"Winston has no principles."

On February 4th, President Bush eulogized the life of Winston Churchill. The president described Winston Churchill as a "great man" and quickly zeroed in on the mistress that both Bush and Churchill share: war. "He was a prisoner in the Boer War, a controversial strategist in the Great War. He was the rallying voice of the Second World War, and a prophet of the Cold War." Indeed, there doesn't seem to have been a war—or an opportunity for war—that Churchill wasn't associated with during his long career.

...

Except this history is a myth. The truth about the real Churchill—the Churchill that few know—is that he was "a man of the state: of the welfare state and of the warfare state" in Professor Ralph Raico's turn-of-phrase. The truth about Winston Churchill is that he was a menace to liberty, and a disaster for Britain, for Europe, for the United States of America, and for Western Civilization itself.

And most particularly for India, my wife's home, and Ireland, the home of my fathers.

Zmirak's Passion -- once more!

So I spent a day or so doing my best to get y'all to read John's review on godspy.com (I am not making this up, just go to http://www.godspy.com and see for yourself) and tonight I am unpacking the food Maya kindly brought from Citarella's with the day's mail in the shopping bag as well. I pull out the hard copy of The American Conservative and spot the cover story -- same author, same topic, but this time a longer, more considered essay on the historical and interreligious issues involved. I won't quote from it or link to it here now; it will be a day or two before it is posted on their (excellent) website anyway. But you know, it's worth buying a copy next time you are at Barnes and Nobles. At least that's where I see it, not at the corner newsstand, whose distributors may not approve of the editor, the notorious Pat Buchanan, though the newsdealers themselves, Arabs in New York, might feel differently. There is also a piece on Iraq in historical perspective which is well worth reading.

Now I shall finish the small tot of Booker's, the taste for which I picked up from certain Orthodox (Carpatho-Russian and OCA) clergy on LJ, almost the last of my 2002 Christmas present from da Goils. Then I shall go back to bed with Middlesex, a damn fine read despite being, for lack of a better word, literature, revealing certain secrets, made up secrets, perhaps, of the origins of the Nation of Islam.

Now what is this Gospel of Mary being pimped on WQXR's ad for tomorrow's Times? Don't tell me Rich Leigh is at again, quoth Maya, who knew the Holy Blood, Holy Grail scribe back in graduate school.

Catch you all later.

f