Where is the Voice of America?

The Heritage Foundation's Helle C. Dale and Oliver L. Horn have written a compelling article, substantial excerpts of which I print below, dealing with the sad (and unnecessary) decline of the Voice of America's presence in Eastern Europe.

It is a very important matter, especially as it suggests the basic steps required to remedy this grave problem. Therefore, I'm forwarding it to my Congressman, Senators, and others with the request that they make a priority the restoration of the VoA's influence in Eastern Europe. There must be an increase in funding, a strengthening of purpose, and a radical reformation of the organization's governing board -- and very soon. I hope you will do the same.

Last week, an exhausted, retreating Georgian soldier was overheard asking, "Where are our friends?" Given that only days before the conflict--and for the first time in over 60 years of broadcasting--the Voice of America's (VOA) Russian-language radio programming fell silent, this was a legitimate question...

In recent years, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) has slashed funding for programming in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia in favor of broadcasts in the Middle East and Asia. It has also outsourced broadcasting to semi-private entities with dubious track records. Additionally, the Russian government has pursued a campaign to eliminate U.S. broadcasts by intimidating and harassing VOA's local, private-sector partners. Consequently, America has--literally and figuratively--lost its voice in the region at a critical moment...

...funding for VOA broadcasts in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia has either flat-lined or declined. Take into account the massive devaluation of the dollar abroad (over 30 percent against some currencies) and there is little wonder why VOA is bleeding programs and personnel at a staggering pace. Over the past several years, VOA has ceased virtually all English broadcasts and cut programs in 21 other languages (mostly in the three aforementioned regions). This was after more than a third of VOA's employees signed a petition in 2004 protesting the "dismantling" of the agency.

Last month, Congress attempted to stop even more cuts. Citing concerns for the region's freedom of speech, the Senate Appropriations Committee condemned the BBG's latest budget request that would not only eliminate VOA Russian language programs, but also terminate broadcasts in Ukraine and significantly cut back those in Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. The committee subsequently approved legislation explicitly funding programs in each of these countries. Yet without any public announcements, and on the eve of conflict between Russia and Georgia, the BBG ceased VOA's Russian-language programs anyway.

In its stead, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a semi-private entity operating in the former Soviet Union, has been tasked with continuing radio broadcasts in Russian. While RFE/RL has a much better track record than Radio Sawa or Al-Hurra, the organization has proven uniquely vulnerable to the Kremlin's crackdown on independent media...

This environment has proven disastrous for RFE/RL, which depends on local partners to broadcast its programming. Citing license violations and unauthorized changes in programming format, Kremlin regulators have forced most of its local partners to stop broadcasts. One Russian station manager commented, "It's sad because the programs were very popular. ... The owners decided that they would rather have their license, because if they kept the programming they would have been in trouble." As a result, three-quarters of the radio outlets provided by private companies have terminated their partnership with U.S. broadcasting over the past two years alone...

McCain Rides High in the Saddle at Saddleback

The boys at Power Line have assembled a terrific collection of responses to the McCain vs Obama vs Warren show at Saddleback Church. I'm only going to list excerpts from a few of my favorites so for the whole lot, be sure to check out this Power Line post.

From Rich Lowry at NRO's The Corner:

...But the starkest contrast came as soon as McCain started his half of the forum. Asked the three people he would listen to as president, McCain said right off the bat Gen. Petraeus (Obama had led with his wife and grandmother). It was an immediate signal that this is a man who is concerned first and foremost with matters of war and peace—just as you expect from someone who wants to be president of the United States. Asked when he had bucked his party at risk to his self-interest, McCain rolled off his greatest hits, and went all the back to differing with Reagan on Lebanon (a reminder of how long he has been immersed in national-security issues). It made Obama's answer about promoting an ethics law with McCain seem incredibly weak in comparison. Then, McCain's answer about the toughest decision he had ever made—refusing early release in Vietnam—was riveting and moving.

In the first fifteen minutes, McCain had established a moral seriousness stemming from his conduct in Vietnam as a POW and his long-time as a national leader that Obama can't match. Throughout the rest of the night, he brought up Iraq, al Qaeda, and the Georgia crisis, when Obama was more inward-looking. McCain sounded like a potential commander-in-chief, Obama more like a potential friend. This is not to say, again, that Obama was not impressive. But the skills he showed tonight—the thoughtfulness and verbal dexterity—were those of a very talented memoirist, which, of course, he is.

From Byron York at NRO:

...This was not your usual political TV show. Warren — Pastor Rick, around here — asked big questions, about big subjects; he wasn’t concerned about what appeared on the front page of that morning’s Washington Post. And his simple, direct, big questions brought out something we don’t usually see in a presidential face-off; in this forum, as opposed to a read-the-prompter speech, or even a debate focused on the issues of the moment, the candidates were forced to call on everything they had — the things they have done and learned throughout their lives. And the fact is, John McCain has lived a much bigger life than Barack Obama. That’s not a slam at Obama; McCain has lived a much bigger life than most people. But it still made Obama look small in comparison. McCain was the clear winner of the night...

The contrast was striking throughout each man’s one-hour time on stage. When Warren asked Obama, “What’s the most gut-wrenching decision you’ve ever had to make?” Obama answered that opposing the war in Iraq was “as tough a decision that I’ve had to make, not only because there were political consequences but also because Saddam Hussein was a bad person and there was no doubt he meant America ill.” But Obama was a state senator in Illinois when Congress authorized the president to use force in Iraq. He didn’t have to make a decision on the war. That fact was a recurring issue in the Democratic primaries, when candidates Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden, Christopher Dodd, and John Edwards argued that they, as senators, had to make a choice Obama didn’t have to make. And now he says it’s his toughest call.

When McCain got the question, he was able to tell an old story with a sense of gravity and poignancy that he seldom shows in public. He described his time as a prisoner of war, when he was offered a chance for early release because his father was a top naval officer. “I was in rather bad physical shape,” McCain told Warren, but “we had a code of conduct that said you only leave by order of capture.” So McCain refused to go. He made the telling even more forceful when he added that, “in the spirit of full disclosure, I’m very happy I didn’t know the war was going to last for another three years or so.” In one moment, he showed a sense of pride and a hint of regret, too; he came across as a man who did the right thing but not without the temptation to take an easy out. In any event, the message was very clear: John McCain has had to make bigger, more momentous decisions in his life than has Barack Obama...

Finally, there was the question of abortion. In the days leading up to the forum, pro-lifers had been worried that Warren was not going to include a question on the issue, focusing instead on things like poverty, AIDS, and the “new” evangelical agenda. But Warren brought it up, simple and straight. “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?” he asked Obama.

“Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade,” Obama answered. “But let me just speak more generally about the issue of abortion because this is something obviously the country wrestles with. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is there is a moral and ethical content to this issue. So I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue, I think, is not paying attention. So that would be point number one.” Obama went on to say that he is pro-choice. Even for people who agreed with him, it wasn’t a terribly impressive answer.

An hour later, when Warren asked McCain the same thing, he got this: “At the moment of conception. I have a 25-year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate, and as president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies.”

“Okay — we don’t have to go longer on that one,” Warren said, quickly moving on...

From Mark Hemingway at The Corner:

When asked "At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?," McCain answered "At the moment of conception." Obama's answer here was flaming-dirigible bad: "Whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity is, you know, above my pay grade."

That spectacularly inept metaphor is going to haunt Obama throughout the rest of the campaign. News flash: There's not a job on the planet above the pay grade of the President of the United States. If you can't solve every problem and are humble about it, that's fine — but you can't get away with being unsure about the most defining moral issue in politics. Of course, he didn't put down the shovel: "But let me speak more generally about the issue of abortion. Because this is something, obviously, the country wrestles with. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is that there is a moral and ethical element to this issue. And So I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue is not paying attention."

So after completely hedging on the question and declining to give a specific answer — he wants to speak "more generally" about the issue? And, lo and behold, speak more generally he does: "I’m absolutely convinced of is that there is a moral and ethical element to this issue." In related news, Obama is also "absolutely convinced" that the sky is blue, water is wet and puppies are adorable. None of this, however, tells me a thing about his judgment and moral worldview.

But what bowls me over about how craptacular his answer here is, did no one on his campaign ever anticipate that he would have to talk about abortion, such that he could come up with a better answer than this? Surely they would have had to expect it at this forum in particular...

From Roger Kimball at Pajamas Media:

...I can understand that people who favor “abortion rights” would not like John McCain’s answer. I find it difficult to believe that any candid person could regard Obama’s response as anything but an insulting and mendacious equivocation. It is insulting because it ostentatiously evades the question while giving a little wink to his home team: “Oh, these religious morons and their obsession with abortion! Of course, I could care less about it, but I also know it’s impolitic to say so, so I’ll emit a brief rhetoric fog and hope no one will notice.” And it’s mendacious because when it comes to “pay grades,” no one’s is higher than the President’s. If a man who aspires to the highest office in the land cannot respond to a pointed question about an important moral issue without taking refuge in empty sophistries, how will he deal with the myriad difficult issues with which the President is confronted daily? It seems to me that in claiming that it is “above his pay grade” to answer this question forthrightly, Obama essentially admits that he is unfit for the office he covets...

From Mark R. Levin at The Corner:

Without a doubt, the lowest moment of the night was Obama's smear of Clarence Thomas. He, like Harry Reid, can't simply disagree with Thomas, he has to try to degrade him. On Obama's best day he can't hold a candle to Thomas's intelligence. Obama can barely make it through a press conference and ducks town hall debates with McCain because of his inability to speak in complete sentences when pressed to show his much noted but usually absent brilliance.

It's Amsterdam for World Congress of Families V

There's a lot of interesting stuff to be read in the August World Congress of Families News and Events including a quick teaser on the World Congress of Families V to be held in Amsterdam, August 10-12, 2009.

As some of your remember, Claire and I were participants in WCF II in Geneva (1999) and last year's WCF IV in Warsaw where we were live-blogging the momentous event. We plan to be there in Amsterdam and I'm sure you would find it of tremendous value too. For more about that opportunity and a lot of important news about WCF's ongoing activities, positions and partners, check out the newsletter or the WCF home page.

Obama's Tire Gauge Gaffe Is Nothing To Laugh At

Jim Geraghty includes in his post over at NRO's The Campaign Spot these salient notes about Barack Obama's tire gauge gaffe.

Seemingly every Republican is walking around today with a tire gauge labeled "Obama's Energy Plan."...

I hope McCain and his surrogates remember the key point in this — not that checking your tire pressure has a marginal impact and that two-thirds of drivers already have the right tire pressure, but that Obama said it would generate as much as offshore drilling — roughly 1.6 trillion gallons in the OCS.

We went over the math this Wednesday, and Obama's just not right (and that's with me using an extremely generous assessment that tire inflation would increase mileage 12.5 percent for one-third of America's drivers). It's not merely that Obama's energy policy consists of recommending the minute and mundane, but that he does so while rejecting solutions that could have a dramatic impact on energy production, oil production, and gas prices.

He's either not familiar enough with the issue, or way too careless in asserting the benefits of his policies. That's the message voters need to come away with, not just, "Ha, ha! Look, a tire gauge!"

The Power of Google

With so many of us tied into the new communicative technologies of the internet, it is justifiable to be concerned about how ideological bias, censorship, unfair competition practices, etc. could be employed to limit its usefulness. Here, for example, is a story from the International Herald Tribune that explores the potential for abuse by such extremely powerful players as Google.

...While Knol is only three weeks old and still relatively obscure, it has already rekindled fears among some media companies that Google is increasingly becoming a competitor. They foresee Google's becoming a powerful rival that not only owns a growing number of content properties, including YouTube, the top online video site, and Blogger, a leading blogging service, but also holds the keys to directing users around the Web.

"If in fact a Google property is taking money away from Google's partners, that is a real problem," said Wenda Harris Millard, the co-chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

Money, of course, is very much at issue. The lower a site ranks in search results, the less traffic it receives from search engines. With a smaller audience, the site earns less money from advertising...

Critics say each new Google initiative in this area casts more doubt on the company's claims that it is not a media company.

"Google can say they are not in the content business, but if they are paying people and distributing and archiving their work, it is getting harder to make that case," said Jason Calacanis, the chief executive of Mahalo, a search engine that relies on editors to create pages on a variety of subjects. "They are competing for talent, for advertisers and for users" with content sites, he said.

Knol has been called a potential rival to Wikipedia and other sites whose content spans a broad range of topics, including Mahalo and About.com, a property of The New York Times Company that uses experts it calls "guides" to write articles on a variety of topics...

Which of the Candidates "Gets It" About Russia's War on Georgia?

Jonah Goldberg's column in today's LA Times makes some profound points about Russia's grievously wicked acts of war against Georgia and about John McCain's correct response to the crisis. The latter, Goldberg explains, was clearly superior to that of his rival.

The Obama campaign has for months pursued the odd strategy of having the junior senator from Illinois act as if he were already kinda-sorta president of the United States. In June, it tried sticking a quasi-presidential seal on his lectern. Then in July, he conducted what seemed like official state visits with foreign leaders and delivered something like a "prenaugural" address in Berlin, inviting comparisons to JFK and Reagan...

Now fate has given Obama a chance to be presidential rather than pretend. Taking advantage of the Olympic distraction in Beijing, the Russians invaded South Ossetia, a territory on the north side of Georgia, a democratic U.S. ally. Out of the blocks, the Russians bombed civilians, rolled tanks across an internationally recognized border and threatened to launch an all-out, destabilizing war. Now it looks as if their army has cut Georgia in two.

Moreover, Russian bombs reportedly targeted the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which runs through Georgia on its way to the Mediterranean -- the only oil pipeline in Central Asia not under Russian control. Russia is tightening its chokehold on oil and gas at precisely the moment energy costs have become the paramount domestic issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.

Obama's response?

First, late Thursday evening, he gave a conventional written statement calling for calm, U.N. action and "restraint" from both sides -- followed an hour later by a slightly stronger condemnation of Russian aggression and a call for a cease-fire.

The invasion of Georgia elicited a wan written communique instead of the sort of exciting rhetoric we've come to expect from his make-believe presidency. But he did make it in front of the cameras the next day for a rally celebrating his vacation in Hawaii. He promised "to go body surfing at some undisclosed location."

During Obama's make-believe presidency, we've heard about bold action, about the courage to talk to dictators. When faced with a real "3 a.m. moment," Obama -- who boasts about 200 foreign policy advisors, broken into 10 subgroups -- proclaims, "I'm going to get some shave ice."

Now, of course, this is a bit unfair in that Obama had planned his no doubt well-deserved vacation for a very long time. But presidential vacations are always well planned -- and often interrupted.

Indeed, President Bush's jaunt to the Olympics as a "sports fan" should also have been cut short the moment tanks started rolling over a country he'd proclaimed a "beacon of liberty" during his visit there in 2005. By Monday, both Bush and Obama were playing catch-up to Sen. John McCain, who seemed to have grasped the gravity from the get-go and whose support for Georgia is long-standing. He took the lead from the outset, demanding on Friday morning an emergency meeting of NATO and Western aid to the fledgling democracy.

The geopolitical significance of Russia's invasion of Georgia at this stage is hard to gauge. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin may not wish to revive the Soviet Union or the Cold War, but he clearly seeks to restore Russia's imperial stature. And Item One on that agenda is to crush Georgia's independence and smother hopes for NATO's expansion to Russia's "near abroad."

The campaign significance for Obama is easier to calculate. He has been playacting at being presidential in order to convince voters that we live in a "new moment" with "new challenges" -- and that he is the president we need for this new era.

This moment calls for more than playacting, yet Obama looks lost without a presidential script...

Getting Away with Murder: The Russian Attacks on Georgia

One of the warnings sounded here on Vital Signs throughout our tenure has been that the Russian bear, in truth, had never gone away. He was merely hibernating, awaiting his time to come back and maul whoever bothered him.

The old addictions to brute power and totalitarian control have remained strong among the Russian leadership. They still dream of the "glory days" of the Soviet Union, the domination of eastern Europe, and the Stalinized version of Communism.

But dreams haven't been enough and so they have clung to many of the vicious vices of their heritage: the financing and arming of other enemies of the West (including terrorist states); persecuting religious believers; continuing their partnership with Russia's high-powered criminal class; silencing political dissent through censorship, imprisonment and lethal violence -- and now this outrageous violence directed at the Georgians.

The New York Post's Ralph Peters nails it down tight in this excellent, not-to-missed article.

It's impossible to overstate the importance of what's unfolding as we watch. Russia's invasion of Georgia - a calculated, unprovoked aggression - is a crisis that may have more important strategic implications than Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

We're seeing the emergence of a rogue military power with a nuclear arsenal. The response of our own government has been pathetic - and our media's uncritical acceptance of Moscow's version of events is infuriating.

This is the "new" Russia announcing - in blood - that it won't tolerate freedom and self-determination along its borders. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is putting it bluntly: Today, Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine (and the Baltic states had better pay attention).

Georgia's affiliation with the European Union, its status as a would-be NATO member, its working democracy - none of it deterred Putin.

Nor does Putin's ambition stop with the former Soviet territories. His air force has been trying (unsuccessfully) to hit the new gas pipeline running from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. The Kremlin is telling Europe: We not only have the power to turn off Siberian gas, we can turn off every tap in the region, any time we choose.

Let's be clear: For all that US commentators and diplomats are still chattering about Russia's "response" to Georgia's actions, the Kremlin spent months planning and preparing this operation. Any soldier above the grade of private can tell you that there's absolutely no way Moscow could've launched this huge ground, air and sea offensive in an instantaneous "response" to alleged Georgian actions...

This is the most cynical military operation by a "European" power since Moscow invaded Afghanistan in 1979. (Sad to say, President Bush seems as bewildered now as President Jimmy Carter did then.)

This attack's worse, though. Georgia is an independent, functioning democracy tied to the European Union and striving to join NATO. It also has backed our Iraq efforts with 2,000 troops. (We're airlifting them back home.)

This invasion recalls Hitler's march into Czechoslovakia - to protect ethnic Germans, he claimed, just as Putin claims to be protecting Russian citizens - complete BS.

It also resembles Hitler's invasion of Poland - with the difference that, in September '39, European democracies drew the line. (To France's credit, its leaders abandoned their August vacations to call Putin out - only Sen. Barack Obama remains on the beach.)

Yet our media give Putin the benefit of the doubt. Not one major news outlet even bothers to take issue with Putin's wild claim that the Georgians were engaged in genocide.

I lack sufficiently powerful words to express my outrage over Russia's bloody cynicism in attacking a small, free people, or to castigate our media for their inane coverage - or to condemn our own government's shameful flight from responsibility...

Latin America Needs a Solzhenitsyn Too

One of the most compelling tributes to Alexander Solzhenitsyn that I've read in recent days is one that not only honors how Solzhenitsyn's personal life and writings exposed the unjust barbarism of Communism in Russia, but also hopes that it will set an example to do the same for Latin America. Below are excerpts from Carlos Alberto Montaner's brief commentary in the Miami Herald. Very good stuff.

...Prison cleaned and cured Solzhenitzyn of communism. All his important works revolve around that experience: A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Cancer Ward, The First Circle, and, of course, his monumental The Gulag Archipelago. Prison turned him into a great man forged by his and other people's pain and into a renowned writer...

Of all the documents written against the Communist madness, the most demolishing is TheGulag Archipelago. It is not a great literary work. Because it is very long, it can even be tedious, but that enormous catalog of atrocities inflicted upon prisoners for so long, written down with notarial cold-bloodedness, wipes out any vestige of sympathy that a sensible and reasonable person might have for Marxism-Leninism.

Some months ago, someone wisely suggested that a group of historians write The Black Book of Latin American Communism. It would be a country-by-country account of the crimes and misdeeds committed in the name of Marxism by the gunmen who were seduced by that ideology. All of us democrats know about and repudiate the monstrous excesses of the right-wing dictatorships on the continent -- Somoza, Pinochet, the Argentine generals and a repugnant etcetera -- but what's needed is an orderly and detailed catalog of the barbarities committed by this frenzied sect of the rabid Left.

All the barbarities: from Trotsky's murder in Mexico, the genocide of the Misquitos in Nicaragua, the Cuban firing squads and the stories about the FARC narcoterrorists' cruelty, to the odious assassinations and kidnappings committed by the ERP in Argentina and the Tupamaros in Uruguay.

When the project was proposed, someone asked to whom the book should be dedicated. No question about it: to Alexander Solzhenitzyn. He pointed the way.

Fears of Muslim Violence Cause Random House to Pull Novel

Sherry Jones, a correspondent for the Bureau of National Affairs, was all set to receive the first copy of her new book from Random House. Entitled The Jewel of Medina, the novel takes as its protagonist A'isha, the child bride of Mohammad. But Jones insists, the novel is not a "bodice-ripper." Indeed, there are no sex scenes at all. Says, Jones, "I have deliberately and consciously written respectfully about Islam and Mohammad...I envisioned that my book would be a bridge-builder."

But then she learned that her publishers at Random House finally remembered that there's one religious group that no one messes with nowadays. Even "deliberately, consciously, respectfully" messes with.

And they pulled the publication.

Random House deputy publisher Thomas Perry said in a statement the company received "cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment. In this instance we decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel."

Now unless this is a clever enough publicity stunt (and that's certainly possible -- generate a lot of controversial, but free, publicity and then publish the novel a bit later on), the Random House execs have shown not only an inexcusable naiveté about Muslim intolerance but an unconscionably weak dedication to the freedoms of thought and speech they have always claimed to champion.

Does Sherry Jones' The Jewel of Medina deserve to be published? I don't know. It certainly doesn't sound like anything I'd ever have an interest in reading. In fact, maybe the world of letters will be better off for not having it clutter up the shelves.

But not for this reason.

Is "Going Green" Going Out of Style?

...But the problem for the green lobby isn't that it has been overrun by “toffs”: it's the chilly economic climate that has frozen the shoots of environmentalism. Espousing the green life, with its misshapen vegetables and non-disposable nappies, is increasingly being seen as a luxury by everyone.

Only a year ago, according to MORI, 15 per cent of those polled put the environment in their top three concerns. That figure has dropped by a third to 10 per cent this month. Now that people are fighting for their own survival rather than their grandchildren's, they put crime, the economy and rising prices at the top of their list.

According to Andrew Cooper, director of the research company, Populus: “There is a direct correlation between how people perceive the economy and the importance they place on the environment. When times are tough people resent paying more to salve their conscience.” This means that fewer people are now buying organic chickens from smart supermarkets when they can pay £3.99 at Lidl. With all food prices rising, the organic market is being credit-crunched. Demand for it grew by 70 per cent from 2002 to 2007; now it has stalled, according to the consultancy Organic Monitor...

Read the rest of this Times (U.K.) guest commentary right here.

Yet More Tributes to Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Pearcey Report, one of the frequent stops in my cyberspace travels, links to several notable commentaries about Alexander Solzhenitsyn that, in addition to the ones I posted a few days ago, I encourage you to read.

Pelosi's "No Drill" Arrogance Means Bad News for the Planet

Charles Krauthammer explains why Nancy Pelosi's obstinate (and under-handed) actions to prohibit the Congress from even getting a fair vote on changing America's disastrous energy policy is a bad deal -- for democracy, for the economy, for national security, and, yes, even for the environment. Check it out.

Tributes to Alexander Solzhenitsyn

I find it hard to believe that there has been so little reaction to the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Aside from some brief comments from world leaders and a few obligatory press reports buried deep in the news, the passing of one of the world's greatest literary figures (not to mention, one of the most significant, inspiring heroes of the Cold War) has hardly made a stir.

But, of course, our modern world cherishes celebrity over character, popularity over principle, and political-correctness over truth. Thus, the MSM will give extensive headline coverage when an actor or reporter dies yet dramatically underplay the life and legacy of one of the most important freedom fighters of our time.

Solzhenitsyn wouldn't have been surprised. Nor would he have much cared. His wasn't a personality that craved attention. He simply, faithfully did his work and left the results up to God.

And, despite the scant attention given to his passing or even the grudging, often griping attention given to his work during his lifetime, the results of Solzhenitsyn's courage, sacrifice, vision and that prodigious, remarkably skilled pen did change the world -- for the better and for ever.

Below I print, as my own tribute to this great writer, a couple of short pieces originally posted on The Book Den in 2006 and 2005. For a few more, simply type in "Solzhenitsyn" in the Search Blog feature of The Book Den, located at the upper left of the opening template.

The Zek Who Changed the World

In 1962 the Soviet literary journal Novyi Mir published Alexander Solzhenitsyn's short novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. The editor, Alexander Tvardovsky, knew he had discovered an astonishing new writing talent with a courageous moral vision, something that hadn't appeared in print in Russia since the days of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. But then how could Tvardovsky have read such authentic Russian literature? Such writers were not only refused publication under the Communist regime, they were refused the permission to live.

But there was something new in the wind that gave Tvardovsky enough confidence to take this daring manuscript to the authorities and ask for permission to publish it. Stalin was dead, the butcher who in his monomaniac savagery had murdered millions of his own people, and his eventual successor, Nikita Khrushchev, had his hands full trying to wrest control from Stalin's hard-line comrades in the Politburo. Khrushchev had already launched (within the private domains of the Soviet elite) his attack on the "cult of personality," a campaign to present Stalin as a paranoid dictator whose excesses had actually undermined the Glorious Revolution.

In so doing, Khrushchev was anything but the liberated, enlightened soul that liberals in the West originally praised him as being. He was just another Communist thug, anxious to develop his own power. Discrediting Stalin, even it meant exposing some of the ugliness of Soviet history, was his means to get a tighter grip on the Kremlin. And One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch with its heart-rending portrayal of the senselessness and brutality of a Stalinist-era forced labor camp in Siberia written by a former zek who experienced it? Well, Khrushchev thought that the novel would make an effective opening move in the next stage of his campaign; namely, taking his attack on Stalin's "cult of personality" to the Soviet public and even to the peering journalists of the West.

But what Khrushchev, in his own spiritual blindness, could not foresee was how powerful a bomb he had set off when he gave Tvardovsky the permission to publish One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. The Stalinists around him proved harder to defeat than he imagined. Indeed, their rage in his allowing just a few of the crimes of the Soviet Union to be published was vicious. Instead of securing power, Khrushchev began to lose it. And, on the other side, even the little scent of freedom that arose from the publication of the novel (and especially Solzhenitsyn's emergence as a respected dissident voice by the West) had an intoxicating effect on the Russian populace. Khrushchev had desired only a little light to shine...just enough to expose Stalin's treachery to the ideals of the Communist Revolution. What he got was a light that grew more brilliant and hot than he ever imagined, a light that revealed the utter wickedness and absurdity of Communism itself.

Khrushchev saw the monumental failure of his tolerance quickly and he tried to reverse it with a complete suppression of Solzhenitsyn's work and reputation. Too late. The comparatively mild light of Ivan Denisovitch would blaze up into the more detailed, more searing revelations of The Gulag Archipelago, Cancer Ward, The First Circle, and more. Published in Western editions, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's work would become the single most reason behind the destruction of the Soviet Union's claims of a moral foundation. And when that began to weaken, other heroes of freedom (Ronald Reagan, Lech Walesa, John Paul II, et al) would follow up to eventually destroy, if not Communism in Russia, the huge threat of the Communist tyranny over Eastern Europe.

Re-reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch recently (as well as discussing it with the students of the 20th Century Christian Writers course I'm teaching for Grace University this semester) was as thrilling as ever as I contemplated how God had used this small novel as a big voice for freedom.

The soaring of the human spirit represented in that book is inspirational on many levels -- the clever sarcasm the author uses to engage the foolishness of the Soviet schemes is superb; the introduction of Alyosha presented the strongest Christian character that Russian literature had seen for three generations; and the passion for a detailed history of how the camps were run strongly foreshadows the full exposure Solzhenitsyn would produce in his later works. All these elements of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (and more) show the spiritual genius as well as the bold courage of Alexander Solzhenitsyn -- a zek who quite literally and splendidly, changed the world.

The Liberating Power of Truth

The injustice and cruelty of the Soviet Union’s vast organization of labor camps in the 1930’s and 1940’s are now well known. But that knowledge didn’t have to surface. Indeed, without the grace of God acting through such heroic individuals as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the truth might well have remained buried by Communist cover-ups. Solzhenitsyn was the foremost voice raised against the grand Soviet machine. Through rare courage and sacrificial efforts, he managed to alert the whole world to what was really happening to countless numbers of innocent human beings.

Solzhenitsyn’s most famous (though not often read) book is the riveting 3-volume, Gulag Archipelago. In that incredible work, the former slave camp worker documents the massive catalog of outrageous lies, violence, and criminal corruption perpetrated by Soviet Communism. In the Gulag (and even in his fiction), Solzhenitsyn serves as an historian. It is enough, he insists, to simply record what happened, to give the truth an open hearing. Truth has amazing power. Solzhenitsyn hoped that when people learned the real story of Soviet tyranny, they would resolve to never again allow the devil an open door to such blasphemy and brutality. It is in this sense that Alexander Solzhenitsyn is hailed as a prophet – not as a fortune teller, but as a “forth teller.” He bravely held up the banner of truth…and simply by performing that service, he helped change the world.

In Solzhenitsyn’s play The Love-Girl and the Innocent, set in a 1945 forced labor camp in Siberia, one of the persecuted men lists just a few of the monstrous crimes performed by Soviet thugs that he has witnessed. The prisoner is beside himself with fury, feeling utterly helpless to do anything about this all-enveloping injustice. But in response, Pavel Gai, an imprisoned ex-soldier who has experienced more than his own share of horrors, answers him with chilling authority. “What can we do? Remember – that’s all.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn did, in fact, remember. In fact, it was his constant plea to God for help in remembering specific events, people and situations so that he could record the true history of the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn desired more than anything else to be a faithful historian in order to effectively honor the victims but, more importantly, so that the preserved truth could set the future free. Ronald Reagan was one who was inspired by those revelations and he acted on the knowledge that Solzhenitsyn had preserved. The Wall fell. The camps are now empty. Truth, just a simple presentation of the truth, can indeed destroy the darkness.

Government "Trash Bin Police" Pull Secret Raid on Posh Neighborhood

And this is what it comes to? The nanny state searching our trash bins to see what recyclable articles we may have missed?

Remember the Vital Signs Blog post from last April which alerted you to the city government of Islington (United Kingdom) fining a fellow and giving him a criminal record because he had overloaded his trash bin by 4 inches? A fellow, by the way, who has to try and store his 6-member family's refuse in the one receptacle the insufferable town fathers allow him?

Well, it turns out that the snobby snoops of Islington have committed even more sinister follies. And, if it can be imagined, actions that are even more intrusive, even more unreasonable, even more weird.

Here's the Daily Mail's story about secret raids conspired over and financed by the local city government of Islington, North London. Trash bins along 53 of Islington's streets were searched, extending into the neighborhoods wherein actors, judges and even London's mayor reside. In all, over a thousand homes had their trash pawed over by the council's rubbish spies. (No, that's not fair. The council refer to them, no joke, as "waste professionals.")

Naturally, people were incensed when they learned of this remarkable invasion of privacy.

For instance, TV star Linda Robson was quoted, "That is terrible. How dare they? I recycle but there may have been private things I was throwing away. It is really intrusive. Is nothing sacred?"

Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury, Emily Thornberry, expressed worries that serious security issues could have been involved. "High Court judges and High Court appeal judges live in those streets,' she said. "I am sure they are careful but a sheet of paper can easily go amiss, and council officers could have seen them. My concerns are who authorised this and what they do with the stuff. They should have told people what they were going to do."

Su Pollard, another popular British actress lives along one of the raided streets. She was also disturbed by the unwarranted searches. "I am quite incensed. It smacks of Big Brother. One feels like a suspect in some way. There is nothing in my bins that would incriminate me in any way - it's mostly yoghurt pots - but I am terribly uneasy about it."

But the town council snobs? They merely exacerbated the controversy when they affirmed, "No permission was sought from residents as none is required."

Furthermore, it argued, "The operatives involved were waste professionals acting under a strict code of conduct which included the possibility of finding items of a personal nature such as confidential paperwork."

The above sentence is, in itself, so comical that I cant' think of anything with which to further satirize it. But it does leave one with the most vivid word picture, doesn't it?

Liberal Democrat councillor Greg Foxsmith said: 'This is not about snooping into households' bins or invading privacy. It was an investigation into rubbish to see what is being sent to landfill and how much more could be recycled. Rubbish is not looked at individually or records taken - confidentiality is taken very seriously."

Uh huh. What is obviously NOT taken seriously are such archaic ideas as privacy and freedom let alone a responsible philosophy which appreciates both the priorities of political office and the limitation of political powers.

Congressman Mike Pence on the "Police State" of Communist China, Forced Abortion, the Olympics and More

"It is important that we speak truth to power. And with the 2008 Olympics in Beijing about to begin, it is important that the people of the United States be heard on our ideals as athletes from around the world and global media descend on China.

"It is important that we say as the late Tom Lantos, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a hearing last year, a few months before his death: 'China is a police state.'

"I personally believe that the selection of China as the site of the 2008 Olympic Games was a historic error. The Olympics is a symbol of the human spirit and in that regard, a symbol of human freedom, and this police state therefore is precisely the wrong venue for a celebration of human dignity and the human spirit.

"And so I commend my colleagues' support for H. Res. 1370. I am particularly grateful for the call on the government of the People's Republic of China to end the abuses of human rights, to release those imprisoned for political and religious expression, and also challenging China to honor its commitment to freedom of the press of foreign reporters.

"While there is much talk in the media today about the cloud of smog hanging over Beijing as these Games approach, let me say from my heart: the real cloud over the Beijing Olympics is the horror of forced abortion. Therefore I am especially grateful to Congressman Chris Smith for adding an important amendment to this resolution noting that: 'Whereas the Chinese government limits most women to having one child and strictly controls the reproductive lives of Chinese citizens by systematic means that include mandatory monitoring of women's reproductive cycles, mandatory sterilization and contraception, mandatory birth permits, coercive fines for failure to comply,' and the like. This legislation will call on the People's Republic of China to immediately end the practice of forced abortion...

Read more of Indiana's Mike Pence's bold remarks to the Congress here.

How "Green Mania" Controls Congress

Let's face it. The average individual American has little or no clout with Congress and can be safely ignored. But it's a different story with groups such as Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club and The Nature Conservancy. When they speak, Congress listens. Unlike the average American, they are well organized, loaded with cash and well positioned to be a disobedient congressman's worse nightmare. Their political and economic success has been a near disaster for our nation...

Read the rest of Walter William's cogent analysis (and stern warnings) in his latest Town Hall column.

We Are the Leftists of the NEA! And We Have Your Kids!

Yes, I know that you've read before about the radically liberal positions taken by the National Education Association (many of which are completely unrelated to education), but I urge you to review them again by reading this alarming Phyllis Schlafly column.

There's not much commentary in it, just a litany of the resolutions passed at the NEA's national conference earlier this month. From statehood for the District of Columbia to government-run health care; from gun control to global warming mania; from abortion on demand to "the feminist boondoggle called the Women's Educational Equity Act" -- the NEA's positions are way, way left of the American people. So too are the numerous resolutions they passed which promote all planks of the homosexual agenda.

And, of course, there were the regular resolutions declaring the NEA's strident, totalitarian opposition to vouchers, tuition tax credits, parental option plans, home schools, and anything else that might make for competition or, for that matter) even oversight of what the NEA is doing with their coerced membership dues.

And these are the people in charge of America's kids!

Get a broader look at this horror story in Phyllis Schlafly's column right here.

With Friends Like This: Severe Religious Intolerance from America's "Ally"

Anne Applebaum, a weekly columnist for the Washington Post, knows a bit about freedom issues around the world. After all, she has served as a correspondent for The Economist in Warsaw; was foreign editor and then deputy editor of the Spectator magazine in London; and she won the Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust award for journalism in the ex-Soviet Union. Applebaum is also the author of Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe and the Pulitzer Prize winner for non-fiction in 2004, Gulag: A History.

Therefore, when she perused the latest publication of the Hudson Institutes' Center for Religious Freedom, the 91-page Saudi Arabia's Curriculum of Intolerance, she knew she had found an important and alarming study.

Here is a portion of her subsequent op/ed column:

Because they are so clearly designed for the convenience of large testing companies, I had always assumed that multiple-choice exams, the bane of any fourth-grader's existence, were a quintessentially American phenomenon. But apparently I was wrong. According to a report last week by the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, it seems that the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education finds them useful, too.

Here, for example, is a multiple-choice question from a recent edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, "Monotheism and Jurisprudence," in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish between "true" and "false" belief in God:

Q. "Is belief true in the following instances:
(a) A man prays but hates those who are virtuous.
(b) A man professes that there is no deity other than God but loves the unbelievers.
(c) A man worships God alone, loves the believers, and hates the unbelievers."

The correct answer, of course, is (c): According to the Wahhabi imams who wrote this textbook, it isn't enough to simply worship God or just to love other believers; it is important to hate unbelievers, too. By the same token, (b) is wrong as well: Even a man who worships God cannot be said to have "true belief" if he also loves unbelievers.

"Unbelievers," in this context, are Christians and Jews. In fact, any child who attends Saudi schools until ninth grade will eventually be taught outright that "Jews and Christians are enemies of believers." They will also be taught that Jews conspire to "gain sole control over the world," that the Christian crusades never ended, and that on Judgment Day "the rocks or the trees" will call out to Muslims to kill Jews.

These passages, it should be noted, are from new, "revised" Saudi textbooks, designed to be less harsh on the infidels. After an analysis of earlier textbooks caused an outcry in 2006, American diplomats approached their Saudi counterparts about modifying the more disturbing passages, and the Saudis agreed to conduct a "comprehensive revision . . . to weed out disparaging remarks toward religious groups."

The promised revision -- hailed at the time as a great diplomatic success -- was supposed to be finished by the beginning of the 2008-09 school year and was accompanied by a Saudi public relations campaign. Among other things, the Saudis sponsored an interfaith dialogue this week, one that all participants hailed as a great breakthrough -- despite the fact that the meetings took place in Spain, apparently because it would be too embarrassing for Saudi Arabia to host Christian and Jewish religious leaders on its own soil. But now the beginning of the 2008-09 school year is nearly upon us, the only textbook revisions have been superficial and the most disturbing part of the books' message -- that faithful Muslims should hate Jews and Christians -- remains...

What's Wrong with This Picture? An Abortion Enthusiast to Become UN High Commissioner for Human Rights?

Fresh from the "You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up" Department comes word that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to name as the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights a woman who has throughout her career absolutely and vociferously denied human rights to unborn human children!

As LifeSiteNews reports, "Navanethem 'Navi' Pillay of South Africa is a founding member of the international non-governmental organization Equality Now, a group that has spearheaded campaigns for abortion access in Poland and Nepal. Pillay remains on the board of the organization which receives major funding from pro-abortion foundations, including George Soros' Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation."

Furthermore, Pillay also supports the "Yogyakarta Principles," which insist that homosexual activities represent natural and binding human rights, including same-sex "marriage," adoption by homosexual couples and state-funded sex change operations.

Drilling for Votes

Promoting a responsible energy policy, particularly drilling for our own oil instead of depending on foreign supplies, is a winning political issue. And that's good news for John McCain. Here's a Washington Times story on a new poll showing McCain gaining significant ground in Colorado.

"We'd gotten into this mind-set that 2008 would be a good year for the Democrats," said Denver pollster Floyd Ciruli. "What this shows is that issues still matter."...

"The results show increased support for additional drilling, which McCain supports and Obama opposes," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Hamden, Conn., which conducted the survey with the Wall Street Journal and Washingtonpost.com.

"Roughly one in 10 voters say they have changed their minds and now favor drilling because of the jump in energy prices," he said. "They support Obama, but with voters saying that the energy issue is now more important to their presidential vote than is the war in Iraq, this group represents an opportunity for the Republican."...