NOVAE MILITIAE

Boy, does the Church ever need a dose of this: http://www.infed.org/christianeducation/muscular_christianity.htm .   Leon Podles on the subject: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=14-01-026-f .

My condolences to all my Roman Catholic brethren who hanker for real Catholic liturgy, sacred music and architecture.  Sell me on the filioque and the papal claims.  Sell me on purgatory and the Immaculate Conception.  Convince me that the Lavender Mafia will be excommunicated, every one.  Until that damned Novus Ordo and its accompanying musical monstrosities disappear, I will not be a Roman Catholic. 

Another gem from Anthony Esolen:  http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2005/10/dies_irae.html .

Text of a speech given at Hillsdale College by former Prime Minister of Spain, José María Aznar. Lord, increase his tribe.

Pessimism should be overcome. It is not too late to change gears in Europe. Immobilism and soft or "decaffeinated" leaders are the worst possible prescriptions for Europe right now. Europe is under existential pressures-from the threat of terrorism, to the risks of economic decline and the perils of a demography characterized by an aging population and an insufficient birth rate, to the persistence of bad ideas about how to face our future. And Europe must find a way to cope with these pressures.

To me, the roadmap for a better future is simple and clear: We must recover our principles, the deepest roots of Europe-for example, our Christian roots, our own cultural beliefs, setting aside the enormous error of multiculturalism. And we should revive a strong will to strengthen our alliances and our commitments to our like-minded friends. We also need to increase the influence of Europe by promoting policies favoring reform, flexibility, and openness. And lastly, we need to decide how to define Europe as a power alongside the United States, as a strong part of the Western world, but not a counter-power to the U.S. It would be foolish to play the game of dividing the Atlantic world.

http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/2005/December/

Are we living through the origins of the next world war? Certainly, it is easy to imagine how a future historian might deal with the next phase of events in the Middle East:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=3EY11ZPK0CBJPQFIQMFSFFOAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/opinion/2006/01/15/do1502.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2006/01/15/ixopinion.html

Sobering.

Courtesy of Cosmic Conservative: http://cosmicconservative.com/weblog/?p=156 .

[fade into scene of press conference in Washington D.C. where a crowd of liberals are rushing forward towards John McCain, who stands on a stage. The crowd is carrying a man on a log who is tied up.]

CROWD: A liar! A liar! A liar! We’ve got a liar! A liar!
DAN RATHER: We have found a liar, might we impeach him?
CROWD: Impeach him! Impeach!
JOHN MCCAIN: How do you know he is a liar?
HARRY REID: He can’t pronounce “nuclear”.
MCCAIN: Bring him forward.
GEORGE W BUSH: I’m not a liar. I’m not a liar.
MCCAIN: But you are documented as one.
BUSH: They made up the documents.
CROWD: No, we didn’t — no.
BUSH: And those aren’t real memos, They are false ones.
MCCAIN: Well?
RATHER: Well, we did do the memos.
MCCAIN: The memos?
RATHER: And the news report — but he is a liar!
CROWD: Impeach him! Liar! Liar! Impeach him!
MCCAIN: Did you make up these documents?
CROWD: No, no… no … yes. Yes, a bit, a bit.
RATHER: He has got a smirk.
MCCAIN: What makes you think he is a liar?
JOHN KERRY: Well, he made me vote yes on the war.
MCCAIN: A vote for war? but you look so French!
KERRY: I got better.
REID: Impeach him anyway!
CROWD: Impeach! Impeach him!
MCCAIN: Quiet, quiet. Quiet! There are ways of telling whether
he is a liar.
CROWD: Are there? What are they? Do they hurt?
MCCAIN: Tell me, what do you do with liars?
REID: Impeach!
CROWD: Impeach, Impeach them!
MCCAIN: And what do you impeach apart from liars?
RATHER: More liars!
MAUREEN DOWD: Men!
MCCAIN: So, why do liars get impeached?
[pause]
DOWD: B–… ’cause they’re men…?
MCCAIN: Good!
CROWD: Oh yeah, yeah…
MCCAIN: So, how do we tell whether he is a man?
RATHER: Snap a thong at him!
MCCAIN: Aah, but can you not also snap thongs at eunuchs?
REID: Oh, yeah.
MCCAIN: Do men ignore sexy women?
RATHER: No, no.
REID: They flirt, they flirt!
RATHER: Throw him at Hillary!
CROWD: Hillary! Hillary!
MCCAIN: Ah, what also will trigger flirtation?
RATHER: Mary Mapes!
REID: Unions!
KERRY: Money, lots of money!
RATHER: Television cameras!
REID: Taxes! Taxes!
RATHER: Fake memos!
REID: Classified leaks!
KERRY: Buckets and buckets of money!
REID: Senate majorities!
DICK CHENEY: Paris Hilton.
CROWD: Oooh.
MCCAIN: Exactly! So, logically…,
RATHER: If… he.. flirts with Paris Hilton, he’s a man.
MCCAIN: And therefore–?
DOWD: A liar!
CROWD: A liar! Paris Hilton! Paris Hilton!
MCCAIN: We shall use my largest video monitor!
[yelling fom crowd]
MCCAIN: Right, run the video!
BUSH: Wow, she’s cute!
CROWD: A liar! A liar!
CROWD: Impeach him! Impeach!

A group of Swedish lesbians dubbled the "Feminist Initiative" has launched a new political party and hopes, among other things, to ban traditional marriage. One of the party's founders recently stated, "Instead of marriage we want to promote a co-habitation law that ignores gender and allows more than two people in a partnership."   Worried about one possible ramification of the proposed law, she adds, "A man who lives with eight women in a patriarchal structure, where the man decides and the women obey is not what we are aiming for."

All this would be something of a yawner were it not for the fact that they may garner 20% of the vote in the next election. Yes, 20% is a minority, but it's a rather substantial one. I suppose we can hope that the projection is wrong, but Europe -- and especially places like Sweden -- show no signs that the culture-killing moral, social and political degradation is anywhere close to abating. Quite the contrary, in fact.  Maybe Islamicization is (and should be) Europe's fate after all.  They want more than two people in a partnership?  Islam can give them that, and a new dress code too.  Judging by this photo of one of FI's founders (Gudrun Schyman), they could apparently use one:  http://www.schyman.se/ .

The article: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1533698.html

Yet more evidence that today's Cultured Despisement of Christianity (TM) will die the death of Chesterton's dogs.  I'll be adding this article to my Societal Transformation section under Resources.)

By Paul Johnson

What matters in history is not always the things that happen but also the things that obstinately refuse to happen.

It was in 1882 that the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche made his celebrated and dire pronouncement: "God is dead." He was speaking for many intellectuals, who believed the progress of science would cause a decline in religious faith — with Christianity the principal loser.

As the year 1900 approached, many leading secular thinkers, including George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, argued that the dawning 20th century would mark the close of history's religious phase. As late as 1957, Julian Huxley, the first director-general of UNESCO, wrote in anticipatory triumph, "Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat."

But here we are, at the threshold of a new millennium, and Christianity is alive and well in the minds and hearts of countless believers. And all the evidence suggests that Christianity will still be flourishing another thousand years from now, for it continues to strike new roots and regain lost territories.

In West Africa, Christians whose ancestors were pagans two centuries ago have built one of the largest churches in the world, roughly the size of St. Peter's in Rome. In Russia, the building that for 67 years housed the Museum of Religion and Atheism is now a church of the Orthodox Christian faith, crowded with worshipers. In the United States, nearly half the population attend a place of worship — the vast majority of them Christian churches — with regularity. Catholicism is spreading in South Africa, Protestant Evangelicalism in Latin America. Christianity is even growing again in China, despite 50 years of efforts by the Communist government to subvert it.

The millennium, then, is nothing less than a jubilee full of remarkable mysteries. And the first mystery is this: Two thousand years ago, a child was born in an obscure village in a backward part of the Roman Empire. The child grew up to be a religious reformer who preached for three years and then was put to death as a nuisance by the Roman colonial authorities. It is, in short, a story of ignoble failure ending in a horrific and shameful death.

Today the world of six billion people counts its years and conducts its annual cycle of events in memory of this crucified failure. The Catholic Church, for the first time, has more than a billion members, and other Christian churches collectively have almost as many followers. It is impossible to travel anywhere in the world without finding a church or a chapel, a symbol or a piece of art commemorating Jesus' work.

In a way the mystery of Jesus' posthumous success and the endurance of his words help to explain other mysteries. For his message is this: power is ephemeral, and worldly success dust and ashes. It is a curious fact that in all ages and all societies, large numbers of people are attracted to the gentle, not the strong, to the sufferers and not the successful. Jesus touched on this tender spot in humanity — the kindness and compassion within us - and in doing so founded what is arguably the most influential of all religions.

If Jesus were to return on the eve of the third millennium, he would find things both strange and familiar. Strange would be the sheer magnificence of the many ecclesiastical institutions he brought into being — St. Peter's, for example, or St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

Familiar to Jesus would be the remarkably accurate echoes of his own words. If he were to listen to an ordinary sermon preached during Sunday service at, say, a Catholic church in an Italian village, or a Southern Baptist chapel in Texas, he would hear the same injunctions he addressed to the common people of Judea nearly 2000 years ago.

He would also note that his words have not lost their pertinence. We may use the Internet and watch the world on TV, but we are the same in essentials as the fishermen, olive-grove workers and shepherds who sat at Jesus' feet on the Mount.

One theme in Jesus' teaching remains of peculiar relevance today and, moreover, explains why Christianity need not fear the challenges of the third millennium. This central theme is that God, not man, is the final authority. God has rights. Human beings have duties; we deny God his rights at our peril.

We have lived through a terrible century of war and destruction precisely because powerful men did usurp God's prerogatives. I call the 20th century the Century of Physics, inaugurated by Einstein's special and general theories. During this period, physics became the dominant science, producing nuclear energy and space travel.

The century also brought forth social engineering, the practice of shoving large numbers of human beings around as though they were earth or concrete. Social engineering was a key feature in the Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes, where it combined with moral relativism'the belief that right and wrong can be changed for the convenience of human societies — and the denial of God's rights. To Hitler, the higher law of the party took precedence over the Ten Commandments. Lenin praised the Revolutionary conscience as a surer guide for mankind than the conscience implanted by religion.

That century is ending, and physics is no longer the fashionable science. Its place has been taken by biology, an epoch introduced by the Watson-Crick discovery of the double helix in 1953 and the birth of the modern science of genetics.

In the past half-century we have uncovered many of the secrets of life. Now we enter the 21st century, the Century of Biology, which threatens large-scale experiments in genetic engineering — not just in crops and animals but in humans as well.

Some scientists believe our newly acquired knowledge of genes offers us the opportunity to transform evolution in more "progressive" directions by making people healthier, more intelligent and longer-lived. Hence the third millennium may begin with cloned humans, "designer babies" and other alarming demonstrations that man now has the power to play God with lives.

Against this scientific background it is comforting to remember that Christianity, with its central message of submission to a higher being, remains so strong and vocal. The words of Jesus created a body of faith and morality that enabled humankind to defeat social engineering, and today it provides defenses against the threat of genetic engineering.

Two thousand years ago, a man came into the world to preach a doctrine of gentleness, love and meekness of spirit. It took hold; it flourished. It is still with us. Those 20 centuries have shown us that the doctrine cannot entirely banish the darker side of humanity. It cannot end war, cruelty, greed and the miseries of the poor. But it mitigates all these things, and it offers a continuing vision of our better, purer selves, and of the better, purer world we could create. Whatever fresh evils arise in our midst, Christ's message contains the means to overcome them.

In the two millennia of the Christian era, we have conquered many scourges of humankind — recurrent famines, smallpox. But we have not conquered death. Perhaps the greatest merit of Christianity is that it provides us with a key to this final mystery. It offers an antidote to the fear death arouses in us, a firm promise of another world beyond and the means to enter it. That is the lasting legacy left by the man born 2000 years ago, a legacy that has not diminished in all those years and which carries us with faith and hope into the third millennium, unafraid of anything it will bring.
 

Thus conservative political theorist James Burnham dubbed liberalism in the face of the Communist threat of the 50s and 60s. Were it not for the arrival upon the world scene of people such as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, Burnham's worst fears may have been realized. We're still not immune to that threat, as the saber rattling of Communist countries such as North Korea and China would indicate.

Lawrence Auster has made something of the same argument with respect to the liberal West and Islam. His musings on the matter can be read here: http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002990.html .

But is it only liberalism that has proven to be an ideology of national suicide? Blogger Huw Raphael points us to a BBC production about the parallel between the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the East and neoconservativism in the West.  One sees in this thesis something akin to Auster's:

This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today. From the introduction to Part 1:

"Both [the Islamists and Neoconservatives] were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today’s nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful. " The Power of Nightmares, Baby It's Cold Outside.

(See Huw's blog entry at: http://raphael.doxos.com/comments.php?id=P2286_0_1_10 )

Could it be that neoconservatism's idealism poses a different but equally dangerous threat to Western survival?  Liberalism softens the West, but neoconservatism hardens our enemies or potential enemies with its quest to impose democratic ideals globally.  Sooner or later that's going to make someone overseas angry enough to do something desperate.  And as liberalism has made us weak from within, a desperate act won't be so hard to pull off.  We may come to rue the day we cast off the Founding Fathers' belief that the American republic should have "no foreign entanglements."

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/tvaradarajan/?id=110006858

One commentator calls Miss Fallaci "the last real man in Western Europe," adding,  "too bad she's dying."

Indeed on both.  Indeed, as I told my wife after finishing Fallaci's book The Rage and The Pride, "she can castrate a man standing 30 yards away with just one stroke of her pen."  She has written boldly, bluntly and eloquently about the supplanting of European culture by Muslim culture, earning her veiled threats from Muslims, the ire of Europe's astoundingly clueless elites, and a day in an Italian court.  (She's told the court to go straight to hell.) 

And indeed, her passing when it happens will be a loss for us who are fighting for the restoration of Christian culture.  An ironic thing, as Fallaci calls herself an atheist.  But she is an atheist of a different sort, one who says she loves Christian European culture, speaks of its historic "spiritual values," and is a fan of the new pope.  An unlikely ally, for whom many of us will be praying.

(Originally posted 4/25/05.)

Continuing on with the theme of Christian Agrarianism. Not that I'd necessarily be committed to this particular form of anti-technological radicalism, far from it. But I think this chap Eric Brende is onto something.

To those of you, my Orthodox brethren especially, who say that the monastic life is to be emulated: isn't this monastic?  And isn't some degree of this realistically within the reach of many of us?  Well, whatever the case, I found this to be an intriguing blog entry.  From Jeff Culbreath's abandoned blog, El Camino Real:

____________________________________________

[A fellow University of Kansas student wrote this book about his time in an Amish style community. It may be of interest to people considering a move to a place where they can live the full Catholic life. A men's group associated with Clear Creek monastery is going to discuss the book, so I prepared a synopsis. ]

“Better Off” by Eric Brende is his account of the eighteen months he spent among some Amish-style farmers somewhere in the Midwest. He doesn’t name them or reveal the location in order to respect their privacy. The book is less a how-to manual than it is about the personal, social and spiritual consequences of living off the grid.

Eric grew up in Topeka as impressed by everything fast and mechanical as anyone else. He first suffered doubts when he had to commute on a bike in a town built for the automobile and he realized that if he had bought a car he would have spent most of his time working to pay for his ride to work. His disaffection with machines crystallized in college. It is curious he does not name the university or the Pearson professors, though he does credit Prof. Quinn in the acknowledgements and he dedicates the book to Prof. Senior.  (The blogger refers to tradtionalist Roman Catholic author John Senior: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0870004166/qid=1114493969/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/002-4045040-7390404?v=glance&s=books  ; http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0898700248/ref=pd_sim_b_2/002-4045040-7390404?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance . )  The tipping point for him seems to have been a course in the history of technology given by a Prof. Kranakis. This is Eric’s account of his thinking at the time:

“The conviction was growing in me that the besetting problem was our culture’s blindness to the distinction between the tool and the automatic machine. Everyone tended to treat them alike, as neutral agents of human intention. But machines clearly were not neutral or inert objects. They were complex fuel-consuming entities with certain definite proclivities and needs. Besides often depriving their users of skill and physical exercise, they created new and artificial demands- for fuel, space, money and time. These in turn crowded out other important human pursuits, like involvement in family and community, or even the process of thinking itself. The very act of accepting the machine was becoming automatic.”

Eric went to MIT for graduate studies in a program that investigated the relation of society and technology. His skepticism about the machine was out of place at MIT; a professor who had just had a hard time moving some rocks without a backhoe challenged him. Did Eric really want to do away with all labor saving machinery? In the face of the man’s direct personal experience Eric felt obligated to demonstrate his thesis. Serendipitously, he met a bearded man with a broad hat on a bus who told him about a community committed to living in a right relation to nature and technology. Eric arranged to rent a house from one of them and to work alongside them, but not before he got married. He moved to the community fresh from his honeymoon and jumped feet first into a real adventure.

He found an orderly if enigmatic place. The inhabitants were not strictly speaking Amish but instead an aggregation of Amish, Mennonites and mainstream Americans who intended to reclaim their lives from machines. Eric calls them the “Minimites” from their desire to maximize benefits with a minimum of machinery. Their method was to avoid electricity, the telephone, automobiles and motorized equipment. Eric found them to be healthy, happy and friendly though he sometimes found it hard to interpret their reserve. Part of this could have been due to the German character of the community; they preached, taught and sometimes conversed in German. Another part he ascribes to the fact that the community was a work in progress and its character was still in flux. Some taciturnity was a desire to avoid conflict over practical and theological matters. He called it a parallel world; a similar geography to the one he knew but with different operating principles.

On a personal level he emphasizes the physical consequences: weight loss, increased appetite. His house was clean and attractive but without water or electricity so some deal of work was involved in hauling water from the cistern. Most of the others had pitcher pumps or spring fed water right in the house so Eric’s situation was not typical. At one point the landlord tried to solve the problem with a ram pump from the creek so some degree of technofix was permitted. One particular problem he had was adapting to the heat without air conditioning. He concludes that the trick is to accommodate the body to the heat gradually as the weather warms up; don’t try to jump between the air conditioning and the heat. He also survived by finding every possible relief: sleeping in the breeziest part of the house, going for a swim in the creek. He does not neglect the emotional consequences, though. He notes that the involvement in quiet, repetitive work changed his cast of mind and enable d him to read more lyrical works than he had been able to in the past. He thinks that the short attention span world of ringing phones and alarms makes a man less suited for contemplative thinking. He also felt his marriage benefited from the close daily cooperation in a common task.

He spends a lot of time on the social consequences. Living without machines works by means of close social cooperation. “Many hands make work light” was the watchword and any big task like threshing drew a gang of men and women from family, neighbors and from a carefully negotiated web of obligations. While it is true that people have to get along so they can work together, Eric thinks that working together also helps people get along. The system reinforces itself. Work was traded like currency, which was necessary because agriculture typically produces little. The majority of farms in the US sell less than $5000 a year. The Minimites made it possible by being debt free. They also refused to buy insurance.

Eric considered thoughtfully the spiritual consequences. What made the whole thing work was what they called “Gelassenheit” which he renders as self-surrender or willingness (in modern German gelassen means calm or collected). The verse they cite in connection with the word is “He who would save his life must lose it.” Living by manual labor means you must be willing to surrender your body to some degree of physical effort. Living by social cooperation means you must be willing to surrender your choice of associates. Living in the hope of God’s gifts means surrendering your will. Eric and his wife surrendered themselves by entering an Anabaptist community despite their apprehension since they are Catholic. There they found a life with a sacramental understanding of the world missing in their experience of the Church.

Though he focuses on the human element, what he says about technology, at least on the macro level, is of particular interest to people who are thinking about moving to Cherokee County. Working without machines demands a higher level of hand skill but he thinks that low technology can be more efficient in a way. You don’t have to get up early to go to the gym before work and then go out at night for your social life; exercise, work and socializing are integrated in one activity. One farmer remarks that he used to use a chainsaw but with the noise and vibration he found it less tiring to use a handsaw. Besides, it’s safer: the handsaw stops when you do. The Minimites do not refuse to use modern things: they use flashlights to get to the outhouse at night and they made a horse drawn baler out of the parts of a motorized one. The trick is to use things that can help without forcing them into debt or destroying the way they live.

Despite the fact that the book is not a manual he still gives many practical tips: using a push mower is feasible if you know how to keep it adjusted and if you never go more than five days between mowing; two hundred strokes are enough to clean a load in a hand-operated washing machine (and supposedly the back and forth motion of a James-style washer is better suited to the human body than is the motion of a rotary crank); a deft chopping motion with a hoe is more efficient than a golf swing. One possible difficulty in canning food is failing to label: dinner may be a surprise. After eighteen months Eric and his wife went back to Boston, he submitted a thesis based on his experiences and got his degree. He stayed there to drive a cab and got together a stake to buy a place outright as the Minimites taught him. After investigating several places like Steubenville and Front Royal, they settled in a midwestern town (which I know is Hermann, MO) and tried to live with the same detachment from machines they had learned. He took people around the tourist locations in a pedal cab and they traded work and made soap obviating some need for cash. Still they missed having a nearby university so they now are in a downtown neighborhood of St. Louis practicing as much of the life as they can.

To sum up he writes: the three main ingredients of technological liberation are a pinch of muscle, a sprinkle of wits and a dash of willingness.

(Originally posted 10/24/04. Comments follow.)

The Australian author uses those words with some disdain, but I would so describe my own attitude and that of my fellows in the cultural wars with pride. We will indeed fight for our faith and cultural tradition, and we don't mean to lose. Especially with that land mass. The author implies that the Red States of America are akin to a new Confederacy, and on one level I think he is right. (Italicized emphasis in the last paragraph mine.)

America's civil war: the Red v the Blue

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/24/1098556297684.html?oneclick=true

October 25, 2004

The political landscape is hardening into partisan cultural voting blocs, writes Paul Sheehan.

The United States is not merely poised to choose its next president, it is engaged in a hot war abroad, an imperial occupation in Iraq , and a cultural struggle at home, a sharpening struggle that has become known as the divide between the Red and the Blue.

At first I did not buy this theory of the growing Red and Blue gulf. It seemed too facile, a media fad about an old cultural fault line. Then I had a good look at the last presidential election. And I changed my mind. There is a divide between the Red and the Blue in America , and it is growing more pronounced. . . .

This divide widened significantly in the 2000 presidential election, the closest in history, when the candidate with the most votes, Vice-President Al Gore (50,999,897 votes) was beaten by George Bush (50,456,002 votes). This year, the polls have been consistent in predicting another razor's edge contest.

It is easy to see why. America has turned into a series of giant voting blocs. Most of the 50 states have become firmly Republican - Red - or firmly Democrat - Blue. They have basically hardened into one-party states. The most striking aspect of the 2000 election was the spectacular vote in Florida, which gave 2,912,790 votes to Bush and 2,912,253 to Gore, thus the election was decided by 537 ferociously contested votes. But the most important structural evolution in the election was the lopsided votes in most of the states in what, nationally, was a dead-heat election. It had never happened quite like this before.

Of the 30 states won by Bush, most were in a landslide. Only two Republican victories were close - Florida and New Hampshire . Twenty states delivered majorities to the Republicans so large that they have become Red states, places where conservatism is now politically dominant.

Similarly, most of the 20 states won by the Democrats were in landslides. (These included the huge electoral trophies of California , New York and Illinois , which accounted for the closeness of the overall vote.) Only five states - Oregon , Minnesota , Iowa , Wisconsin and New Mexico - delivered narrow victories. Thus most have become Blue states, with demographics that deliver dominant Democrat votes in presidential contests.

There are so many Red and Blue states, about two-thirds of the total 50, and the margin of victory was so large in 40 states four years ago that there are really only 10 swing states. And three of them are too small to really matter. Thus this year's election is a confrontation between giant one-party blocs in which just seven states - Florida, Iowa, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio and Missouri - will constitute the real battleground.

It is a very narrow field of battle. The major parties have worked to make it so. After the 2000 election and the 2000 census, the Republicans and Democrats agreed on new congressional boundaries which left 90 per cent of seats safely Red or Blue. The real electoral contests thus shifted to the preselection process in most seats, where party ideology can be more easily enforced. The entire process has become more ideological.

Geography has also hardened. Southern whites have finally and emphatically gravitated to their natural home, the Republican Party, which in turn is becoming dominated by a conservative, martial religiosity. The Democrats have consolidated around large citadels in the cosmopolitan east and west coasts and traditional Midwest urban heartlands of Chicago, Detroit and Minneapolis. Bush and Kerry personify this divide.

Real cultural divisions have been compounded by massive internal migration by people into like-minded regions. The era of Tweedledum and Tweedledee US party politics has ended, irrevocably.

Reader Comments (4)

Here I am, a Red American in the blue blue state of Rhode Island, most Catholic state in the country.

Well, it is fun sometimes.

But the mists are clearing, and the battle lines are sharpening. On one side, Man as God: obsessed with these bodies we have in common with beasts, yet hating the body, reducing it to manipulable masses of cells, or to a pleasure machine equipped with plugs and sockets. On the other side, more or less confused people hanging on to belief in the God-Man, the Word made Flesh who dwelt among us. But who would have thought that our civilization would crack up over, well, the freedom to unzip whenever, with whomever, however, and for whatever reason?

Boy was Marx wrong. We will not go to battle to protect the wallet. Rather some little thing a couple of inches away.

So I think Blue America has its god. One-eyed it is ...   October 27, 2004 | Tony Esolen

The trouble is that if we cede California and New York to the blues we lose a Big Part of the country's wealth. A lot of its silliness, too, but a lot of its wealth.  October 27, 2004 | GregK

What's up with New Hampshire? Talk about being in enemy territory for your upcoming civil war. October 28, 2004 | LLB

The battle lines are being drawn even within states. Sacramento County in California, for instance, is solidly Blue, but is surrounded by heavily Red counties on all sides. Like many other Californians, we're soon going to be leaving a Blue county for a Red county. October 28, 2004 | Jeff Culbreath

One of the reasons I love Touchstone is that gems like this one regularly appear in its pages:

A couple of years ago I was roused from my gardening by whoops and hollers across the street. Two boys were playing with a doll. They had laid a plank across a cinderblock, with the doll on one end of the plank; then they dropped another cinderblock on the other end of the plank, to see if they could catapult the doll over an eight-foot-high fence about thirty feet away. They called it High Flying Barbie. I roared with laughter, and advised them to shorten the front end of the plank so as to decrease Barbie's elevation but increase her distance.

Those boys give me hope. Truth will prevail, indeed has prevailed, though the world comprehendeth it not. And I know that the day is coming, and is at hand, when I shall see the Feminist Barbie, like all the other nature-denying, Creator-correcting experimenters against reality, sailing end over end through a cloudless sky, beyond the pale and into oblivion.

(October 2004, pp. 9-10)