Meaning of the Passion

What is the meaning of Christ’s Passion? What does it mean when God sacrifices his Son to show that He loves the world? And what are we trying to say when we observe the curious events that took place on the eastern edge of the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago?

In the London Times Gerard Baker reminds us of the human at the center of the Passion: St. Peter.

It is Peter who most truly compels our attention as the flawed human in the narrative: not the good or evil figure sleepwalking his way towards fate, but the man with choices who can’t get them right; who oscillates between the inner angel and the demands of the flesh.

First he tells Jesus that he’s going to be right there with Him, rashly attacking one of the soldiers sent to arrest Him. Then a day later, he is busily denying all knowledge of Him. It is right after Peter’s denial in Bach’s Matthew Passion that the alto sings the haunting (Win) (Real), Erbarme dich, Mein Gott: Have mercy, O God.

Yet it is the flawed St. Peter who becomes the official founder of the Church, the guy who talks the talk but can’t quite walk the walk the walk.

Is the Squeeze on for al Sadr?

What is really going on in Iraq these days? Are things really in an impasse as the Iraqis fail to come up with a new government? Or is something going on under the blanket?

Austin Bay thinks that they may be putting the squeeze on Muqtada al Sadr and his Mahdi militia. And Shia Ayatollah Sistani may be at the center of it.

Wishful thinking? Who knows? But let us give the Iraqis credit for being more than just American stooges. After all, the translation of “national rescue coalition” is “everyone gets a share of the loot.”

Back in August 2004 Sadr thought he was going to put the interim government out of business by taking over the mosque in Najaf. Instead the US forces mauled his fighters, the inhabitants of Najaf welcomes the US as liberators, and Sistani negotiated a face-saving withdrawal for Sadr and his fighters.

in the January elections Sadr supporters won three dozen seats in the Iraqi parliament, and he obviously felt he was going to be a king-maker in the new government.

But that status appears to be short-lived. One indicator is the March 26 attack by Iraqi commandos on a Mahdi militia facility in Baghdad. The predictable media outrage lasted less than a week -- and Iraq's Interior Ministry pointed out it had acted to stop sectarian vigilantes. Sadr lost "street face" to the Interior Ministry -- and it appears Sadr's political position has subsequently deteriorated.

And yes, are our MSM dumb or something? Couldn’t they see what was going down when the Iraqi special forces took out Sadr’s pals and afterwards when he squawked like a banshee and staged his fake demonstrations?

Or as Mike Wallace might have said in his heyday: You mean to say that the Iraqi army is now “stood up” enough so it could be used to teach Sadr and his militia a lesson?

The truth is, of course, that we ordinary mortals don’t have a clue what is going on in Iraq behind the curtains.

Fighting Against Economic Reality

At bankrupt Delta Air Lines union pilots who earn an average of about $150,000 a year are resisting 18 percent wage cuts to keep the airline flying. In France students riot in the street to protest the idea of postponing for two years the French guarantee of lifetime employment. In Italy Prime Minister Berlesconi is voted out of office (just) after failing to pass legislation in his five year period in office that would make Italy’s labor market for flexible and Italy more competitive. And, let us not forget the German electorate that nearly died of fright last fall when an advisor to candidate Angela Merkel proposed tax rate cuts.

Now George Will writes about the agonies of General Motors, a corporation that pays $100,000 to $130,000 a year to keep 14,700 laid-off workers in a “Job Bank.” And the United Auto Workers union is threatening a crippling strike if bankrupt Delphi gets the bankruptcy court to cut wages of its members.

What goes up comes back down, especially in the marketplace. But the welfare state is founded on the notion that a government can legislate economic relations and that people should never have to suffer unemployment or reduction in wages.

The beauty of the market system is that is spreads risk around. The danger of the political system is that it concentrates risk, and it encourages people to resort to political power to avoid losses and setbacks.

The history of the industrial era teaches us that it is essential for the market to adjust to new conditions every day. If you try to resist economic change you just put it off, so that the eventual change becomes wrenching, or even catastrophic.

But some people never learn.

Enough of the Self-Servers on Iraq

Should we have sent more troops to Iraq? Did Defense Secretary Rumsfeld criminally omit to plan for the Iraq occupation? Right now, observes Victor Davis Hanson there is a plague of retired senior officers plugging books on TV. And they

offer sharp interviews about our supposed strategic and operational blunders in Iraq — imperial hubris, too few troops, wrong war, wrong place, and other assorted lapses.

Imagine if we had talking heads second-guessing every action in World War II!

Then there is Iran, for which there are three “bad” options, and

on which talking heads can blather about the dangers of "preemption," but without either responsibility for, or maturity in, advocating a viable alternative.

In Iraq we might have sent more troops. But more troops doesn’t necessarily mean a better outcome. “More troops may have facilitated Iraqization — or, in the style of Vietnam, created perpetual dependency.” Who knows?

What we need, then, are not more self-appointed ethicists, but far more humility and recognition that in this war nothing is easy. Choices have been made, and remain to be made, between the not very good and the very, very bad. Most importantly, so far, none of our mistakes has been unprecedented, fatal to our cause, or impossible to correct.

And in any endeavor, let us never forget, there are always going to be mistakes. It comes with the territory, as Dan Rather used to say.

It’s easy to play the game of outrage politics, and dish out blame on national TV. But in the real world people have to make decisions based on the information they have at the time. After they have made the decision the facts on the ground change, and it turns out that many of the decisions were wrong.

It may be, for instance, that the whole Islamo-fascist eruption is an ephemeral flash in the pan that will soon fade away. Or it may turn out to be a titanic clash of civilizations.

If you were the leader of the United States, the nation preeminent in the world for the idea and the vision of a global commonwealth of democratic capitalism, what should you do? Take Islamism seriously as a force to be stopped, or just ignore it?

New Hope for Malaria Sufferers

I know. It’s rather bad form to equate the tragedy of malaria with the tragedy of psoriasis. But there really is good news on the malaria front. Only there’s a minor problem.

First the good news. Scientists have found a way to synthethize artemisinic acid, a precursor to artemisinin, “the most effective therapy for the world’s second-most deadly infectious disease.” The problem is that the process uses genetically modified yeast or bacteria. And we all know how dangerous that can be.

It’s estimated that the new method will reduce the cost of a dose of the malaria drug by 90 percent from about $2 to about 25 cents.

The report in the London Times on this breakthrough by Mark Henderson indicates that the new method should be ready in about ten years. It was funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

We could also help in the meantime and save lives by allowing the use of DDT.

Employers Hiring Older Workers in Britain

In Britain, older workers are rushing into the work force. According to Allister Heath in the London Spectator, “pensioners accounted for 85 per cent of the employment growth in Britain during” the last six months. A full 60,000 of them went back to work.

Why are they going back to work? Who knows? For some it is a choice, and for others it is probably from necessity. Real-estate taxes have been going up pretty sharply in Britain due to escalating home prices.

But maybe the rise in older worker employment is not just the desire of older workers for jobs but a conscious strategy of employers to seek out “seasoned citizens” as employees.

One third of companies are giving school-leavers basic training in literacy and numeracy and nobody is fooled by the government’s propaganda about increasing standards any more.

In fact, employers are finding that older workers with just a basic high-school education—“O-levels” in Britspeak—are more literate and numerate than college graduates. One employer said that

Pensioners tend also to be more articulate, better presented, and have a better attitude to work than many of today’s school-leavers or university graduates; if he could, he would recruit only Polish immigrants or British pensioners.

At the home improvement store B&Q they opened a store in the town of Macclesfield staffed exclusively with people over 50. There were no problems with getting the oldsters to use computers.

The Macclesfield store did better than other B&Q stores in almost every way. Profits were higher by a fifth; staff turnover was six times lower; there was more than a third less short-term absenteeism; and, most remarkably of all, theft collapsed by more than half.

It all gives you a new perspective on an old excuse: “I’m living on a fixed income.”

Dem Vote 43.9% in CA 50 Special Election

How much trouble are Republicans in for this Fall? Maybe not as bad as some have feared. In the special election to fill disgraced Republican Congressman Randy Cunningham’s seat the Democrat came in with only 8 percent more votes than in the general election in 2004. That means that the election will go to a runoff in June. Writes political scientist Jay Cost:

The Democrats had everything going for them in this election. They had a corrupt felon-incumbent, they had low turnout, they had a well-financed challenger, and they had a divided Republican field. They had a district that has, in the last 10 years, skewed Republican less and less. And they only managed to get about 8% more of the vote when they needed 14% more. In 2004, Busby pulled in 36%. This time around she won 43.9%.

Cost gets specific:

There is no other way to understand this but as a loss for the Democrats.

That is because CA 50, as Cost has written before, is the “type of seat the Democrats need to capture to take the House” in November. It is Republican but has been trending slowly Democrat over the last few years. Therefore Cost predicts:

no win in CA 50, no Democratic takeover. I still hold that position.

Meanwhile Tom DeLay has decided not to run in Texas and Bush’s numbers appear to have hit the floor.

The question is: how will the immigration issue play in November?