being a man of peace and a significant player in world affairs while Barack Obama, the peacemaker, has become the trigger happy war mongerer. How the President allowed that to happen is almost beyond comprehension.  But he did.  

The President’s ambitious plans, grounded in his belief that no one can match his intellect, have gone up in smoke and flames, as Washington Post columnist George Will noted a few days ago: 

“Barack Obama’s foreign policy dream – cordial relations with a Middle East tranquilized by “smart diplomacy” – is in a death grapple with reality. His rhetorical writhings illustrate the perils of his loquacity. He has a glutton’s, rather than a gourmet’s, appetite for his own rhetorical cuisine.” 

It’s sad. It’s like watching a cat tease an unfortunate mouse or bird just before he eats it. Not long ago, Peggy Noonan put it even more succinctly in her Wall Street Journal column: 

“A serious foreign-policy intellectual said recently that Putin’s problem is that he’s a Russian leader in search of a Nixon, a U.S. president he can really negotiate with, a stone player who can talk grand strategy and the needs of his nation, someone with whom he can thrash it through and work it out. Instead he has Obama, a self-besotted charismatic who can’t tell the difference between showbiz and strategy, and who enjoys unburdening himself of moral insights to his peers.” 

I think this has rankled Mr. Obama. His ego’s been bruised. The crown’s been tarnished and the bloom really is off the rose. 

Things are so bad that people are beginning to see the real Barack Obama. Military historian Victor Davis Hanson recently observed that  “After five years of this, the world caught on, and sees juvenile and narcissistic petulance in lieu of statesmanship—and unfortunately a sinister Putin takes great delight in reminding 7 billion people of this fact almost daily.” 

Even reliable media allies are turning on the President. The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, for example, poured this salty tidbit into the festering wounds: “Unlike Bill Clinton, who excels at boiling down complex arguments to simple ones, Obama prefers to wallow in the weeds, reminding people that he’s the smartest man in the room and expecting their support because he feels he is only doing what’s complicated and right.” 

We’ve had many warnings about the dangers of this kind of megalomania in the past. One that seems appropriate right now comes from the pen of John Jay (Federalist 4, written in the late 1780’s): 

“Absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition… These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.” 

John Jay knew what he was talking about. He and his fellow American colonists had just defeated the mighty British Empire in our Revolutionary War. If only King George III and the British parliament had seen it all coming. But, it was close to impossible. Megalomania tends to blind one to reality. 

At the end of that war, tradition has it that the British played an old tune titled “The World Turned Upside Down,” a stanza of which follows: 

“If buttercups buzzed after the bee, 

If boats were on land, churches on sea, 

If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows, 

And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse, 

If summer were spring and the other way round, 

Then all the world would be upside-down.” 

The world does occasionally turn upside-down. Empires fade; new empires supplant them. “Wise” men are proven to be fools. Are we witnessing such a turning now? It’s early and the geopolitical wheel’s still spinning, but things aren’t looking good for the smartest man in the room. 

What does all of this mean to you and me? Will sanity prevail in the end? Sadly, it all seems to depend on the whim and will of Barack Obama. That, and his hubris, have made these times that really do “try men’s souls.” 

“There is a City of Gold 
Far from the rat race that eats at your soul 
Far from the madness and the bars that hold 
There is a City of Gold 
 
There is a City of Light 
Raised up in the heavens and the streets are bright 
Glory to God—not by deeds or by might 
There is a City of Light 
 
There is a City of Love 
Surrounded by stars and the powers above 
Far from this world and the stuff dreams are made of 
There is a City of Love 
 
There is a City of Grace 
You drink holy water in sanctified space 
No one is afraid to show their face 
In the City of Grace 
 
There is a City of Peace 
Where all foul forms of destruction cease 
Where the mighty have fallen and there are no police 
There is a City of Peace 
 
There is a City of Hope 
Above the ravine on the green sunlit slope 
All I need is an axe and a rope 
To get to the City of Hope 
 
I’m heading for the City of Gold 
Before it’s too late, before it gets too cold 
Before I’m too tired, before I’m too old 
I’m heading for the City of Gold” 

• Bob Dylan – “City of Gold” (1980 – Special Rider Music) 

I’m past eighty years old now. My journey is almost complete. There are mornings when I sense that I can hear the conversations and the beautiful music drifting earthward from the Celestial City. That’s a far cry from a few years ago, when my view of that Celestial City seemed so distant.  

While I realize that I’m currently earthbound, I take great comfort in the fact that I’m closer to my real home and I rejoice in that. 

The world I inhabit now is full of false gods and false promises, greed, and corruption running rampant. It’s been that way here on earth since the beginning of time. History is full of examples – Egypt, Rome, Babylon. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.  

While we Americans try carve out an exception for ourselves as the “shining city on the hill”, we have strayed far from the original covenant many of our forefathers agreed to. Our streets are violent, with criminals often acting with impunity. Many of our politicians are openly corrupt.  

Sadly, the America we inhabit is far from being that “shining city on a hill.” I believe it’s more like the America Bob Dylan described in 1989: 

“We live in a political world 
Courage is a thing of the past 
Houses are haunted 
Children unwanted 
The next day could be your last” 

As I said a few sentences ago, this world has been subject to corruption for thousands of years. The Christian scholar, Augustine, lived during the times when the great Roman Empire was collapsing. He observed it and described what he was seeing in his masterwork “City of God” 

“The earthly [city] has made for herself, according to her heart’s desire, false gods out of any sources at all, even out of human beings, that she might adore them with sacrifices. The heavenly one, on the other hand, living like a wayfarer in this world, makes no false gods for herself. On the contrary, she herself is made by the true God that she may be herself a true sacrifice to Him.” 

Thankfully, my sense of hope is higher now than it was a few years ago, when things were far less corrupt than they are now. Back then, my wife, Nancy, and I were also discussing our growing sense of alienation with “the things of this world.” The abiding life theme coming from those discussions was that our shared pilgrimages had a way to go. We saw the “celestial city” less dimly than we did a quarter of a century before, but we recognized that our vision was still dimmed by the temporal realities that so often dominated our lives. This begged the question for us. “How can we truly learn to be “in, but not of, the world?”  
 

As Christians, we have learned that a substantial part of our historical narrative is the shared story of aliens and strangers looking for a city they had neither built nor seen. As we now gaze back through time we see the panoply of fellow travelers who preceded us. There was Noah. There was Abraham, who left one of the most vibrant cultures in the early world to seek the city Nancy and I now see dimly in the distance. There was Moses, who traded the wealth of Egypt for a pilgrimage in the wilderness with God’s liberated slaves. As we hear the names called we see human weakness in all its glory. We see a prostitute, a coward in hiding, a self-absorbed strong man, and a repentant adulterer. We see the prophets who set trumpets to their mouths only to be stoned for the words of warning they proclaimed. 
 

These are the citizens of our homeland. 
 

Through all the tribulations in life these men and women saw life through a common prism – faith! They chose alienation from the familiar and safe for a promise they never saw fulfilled on the earthly side of their journeys. And it is that prism through which we too must see our lives and our times. 
 

As we proceed on our respective journeys, we see what they saw long ago. The road we must travel is difficult, littered with the age-old temptations to stay earth-bound and proceed no further than our culture will allow. Moses experienced it when Pharaoh responded to God’s demand for liberation with the telling words, “You can go, but don’t go too far.” So do we. 
 

One of the great lessons of history is that even the greatest of cultures are imbued with curses as well as blessings. Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome could boast of power, wealth, philosophy, art, law, and human progress. But theirs was also the story of barbarity, corruption, and unbridled evil. Empires rose, full of promise, only to descend into madness. Another would supplant it. In time the cycle would repeat itself. Our fathers in faith saw this and refused to give in to the temptation of becoming earth bound. They sought something better. 
 

Ah, but we’re Americans. We’re different. We’re the people of the “New Frontier” and the “City on the Hill.” We’re “the last best hope of earth.” 
 

This, I think, is the great American curse. It’s the temptation to which far too many Christians have fallen prey. We’ve all too often succumbed to the false notion that America is our final destination. Richard John Neuhaus recently wrote of this phenomenon and its accompanying tension and asked whether, for the Christian, America may be more Bablyon than it is the New Jerusalem we’ve falsely thought it was, or hoped it would be: 
 

“The title American Babylon will likely puzzle, and even offend, some readers. There is in America a strong current of Christian patriotism in which “God and country’ falls trippingly from the tongue. Indeed, God and country are sometimes conflated in a single allegiance that permits no tension, never mind conflict, between the two.” 
 

There’s a tension at play here. We live in one world. We seek, or should be seeking, another. In the third century Tertullian asked the question – “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” In our time should that question be – “What has American Babylon to do with the New Jerusalem we seek?” 
 

Is this all a matter of just splitting hairs? I think not. The tension is as real as my American citizenship and the sense of love, duty, and patriotism I feel for my country. I realize that I’ve been a partner to freedom, privilege, and wealth that few in history have had. I am an American. But, the sense of alienation I feel in my little corner of Babylon is also as real as the dynamics of the new city I seek. As I read the accounts of those who have preceded me in faith I also understand that my Babylon carries its curses as well. America is no different in that regard than any other empire in history. The children of Israel had their taskmasters. So do we! This new age is not immune. As C.S. Lewis once observed: 
 

“What assurance have we that our masters will or can keep the promise which induced us to sell ourselves? Let us not be deceived by phrases about ‘Man taking charge of his own destiny’. All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of the others. They will be simply men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest. The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?” 
 

Can we escape the tension? I think not. About the best we can do is give moral voice to our concerns, live in peace with others as much as it is possible, realize that our narratives are linked historically to a different homeland and people, and to learn to sing the song of Zion in a foreign land. That seems like so little. Perhaps so. But if we give in to the temptation to make Babylon our permanent abode we fall prey to the false notion that we have the capacity to create heaven on earth. Once we give in to that delusion it may only be a matter of time before we stir the stagnant water, see ourselves mirrored there, and worship what we see. 

“To man the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold attitude. He perceives what exists round about him – simply things, and beings as things; and what happens round about him – simply events, and actions as events; things consisting of qualities, events of moments; things entered in the graph of place, events in that of time; things and events bounded by other things and events, measured by them, comparable with them: he perceives an ordered and detached world. It is to some extent a reliable world, having density and duration. Its organization can be surveyed and brought out again and again; gone over with closed eyes, and verified with open eyes.” 
 
– Martin Buber – from “I and Thou” 
 
My mother was cut from hardy stock. She was born in 1910, in a little Newfound fishing village called Mcivers, pictured above. She was the youngest of Fannie Rose Morgan and Reuben Park’s nine children. 
 
While I didn’t realize it at the time, what seemed to be a bad staffing assignment on the part of the U.S. Air Force in 1963 turned out to be on of the greatest blessings in my life. I’d been at Travis Air Force Base for about two years when the orders came. I was going to Ernest Harmon, which was located in Stephenville, Newfoundland. 
 
My first recollection of life at Harmon was that it was cold, damned cold. I’d arrived in early December and by that time the snow was already piled up higher than anything I’d ever seen. And, the wind was almost always blowing at thirty miles an hour, with snow squalls descending in the late afternoons, dropping three or four inches of snow. After that, the nights would clear, the winds continue, and the temperature drop to about ten below. 
 
My daily routine was about as predictable as the weather. There was work in a communications relay center, dressing to endure the walk from the barracks to work, chow, and about two or three hours a day in the airman’s club, drinking. Like most GI’s stationed there, the drink was the real center of my life. I rationalized it by calling it anti-freeze, claiming I needed it to survive the Newfoundland winter. 
 
I knew that my mother had been born in Newfoundland, but once stationed there I never gave much thought to contacting my mother’s family. There were two reasons I used to justify my thinking. First, it was just too cold to move far from Ernest Harmon. I assumed that my mother’s family would be hunkered down just like me. But, fundamentally, I was really afraid to meet them. I was afraid they might be like her. After my father died in 1948 she’d had a complete nervous breakdown and been hospitalized for a year or so. The “healing regimen” included all sorts of medications and went so far as to also include shock treatments. My brother has a picture of her taken not long after she got out of the hospital. She weighed about eighty pounds. Every time I look at that picture I have to stifle my emotions. Her face looked empty, as if almost all the life had been shocked and electrified out of her. There was a body there, to be sure, but the sullen, downcast look on her face has always spoken volumes to me. It’s as though the forty pounds missing from her were the soul. Her cheekbones, mirrored against the gaunt face, the sunken, hollow eyes, were the most prominent features. As I occasionally look at the picture I see the weight of the world collapsing down on her. With shoulders slumped, face weighed down, she has become to me the epitome of a tortured soul. 
 
It took me years to see my mother’s life in the proper light. Until that happened she remained a great embarrassment to me. Her neuroses, born of circumstances beyond her control, dominated her life from the time she left that hospital. The weight of those “quirks” often fell on me and I recoiled against them. As I think back on it now I believe it’s the reason I was the first in my family to go far from home. I’d decided at a young age that when the opportunity came I was going to escape the things that dominated her. I determined they were not going to dominate me. 
 
That brings me back to Newfoundland. I was content to stay around the people I felt most comfortable with. If I was going to be around neurotic people, I reasoned, I was going to share my time with people whose neuroses I shared. So, like my buddies, I clung to drink, fast women, and as much fancy clothing I could afford. 
 
It was, as I recall, about four months into my tour, in early March, 1964, when I got a letter from home, encouraging me to visit the Parks, my mother’s family. I ignored that letter, but a second letter came two weeks later with an even stronger encouragement. I decided to go ahead and make the pilgrimage, only to stop the barrage of letters. 
 
Mcivers is about twenty miles or so from Corner Brook, in Newfoundland’s Bay of Islands area. It’s rugged country, made for rugged men and women, the hardy stock my mother came from. 
 
The trip from Stephenville to Mcivers was uneventful. By this time I was getting used to the snow, wind, and cold, so much so that it seemed quite natural to me. A ride in a sixties version of a micro-bus going sixty five miles an hour on snow packed roads would bother me today. It didn’t back then. I just figured that if we went off the road we’d just wind up in a snow bank, crawl out of the vehicle and dig out, then go on our way. I believe the bus driver was thinking the same way. 
 
I arrived in Mcivers right around dusk. The first thing I noticed was that the wind was as prominent there in Mcivers as it was at Ernest Harmon. My African-American buddies back at the base used to listen to the wind howling and say that the “hawk was talking.” The bus stopped and I thanked the driver for the ride. “Hawk’s really talkin’ out there, ain’t he?” I said, as I got up from my seat. “What’s that, my son?” the driver asked. Realizing that there was a language barrier, I replied, “Nothing…Just GI talk, that’s all.” 
 
As I got off the bus I pulled the hood of the parka over my head to protect myself from the wind, looked up at the sky, which was beginning to reveal the stars that ruled the cold Newfoundland night. The bus pulled away and as it did the driver rolled his window down and barked out, “Sonny Jim, if was you I’d be gittin’ myself inside quick like. Otherwise you’s gonna’ freeze solid fore the mornin’ comes.” I waved, acknowledging his wise counsel, and headed off to the closest house I could find. 
 
The door opened even before I got to the threshold. There to greet me was a woman. She was fairly tall, with a strong appearance, a round pleasant face. Her voice spoke of an inner calm. As I moved forward to announce myself she said, “Lionel, my son, you’ve got some thin.” It took me a moment to realize that I’d been mistaken for someone else. Once I did I announced myself. “Ma’am, I’m not Lionel, I’m Susie Park’s son from America.” Her face lit up as soon as she heard my words. “Oh, God’s goodness, my son, I’m your aunt Mabel.” She motioned me forward and hugged me, pulling me past the threshold as she did. “Billy, Billy, come ‘ere,” she shouted. “Your sister Susie’s boy’s here from America.” My uncle came dashing from a back room as we were entering what appeared to be a dining room. There was a long table in the middle covered with an oil cloth, with neatly arranged chairs surrounding it. The room was warm and inviting. My uncle, who was a fairly short man (as I recall he appeared to be shorter than my aunt), with thinning hair, and a very pronounced smile, stood erect, beaming at the sight before him. “Well, Lord stone the crows.” He looked me over for a few moments, then, beaming again, went on. “Mabel, you’re right maid, he’s some thin. I think we need to get this boy some food, they don’t feed ‘em too well in America.” With that he motioned me to sit down. It wasn’t long till the table was filled with cookies, biscuits, bread, jams, and tea. We sat for hours and talked. To this day I remember the ambiance much more than the subjects covered. As the conversation went on the room seemed to warm with each word spoken. I received the hospitality and listened, realizing that my fears about the Parks, based on my history with my mother, were unfounded. These were good people, the salt of the earth. 
 
The conversation went on for some time and then there was a knock at the door. Mabel smiled at me as she got up to answer the door. “’Tis your uncle Philip. He’s over every evening about this time. Susie named you after him. I’m sure he’ll love these moments with ya’.” As the door opened I saw a short man. He was barrel-chested and appeared to be quite strong. From what my mother had told me I knew he’d been a lumberjack and could “cut more cord o’ wood than any man in the Bay of Islands.” I stood up and he gazed at me for a moment. Then he asked Mabel, “What’s this, then, Mabel, a stranger in our midst?” Mabel laughed. “’Tis no stranger, Philip, ‘tis your namesake from America. This is your sister Susie’s boy from America.” With that Philip rushed up to me and hugged me. He held me for quite some time, then let go. “It’s him for sure, is it, Mabel?” he asked, looking for reassurance. “He’s not a phantom, is he?” Billy and Mabel, in unison, reassured him. “Oh, no, my son, he’s Susie’s boy for sure.” “This is wonderful,” he beamed as he hugged me once more. As he did I could feel tears from his cheeks touching mine. This, for my uncle Philip, was a great day. He let go of me for a moment, holding me by my shoulders, looking me over. After that he did something that amazes me to this day. My uncle, seventy-seven years old, past his prime, picked me up and twirled me around seven or eight times. “It’s a glad day for Philip Park, it is,” He said as he did. When he was done he plunked me down like a small toy and we all sat down for more conversation and remembrance. 
 
For the next hour or so we all sat and talked. I noticed that Mabel, Philip, and Billy seemed far less concerned with the goings on in America, the progress of the world’s greatest nation than they were with Susie. Philip and Billy would occasionally reminisce across the table, giving me little glimpses into my mother’s real soul. Their remembrance filled the air. One would talk, the other would listen, nodding as he did. “How long’s it been since we seen her?” “Forty year I think.” “Been that long has it?” “Oh my, yes, it’s been that for sure.” “She was the flower of Mcivers, our Susie was.” “Oh my, yes, she was that and more.” This went on for some time and then it got more specific. Billy began, out loud, to remember a sad time. “Do you remember, Philip, the time when she was so young and she wanted to go to a dance? I think she was sixteen, maybe.” Philip nodded, acknowledging the memory. Billy continued – “Mum thought ‘twas alright but Dad wouldn’t hear of it. I remember Mum pleadin’ with him – “Oh Reuben, let her go, the boys will be sure she’s okay.” 
“I remember it,” Philip said. “Reuben Park was a hard man, a mean man and he wouldn’t let her go. Said she was too young.” 
Billy continued on. “I remember poor Susie pleadin’ with him and us takin’ up for her, but it was no good. We all just got beat for all our pleadin.” 
As I looked across the table I saw Philip wipe the tears from his eyes. “She cried by the fireplace all night long. No one could console her…..He was a hard man, was Reuben Park. He was mean to our little Susie” 
 
And so it went late into the night until fatigue set it. Mabel went to prepare a place for me to sleep, a feather bed with a huge down comforter. As she was doing that Billy left me with the night’s parting words. “Your mom’s a good woman, Philip. Our Susie’s was the flower of Mcivers. I think she was the best of us Parks.” 
 
We then all sat quietly for a few minutes, basking in the glow of the conversation and memories of the flower of Mcivers. It was time full of marvelous silence, with Billy and Philip remembering a sister they loved and treasured and me seeing my mother in a light I’d never seen before. I remember that silence to this day as not only being full, but also being filled with wonder. 
 
Mabel came from the bedroom she’d prepared for me and announced that it was fit for American habitation. This way, Philip,” she said, motioning me toward the room. “Bein’ a soldier you’re probably not used to much comfort, but we’ll make you comfortable here. We gotta’ do good by Susie’s boy.” I thanked her, said good night to Billy and Philip, and turned toward the bedroom. Mabel had one last word. “You’re uncle Fiander will be by in the morning for breakfast. He’s always by our place in time for breakfast along with the other Parks. You’ll bring a glad tear to his eye when he sees you, for sure.” With that, the door closed behind me. 
 
It took me a while to get to sleep that night. My mind and heart were filled with thoughts. The goodness of the Parks melted some of the hardness I’d developed over the years. I laid there, rearranging my thinking. There was so much more to Susie Park than the neuroses I’d seen for years. To those who were close to her and loved her she was the flower of Mcivers. As I drifted into slumber I wondered, “How did she get from here in Mcivers to where she is now?” “Who?” I asked, “robbed the flower of all of its beauty in the years it took her to get from here to there?” 

It was to take years to get the answers to those questions 

“In becoming an Irishman, Patrick wedded his world to theirs, his faith to their life…Patrick found a way of swimming down to the depths of the Irish psyche and warming and transforming Irish imagination – making it more humane and more noble while keeping it Irish.” 

    – Thomas Cahill – “How the Irish Saved Civilization” 

Tomorrow is Saint Patrick’s Day, a day to celebrate all things Irish. Across America, people will be wearing lots of Kelly green, sporting badges with the words “Kiss me, I’m Irish inscribed on them, tipping a pint of Guinness (the Irish also call it a pint o’ the bitters), or viewing parades with their friends and neighbors.  

I’m Irish American myself, so I love the tradition. My father was the stereotypical Irish American. My mother, who was born in Newfoundland, met him when she came to Boston with her sisters in the 1930’s. She was smitten with his handsome face and curly hair not long after she met him. They got married and settled into life in America. He worked as a “chipper,” or the trade was more commonly known, ice man. He delivered blocks of ice to people’s homes every working day. It was backbreaking labor. My brother was born in 1938; my siter was born in 1940. I was born in 1942, about a year after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.  

I have very few memories of him. I do remember running up to him occasionally when he came home from work. I’d jump up in his arms and he’d hug me. I remember the warmth of those hugs on my cheeks, along with the wetness on my arms and chest that came from the leather apron he wore. I have only one other memory of him.  It came a few days before he died in 1948 from Tuberculosis. My mother, brother, sister, and I were standing in a hospital lobby looking up at the glass enclosed isolation ward where was standing. I can still visualize him waving meekly at us as we stared longingly at him from below. Any memory I now have of him comes from sources that were closer to him than I was. 

I was born in 1942; the Pearl Harbor attack had taken place in December of 1941. For my father, the attack on Pearl Harbor brought out his patriotic instincts. He decided to join the Marine Corps and do his part as a loyal American. He took the physical and that’s when fate intervened. When the results came back the doctors notified him, “Mr. Dillon, you’ve got Tuberculosis.” He was despondent. He really wanted to join the Marine Corps. The doctors tried to reassure him. “It’s going to be a long war, Mister Dillon. Get treated and you’ll still have your chance to fight the Japanese.” He didn’t listen. He refused to get treated and sank into an alcohol fueled depression that eventually killed him.  

I’ve never understood why he took the course he did. About the only thing about what did that’s made sense to me was that it was a very Irish approach, full of self-pity. He was maudlin to his core.  

My mother was the brave one. She somehow fought her way through a nervous breakdown that included barbaric electroshock treatments to keep her family intact. It the kind of courage that one rarely finds in this world.  

In the years since, when I’ve tried to recapture my early moments with my father, my wife, Nancy, has always reminded me that I needed to firmly grasp that it was my mother who should be my role model. She was the one who had the courage to keep going when things seemed impossible. My father had the maudlin Irish instincts. My mother was the one who was imbued with Celtic tenacity.  

As I was growing up, I occasionally asked my mother about my Celtic roots. “How Irish am I?” She’d always respond, “You’re as Irish as Paddy’s pig.” I didn’t understand what the title meant. I just knew that I was “as Irish ad Paddy’s pig.” It wasn’t till years later that came to understand that it as the British who first coined the derisive term as a way of mocking the Irish as nothing more than crude, primitive, uneducated, dirty barbarians.  

Strangely, the taunting language and description of the Irish that the British first used as an epithet has become a term I now warmly embrace. I am “AS IRISH AS PADDY’S PIG!” 

Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to visit Ireland several times. I’ve kissed the Blarney Stone. Nancy and I have had the pleasure of casually sipping tea at Bewley’s on Grafton Street. The tea was good, but what made the event so meaningful for us was the Irish approach to Bewley’s. Here in America, we sit at our table and other guests sit at theirs. It’s very private. Not so in Ireland. We sat down at a table and before we could get settled, we heard a man’s voice. “Do you mind if I sit with you, then?” We responded that we’d be delighted to have him join us. He then sat down with us and a brief conversation followed. He explained how things work in Ireland and then told us to keep our eyes on the lookout for the “do gooders” who are trying to ruin everything here in Ireland.”  

You may be asking what a “do gooder” is. It’s an Irish slang for a liberal or a Progresssive.There weren’t many of them in Ireland in those days, but I think that has changed a lot in the years since. I do know that quite a few of them came to America, became politicians, and they are doing their very best to ruin things here now. 

 We’ve done a Dublin pub crawl, visiting the haunts of famous Irish writers like William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde, and James Joyce. We’ve had the pleasure of sitting in a pub close to the Cliffs of Moher, listening to a uniquely Irish group perform traditional Irish ballads. When I say uniquely Irish that’s exactly what I mean. The two person group consisted of a young woman who played the flute. The thing that made her uniquely Irish was the fact that she chain- smoked while she played. I can still see the smoke floating from the flute as she played. The guitarist was a one-legged man, whose skill with the guitar and his warm Irish tenor voice were incomparable. There was the third member of the ensemble, but he didn’t perform with a musical instrument. He was an elderly gentleman who sat on a stool next to the perfumers. He sat smiling, with his mouth closed, so I couldn’t tell for sure whether he had many teeth in his head. He just sat there, smiling, with his right hand extended in the direction of the audience.  That extended right hand was a signal to the bartender to put of pint of Guinness in it at the appropriate time(s). It took me a minute or two to figure out what his role was until it hit me. He was a “groupie,” an Irish version of the “groupies” who follow rock bands and singers from venue to venue here in America.  

It was a memorable evening, made even more memorable as Nancy and I made our way back to Maeve Fitzgerald’s Inn, accompanied in the moonlit night by a couple of cows enjoying a stroll with us.  

We’ve done an amazing tour of the library at Dublin’s Trinity College. It’s home to the famous Book of Kells, a beautifully crafted manuscript of the four gospels based on the Latin (Vulgate) of the Christian Bible. The original texts were composed sometime in the fourth century by Saint Jerome. That, along with the thousands of classical texts, were preserved by the Irish monks of Iona like Columba, Aidan, and Scabbyhead when the barbarians swept across much of Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries, about 200 years after Saint Jerome died.  

Their work was critical to the preservation of Christian civilization. Their contributions have been memorialized in contemporary literature. One of those works is Thomas Cahill’s “How the Irish Saved Civilization.” I read it a few years ago and recommend it highly. Also, for those who may be wondering how the Irish came to America I’d also like to recommend Edward Laxton’s “The Famine Ships” which chronicles the Irish pilgrimage from the great potato famine to the anti British uprisings of the early twentieth century. 

Nancy and I have seen just about anything a person would want to see in Ireland over the years.  

We once got to meet a wonderful group of young Irishmen in a pub who were celebrating a rare curling or rugby victory over the British. They fell in love with us, in part because we’re Americans and in part because they loved saying two words – Nancy and Kansas, which they pronounced “Nhhhancee” and “Khhhansas.” They would celebrate, then stop and say, “Boys, let’s go give Nhhhancee from Khhhansas a hug.” 

It was priceless. 

On another trip, we somehow managed to crash the boat we’d rented into an arched bridge. Thankfully, by that time I’d kissed the Blarney Stone, which made explaining the disaster to the owner quite pleasant. I called him and said, “well, then, you wouldn’t believe it. We’ve sheared off a wee bit of the cabin of your boat.” 

As the Irish almost always do, he took it all in stride. 

On another trip, we had the pleasure of meeting an older woman who had to be the sauciest waitress I’ve ever met. She was in her sixties, I think. She was about five feet tall. She weighed less than a hundred pounds, but, oh man, did she have a wicked left hook. I can still hear her fist against the mouth of an unruly patron she confronted on the other side of the establishment. I can still hear the thud of his body hitting the floor. When I asked her what had happened, she said nonchalantly, “I just popped ‘im one and that was that.” 

Tomorrow we’ll be celebrating Saint Patrick’s life and contributions to Western Civilization. He came to Ireland, not as a native Irishman, but as a slave. By the time he’d shed those chains, he was responsible for abolishing slavery and bringing Christianity to large swaths of Ireland. Folklore even maintains that he singlehandedly drove the snakes out of Ireland. If that’s true, I suspect that more than a few of them made their way to America with the “do gooders” of Dublin and became politicians. 

I’ve gone about as far as my Irish “gift of gab” can take me today. Tomorrow I’m going to enjoy celebrating the fact that I’m as “Irish as Paddy’s Pig.” I’ll be eating the traditional corned beef dinner, along with Irish soda bread, and possibly a pint of Guinness. My Saint Patrick’s wish for you is the same – good food, Irish soda bread, a pint of Guinness, and lots of happy conversations and enjoy one another’s company. 

“Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: 

“Who is this that obscures my plans 
    with words without knowledge? 
Brace yourself like a man; 
    I will question you, 
    and you shall answer me. 

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? 
    Tell me, if you understand. 
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! 
    Who stretched a measuring line across it? 
 On what were its footings set, 
    or who laid its cornerstone— 
while the morning stars sang together 
    and all the angels^[a] shouted for joy? 

 “Who shut up the sea behind doors 
    when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment 
    and wrapped it in thick darkness, 
 when I fixed limits for it 
    and set its doors and bars in place, 
 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; 
    here is where your proud waves halt’?” 

• Job 38:1-11 (New International Version) 

This morning, I feel the need to get in touch with my smallness. It’s an exercise I first became acquainted with when my wife, Nancy, and I moved from Memphis to Emporia, Kansas, which sits about 100 miles south of Kansas City.  

I knew very little about Emporia before the move. My wife, Nancy, and I were living in Memphis, working for FedEx.  

 
As we started out, I remembered how things were just before I retired. I’d made the trip south on the turnpike so many times it had become too common to me. If I had to put a number to it I’ll bet I missed the glory of the Flint Hills a hundred out of a hundred and one days back then. It had just become humdrum, a drudgery. 
 
Ah, but now I look forward to these little day trips. That was what it was like on the morning, June 2nd, 2005. 
 

This is the way I described the events of that morning back then: 

 
Coach and I took another trip to Wichita today. The part the Volvo dealer had ordered a week or so ago was in and so we headed out at about seven-thirty to get it attached to the rest of the car. 
 
As we started out, I remembered how things were just before I retired. I’d made the trip south on the turnpike so many times it had become too common to me. If I had to put a number to it, I’ll bet I missed the glory of the Flint Hills a hundred out of a hundred and one days back then. It had just become humdrum, a drudgery. Listening to sultry new-age voices on NPR like Lakshmi or Mandalit. 
 
Ah, but now I look forward to these little day trips. So it was on this morning, June 2nd, 2005. 
 
The hills are especially beautiful this year. The late rain and early spring rains, along with the burning, have produced the most incredible green that I’ve ever seen. It is a sight to behold! 
 
I think it was right about my favorite spot, mile marker 109, that Nancy mentioned something Curtis McCauley said the other night when he and his wife were over for some barbeque. Doctor Mac, as I know him, says he’s retired, but he does more work these days than most of the young bucks I met in the corporate world. One of the things he’s currently doing is providing transportation for young people who have somehow made it into the “system.” I think that most are products of broken homes. At any rate, Doc spends a good part of his time taking them to doctor’s appointments, counselors, or an absentee parent. Not too long ago he was taking a young boy from Emporia to some sort of appointment. Their course took them through the Flint Hills, and somewhere along the turnpike he asked the boy a question. “Did you know that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills?” The boy seemed a bit puzzled, so Doc continued with an explanation. “Some of them are black, and some of them are brown, but none of them are green.” The boy seemed even more puzzled with this. Curtis, who finds it almost impossible to avoid mischief, then decided to add more puzzlement yet. “Why do you think that God doesn’t make them green?” he asked. Now I wasn’t there, but I can almost see the gleam in Doc’s eyes as he parried with the lad. I think he might have been thinking “I’ve got this kid stumped.” But, after a minute or so of reflection the boy offered this wonderful piece of youthful wisdom. “If they were all green,” he replied. “God wouldn’t be able to see them from “up there.” 
 
I’d have to say that the boy won this little battle of wits, and I also think that Curtis was delighted to have been the boy’s foil. Curtis has one of those gruff exteriors, but inside is lurking a universe of kindness and love. I don’t think he does all this driving around for the money. I think he does it because he cares about these kids; I think he loves them and wants to give them a little bit of caring that they would otherwise never get. Absentee parents and the “system” just can’t do those things. 
 
The thought of this wonderful little exchange did something for me. As we passed south of that treasured marker on the turnpike, I felt the recapturing of the awe and the wonder I had felt before the trip had become drudgery. To that end, I’m going to re-post a bit of free verse I penned one morning as I stopped a bit south of mile marker 109. 
 
The things I felt then I felt this morning. I felt that wonderful sense of my own smallness. I felt that wonderful inner sense of being “known. I felt that wonderful inner sense of being loved.” 
 
It now follows. I hope you find it edifying. 
 
 
Reflections at Mile Marker 109, Kansas Turnpike 
By 
Phil Dillon 
© 2002 Phil Dillon 
 
It’s the cusp of dawn. I’m chasing Orion’s Belt and bull-haulers down the Kansas Turnpike. At mile marker 109, about a furlong or two south of the cattle pens, I stop. 
 
The occasional rush of southbound traffic breaks the dawn silence. Like a general poised in his appointed place, I review the early morning parade. Saints and scoundrels, gospel singers and politicians, truckers, ranchers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, mothers, fathers, children, all pass by. Problems and opportunities wind their way down the highway with them. 
 
I touch the highway sign. Mile marker 109. I feel the bits of rust creeping up on the metal. It’s man-made, temporal, placed on the edge of the eternal. It speaks. “This is where you are.” It speaks of commerce and progress passing by. It speaks of cattle and concept drawings on their journeys past a solitary milepost planted on the edge of eternity. 
 
I turn, take a step, and cast my gaze across the prairie. Like the storied astronaut of my youth, that one small step transports me from one world to another. Thoughts pass by. Some pass quietly, humming like the Toyotas and Fords on the highway. Others I hear in the distance. Their low, grinding hums become roars as they draw near, like the Peterbilts and Kenworths hauling their precious cargoes from Chicago to Dallas or the Twin Cities to San Antonio. 
 
While the darkness has not yet surrendered to the day, there are hints of color along the rim of the eastern sky. I sense that they carry the faint whisper of an announcement of the millennium to come. The ageless ritual proceeds, moment by moment. Light overcomes the darkness. The unbroken sky and the endless sea of grass now join together in a hymn of praise. The morning breeze caresses the tallgrass. The blades of grass, in turn, wave gently to and fro, worshippers caught up in the glory of this moment. 
 
Thoughts glide effortlessly through the air, then stop to gently kiss the earth. The earth gratefully receives the kiss from above and pleads, “Maranatha…..Maranatha.” 
 
A hawk circles above, wings outstretched, reaching for an unseen spire. As he circles, the dawn sun touches him, revealing his priestly robes and eyes of fire. 
 
I sense that I’ve entered a great cathedral. I’m overwhelmed by my own smallness. I fear. The hawk descends slowly, gracefully and speaks. “You are indeed small. But, fear not. You’re known…..You’re known. This is where you are. Mile marker 109. This is the place where the line between now and forever is drawn. Here you own nothing, but are given the grace to be a part of everything. The language of the world you left is ownership. The language here is stewardship. This is the place where moth and rust do not corrupt.” 
 
His appointed ministry complete, he now lays hold of the morning currents and moves effortlessly off to the east. 
 
I feel the warmth of a tear as it drifts slowly down my cheek. My epiphany’s complete. I turn back and take another small step, returning to the world I left moments before. I take my place in line with my fellow travelers, the builders and dreamers, the movers and shakers, the commerce and the concepts. Our daily procession has taken us past this place…..mile marker 109.

“Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: 

“Who is this that obscures my plans 
    with words without knowledge? 
Brace yourself like a man; 
    I will question you, 
    and you shall answer me. 

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? 
    Tell me, if you understand. 
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! 
    Who stretched a measuring line across it? 
 On what were its footings set, 
    or who laid its cornerstone— 
while the morning stars sang together 
    and all the angels^[a] shouted for joy? 

 “Who shut up the sea behind doors 
    when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment 
    and wrapped it in thick darkness, 
 when I fixed limits for it 
    and set its doors and bars in place, 
 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; 
    here is where your proud waves halt’?” 

• Job 38:1-11 (New International Version) 

This morning, I feel the need to get in touch with my smallness. It’s an exercise I first became acquainted with when my wife, Nancy, and I moved from Memphis to Emporia, Kansas, which sits about 100 miles south of Kansas City.  

I knew very little about Emporia before the move. My wife, Nancy, and I were living in Memphis, working for FedEx.  

 
As we started out, I remembered how things were just before I retired. I’d made the trip south on the turnpike so many times it had become too common to me. If I had to put a number to it I’ll bet I missed the glory of the Flint Hills a hundred out of a hundred and one days back then. It had just become humdrum, a drudgery. 
 
Ah, but now I look forward to these little day trips. That was what it was like on the morning, June 2nd, 2005. 

This is the way I described the events of that morning back then:  
Coach and I took another trip to Wichita today. The part the Volvo dealer had ordered a week or so ago was in and so we headed out at about seven-thirty to get it attached to the rest of the car. 
 
As we started out, I remembered how things were just before I retired. I’d made the trip south on the turnpike so many times it had become too common to me. If I had to put a number to it, I’ll bet I missed the glory of the Flint Hills a hundred out of a hundred and one days back then. It had just become humdrum, a drudgery. Listening to sultry new-age voices on NPR like Lakshmi or Mandalit. 
 
Ah, but now I look forward to these little day trips. So it was on this morning, June 2nd, 2005. 
 
The hills are especially beautiful this year. The late rain and early spring rains, along with the burning, have produced the most incredible green that I’ve ever seen. It is a sight to behold! 
 
I think it was right about my favorite spot, mile marker 109, that Nancy mentioned something Curtis McCauley said the other night when he and his wife were over for some barbeque. Doctor Mac, as I know him, says he’s retired, but he does more work these days than most of the young bucks I met in the corporate world. One of the things he’s currently doing is providing transportation for young people who have somehow made it into the “system.” I think that most are products of broken homes. At any rate, Doc spends a good part of his time taking them to doctor’s appointments, counselors, or an absentee parent. Not too long ago he was taking a young boy from Emporia to some sort of appointment. Their course took them through the Flint Hills, and somewhere along the turnpike he asked the boy a question. “Did you know that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills?” The boy seemed a bit puzzled, so Doc continued with an explanation. “Some of them are black, and some of them are brown, but none of them are green.” The boy seemed even more puzzled with this. Curtis, who finds it almost impossible to avoid mischief, then decided to add more puzzlement yet. “Why do you think that God doesn’t make them green?” he asked. Now I wasn’t there, but I can almost see the gleam in Doc’s eyes as he parried with the lad. I think he might have been thinking “I’ve got this kid stumped.” But, after a minute or so of reflection the boy offered this wonderful piece of youthful wisdom. “If they were all green,” he replied. “God wouldn’t be able to see them from “up there.” 
 
I’d have to say that the boy won this little battle of wits, and I also think that Curtis was delighted to have been the boy’s foil. Curtis has one of those gruff exteriors, but inside is lurking a universe of kindness and love. I don’t think he does all this driving around for the money. I think he does it because he cares about these kids; I think he loves them and wants to give them a little bit of caring that they would otherwise never get. Absentee parents and the “system” just can’t do those things. 
 
The thought of this wonderful little exchange did something for me. As we passed south of that treasured marker on the turnpike, I felt the recapturing of the awe and the wonder I had felt before the trip had become drudgery. To that end, I’m going to re-post a bit of free verse I penned one morning as I stopped a bit south of mile marker 109. 
 
The things I felt then I felt this morning. I felt that wonderful sense of my own smallness. I felt that wonderful inner sense of being “known. I felt that wonderful inner sense of being loved.” 
 
It now follows. I hope you find it edifying. 
 
 
Reflections at Mile Marker 109, Kansas Turnpike 
By 
Phil Dillon 
© 2002 Phil Dillon 
 
It’s the cusp of dawn. I’m chasing Orion’s Belt and bull-haulers down the Kansas Turnpike. At mile marker 109, about a furlong or two south of the cattle pens, I stop. 
 
The occasional rush of southbound traffic breaks the dawn silence. Like a general poised in his appointed place, I review the early morning parade. Saints and scoundrels, gospel singers and politicians, truckers, ranchers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, mothers, fathers, children, all pass by. Problems and opportunities wind their way down the highway with them. 
 
I touch the highway sign. Mile marker 109. I feel the bits of rust creeping up on the metal. It’s man-made, temporal, placed on the edge of the eternal. It speaks. “This is where you are.” It speaks of commerce and progress passing by. It speaks of cattle and concept drawings on their journeys past a solitary milepost planted on the edge of eternity.

I feel like I’m all wrapped up in a warm blanket of nostalgia today, dreaming of the time when Ike was the president and I was the stickball champion of Chatham Street. Strangely, the nostalgia is being triggered by my inability to come to grips with the madness that has swept over America in the twenty-first century 

I grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the post-war era. The Axis forces had been defeated after four grueling years of war. American soldiers, sailors, and Marines were coming back home. They were ready to put their guns away and rebuild their lives. That deep desire was reflected in films like the classic western “Shane.” It/s story of a gunfighter named Shane. Like the Americans who served in World War II, he is ready to settle down and put his gun away. The film begins with Shane coming upon a Wyoming homesteader named Joe Starrett, his wife Marian, and their young son Joey It doesn’t take long for Shane to find the life of the homesteaders attractive. The Starretts offer Shane a job on their homestead and the story proceeds from there. This essay begins with brief YouTube video of that encounter.  

Shane is a truly classic film. It’s been dubbed a “Cold War parable” by many film critics. Over the years, when my wife and I have hosted international students, Shane has been required viewing. Before we start watching, I try my best to explain that if they want to understand how American men from my generation thought, they need to watch Shane’s story unfold. It’s pitch perfect. 

Around the same time Shane playing in America’s theatres, another conflict arose. The Free World’s leaders called it a “police action,” somehow believing that sidestepping the use of the word “war” to describe the conflict would be acceptable to America. They were wrong. In 1952, General Dwight Eisenhower, the man who had been the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces that had defeated the Nazis in Europe, ran for the Presidency of the United States, promising to get us out of the so called “police action.” About a month before the election, he spoke in Detroit and said, “A soldier all my life, I have enlisted in the greatest cause of my life, the cause of peace. I do not believe it is a presumption to call the effort of all who have enlisted with me a crusade.” 

Eisenhower won the election handily, proof that America was ready for change. Once he took the oath of office, he was true to his promise.  He was inaugurated on January 20^th, 1953. Six months later, on July 27^th, the Korean Armistice was signed, ending the conflict. 

Eisenhower served as President for eight peaceful, prosperous years. An interstate highway system was built. NASA was established. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was passed. 

On January 17, 1961, Eisenhower made a brief televised farewell to the American people. While it was brief, it has become known as a very powerful, prophetic warning about what he termed “the military-industrial complex.”  

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. 

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. 

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” 

Eisenhower’s televised farewell speech was a harbinger of things to come. The 1960 Presidential campaign featured a televised presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The post-debate analysis held that Kennedy had won. The reason for that consensus was television. Most of those who had listened to the debate on the radio believed that Nixon had won. Those watching the debate on television believed that Kennedy had won.  

What would account for the disparity? Those who listened on the radio could not see either candidate. Those who watched on television not only heard the candidates but also saw them as they debated. It’s been said that appearances can be deceiving. Based on the Kennedy-Nixon debate, it may also be said that appearances can be enlightening. During the debate, Kennedy seemed calm and composed. He was handsome and his Irish charm shined through the cameras into the homes of Americans who would be deciding who to vote for. Nixon, on the other hand seemed nervous, almost out of place. As the debate went on beads of perspiration began to trickle down his forehead. It was far from an ideal look.  

The persuasive power of television also came to America when television networks hired news anchors based on their ability, calm manner, and, most importantly, their perceived trustworthiness. In those days, Americans saw the news presented by men like Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Howard K Smith, Walter Cronkite, or John Cameron Swayze. When they spoke, America watched, listened, and trusted what they were seeing and hearing.  

That was over a half a century ago. The story today is far different. Our mass media is overloaded with on-air personalities whose pretty faces mask the agendas they are pushing. The public no longer trusts them. Since the days of Huntley and Brinkley we’ve had to invent new terms for what we’re viewing, terms like fake news, disinformation, etc. It’s so bad that it has become close parroting the language or George Orwell’s “1984.” It makes me wonder if it won’t be long till we see media personalities with names like Winston Smith and “Newspeak” cleverly crafted prevent those watching from being able to think at all.  

I could go into more detail, but I don’t feel I need to. We all know what’s going on. You know it. I know it.  

There’s a part of me that longs for the bygone days, the days when trust was the coin of the realm. We need more “muckrakers” like Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell to root out corruption. We need more journalists like Gareth Jones who refuse to be puppets of politicians and their agendas. We need to stop rushing headlong into disaster. We need to go Back! 

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free 

exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Our Founding Fathers embedded freedom of the press as a foundational American right. The language of the First Amendment could not be clearer. The only thing I would have considered adding if I had been a party to drafting the Bill of Rights would be to add a few words to enshrine the principle that the free press would also need to be a responsible press. 

Freedom of the press in America actually pre-dated our Constitution. In 1733, a German printer and journalist named John Peter Zenger began printing a periodical called The New York Weekly Journal. Some of his work was critical of the colonial governor, a man named William Crosby. Crosby, apparently offended by Zenger’s words, had him arrested. When a grand jury refused to indict him, New York;s attorney general had him charged with libel. When all was said and done, Zenger was found not guilty of libel. 

That verdict has shaped our national understanding of how a free press can operate in a free society. A free press has a great deal of latitude, with limitations.  A free press can provoke and criticize, but it cannot use its considerable freedom and power to engage in libel or deceit The long and short of it is this – criticism is one thing; libel is stepping out of bounds, both legally and morally.

This philosophy worked quite well for many years, but there came a time when a journalistic bent for something different came on the scene. This approach was dubbed “yellow journalism.”  In the 1880’s, Joseph Pulitzer, owner of the New York World, used his influence to fight against political corruption in New York City. His approach was unique, using banner headlines, sensationalized stories, and other techniques to inform the public about the skulduggery and political patronage that was taking place down at Tammany Hall. 

Pulitzer’s approach was quite effective. The sensational reporting produced increases in circulation and profits. William Randolph Hearst, heir to the Hearst fortune, moved to New York, purchased a failing newspaper and set himself up as a direct competitor to Pulitzer. The rivalry produced some stunning results. Circulations skyrocketed. Hearst became a champion of the working class, using his publication to advocate for better working conditions for his working class subscribers. 

As Hearst’s influence grew, he expanded his horizons. In the 1890’s, the United States was engaged in a geopolitical tug of war with Spain in Cuba. As the give and take got increasingly hostile, Hearst sent one of his reporters to Cuba to report on what was going on. The reporter went and cabled back to Hearst that there was no war. Hearst was said to have responded, “You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.” Then, in 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine exploded in Havana harbor, killing a large number of American sailors. Was the cause of the explosion accidental or had the Spanish been the dastardly culprits? It was at this point that yellow journalism took over. In the end, Hearst got the war he’d told his reporter he’d “furnish.”

The next phase of journalistic development came with a group of journalists who became known as the “muckrakers.” Writers like Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, and Upton Sinclair used their considerable skills to advocate for reform and change. They attacked corporations like Standard Oil and wrote at length about the awful working conditions America’s low wage laborers had to endure in factories in the Midwest or the deplorable working conditions in Chicago’s meat packing plants, as Sinclair Lewis did when his book “The Jungle” was published in 1906.

The muckrakers were very effective, so much so that in time a breed of journalists burst upon the scene. These days, we call them “investigative journalists.

While it’s difficult to pinpoint where this form of journalism was born, I believe it came upon the scene in the early 1930’s. The Soviet communists, who would in the 1940’s become our allies in the struggle against Nazism, took over a large swath of Eastern Europe. While Stalin and his henchmen were proclaiming that they were creating an earthly utopia, the free world was suffering through what we now know as the “Great Depression.” 

The obvious question arose. How could this be? Newspapers around the world sent journalists to Russia to see if this loudly proclaimed miracle was actually happening. One of the most prominent American journalists of the time, Walter Duranty, went to Moscow and began filing glowing reports back to the United States. Were Duranty’s reports true and, if they were, did that mean that Karl Marx was right when he said, “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

Very few questioned Duranty’s reports. After all, he was a highly respected journalist who wrote for the New York Times, America’s gold standard of journalism. But, a young Welsh journalist named Gareth Jones wanted to see the reported “miracle” for himself. So, he went to Moscow. He was introduced to Duranty, who took the Welshman “under his wing.” It didn’t take long for Jones to see what was actually going on.  Duranty was investigating nothing. In truth, he wasn’t doing much other than posting stories that Stalin’s henchmen were providing for him. 

It was at this point that Jones decided he needed to see what was actually going on. He somehow snuck away from Duranty and the Soviet officials and made his way to Ukraine, the Soviet breadbasket and home to multitudes of peasant farmers called “kulaks.” What he saw was as infuriating as it was tragic. Ukranians were starving by the millions in what is now known as the “Holodomor.” Stalin and the Soviet apparatus were systematically starving the Kulaks and selling the wheat they grew on world markets. The proceeds from these sales were then used to fund Stalin’s projects like the Moscow subway system and a group of enormous skyscrapers called “the “Seven Sisters.”

Jones managed to leave Russia and was determined to tell the world the whole story. Very few “reputable” newspapers would even give him the time of day.  He was able to get William Randolph Hearst the reports he had filed, but it was to no avail. The “smart” people in America, given a choice between a highly respected journalist like Duranty, who wrote for the Grey Lady, and a Welsh upstart being supported by a “yellow journalist” like Hearst, chose Duranty.

The tragedy came full circle when Jones was murdered a few years after truthfully reporting on an act of genocide committed by one of the most evil men who has ever walked the face of the earth. 

 And Walter Duranty. Did he ever express remorse for the evil he was complicit in? No! In fact, he actually won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for his work in Russia.  Neither the Pulitzer Prize committee nor the New York Times have agreed to rescind the award. It still stands as a testament to the true nature of the members of the Pulitzer committee, the New York Times, and Walter Duranty. It makes my blood boil.

As I look at the Fourth Estate today I see the same levels of corruption that infected the thinking of Walter Duranty. You see it. I see it. We all see it! And, I believe the only thing that will turn things around for the craft we so zealously protect with our Constitution will be journalists who have the courage to expose the corruption. The prophet Elijah, challenged  the corrupt practices of the powerful in his day (I Kings 18). He was given the mantle “troubler of Israel” for his effort. We need more journalists today who are willing to take on Elijah’s mantle in our day. And, when they do speak out we need to listen to them and support them.

There will be a follow up essay that focuses on the current scene in the world of mass media, journalism, and their respective relationships with the our government. It should be published sometime early next week.

As for the rest of this day, I’m going to get together with my Christian brothers and sisters at Kings Family Church in Kansas City.  As we all do, I need day of worship, fellowship, and reflection before a new week in this mad, mad world dawns.