Vox Popoli

I was disappointed that the Italians didn’t play better, but then, the Danes are always tough. Buffone kept the Azzurri in it, but that’s to be expected. Both goalies played very, very well, as there were desperate one-hand reflex saves on either end. The draw makes it tough, though, as Sweden looked imposing in utterly destroying Bulgaria. Excellent team play and unselfish passing simply tore apart the defense. It’s no wonder that there are 30 teams lining up to try to sign Henrik Larsson out of Scotland.

And speaking of strikers, I think the Italians are more dangerous with Inzaghi up front. Del Piero and Vieri simply don’t seem to work together very well, and Inzaghi is nothing if not a fox in the box.

As for tonight’s games, I expect Holland to beat Germany and the Czech Republic shouldn’t have any trouble with Latvia. Advocaat is a lousy manager at this level, but he’s made the right decision to sit Kluivert since Van Nistelroy doesn’t blow his chances the way Kluivert does. I still think the Dutch would be better off with Dennis Bergkamp creating chances from behind the strikers, but unless they self-destruct – which is always a definite possibility – they will win.

Jonah Goldberg agrees with my assertion that Bush is no Reagan: Bush seems to have abandoned the rhetorical high ground. Reagan declared that government wasn’t the solution, it was the problem. In countless ways, Bush has been saying the reverse. And once you concede that the “government has to move” every time “somebody” hurts, you’ve pretty much abandoned your dogma and picked up the opposition’s. What makes things even worse is that while Bush may be good and decent and unfairly criticized for a host of things, he’s a terrible spokesman for conservative principles.

I suggest that this is because George W. Bush is not, and has never been, a conservative. Is there one thing he has done that Bob Dole, the tax collector for the welfare state, would not have? Less than a year later, even Republican professional consultants are admitting that the Medicare entitlement is a disaster in both practical and political terms, and just imagine if his immigration amnesty had not been so vehemently resisted by the Republican Congress.

I’d thought that the homogamy issue would give Bush a slam dunk in the election, but the president, timorous creature that he is, is afraid to run on the issue. I am beginning to suspect that Joseph Farah is correct and Bush’s cowardice and lack of conservative conviction may cost him the election, despite John Kerry’s incompetence.

Reagan, one must remember, was always considered an over-principled extremist. He dared to take risks. He also won by landslides in a political environment that was markedly less open to conservative ideas than today.

A friendly foe writes: It feels good, Vox. I was finally able to use one of your columns for its intended purpose today. That kind of scares, though. What’s next? Will I soon be following the advice of Rabbi Boteach, too? Anyway, I’m mainly writing to ask if you got to see that incredible France-England match. I’m guessing you probably don’t care much for my Bleus simply on principle but even you have to admit that Zidane was off the hook! That was unbelievable.

I don’t think he’ll have to worry about paying heed to the Rabbi’s advice, not unless he’s planning to become the next Britney Spears, Michael Jackson or Madonna. As for Les Bleus, I’m a little conflicted. I can’t hate the team that supplied Henry, Viera, Wiltord and Pires to my Gunners, but I really can’t cheer for them either.

Space Bunny and I watched the game and were very disappointed for the Lions. She’s a big England fan and felt especially bad for David Beckham. I was worried about that free kick, Zidane is still, as he once said, “at the pinnacle of his art”. And why is England STILL not practicing penalties – I take better penalties than that. I was surprised how flat the Blues were otherwise, though. I’m not impressed by Trezeguet, as he doesn’t make enough runs to keep teams from keeping two and three defenders on Henry. It didn’t hurt England that Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole know Henry better than anyone, of course. Still, I saw nothing in the Swiss-Croatian game that leads me to believe that England will have any trouble going through despite the loss.

Vassell for Owen and Hargreaves for Scholes were good moves, but I thought it was a huge mistake to put Heskey in for Rooney, although I never imagined it coming back to bite Sven as it did. Rooney had been effective in tracking back to help the midfielders all game; Heskey as usual, was nearly useless up front, then came back and plowed over Zidane to give up the fatal free kick. I know they keep naming Heskey to the squad because Rooney, Owen and Vassell are all so short, but I’d still rather have Kevin Phillips or even Teddy Sheringham as a fourth striker over him.

As for the other games, I suspect that Portugal’s “Golden Generation” will be viewed as more of an Age of Brass. Their loss to the USA in the World Cup is looking like less and less of a shock in hindsight, as Greece was clearly the superior team, their dearth of stardom notwithstanding. What an embarrassment for the hosts! Spain simply toyed with Russia, so much so that I wouldn’t be overly surprised if the Greeks upset the Russians and stole the second spot from Portugal.

In today’s games, I like Italy over Denmark and Sweden over Bulgaria. Both Scandinavian teams usually play well in the European championships, especially the Danes, but I think the Azzurri are due this year.

CR writes: As always, you are spot on. I was married to my first wife for 19.5 years (dated for 5.5 before marriage, met at 17 years old). Every troubling sign you list was there and grew worse during those 26 years. As a Catholic, I did two things that I do not regret (because they were right) that hurt me considerably: 1) I never divorced her (until she threatened to shoot our children which led to me finding out how mean she was to them in general), and 2) I never told anyone else about what was going on between us (I don’t recall the scripture passage but I remember that if someone doesn’t NEED to know something bad about someone else, you have no right to tell them).

Only after the fact, I found out that for several years she had been saying horrible things about me to everyone we knew. I found emails from her seeking advice on how to “divorce [me] and keep everything.” And so much more… At last that life is over for me…and I have remarried. My new wife of 4 years is such a wonder. I could go on forever talking about why…but the most important quality that makes this marriage such a fabulous marriage is quite simple…we both knew OURSELVES very well! No BS, no posturing, no game-playing, no disappointing revelations after the knot was tied. Your article is (as always) of the highest caliber. I am writing only to suggest that SELF-reflection is also very, very important. “Are you REALLY the man or woman you project to your intended spouse?”

The only thing I’d disagree with here is that one does not have an obligation to keep silent about another person’s misbehavior. This flies directly in the face of the Biblical notion of accountability; seeking counsel and wisdom on matters that directly concern you should never be confused with gossip.

That being said, better late than never, and CR’s story not only highlights the importance of being honest with yourself about your mate’s potential flaws, but also that we can learn from our mistakes.

Bane writes: The lovely and talented Vox Day has some further insight on Islamo-Saxon weirdness.

So, when did Bane join VQPF? Zink, have you no standards?

Consider that the author of Proverbs, who presumably knew something about women, saw fit to write: “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.” If it was so hard for a king with 700 wives and concubines to discover one of noble character, it should come as no surprise that many young men, (and embittered older men), should see high-caliber women as being scarce to the point of utter myth.

Furthermore, it can be difficult for a man to find a woman who presents just the right mix of darkness and light to make a suitable partner for him. Few of us who have inhabited this fallen world and sampled its delectable but poisoned fruit would find an apt mate in the angelic near-saints that one occasionally meets being produced by Southern Bible colleges, while at the same time, a jaded girl with two abortions, 37 former lovers and divorced parents in her past is unlikely to hold much appeal for the man seeking a wife who will also be the mother of his children.

I knew Space Bunny was the right girl for me when she asked me why I seemed to be a little down one evening during our engagement and I told her that it was hard to accept that I was going to have to be good, when I had been so good at being bad. The fact that my sense of loss not only did not offend her, but saddened her, too, gave me the confidence to know that I had chosen the right girl for me. Her character is as honeyed as her hair, but has been sufficiently seasoned by events to prevent her inherent sweetness from cloying too much.

Now, I never recommend missionary dating, or dating someone in the hopes that they will change in any major way. But I have to admit that there is one exception to this rule, which is the woman who has never seriously considered Christianity, (or whatever is of supreme importance to you), and has a genuinely open mind about it.

My brother, who is exceptionally good-looking and occasionally an idiot of like proportions, had been lamenting that he simply could not find the kind of girl for whom he was searching. The women he met at church failed to share his interest in clothes, style and other ephemera, while those he met in the nightclubs were attractive to him but both spiritually dead and morally challenged.

My suggestion was that he try to find the middle ground and look for a girl in a nightclub who was willing to go to church with him. By this, I meant that if he went on a date with a girl he met out and about, he might casually introduce the concept of his regular church attendance and see what her reaction was. If she expressed curiousity or interest, invite her along and see her again. If, on the other hand, she expressed hostility, contempt or even neutrality, move on.

However, my brother has a disturbing tendency to take my suggestions literally. The next weekend, he saw a pretty girl at a night club, walked up to her and dropped an unusual opening line on her: “Would you like to go to church with me?” As she explained later, she thought that was a bizarre question and she had no particular interest in church, but she was perfectly up for going anywhere that this extremely handsome fellow might be interested in taking her. (Keep in mind, he can’t even show his drivers license to write a check without the girl behind the counter marveling at it.)

However, God works in mysterious ways, and that pretty girl in the nightclub is now the mother of my nephews and an active God-fearing Christian who I am pleased to call sister. Change is always possible, for Jesus Christ makes all things new. Do not, however, count on anything else changing an woman, especially not a woman who holds herself in active opposition to the source of love, truth and light.

Or, the lack thereof. I’m sure you’re as shocked as I am. Beat Bush Blog writes: The Rittenhouse Review is polling its readers about their religious beliefs. The results thus far suggest that those of us in the left blogosphere are a lot different from “Middle Americans” in this respect. At this writing, 59% of respondents (222 out of 376) categorize themselves as “Agnostic/Atheistic/Unitarian.” Various flavors of Christianity have a total of only 23% (88 votes).

I realize that online polls are not scientific, but this is still a striking result. The percentage of agnostics/atheists/Unitarians in the Rittenhouse poll is about four times the proportion in the general United States population. Of the 50,000 respondents in the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, a total of 14.4% said they were “No Religion” (13.2%), Agnostic (0.5%), Atheist (0.4%), or “Unitarian/Universalist” (0.3%). This was an open-ended survey (i.e., respondents could answer however they wished, without being limited to specified categories of religions).

An online poll of Daily Kos readers as to whether they believed “in a higher power, i.e. God” reached similar results to the Rittenhouse poll. Only 40% (90 out of 223) answered “yes,” while 60% (133 out of 223) answered “No.”

Of course, most of these Godless lefties consider themselves highly moral paragons of virtue, although I’ve yet to meet one who can explain the strange correlations between their independently reasoned morality buffets and the Judeo-Christian morality of the culture in which they, their parents and their grandparents have been steeped.

From Debka: MI6, the operational arm of British expansion, historically opted for the Middle East camp opposed to Israel and cultivated a special relationship with Yasser Arafat going back decades. Strictly speaking, Egyptian intelligence invented the Palestinian national leader and used his services between the 1960s and well into the 1990s. Even today, the Egyptian official assigned to keeping tabs on him is intelligence minister General Omar Suleiman. It is less well known that during those decades, British intelligence ran a covert operation to build him up as a world figure. London saw in him a vehicle for planting British influence deep inside the Arab-Muslim orbit (which is why he was never received in Islamic revolutionary Tehran) and an instrument for keeping Israeli intelligence in check and limiting its influence in Washington.

These ties were somewhat loosened after the 1993 Oslo peace accord, when he relocated from Tunis to Gaza and Ramallah. But they were never abandoned. The British have performed two key services for the Palestinian cause:

A. They sponsored the concept of Palestinian statehood as a means of reducing the Jewish state to what London considered its natural dimensions, sitting behind Arafat’s shoulder and lobbying the international case for a Palestinian state year after year until it was taken up by President Bush. Few Israelis are aware of the pivotal role parts of MI6 through the British Foreign Office played over the years in developing and shaping Palestinian diplomatic and PR strategy, helping to make the Palestinian cause far more resonant internationally than the Israeli case – even when Arafat openly espoused and practiced terrorism.

B. They instigated the first Palestinian uprising against Israel in 1987; it was not provoked by Arafat then still in Tunis or even the PLO leadership, but MI6 agents operating in the Rafah refugee camp of the southern Gaza Strip. The trigger was a road accident in which an Israeli army truck ran over a group of Palestinian children. The local protest raised spread quickly and was presented opportunistically to the media as a “popular uprising.”

I have no idea if this is true or not, except that Arafat is an Egyptian and the nephew of the Nazi-loving Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. I found it interesting in that it illustrates the point that the public very seldom has an accurate picture of what is going on behind closed doors. Whatever the truth may be about various geopolitical situations, it almost certainly isn’t what is being discussed openly in the newspapers every day.

So, women are being encouraged to vote their genitalia this election. I hope my pro-suffragist critics will be conscientious about informing Eve Ensler that there’s no need for her latest project, since they’ve done such a wonderful job of demonstrating how women voting has no effect on anything whatsoever.

“The convention whereby the dollar is given a transcendent value as an international currency no longer rests on its initial base… The fact that many states accept dollars in order to make up for the deficits of the American balance of payments has enabled the US to be indebted to foreign countries free of charge. Indeed, what they owe those countries, they pay in dollars that they themselves issue as they wish…. This unilateral facility attributed to America has helped spread the idea that the dollar is an impartial, international means of exchange, whereas it is a means of credit appropriated to one state.”

Charles De Gaulle, 1965. I wonder how much longer we’ll be able to get away with it, considering that the Euro has now surpassed the Dollar in its percentage of internationally purchased bonds? It doesn’t do you much good to print more of what nobody wants.