On this date, 438 years ago, the fleet of the Holy League, led by Don John of Austria, crushed the Turks at Lepanto, an event marked on the calendar of the Catholic Church as the Feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.  (Don John had a rosary distributed to each man in his fleet before the battle, and Pius V was praying the rosary during the battle.)  Lepanto was also commemorated by G. K. Chesterton, who wrote a poem inspired by the battle while he was still an Anglican.  It is one of many signs of the impoverishment of our culture that we no longer seem capable of producing poetry like this.  Chesterton’s great tribute to the valor of Christian men at arms may be found here.  Enjoy.

Two very different newspaper pieces caught my eye yesterday.  One, in the New York Times, told the story of Simmons, the mattress manufacturer that is about to file for bankruptcy, after years of being saddled with debt and drained of cash by its private equity firm owners, who have walked away from their disastrous mismanagement of Simmons with millions of dollars for themselves.  The financial sector used to assist the manufacturing sector in this country.  Now, it seems to assist only itself.

The other was an op-ed in the Washington Times, and detailed absurd federal prosecutions of people who had committed acts that have become criminal only because of the expansion of federal criminal law, which now guards us against such dangers as failing to fill out all the forms for importing orchids or failing to put a federally mandated sticker on a UPS package.  A Congress intent on helping the country would spend more time repealing laws than enacting them.

The connection between the stories is this:  in many ways, we have become a society that rewards people who don’t deserve to be rewarded and punishes people who don’t deserve to be punished. 

Yesterday on Meet the Press, Bill Clinton said this when asked if the “vast right wing conspiracy” that Hillary claimed was the source of all the Clintons’ political troubles was still around:  “Sure it is, it’s not as strong as it was, because America’s changed demographically, but it’s as virulent as it was.”  In other words, because mass immigration is decreasing the white share of the electorate, opposition to liberalism is decreasing.  In fact, as all the outcry over the “racist” nature of the tea parties shows, the future promises to be one where the mere fact that a policy position is held mostly by whites is likely to make it suspect, if not toxic.  If the Democrats have figured this out, why does the GOP keep nominating for President men who haven’t?

Many Takimag readers might be interested to learn that Chronicles has put on its website Sam Francis’ review of S. T. Joshi’s biography of H. P. Lovecraft, from the May 1997 issue.  Each of Sam’s essays for Chronicles was a delight, but this one is especially good, since Lovecraft is a writer Sam enjoyed and knew well.  It is a shame that Sam did not write more about the writers and movies he enjoyed, but we can at least be grateful that he wrote this review and his masterful analysis of The Godfather, also for Chronicles.  Those who are interested in Sam’s review may find it here.  (Thanks, too, to John Derbyshire, for starting this recent discussion of Lovecraft and for linking to Sam’s review at NRO).

I have not commented on the debate between Kevin Gutzman and Austin Bramwell on the Constitution because I make no claim to be an expert on the Constitution. Like most non-academic lawyers, my focus is on helping my clients with their practical legal problems, and my outside interests do not include delving into Constitutional history or theory.  But I do want to comment briefly on Prof. Gutzman’s assertion, in his most recent essay, that “Bramwell refers to various tendentious ‘scholars’ and judges whose ‘theories of’ and ‘approaches’ to the Constitution always lead them to the desired outcomes. (Bramwell admires them).’” 

Now, maybe I’ve missed a judge or two, but the two judges I see quoted in the Austin Bramwell essay to which Gutzman is replying are Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia, men who scarcely deserve our scorn.  If Bork is nothing more than a “tendentious judge” who merely uses the Constitution to advance his policy preferences, it is hard to see how we may justly criticize the Senators who voted against confirming him to the Supreme Court.  But I don’t think that’s a very good description of Robert Bork.  Indeed, Bork’s defeat in the Senate was a disaster.  At the very least, Bork would have provided the fifth vote to overturn Roe v Wade, thereby doing more to vindicate federalism, morality, and simple decency than virtually any other single action I can think of.

Nor do I think Gutzman’s description applies to Antonin Scalia, the author of the magnificent dissent in Planned Parenthood v Casey that makes as strong a case against judicial imperialism as has ever been made by a Supreme Court justice.  Takimag readers will also enjoy Scalia’s stinging dissent in Johnson v Transportation Agency, which remains the strongest indictment of affirmative action penned by a Supreme Court justice.

I am not suggesting that Bork and Scalia are perfect.  In fact, I can think of areas where I disagree with each man.  But I think they are honorable jurists, and we would be fortunate indeed if their thinking reguarly commanded a majority on the Supreme Court.

Both Paul Craig Roberts and John Derbyshire keep reminding us that the government sector is prospering while the rest of America suffers.  Further support for this view came today in a Reuters article, noting that Washington, DC is the preferred home for wealthy young people.  In fact, of the 50 counties in the United States with the highest percentage of people aged 25-34 making over $100,000 per year, sixteen of them were in the Washington area, and only two counties not near Washington or a state capital made the top ten.  In the past, the key to wealth was manufacturing, which often arose in proximity to natural resources or waterways.  Today, the key to wealth is proximity to government. 

This new economy that has arisen to take the place of manufacturing is not a congenial one for conservatives.  As commenter Derek Leaberry noted sardonically at the Chronicles website, “An economy dominated by the therapeutic state, government workers, school teachers, flabby-handed computer geeks, restaurant chefs, sommeliers, Wall Street gangsters and mall securitymen will be one that is antagonistic to conservative values. That is what the future holds if absolute free trade reigns globally. Karl Marx would be overjoyed.”

A pro-life demonstrator was murdered this morning in Michigan.  If the victim had been an abortionist, we would be treated to breathless news coverage, fervid denunciations of right wing “hate speech,” and angry calls for pro-life groups to apologize for their rhetoric or, ideally, disappear altogether.  Somehow, I don’t think we’ll see anything comparable in the coverage of this murder.

Today brings the sad news that Robert Novak has died. Novak was a great reporter, a proponent of the foreign policy Colonel McCormick used to advocate in the Chicago Tribune, and the author of a great and revealing memoir on the ways of Washington, The Prince of Darkness. He was also the target of Canadian carpetbagger David Frum, who listed Novak among the “Unpatriotic Conservatives” who were defying Frum by refusing to go along with the Iraq War. Turns out that the skeptics were right, but NR has never apologized for running Frum’s screed on the front page. Still, the memory of Frum’s unrepudiated smear is the source of some obvious embarrassment on the day of Novak’s passing. Six years ago Beltway apparatchik Mark Krikorian was singing Frum’s praises, while sheepishly suggesting that “lumping Bob Novak with Sam Francis might have been painting with too broad a brush.” (Sam’s lack of patriotism was obvious to Krikorian). Today, after Frum has been kicked out of the NR tree house, Krikorian is a bit more bold, describing Novak as a “patriot.”  And even Frum seems a tad embarrassed, writing at his own website that “Robert Novak for all his faults was never an unpatriotic American” and that “today is as good a time as any to correct” the impression that Frum had called Novak unpatriotic. (Of course, the better time would have been while Novak was still alive, but Frum has no doubt been busy these past six and half years).

In his book The End of Faith, new atheist Sam Harris wrote that “some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.”  Harris has since said that Christianity by itself is not one of those propositions, despite his claim that it is both evil and dangerous.  But we learned this week that Harris favors denying government employment to professed Christians, as the New York Times—a paper that saw membership in the Communist party as consistent with government service—ran Harris’ op-ed attacking Barack Obama’s appointment of Francis Collins to head the National Institutes of Health.

As Harris concedes, Collins’ credentials for the job are “impeccable;” Collins “is a physical chemist, a medical geneticist, and the former head of the Human Genome Project.”  What makes Collins objectionable to Harris is that he is an evangelical Christian who sees evidence for his faith in science, and “few things make thinking like a scientist more difficult than religion.”  Harris’ attack on Collins has been joined by Jerry Coyne, who compares Christianity to Scientology and sees Collins as “too ridden with crazy ideas to hold down an important government job,” and P. Z. Myers, last seen desecrating the Eucharist, who dismisses Collins as a “flaming idjit” and a “clown.”  Too bad Harris, Coyne, and Myers weren’t around to warn us of the dangers Georges Lemaitre and Gregor Mendel posed to science.  The evidence continues to mount that the new atheists are hate-filled fanatics, at war with the heritage of the West and of Western science.

In her great memoir of the Reagan White House, What I Saw at the Revolution, Peggy Noonan expressed her admiration for the speechwriting team of the Nixon White House, calling Pat Buchanan, William Safire, and Ray Price the “Murderers’ Row” of speechwriters.  Today, I had the pleasure of hearing from one of those Nixon alumni about another Nixon alumnus in response to my piece on Apollo 11.  Takimag contributor and reader Pat Buchanan was next to Ray Price at Cape Canaveral, three miles from where the massive Saturn V propelled Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins into space 40 years ago today.  Price’s reaction after liftoff:  “The sound alone is worth the $24 billion.”  It is hard to imagine any more recent White House speechwriter capturing a moment in history as perfectly as Price did.