I’ll leave hunting down profound responses to the Pope’s very smart disquisition to Peter L., but I couldn’t resist linking to Anne Applebaum’s column this morning (which is politically smart, but not deep). A taste:

[N]othing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism and hatred that pour out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day, all across Europe and the Muslim world, almost none of which ever provokes any Western response at all. And maybe it’s time that it should: When Saudi Arabia publishes textbooks commanding good Wahhabi Muslims to "hate" Christians, Jews and non-Wahhabi Muslims, for example, why shouldn’t the Vatican, the Southern Baptists, Britain’s chief rabbi and the Council on American-Islamic Relations all condemn them -- simultaneously?

Maybe it’s a pipe dream: The day when the White House and Greenpeace can issue a joint statement is surely distant indeed. But if stray comments by Western leaders -- not to mention Western films, books, cartoons, traditions and values -- are going to inspire regular violence, I don’t feel that it’s asking too much for the West to quit saying sorry and unite, occasionally, in its own defense. The fanatics attacking the pope already limit the right to free speech among their own followers. I don’t see why we should allow them to limit our right to free speech, too.

Let’s see: turns out you can get e-coli from organic spinach, which is another reason not to eat vegetables. I’ve always been suspicious of the organic food craze.

Thanks to John Podhoretz over at The Corner, I learn about a splendid new blog with the provocative title Hatemongers Quarterly. Wish I’d thought up that.

Thomas Byrne Edsall writes in The New Republic that "Whatever happens this November, no one should be fooled: The Democrats are still in deep trouble."

Vicki and I went up to Hillsdale for Nancy Silver’s memorial service. She was well remembered at the fine service, and her two sons Arthur and Tony were solid through the event and the months of hardhsip.

Monday is Constitution Day. Institutions that receive federal fnding are required to observe it in some way.

I’ve scheduled a lecture by Jon Macfarlane, a new colleague most recently at Notre Dame.

Charlotte (N.C.) area readers might be interested in this event at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C.

I’d be interested in hearing what others’ institutions are doing.

Stephen F. Hayes, who knows a thing or two about Iraq and intelligence, chews up the Senate Committee’s report on Iraq/al Qaeda relations and spits it out. His conclusion:

Some day there will be an authoritative and richly detailed history of the nature of the relationship between the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups. This latest product of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is unlikely to merit even a footnote in this history.

GWB vindicates Knippenberg:

I was just speculating that the culture might be changing, and I was talking about when you’re involved with making decisions of historic nature, you won’t be around to see the effects of your decisions. And I said that when I work the ropelines, a lot of people come and say, Mr. President, I’m praying for you -- a lot. As a matter of fact, it seems like a lot more now than when I was working ropelines in 1994. And I asked them -- I was asking their opinion about whether or not there was a Third Awakening, I called it.

I’d just read a book on Abraham Lincoln, and his presidency was right around the time of what they called the Second Awakening, and I was curious to know whether or not these smart people felt like there was any historical parallels. I also said that I had run for office the first time to change a culture -- Herman and Hutch remember me saying, you know, the culture that said, if it feels good, do it, and, if you’ve got a problem, blame somebody else -- to helping to work change a culture in which each of us are responsible for the decisions we make in life. In other words, ushering in a responsibility era. And I reminded people that responsibility means if you’re a father, love your child; if you’re corporate America, be honest with the taxpayers; if you’re a citizen of this country, love your neighbor.

Here’s the text of Bob Casey’s big speech on faith and the common good. Barack Obama he isn’t.

Let me pick at a couple of the speech’s facets. First, the 900-pound gorilla, abortion. Here’s what BC, Jr. had to say:

As many of you know, I am a pro-life Democrat. I believe that life begins at conception and ends when we draw our last breath. And I believe that the role of government is to protect, enrich, and value life for everyone, at every moment, from beginning to end.

We must unite as a country, Democrats and Republicans, behind the understanding that the common good requires us to value all life. For 33 years, this issue has been used mostly as a way to divide people, even as the number of abortions continues to rise. We have to find a better way.

There have been times when members of my party have vigorously opposed me because of my position on abortion. And those of you with long memories can recall a dark night in 1992 when the national Democratic Party insulted the most courageous pro-life public official in our party who simply asked that those who believed in the right to life be accorded the right to speak. But things have changed over the ensuing 14 years. I have been encouraged to see Democrats in this new century becoming more open to people who are pro-life. The common good can be advanced by working towards common ground.

For example, pro-life Democrats in the House are on the verge of introducing legislation that would work toward real solutions to our abortion problem by targeting the underlying factors that often lead women to choose abortion. As a public official, I will continue to work within the party to ensure that Democrats are welcoming and open to such initiatives.

Abortion is clearly an important life issue, and as a Catholic, I understand that life extends beyond the womb. In my view, neither party has gotten it right when it comes to life issues. We can’t realistically expect to tackle the difficult question of abortion without embracing the "radical solidarity" with women who face a pregnancy that Pope John Paul II spoke of many years ago.

If we are going to be pro-life, we cannot say we are against abortion of unborn children and then let our children suffer in degraded inner-city schools and broken homes. We can’t claim to be pro-life at the same time as we are cutting support for Medicaid, Head Start, and the Women, Infants, and Children’s program. I believe we need policies that provide maximum feasible legal protection for the unborn and maximum feasible care and support for pregnant women, mothers, and children. The right to life must mean the right to a life with dignity.

Note how he wants to consign the hostility to pro-life Democrats to his Party’s past, and how quickly he moves from abortion to social welfare policy. There’s no talk whatsoever about reasonable restrictions on abortion (parental consent or partial-birth abortion, for example).

And then there’s his contestable analysis of the causes and cures of poverty:

The common good must first be based upon a solid foundation of justice. As Saint Augustine taught us: "Without justice, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers?" Justice cannot abide 34 million people in poverty and 8.3 million children without health care. Justice cannot ignore the suffering of millions of parents in this country who have to face the soul-crushing thought that they might have to tell their child to go to bed hungry...or who realize that they simply cannot afford the medical treatment their child needs. Justice demands our understanding that the hungry, the impoverished, and the uninsured in this country are not statistics, they are children of God. They are our brothers and sisters, our fellow Americans.

We see poverty on the rise and middle-income families struggling to make ends meet not because they lack the drive to make a better life for themselves and their families. Rather, the problem stems from mistaken priorities and failed leadership. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated so wisely, "It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach." And that is exactly what we’ve seen. At a time when the number of working poor in this country keeps increasing year after year, tax cuts for the wealthy should not be the price we are asked to pay for an increase in the minimum wage.

There is, for example, no acknowledgement that there is any personal responsibility for one’s distressing circumstances; they’re the result of "mistaken priorities and failed leadership," not bad choices or flawed character. I don’t mean to say that every poor person is wholly and solely responsible for his or her plight, just that some of the problems might stem from the soul or the character, not the failures of government. Indeed, treating people with dignity requires that they be treated as responsible individuals. In addition, one thing that it is fair to say that Saint Augustine is not is an absolutist when it comes to the possibility of justice in this life. Justice is a feature of the City of God, not, strictly speaking, of the City of Man, which can at best achieve a simulacrum of justice. How in this fallen world we can achieve, within our limited means, this simulacrum is a question about which reasonable people of good will can disagree. But Bob Casey will have none of it: in his world, there’s no room for disagreement, no consideration of the notion that the water that comprises the tide that life all boats has to come from somewhere.

I don’t for a moment doubt Casey’s sincerity, but let’s not kid ourselves: this was a highly partisan speech in which religion was deployed to trump his opponents. Looks to me like a "faithful Democrat" is doing what Democrats constantly accuse Republicans of doing.

Peggy Noonan doesn’t think so:

People don’t say as often as they used to, "You watch Bush’s speech last night?" Or they don’t ask it with the same anticipation and interest.

I think that Americans have pretty much stopped listening to him. One reason is that you don’t have to listen to get a sense of what’s going on. He does not appear to rethink things based on new data. You don’t have to tune in to see how he’s shifting emphasis to address a trend, or tacking to accommodate new winds. For him there is no new data, only determination.

He repeats old arguments because he believes they are right, because he has no choice--in for a penny, in for a pound--and because his people believe in the dogma of the magic of repetition: Say it, say it, to break through the clutter.

There’s another reason people don’t listen to Mr. Bush as much as they did. It is that in some fundamental way they know they have already fully absorbed him. He’s burned his brand into the American hide.

I agree with some of this. What’s impressive about the President is often not what he says or the way he says it (no Churchill, he), but the conviction with which he says it. Of that conviction we’re already convinced. Some of us like it a lot, some a little, some not at all. (Rasmussen has lately pretty consistently had the "strongly disapproves" of the Bush presidency at 38%. There’s likely nothing other that "I’m resigning" that could win any plaudits from that group.)

Far be it from me to dissaude President Bush from speaking. I’m in love with, perhaps overly so, with words, which is an occupational hazard of the business I’m in. But I don’t think too many people will pay close attention until some big event makes them do so. Then words matter, as they did in the days immediately after 9/11.

I’d like to put two propositions out there for NLT’s master logicians to chop up into tiny bits. First, because events don’t speak for themselves but must be set in a coherent and meaningful framework, speeches are important. But speeches themselves rarely (not never, just rarely) set the events in motion. Speeches depend upon deeds (our’s, or the other guys’), which in turn demand both an active and verbal response. But without actions, speech degenerates into mere talk, to which we pretty quickly cease to pay attention. (Bill Clinton might have been entertaining, but we knew he wasn’t too serious.)

Second, despite their ultimate importance, the relative weakness of speeches tempts us to discount them and to rely on deeds alone. Presidents sometimes act without trying to explain themselves. Of this approach, Richard Nixon was the champion, but George Bush also falls prey to the temptation, which is especially powerful when so many people refuse to listen, or willfully misunderstand what they’re hearing.