Latest prayer update

So far things are looking about as good as they can.  Days seem to drag on with geological timing right now, as we're simply watching to see if the symptoms dissipate.  If they do, then it means there is likely nothing serious at all.  So far, it seems to be heading in that direction.  And if things continue tomorrow as they have today, it will be good news.  But it's only the second inning of a nine inning game, so continued prayers are requested and appreciated.  I will say this, I'm proud of my son.  He's handled this a thousand times better than I ever would have handled it.  I'd have been curled up in the corner somewhere trying to pick flowers off the paper towels.  But all in all, he's been an inspiration to me, that's for sure.  More prayers and more updates to follow.  TTFN.

UPDATE: He's had another incident, but the doctors still seem to think it may just be part of the healing process.  That's our prayer.  Healing means injury and that means nothing more serious.  So pray that things continue along the way they've said they should.

Update on prayer request

He had some tests, but so far they've come up negative.  Which is good.  They don’t know yet for sure what’s happened, though they’re pretty confident ruling out anything life threatening, or that word which nobody likes to hear.  Still, I’d prefer to know what has happened, and right now we’re in a wait and see mode.  If things get better, and the symptoms fade away over the next week or two, things should be OK as long as there is no repeat of the symptoms after a month or more.  If there is, then it’s back to the tests, going to the next level.  So we’re hoping that the symptoms continue to diminish, and that after about another two or three weeks they’re gone.  If it happens  that way, it will be the best sign that nothing was wrong, and it might just have been an injury.  We’ll keep folks up to date, please continue the prayers during this time. Thanks for the continued prayers, emails and messages.  It's meant much.

Ignorance versus idiocy

If you think 2 +2 = 5, that circles have four equal sides, or that George Washington Carver was our first president, you might be ignorant of the facts.  Perhaps uneducated.  If you trust the news media to tell you the truth, you might be an idiot.

Really.  So the unemployment rate went up to 7.6%.  Generally, the unemployment rate going up is never, ever seen as good. At least if a Republican is in the White House.  But not so fast, CNN tells us.  In a pre-prepared segment, CNN deals with the numbers.  You see, in addition to the unemployment rate, most will tell you that the jobs being created are not great jobs.  They are low paying, temp or part time jobs, such as those in the hospitality or food service sectors.  Which shouldn't appear good.

And yet CNN swoops in with its pre-prepared segment, complete with visuals and stock footage, to explain that a rise in jobs in the hospitality fields, typically seen as low paying, seasonal and poor replacements for high paying full time jobs with benefits, can actually be great!  Heck, a CEO involved in the hospitality industry explains that many jobs in hotels with restaurants offer a free meal!  Of course your family may starve, but lets not dally on the details.  My apologies for no link, but I just watched it and CNN probably hasn't added it to the site.  If CNN has any shard of credibility left, it will actually burn  the prints.

Of course CNN isn't the only outlet.  All outlets are trying to put their best spin on this.  FOX, of course, can barely contain its glee.  But in all things, it should be obvious to anyone with more brains than a mite that any notion our journalism outlets are telling us the truth should have gone the way of the butter churn.

Urgent prayer request

Without getting into detail, a prayer request for our oldest son.  There are about a half dozen physical abnormalities in life that if they occur we are told to see a doctor immediately.  Well, one has occurred with him.  We're praying that it's an infection, injury or minor ailment.  Like all such things, it runs the gamut of 'serious but treatable to...', well, we don't want to think of it.  So prayers would be appreciated.

Lest we forget

June 6, 1944

When I read John C. Wright

I want to give up blogging.  I mean, what's the point?  When he says it so much better than I could on my best day.  Here he is in a quick little post, poking a finger in the eye of the post-Christian, liberal tendency to shame and deride the wars of Europe, such as the Crusades, while giving a pass to other cultures, like that of Islam, that were every bit as bad.

This is the result of multi-culturalism.  It was hitting its strides in the 1980s when I was in college, spurned on by professors who had, in their day, been blowing their minds at Woodstock or bringing liberal values to the world through the Peace Corps.  The premise was clear: White, European, Christian, Heterosexual (a later addition) Men were the nothing so much as the incarnation of total evil and the singular cause of all human suffering in the world.  All other civilizations were superior in every way, with lovely people with buff bodies and perfect hair, running about the world in loin clothes, making love under the stars, and chanting John Lennon songs all day.

If you want to see this in action, you could do worse than watching Dances With Wolves, or Disney's Pocahontas for examples.  Scholarship is also on board.  A few years ago, the BBC produced a well made documentary of India.  Interesting stuff.  But I couldn't help but notice that MC tendency to downplay the atrocities committed by any civilization that wasn't European.  But when the Brits arrived in India, it was Cue the Darth Vader march, and that's where the evil came in.  Likewise, I watched a PBS documentary some years ago in which the scholars pointed out that Europeans who came to the New World didn't just come to rape and pillage and spread disease and genocide.  They also came to ravage nature, destroy forests, and upset the climate!  Those Europeans just can't do anything right!

Mr. Wright focuses on the condemnation of conflicts like the Crusades.  The hypocrisy of smacking down Europe's heritage of defense or war while giving others a pass.  But it's only part of the overall mega-message with which progressives have convinced a growing number of Westerners that the best thing for the world would be the eradication of everything to do with Western Civilization (esp. Christianity and the Catholic Church).

One note I will add.  This applies to America and Protestant Christians, too.  I'm sometimes shocked at how willing Catholics are to drudge up the worst possible interpretation or take on things done by America or Protestant culture.  Same basic take: The Catholic Church in the Medieval era was misunderstood and totally within its rights, but America?  Ha!  There's an evil nation of unjust wars and genocides and evil and all that!  Don't do it, since America and the West, Protestantism and Christianity are all seen as the same by those who wish to disassemble them all.  A lesson many Evangelical Christians had learned, and that helped me see Catholic history in a whole new light.

The greatest pitfall of ministry

Is not sex, or money or even power.  Yes, those make the headlines.  But the real pitfall is confusing your own biases, prejudices, or just plain opinions with the Gospel.  It's a constant problem in Protestant life, where individual inspiration and interpretation of the Bible are assumed.  Why can't it be that the Holy Spirit just happened to tell me we should root for Michigan this year, huh?

But oddly enough, I've learned it's no different in Catholic circles.  Again, especially across the Catholic blogosphere.  See my posts about the amateur nature of so many Catholic bloggers/apologists.  Hey, it's not an easy pitfall to avoid when you've had training and education and professional experience.  Without those things, it can almost become the norm.

So over at Simcha Fisher's, she's laid out exactly what she will and won't tolerate when it comes to fashion.  What she will wear, what she won't wear.  What clothes she finds appealing, what clothes she finds unacceptable.  No problem at all.  And she's right about many things.

But here's the thing.  What she, and some weeks ago Marc Barnes, is railing at is this old notion that women should be pretty and dainty and pure and whatever.  That idea of girls were girls and men were men.  Girls in their pretty lace and dainties, rugged men in their shirts and hauberks.  Yes, I'm aware that, with some scrutiny, we can find problems with those ideals.  With concentrated scholarly appraisals, we can unpack bad, un-Christian, even dark ideals behind all those.

But guess what.  We can do the same with any idea, practice, fad or whatever. In the end, those were simply ideals formed by people of a particular culture in a particular point in history.  They were simply formulated opinions that people thought worked.  Just like ideals and preferences held by Marc Barnes, or Simcha Fisher, or me, or anyone.  Have your opinions all you want.  Yes, based on that all-important Catechism, which seems more important at some times than others, modesty is probably the best way to err.  But for heaven's sake, don't try to make your own generationally and culturally and socially and personally informed opinions and preferences about fashion choices to be a clash betwixt heaven and hell.  Don't make it about the powers of God (your opinions) vs. the powers of Satan (people whose preferences differ).  It's a very, very, very and let me repeat - very - dangerous temptation in any ministry.  Which is why applying the label 'evil' to things, or hinting at things like misogyny, bigotry, prejudice, or heresy ought to be done rarely.  And almost never when discussing slacks as opposed to skirts.

I should mention that in the piece, Ms. Fisher is more restrained than are many who come by to comment.  Alas.

If you want to explain why lying is wrong

You don't start by saying 'cuz the Church says so you lousy sinner.'  You start from the beginning.  Years ago, my Dad had a heart attack.  A work horse all his life, he was healthy and that's what saved him.  But the biggest shock wasn't that he had a heart attack (though people who knew him actually wept when they heard, thinking if C.C. Griffey could have a heart attack, anyone can!).  The biggest shock was that he had diabetes.  Pow!  Pow!  One-two punch.

Now, when things settled down and everything got back to normal, we talked about things.  We realized we should have seen it all along.  Out of the blue he began getting tired when he never was tired his entire life.  He was starting to take forever to heal.  He was always thirsty.  I mean that.  We took to keeping milk jugs filled with water in the fridge.  It never dawned on us to look deeper.  We just thought, "Gee, he's awfully thirsty, let's get him some more water."

But all the water and band-aides and naps couldn't help, because the problem wasn't that he was thirsty, not sleeping enough, or just accident prone.  It was that he had a disease.  We were dealing with the symptoms. We were missing the disease.

As I sit back and gradually lose my interest in the Catholic blogosphere, I think one reason is that it is peopled by amateurs.  Amateurs, of which I am one.  I wasn't an amateur in my Protestant days.  With graduate and post-graduate schooling, years of pastoral and counseling experience, leadership and administration, I knew my way around our own tradition.  I knew enough to know that one thing you had to deal with in churches was amateurs.  And you needed to be careful that someone didn't misrepresent the faith, or present a bad witness to the unbeliever in the name of the Faith.

Well, I feel that is a problem with the blogosphere. Too many amateurs.  Oh, they may be brilliant, they may be eloquent, they may be dedicated and devoted.  And some of them may just be blowhards.  But whatever, most of them don't have the formal training mixed with the trenches of applied ministry to filter through what they say.  Often, they simply write subject by subject.  They deal with 'how should you vote?' (like me, duh); or 'should you ever lie to save a dying baby'; or 'we must do whatever it takes to defeat consequentialism'; or, well, you get the point.

But if a Catholic, non-Catholic, or even an American, thinks things like lying for a greater good, or doing wrong that good may come of it, are morally permissible, chances are it isn't because they've grasped the deepest and most foundational basis for Catholic teaching and belief and reached their conclusions accordingly.  It's probably because there are other factors at work.  I've said that if you accept homosexuality, it's because you already accept many things at odds with traditional Christian morality.  If you accept might makes right, survival of the richest, what's wrong with abortion rights, it's because you already have bought into many ideals and beliefs that would have been foreign to a Christian thinker only a few centuries ago.

That's not everyone's fault.  We are of our time, despite what Chesterton seemed to believe.  And so are many Catholic bloggers, who can be just as prone to being children of their age as anyone.  In fact, it's because of this amateur status that they can miss this fact, and end up doing or saying things that seem smack out of the park loony when set against other things they say.

In the end, when you are trained and you have the hands on experience, you begin to look at people and their flaws, errors, and failings, and realize that they are doing what they are doing for the same reason I have my flaws, errors and failings.  Because we are children made in the image of God living in a fallen world.  And our particular era of fallenness encompasses some differing views of the world from that which has been held by the Christian faith, or is held by the Catholic faith today.  And at that point, you begin to realize that just yelling and calling people names, insulting them and smacking them down because they can't see why it's better for a baby to die than tell a lie to save it is about as effective as handing a diabetic more water when they just can't quench their thirst.  If people think it's better to lie to save a baby, it's possibly because they have been weaned on a set of beliefs and values that differ from those of the Catholic tradition, and there's the disease.

Starting with those values, those key and foundational beliefs, that define the Catholic world view would be a much better approach.  It helps because, one, like my Dad's diabetes, it acknowledges the disease rather than the symptoms.  Two, it keeps me humble because suddenly I realize I might be stone dead wrong about things and not realize it, since I'm every bit the child of my age.  Three, it prevents the growth of my own inner fundamentalist who just can't imagine why everyone else isn't as humble as I am.  And finally, it is far more likely to produce results as people may begin to realize that God chose foolishness, rather than great wisdom.  It will do a better job at getting people to stop thinking as men think, and start thinking as God thinks.  From there will come changes in more than the symptoms, but ultimately changes that lead to curing the disease.

With that said, here is the type of person Catholics everywhere should be listening to.  He's a pro.  He has the training and the experience.  And he knows how to go beyond the symptoms, and get straight to the disease.  Watch.  Listen.  Learn why Catholic is Catholic, and not just a variation of modern alternatives.

Keven O'Brien sums up the Lying Debate

From the point of view that lying is always wrong, period.  But then, Keven O'Brien also called Ferris Bueller's Day Off "one of the most Christian movies ever made."  Really. That celebration of 80s hedonism and narcissism, laziness and selfishness, mockery of education and families, is really quite Christian.  How does he conclude that a movie made for my generation, that my generation knew full well was a celebration of the Great ME, is actually the Paschal Mystery unpacked?  Well:

"It's about how a father should love his son more than his car; it's about how the small minded indoctrination of compulsory education is a prison; it's about freedom of spirit; it's about overcoming jealousy; it's about loving your brother; it's about loving life."

In other words, it's about the problems everyone else but Bueller had.  It's not about Bueller wanting a day of selfishness, narcissism, lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting the kindness of a city, mockingly using his parents' love, using his friends, treating people like objects for his own gratification.  Nope.  His parents, his friends' parents, his principal, his school, his town, his society, you see, they were all the problems.  The real solution was freedom of spirit!  It's about loving life!  It's about focusing on all the problems of everyone else but that main character who is giving us a blank check to focus on the Great ME.

Think on that for a while.  And think on the great lying scandal of our time as unpacked across the Catholic blogosphere.  After all, isn't this whole lying debate really that?  I mean, there could be some folk arguing against all lying who never, ever lie.  But I can't help but think some, if not most, have lied at one point or another, and for reasons far less noble than Live Action's.  Not to say Live Action is right.  I think there is something to be said about using lies and deception to promote the Gospel truth.

But you know what?  Given how little I actually get out there, get my hands dirty, and sacrifice it all for the Pro-Life cause, I'm going to stop a minute before I spend hours and hours of my energies pointing out just how badly others are doing what I spend so little of my own sweat and blood doing myself.  If nothing else, I'll have the balls to get on the horn and find a way to contact Lila Rose or someone and speak to them face to face.  I may mention I disagree with their methods, and heck, may even say that lying isn't right, and we should strive for the truth in all things.

But it takes a special generation of believers to think that our energies are best spent writing endless reams of condemnations of other believers for how they work their ministries and pilgrimages.  It might actually take a generation that looks at one of Hollywood's greatest celebrations of hedonism and narcissism ever put to film, and concludes that's really what the Gospel is all about.   See it that way, and the entire lying debate begins to make more sense.

As we invoke our inner Metternich

Today I have an extra day off.  Did it so I could get the benefits of a full Memorial Day weekend.  Since I work most weekends, just having Memorial Day off was barely a boon, so took today.  Will be spending it in the garden weather permitting, and then later tonight eating leftovers from yesterday's bounteous feast.  When the sun has set and the lights are low, we'll then continue plotting and backstabbing as we recreate the world's perilous position in the years leading up to the War to End  All Wars.  I don't have the original Diplomacy game, but the modern remake of the classic does quite well.  And the best thing?  Since it falls right around the right period for their studies, and since they're home schooled, we can count it as a Social Studies project by comparing our take-down to what really happened!  Fun stuff.

I'm Turkey this time around and have already obtained some footholds in the Balkans.  But my wife has hit our soon to be 8th grade Cossack out of the blue.  Meanwhile our 9th grade Frenchman and my soon to be Senior Austrian are staking their claims.  We'll see.  My money is on anyone but me at this point.  But that will certainly occupy our day.  See you all soon.

If you won't lie to save babies

Then your next step should be to sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and follow Jesus in the manner of St. Francis.  Oh wait, you say.  The Church has made it clear that Jesus didn't say we all have to do that (even though the early Church described in Acts appeared to take it literally).  I'm not saying he did.  I'm saying that as the 'should we lie to save babies' debate rages, somewhat inconsistently, across the Catholic Blogosphere, there are many who stand with pride on their willingness to say all lying is really the same, it's all intrinsically evil (which has some basis to it based on current Church teaching), and it doesn't matter why, I wouldn't lie once even if it meant saving a baby from certain death.

OK.  Fair enough.  You're probably a better man than I am.  But my colleagues and I used to have a little thing we did in my ministry days.  Sometimes, in casual conversation or counseling, a believer would wonder if they had what it took to be a martyr.  To really take a bullet for the faith.  We said if you have a hard time getting up and going to church on Sunday, or taking part in things, or even reading your Bible or praying regularly, probably not.  If you do all those things and still wonder, then sell all you have and live a life of poverty.  Because in the real world, it's easier to sell everything than die for the faith.  Of course you don't have to in order to die for it.  People have probably died for the faith, when push came to shove, in opulent mansions and luxury homes.  But it is a good test when things are slow.

Same here.  If you boast of your willingness to let the innocent die rather than tell even the whitest lie to save them, I suggest selling everything and living in poverty first.  And if you can't do that, but are still willing to let the innocent die rather than tell even the whitest lie to save them, then it might be time to rethink your pilgrim walk.  I'm not saying lying is right, or we should lie to do good.  It looks complex, and it looks like that part of the Catholic faith that wants to embrace the inner Amish - you don't do anything but prepare for the next life.

But it is tough, because it wants, on one hand, Catholics to be prepared for the ultimate sacrifice.  More so, it wants Catholics to be prepared to let others be sacrificed rather than do evil to save them.  And yet, unlike the Amish or other such stringent faith traditions, it stops short on depriving us of the luxuries and pleasures of a worldly life.  And therein lies the possibility that Catholics could begin to imagine that martyrdom is just how many innocent people I'm willing to let die for my righteousness, all the while laughing on my way to the bank.  A dangerous trend, and one that sets up a level of spiritualism that seems hell and gone from that traditionally understood or biblically expounded.

Memorial Day Movies

And movies for any patriotic day dedicated to remembering Vets.  There are others that aren't mentioned that are every bit as essential.  Tora, Tora, Tora leaps to mind, but I typically keep that for December 7th.  Stalag 17 and even the historically over the top The Battle of the Bulge have always had a 'Christmas feel' to them.  But the following are ones that are shown, or to me are worth watching, whenever the flag goes up and our thoughts turn toward those who gave that last measure of devotion. 

The Longest Day

Staring almost every male actor in the film industry at the time, The Longest Day is the war movie where everything works.  It has that old time patriotism, mixed with just enough moments of terror and loss and honesty to remind everyone what war is all about.  Made in 1962, after the first wave of Rock and Roll but before the British Invasion, it was a mere 18 years after the event.  That's as long ago as the Oklahoma City bombing to us.  And yet already there was that tension, that anti-war, increasingly anti-American liberalism vying with those still lifting up what America and its allies had done to defeat evil.  This splendid movie, superstar packed to the hilt, won the match and gave Americans and free people a reason to look back and be proud.

Patton

One of the most iconic images in motion picture history right there.  George C. Scott's magnum opus performance as the ivory handled pistol wielding, cussing and slapping general of WWII is the stuff of legend.  It's a reminder of how in those war years, generals and military leaders held the public in as much awe as Hollywood celebrities and musicians and athletes.  Scott's performance is in the spotlight, but also Coppola's masterful screenplay which avoided the controversies surrounding Patton that would bog down a modern movie.  Instead, he focuses on Patton's quirks and little traits, his poetry and his belief in reincarnation, his religion and his mouth.  He says 'this is Patton, you decide.'  A tendency no longer near alive in modern movies. Except...

HBO's Band of Brothers

In one of the greatest mini-series or television events ever produced.  Band of Brothers is right in every place that the theatrical Saving Private Ryan was wrong.  The reason SPR isn't in this list is that, apart from the brutal opening scene, the movie is a Baby Boomer retelling of WWII through Boomer eyes.  Mostly, SPR is a bunch of foul mouth fellows walking around and whining about how unfair everything is.  In ten episodes of Band of Brothers, you never once hear the phrase 'this isn't fair!'  Based on Stephen Ambrose's book of the same name, BoB leans on actual interviews with the real vets, and allowed their input during production.  It was their story told by them.  What we have is not something that dwells on vast, geopolitical controversies, or anything really.  It just says 'here's these guys, here's what they did, let's watch.'  The link to the real interviews adds an extra dimension that cannot be reproduced anywhere.  A definite watch for those losing site of America's greatness and just why that generation was once called the greatest.

Gettysburg

Based on Michael Shaara's book The Killer Angels, Gettysburg started as a made for TV movie, but the powers that be thought it might be better for a major theatrical release.  Not perfect, and sometimes bogs down as one after another, the cast must have its chance to stand and give a ten minute speech explaining to the audience what it's really all about.  But when the action starts, and the historical reenactors have their chance to replay that fateful day, it can't get much better.  The star power alone is worth its weight, and Jeff Daniels gives one of his best performances as one of the most fascinating war heroes in American history.

The Bridge on the River Kwai

This isn't American!  No, it's David Lean's great tribute and analysis of an oft-forgotten part of WWII, namely the Pacific War that didn't happen over Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima.  It showcases, albeit in sanitized fashion, the brutality of one of history's most murderous empires.  But more than that, it looks into the mentality of the men who fight, what can go right, and what can go so wrong.  Sir Alec Guinness's award winning portrayal of a man who is the best and worst of war is unforgettable, as are all the performances, not the least of which is Sessue Hayakawa's scene stealing Colonel Saito.  The movie is also noteworthy as a lesson not to put too much faith in Hollywood versions of history more interested in making points than telling the history.  Though with modern historical studies, there's not much difference.

The Guns of Navarone

With a cast like this, what can go wrong?  A fan favorite, and one of the most influential war movies that established the whole 'those poor suckers don't have a chance' story line.  Oddly, David Niven was the only one of the main cast to serve in WWII, and do so heroically.  His 'I don't want the responsibility' Corporal Miller, an explosives genius, matched against 'whatever gets the job done' Captain Mallory, played by Gregory Peck, is the crux of the movie's theme.  As Peck lamented many times, the movie is so fun, people forget it's supposed to be an anti-war movie.  In many ways, just like Bridge on the River Kwai.  A mere decade and a half after the war, and already that generation was beginning to take a second look at what happened.  Something the Boomers often overlook.

Operation Pacific

John Wayne?  Really?  Yes, really.  Sure, many of his movies stretched the boundaries of realism, but no worse than many war movies today, which often err on the opposite side, where everything is lousy, everyone sucks, nothing is worth anything.  Same lack of realism, different reasons. For Wayne, a patriot through and through, the Americans were the good guys, end of statement.  And his movies showed it.  There were many of course, not the least of which the aforementioned Longest Day.  But in terms of Wayne vehicles, not only does this show a side of warfare often forgotten, but it was one of the best in terms of showing it for what it was, with as few embellishments as possible.

Platoon

Send the kids to bed with this one.  One of the earliest 'just cuss every few seconds to make the point' movies, Platoon doesn't suffer from Stone's utter hatred of Capitalist America as much as most of his later films.  This is Stone telling his story.  There's enough commentary, in the part of Berenger's Barnes and Dafoe's Elias to remind us of the controversies of America's first lost war.  But he also makes it about the people, and brings in the little details he knew from experience to make this one of the best war movies of all time.  Dale Dye's commentary on the DVD is perhaps one of the greatest such commentaries ever.  In some ways, it moved me more than the movie itself.

Charles Kuralt's The Revolutionary War

Not a Hollywood production, but a series produced in the heyday of Cable channels, when The Learning Channel meant learning.  Still enough of Americana to make it worth watching, the emphasis is certainly on showing some of the meaner, shadier sides of America's war of independence, while unpacking some of those famous villains and giving them a human side, Arnold being the most obvious.  The reproductions are well produced, Kuralt's narration is worth gold, and there's still enough of a balance between the bad which needs told as well as the greatness that needs remembered, to make this a far better series than most of what is produced today, most of which sadly emphasis the bad to the exclusion of anything.  A good watch to remember just why we have this country to slap around in the first place.

The Dirty Dozen

How did this get here?  A fictitious movie that nobody really knows what to do with.  Part Boomer rebellion, part callous who cares about human life, part in your eye to the establishment, The Dirty Dozen was a major hit in the Summer of Love, when so many were singing All You Need is Love.  The cast makes it work.  You can't go wrong with talent like that.  Even though you get the feeling there is plenty of commentary about war, its ugliness and its brutality, the movie never quite goes over the line to outright preaching like so many today.  It's also worth remembering that many of the attitudes of this time, rethinking the greatness of the war and those who fought it, were being held by those who back in their day were landing on the beaches of Iwo Jima and Anzio.

Kelly's Heroes

Even the name can't be taken seriously, inspired as it obviously was by the surprising hit TV series Hogan's Heroes.  And even then, the movie Kelly's Heroes takes Hogan's Heroes and knocks it down another notch.  These heroes aren't out to save the world in some crazy POW camp.  These guys are out for loot!  A fictitious sixties inspired yarn in which a ragtag bunch of soldiers stop caring and decide to break the rules, not to defeat Nazism, or save the world, or defend freedom, but just to nab some gold from a bank behind enemy lines.  Fun stuff to be sure, but also a reminder of just how far we'd come as a nation.  In college, it was these movies or John Wayne that led many of my classmates to conclude WWII was no big deal after all, not like Vietnam, which was really bad.

MASH

The sixties generation anti-war movie against which all sixties generation anti-war movies are measured. MASH was a Vietnam anti-war movie only loosely set in Korea.  From the sex, drugs and sex emphasis, to Sutherland's hopped up flower child Hawkeye, one almost forgets this is supposed to be in the 50s Korean conflict.  Yes, it's fun.  It's a good watch.  The gags, the performances, the talent, and the link to the classic and immensely successful TV series of the same name, all make it worth the watch.  What is especially noteworthy is that this was a major hit the same year as another major hit named Patton.  What does that tell you about the conflicting attitudes in 1970.

Stripes

The next generation, born in the wake of the Boomers, had to have its say.  By now, Vietnam was lost, and movies like MASH and Easy Rider had a bigger impact on the general mindset than The Longest Day or any John Wayne movie.  Stripes was a vehicle for Bill Murray, and set him perched on the edge of the super-stardom he would enjoy three years later battling ghosts.  A take off of Private Benjamin, Stripes held the basic contempt for most things America that was all the rage by then.  Breaking rules was the thing to do, and the army was now an industry of buffoons and dolts, at best.  What is really worth noticing, however, is Murray's famous 'mutts' speech.  Almost edgy in its day for poking fun of America's triumphant diverse heritage, against the utter hatred and contempt for traditional America that comes out in many movies today by the likes of Oliver Stone and others, the speech comes off as almost John Waynish.  There's how things can change.

Red Dawn

Controversial in its day because of the violence, Red Dawn was an anomaly in a cultural landscape that was increasingly concluding that we'd met the enemy and it was us.  Reagan was president, and we were being told that it was Reagan, not the Soviets, who would doom us all.  In fact, as a series I've seen on PBS points out, the whole Cold War may have been orchestrated by the American Military Complex, and not the fault of those misunderstood Soviets at all.  That attitude was already taking shape when this odd thing came out.  Assuming an unlikely scenario in which the Soviets pair up with Hispanic forces to invade the hinterland, Red Dawn assumed a bunch of high schoolers of varying backgrounds could bring the Red Army to a standstill.  Good performances and a captivating story line help.  Mostly, it's just interesting to see how a movie with the attitude of 'America is great let's defend it!' stands out like a sore thumb when set in juxtaposition to other Hollywood fare in recent years.

The Best Years of Our Lives

A movie that smacks down the Boomer Myth that they were the first generation to honestly look at the ugly underside of things like war and anything else to do with America.  Winner of 1946's Academy Award for Best Picture, and a box office hit, this movie takes an honest look at the cost of war in a way few movies before or since have equaled.  It's not at the end of the list because of its stature.  In fact, if that were the case, it'd be at the top.  Instead, it's here to remind us that much of what we've bought into in order to forget our country's greatness was, in fact, a lie.  And few lies have been more effective than the one that said ours is the first generation to be honest about America's real history.  Truth be told, most of what passes for honesty is anything but that.  Instead, look at the movies from the times, such as this remarkable gem, and see how that generation that came before the Boomers, like most generations, actually dealt with reality.  Get your hankies, you'll be glad you did.

There are others.  Some as I said are watched at specific times because of historical accuracy or that's just how I remember them.   Many, like All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory, The Lost Battalion, The Blue Max, From Here to Eternity, Twelve O'Clock High, Apocalypse Now, My Boy Jack, and First Blood, among others, are worth their weight, and have a place, though maybe not in a day that's supposed to be a day to remember the fallen, those who went before, those who died in some faraway land so that we could do what we do best, and that's sit around and complain about the country we inherited.  But then that's why I didn't list such things as the Deer Hunter or Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket.  After all, why watch those movies when I could watch a modern Stone movie instead?

A bittersweet Memorial Day story

For your reading pleasure.  The diary of a Vet killed in the Pacific war finally makes it all the way to the girl he loved.  But there's a little twist on how she finally was able to read it.  I won't give it away.  Click and read.  It's worth it on this rainy, chilled Memorial Day.

To all the Vets

Thank you

And to my most important Vet of all, thanks Dad.  I miss you. 

In a newspaper piece that reads like bigotry on the march

And it completely misses the real story. A decision by UW Medicine to affiliate with a Catholic system is being treated like a decision to affiliate with Black health systems in the 1830s, or Jewish health systems in the 1930s in certain parts of the world.  It's just amazing to see the bigotry and see where it's going.  Growing up in the 70s and 80s, we always asked why.  Why were Americans so racist?  Why did the Germans follow Hitler?  Why were the southerners so against Blacks?  How could people treat a group of other human beings that way?  Well, turn on the tube and watch or pick up a local paper.  It's like a historical case study in the making.  And no made for TV movies needed to help us get the point.

Film industry takes a bold leap of courage

And awards one of its most prestigious awards to a film advocating homosexuality.  Yep, you read right.  It's almost hard to comprehend the courage it takes to present a pro-homosexual film to the movie industry gathered in France.  Seriously, I ask you, is there any industry more cowardly and more conformist to collective group think than the modern film industry.  What happened to the days when the arts and entertainment world boldly challenged the status quo and the latest fads, instead of being the primary supporter and promoter of the same?

An observation

Not to sound pro-Nazi or anything, but I was thinking on this after Mark Shea revisited a post by Simcha Fisher denouncing Holocaust deniers.  Now, for me, denying the Holocaust is as stupid as denying the moon landings.  But for me, it's no more evil than ignoring or denying the Communist horrors of the last century, which are often downplayed if not outright ignored. Or the Armenian genocide which is open to academic debate and political denial.  Or even the meaner aspects of the non-Western world in pre-imperialism days, or the atrocities committed by those cultures as they battled Western Imperialism.  To me, denying any of those things, or downplaying them for whatever reason, is just as stupid, or just as wrong.

But then, I don't believe that the only evil of the 20th century belonged to the Nazis or Americans over the skies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I believe evil did quite well in other corners of the world.  Denying, qualifying, excusing, or whatever in those other cases is just as bad as ignoring or denying the terror of the Holocaust.

So I saw this and it made me wonder.  The headline is championing a soccer league for embracing its anti-Nazi past.  And I thought on that for a minute.  If you are anti-Nazi, it's hero time.  If you are proudly and passionately anti-Communist?  Why, it's Archie Bunker time, at best.  Or Jo McCarthy time.  Or blacklist time.  You're really the baddie.  Why?  Why the difference?  Why is standing against Communism likely to get you ignored or argued with at best, and downright condemned at worst?  Why are those actors and writers who actually loved Communism and the whole Communist ideal treated like martyrs and heroes, while actors who had even some connection to the Nazis, even if they later renounced everything, dogged by it their entire life, if not ostracized and shunned?

All the gold in the world didn't keep him from having to prove he helped Jews escape the Nazis,
and still his Nazi ties plagued him through his career

Blacklist hero and closet Communist.  Just watch 1960's Spartacus
through a Communist lens and it all makes sense.

I don't know.  There are probably reasons, but some of them might be unknown, part of ulterior motives and therefore unable to be proven, or something.  But I've noticed it over the years.  And it's not changed, even in the Catholic blogosphere. 

No athlete has ever done this

Come out as gay!  Oh, wait.  Well, no athlete who's currently playing has come out as gay!  Oh, just a second.  No athlete who's actually currently on a sports team and is actively playing but not on an injury list has come out as being gay!  That's it!  Now we have it.  Real, earth shattering news that deserves the appropriate headlines.  For the whole notion that humans are only worth labeling based on their sexual preferences, I give you Marc Barnes.  Marc is a great writer.  Yes, at times he overshoots the mark or goes too far, but the essence of this piece, deflating the ludicrous modern notion that a person's preferences about sex is the only thing worth promoting, is spot on. 

Confirmation comes quickly

Here is a little shot of our family enjoying the after Confirmation celebration for my awesome Eighth grader.  He's been confirmed!  More on these thoughts in the not too distant, but wanted to post this just as a big kudos and a hat tip to God for keeping us alive and still along the grace walk of his abundant mercies, no matter how often I sometimes shake my fist.  The dinner was his choosing, and I dare say, he chose well.

The largest Lego model in the galaxy

Is right here.  A life size replica of a famed Star Wars X-Wing fighter built with Legos.  Wow.  So much for any pride I have over my petty Lego accomplishments.