It appears that the Communists in China are concerned about the ideological purity of the young. Check out this news report from the ’South China Morning Post.’

CPO/Social Base: College Campuses to Get Compulsory Dose of Moral Fiber (3/30/05, South China Morning Post)

In remembering the legacy of Pope John Paul II, Steve Hayward offers an excellent account of his contributions to the demise of Communism and hope for liberty. To his wonderful review, forgive me for adding some personal reflections that may help explain some of this Pope’s amazing powers in this regard.

In 1993 I travelled to Liechtenstein for a seminar sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute which was taught by Michael Novak, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, and George Weigel (the Pope’s biographer). There were also several of the Pope’s top theologians present as guest lecuturers. The idea was to bring together ten American students with 20 Eastern European students to help them come to grips with the ideas of democracy and capitalism. It is hard to say who helped whom. At that time (despite twelve years of Catholic "education") I didn’t know a papal encyclical from an encyclopedia and neither, by the way, did most of my American counterparts. Steeped as we were in the more conventional readings about liberty and natural rights, we were more than alittle astonished to meet all of these very bright Eastern European students who came to hold democracy and capitalism so dearly as a result of John Paul II’s teachings--particularly--with regard to his teachings about the dignity of human life. The dignity of human life is what calls upon all men to respect the natural and God-given rights of all men. Of course the culture of life would respect the ideas of democracy and capitalism! Unfortunately, democracy and capitialism have not always supported the culture of life.

I often have conversations with students who claim to want to become intelligence agents (or analysts). More often than they will have been told that they should some something technical, something that would "prepare" them to be able to analyze; there must be some sort of information that they should get; there must be a scientific method to such a thing, they say, much like the study of accounting if want to be an accountant. I, of course, respectfully disagree. I talk with them about what they should study and why. David Brooks agrees with me:

I’ll believe the intelligence community has really changed when I see analysts being sent to training academies where they study Thucydides, Tolstoy and Churchill to get a broad understanding of the full range of human behavior. I’ll believe the system has been reformed when policy makers are presented with competing reports, signed by individual thinkers, and are no longer presented with anonymous, bureaucratically homogenized, bulleted points that pretend to be the product of scientific consensus.

In December of 1997, the Honorable Lindy Boggs presented her credentials to Pope John Paul II. The Pope offered some remarks on the credebility of America policy. A few passages:

The Founding Fathers of the United States asserted their claim to freedom and independence on the basis of certain "self-evident" truths about the human person: truths which could be discerned in human nature, built into it by "nature’s God." Thus they meant to bring into being, not just an independent territory, but a great experiment in what George Washington called "ordered liberty": an experiment in which men and women would enjoy equality of rights and opportunities in the pursuit of happiness and in service to the common good. Reading the founding documents of the United States, one has to be impressed by the concept of freedom they enshrine: a freedom designed to enable people to fulfill their duties and responsibilities toward the family and toward the common good of the community. Their authors clearly understood that there could be no true freedom without moral responsibility and accountability, and no happiness without respect and support for the natural units or groupings through which people exist, develop, and seek the higher purposes of life in concert with others.

The American democratic experiment has been successful in many ways. Millions of people around the world look to the United States as a model in their search for freedom, dignity, and prosperity. But the continuing success of American democracy depends on the degree to which each new generation, native-born and immigrant, makes its own the moral truths on which the Founding Fathers staked the future of your Republic. Their commitment to build a free society with liberty and justice for all must be constantly renewed if the United States is to fulfill the destiny to which the Founders pledged their "lives . . . fortunes . . . and sacred honor."

. . . Your Excellency, these are some of the thoughts prompted by your presence here as your country’s diplomatic representative. These reflections evoke a prayer: that your country will experience a new birth of freedom, freedom grounded in truth and ordered to goodness. Thus will the American people be able to harness their boundless spiritual energy in service of the genuine good of all humanity.

Hugh Hewitt offers the following insight into the "recent" mobilization of the "religious right":

The speed with which issues that excite the passions of people of faith have arrived at the center of American politics is not surprising given the forced march that the courts have put those issues on. It was not the "religious right" that pushed gay marriage to the center of the public debate; it was courts in Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts. It wasn’t the "religious right" that ordered Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube removed; it was a Florida Supreme Court that struck down a law passed by the Florida legislature and signed by Governor Jeb Bush which would have allowed Terri Schiavo to live. And it isn’t the "religious right" that forced the United States Supreme Court to repeatedly issue rulings on areas of law that would have been better left to legislatures.

I suggested, not altogether facetiously, that returning the abortion debate to the political arena, where it does indeed belong (according to an understanding of the our constitutional order genuinely faithful to the document that is supposed to be at its heart), could go a long way toward "taming" the sometimes irregular passions of conservative religionists. I should find it remarkable (but unfortunately do not) that our friends on the Left, who always seem interested in giving voice to the marginalized as a way of giving them a moderating stake in the system, and who profess to understand the frustration of those who are denied a voice, are not on the forefront of those calling for a return to a genuinely deliberative democracy to pour oil on our troubled waters.

I recognize that some will say that the voice of the "religious right" is too loud, since religious conservatives are said to dominate the national Republican Party (though Jonathan Chait is not sure he agrees). Accepting for the sake of this argument their claim, what we have is a conflict between two (as yet unarmed) camps: religious conservatives "controlling" Congress and the Presidency and secular liberals "controlling" the federal judiciary. The conventional liberal wisdom would call for both sides to enter into conversations in order to facilitate moderation and compromise. My impression, however, is that the secular judicial liberals regard their judicial bastion as impregnable, so long as their guerilla forces in the Senate and the press can continue effectively to harrass their opponents. I don’t think that this is a winning strategy, since all that it is sure to accomplish is weakening the moral and legal authority of the judiciary.

The outpouring of concern and affection for John Paul II shouldn’t be a surprise. Not only has he reigned for 26 years (selected on October 16, 1978; the longest reign of any Pope, I am told), but he has shown himself from the start to be both a serious person and loving person, and one who meant to have an effect on both the spiritual and political life of the world, and he has. Over the next many days, we will hear from thoughtful observers about the man and his work, and I will try to pass them on. You might want to check the National Catholic Reporter’s blog site for updates on the Pope’s condition, and note John L. Allen’s reporting. Also see comment. I remember him going to Poland about a year after he became Pope, and telling his fellow countrymen, "Do not be afraid." And also, "You are men. You have dignity. Don’t crawl on your bellies." The effect was electric, and was not restricted to Poland. In gratitude, I join all others in prayer on his behalf.

Wilson Carey McWilliams died earlier this week. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.

I promised to offer some summary comments on this conference, held yesterday on the campus of Berry College. It was the eighth edition of conferences that colleagues from Berry and Oglethorpe have organized over the years. As usual, the folks at Berry did an excellent job hosting the event, treating us guests well, feeding us well, and watering us well at T. Martooni’s, a new ornament on Rome’s quaint Broad Street downtown. Now that I’ve mentioned the important stuff, let me say a few words about what transpired.

The student panel (four from Berry, one from Oglethorpe) was as good a version of an undergraduate panel as I’ve seen. The students were all thoughtful and well-spoken. All are destined for greatness, some in law school, others in grad school or seminary.

John Seery eloquently summarized the challenges faced by residential liberal arts colleges and proved that his poetry inspires red state non-denominational evangelicals as much as it does the SoCal sophisticates of Pomona College. While I suspect that this has a lot to do with his gifts as a lecturer, I can’t overlook that fact that he was willing but (fortunately for the competition) unable to enter into a faculty cow-milking contest.

The Catholics sent to track down Naomi Schaefer Riley found her and by and large liked what they found--a journalist willing to try hard to enter into the lives of young people very different from herself.

The auditorium was overflowing for the "debate" between William Galston and Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr.. Both were in excellent form, Mansfield provocative, pungent, and funny, Galston impressively systematic and pellucid. Galston is an excellent and persuasive apologist for a liberalism to which (IMHO) he alone among Democrats adheres. Mansfield made no attempt to paper over the tensions within the "conservative movement," but reminded us why, with all its problems, conservatism is preferable to liberalism as it is actually practiced.

If and when a report appears in the Berry College student newspaper, I’ll link to it. And those who have access to the April issue of The American Spectator should read Peter Lawler’s beautiful celebration of liberal education as practiced at his (non-denominational Christian) institution (not yet available on-line). Among the virtues of Berry students are the negative one of not throwing pies, as well as the positive ones of respectfully asking hard questions and genuinely appreciating intellectual stimulation. (Lest I neglect my own institution, similar virtues were on display today when John Seery walked us through Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies.)

Danielle Allen, Dean of the Division of the Humanities and Professor in the Department of Classical Languages and Literatures and the Department of Politics at the University of Chicago, will be conducting a colloquium at the Ashbrook Center today at 3:00pm. The colloquium will be broadcast live on the Internet. To listen, click here.

Sandi Berger, Clinton’s National Security Advisor, has pleaded guilty to a minor charge "will acknowledge intentionally removing and destroying copies of a classified document about the Clinton administration’s record on terrorism." But note this:

The terms of Berger’s agreement required him to acknowledge to the Justice Department the circumstances of the episode. Rather than misplacing or unintentionally throwing away three of the five copies he took from the archives, as the former national security adviser earlier maintained, he shredded them with a pair of scissors late one evening at the downtown offices of his international consulting business.

The document, written by former National Security Council terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke, was an "after-action review" prepared in early 2000 detailing the administration’s actions to thwart terrorist attacks during the millennium celebration. It contained considerable discussion about the administration’s awareness of the rising threat of attacks on U.S. soil.

My colleague, Dr. Will Morrisey, comments on the ’Washington Post’ piece by Jim Hoagland on DeGaulle, France and the EU which Dr. Schramm posted below.

Morrisey writes: This is a pretty good piece, although Hoagland doesn’t really `get’ de Gaulle.

The real "big idea" of Gaullism was neither meritocracy nor European integration. It was to save French republicanism from the inability of parliamentarism to defend the country. In order to do that, de Gaulle argued, France needed a much stronger executive branch than it had in any of the previous four republics--without, however, moving into Bonapartism or monarchism. Hence the constitutional amendment referendum to establish national elections for the presidency of the republic.

The `meritocracy’ was intended to strengthen that more basic principle of strengthening the executive branch.

As for Europe, de Gaulle want "the Europe of the fatherlands" and not a bureaucratic entity centered in Brussels. He did want France and Germany to dominate the confederation--with the Brits joining only if they severed their special relationship with the Americans and with their commonwealth nations, a move de Gaulle did not expect them to undertake anytime soon! At any rate, he wanted a `political’ Europe, not a bureaucratized Europe.

Andrew Busch admits that those who are sympathetic to the principles of limited government have many reasons to prefer a flat tax or a national sales tax in theory, but he warns us that in practice they should be feared. He thinks we should reorient our thinking by focusing an different sets of issues: lock in Bush’s tax cuts; make them permament. Second, make taxation transparent (witholding is not). Third, change the date of tax day (because of witholding, people actually look forward, to tax day because they seem to be getting something from the government). Fourth, everyone should pay something because "unless everyone pays something at least some of the time, some will begin to lose touch with the real cost of government." Read the whole thing.