This, from the Princeton University newspaper, caught my eye: “New York Assemblyman and Minority Leader James Tedisco (R) said Tuesday that he will move to impeach Gov. Eliot Spitzer ’81 if the embattled officeholder does not step down from his post by Thursday.”

Isn’t there something deeply comic about the Daily Princetonian’s careful notation that Spitzer was in the Princeton class of 1981? It reminds me of a story Fr. James Burtchaell once told me, about a photograph in the Holy Cross alumni magazine around 1971. It showed an FBI agent leading away in handcuffs a priest at an anti-Vietnam protest, and the caption read something like: “Fr. James McCarthy (class of ’59), with Andrew Sweeney (class of ’63).”

Ah, alma mater!

Michael Fragoso, policy analyst at Family Research Council, sends along the following:

The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) was victorious in Sunday’s parliamentary elections. Although the center-right People’s Party (PP) made some isolated gains and the PSOE again failed to win an absolute majority, the result is disappointing, with José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero remaining Prime Minister.

Worthy of note is the coverage that the elections are getting in the United States: read most news accounts and one cannot help but conclude that the Left’s victory was all about social policy. The Washington Post was quick to note in the second paragraph, “Voters turned out in force to endorse the progressive social agenda that Zapatero championed in his first term — including new laws on women’s rights, divorce and gay marriage — and returned him to office for another four years.” The New York Times also partly credits the victory to homosexual marriage, and can barely contain its glee that Sr. Zapatero seeks “to propel a country once gripped by religious conservatism into the liberal vanguard of Europe.”

The liberals at the Times are right to be excited, at a certain level. After all, it was a victory for the socialists, and Spain’s reputation as a bastion of Catholicism and conservatism is well known—from the Black Legend of old to Hugo Chavez’s recent whining about former Prime Minister José María Aznar. For secular schools and same-sex marriage to be winning political issues in a nation until recently called “Sword of the Pope” and “Hammer of Heretics” is quite the coup indeed. Sadly for the Times and Post, this is not what happened.

Of course Zapatero’s social policies are contentious in Spain; one can reasonably assume that some people voted either for PSOE or for the PP on account of them. Most Spanish reportage, however, indicates that nationalism was the issue of the day.

Contemporary Spain is made up of 17 “autonomous communities” and 2 “autonomous cities.” Some of these communities—most notably Catalonia and Basque Country—have long-standing independence movements—with the Basque movement breeding the notorious terrorist group ETA. The two main Spanish parties have very different approaches to regional autonomy and independence.

The PP believes in a central, Spanish national government, vaguely resembling something like the United States or the German Federation. It is well known for its law-and-order approach to nationalist terrorism.

The PSOE has expanded the bureaucratic self-government of the autonomous communities and is more open to “cultural” forms of autonomy. (Linguistic and dialectical differences figure prominently in both the justification for regional autonomy and “national independence” movements.) Zapatero has also sought to end the terrorism in Basque Country through negotiations with ETA rather than through force.

The differences between these sets of policies are stark, and they clearly would appeal to different groups: PP self-identified “Spaniards,” and PSOE regional malcontents. More than anything else this election was about regional and ethnic tensions and the jockeying by political parties to exploit these them—not the grand repudiation of Iraq and the Church that the American media seem to have seen.

Evidence for this can be seen in a helpful map provided by the liberal Spanish paper El Mundo. In total PSOE won 43.64% of the vote to PP’s 40.11%. In core “Spanish” regions, PP did quite well, with sizeable victories in Galicia, Madrid, Castile and Leon, Cantabria, Rioja, Valencia, Castile-La Mancha, and Murcia. The socialists, on the other hand won Aragon, Catalonia, Basque Country, Navarre, Andalusia and Extremadura. Of these Catalonia, Andalusia, and Basque Country have strong “nationalist” movements. In many ways, it is a “red-state blue-state” divide, with the “red states” largely consisting of the medieval kingdoms of Castile and Leon.

While in this election social issues were not at the fore of the Spanish elections, pace the American media, the Spanish conservatives would do well to make them such in the future. This election showed that the PP will have a difficult time appealing merely to economic reform and national unity so long as the socialists kowtow to the nationalists and separatists. If the conservatives want to make headway into different ethno-national populations like Catalonia and Andalusia, perhaps they should remind these voters what else they get in their deal with the socialists: what region gains “autonomy” by being forced to accept gay marriage or abortion through a central government? Are more signs in an area’s native language worth a militantly secular national government interfering in local schools or mandating easy divorce?

The conservatives need to reframe their message and expand their coalition. Radically liberal social policies are bad for regional autonomy, as well as for Spanish Catholics. That should make these policies bad politics for the socialists, which is hopefully something the conservatives will learn before the next election.

I was very pleased to hear this morning that the 2008 Templeton Prize has been awarded to Michal Heller (who publishes in English under the name Michael Heller), a Polish priest, physicist, philosopher, and theologian. Here is an excerpt from what I said about him in the October 2004 issue of First Things:

Michael Heller brings to his reflections on science and religion a depth of knowledge, thought, and experience that is highly unusual. He spent his early childhood in Siberia, where his family had been exiled from Poland by the Soviets. The power of faith to sustain people through extreme hardships turned his mind to God and eventually led him to the priesthood. He went on to earn a master’s degree in philosophy and a Ph.D. in physics, and he was one of the intellectuals who would meet at the Krakow residence of Archbishop Karol Wojtyla to discuss science and faith. After Wojtyla became pope, Heller continued to organize these meetings, bringing eminent scholars from around the world to participate. He is currently professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Krakow and an active researcher in relativistic cosmology. These essays show him to be a thinker of fine judgment about science, theology, and philosophy, and about their interrelationships.

From many points of view, this is an excellent choice.

On February 25, we posted as the Daily Article an interview I conducted with Timothy Keller, author of the new bestseller The Reason for God. It was picked up by quite a few, mostly evangelical blogsites and has resulted in our being added to a hefty list of blogrolls—something we certainly welcome.

Not altogether surprising, some bloggers used the interview to take Pastor Keller to task for either his views on evolution or on church planting, which some of the sterner Reformed bloggers construed as being too broad (which is as benign a term as I can use here).

Pastor Keller took the time to respond to some questions and concerns the interview generated.

When our editor, Joseph Bottum, read Pastor Keller’s remarks, he was . . . not undispleased. He took them to mean that the good pastor’s default position was to throw me under the bus. In fact, Jody was so angry at Keller’s remarks that he wanted to respond himself. I would spare Pastor Keller that, and so I am responding myself.

Pastor Keller says that “I knew at a few points he strung statements together in a way that might raise questions. I thought people would ask the questions (like you) rather than jumping to conclusions. I don’t want to criticize the interviewer here. I think he did a fairly good job of representing a whole lot of conversation. But it wasn’t perfect.”

So here’s my reaction to Tim Keller’s reaction to the blogosphere’s reaction to the interview. It has been noted on many blogs that this is one of the longest interviews Keller has given. It was, indeed, originally longer: The complete, unedited transcript ran to about 7,500 words. (The interview lasted for 45 minutes.) Keep in mind that a typical Daily Article is around 2,000 words, and a feature article in the magazine 5,000 words. So I was asked to cut the interview by 2,000 words, lest readers’ eyes glaze over. I ended up trimming about 1,700.

What was left on the cutting room floor? Sentence fragments and some false starts that any spontaneous response to questioning generates; repetitive replies; a longish question and answer about the nature of the apologetic enterprise itself; a couple of anecdotes about counseling that, while interesting, were unnecessary to make a point that had already been made; references to Hodge and Warfield and James Boyce on the subject of evolution, a segment of the interview that had already gone on for a while.

If Pastor Keller thought my imperfect editing job had in any way, even unintentionally, misrepresented what he had said to me, he has had two weeks to get in touch with me to that effect. I have heard neither from him nor his publicist, to whom I sent a link to the interview the morning it went live. I have not received even a single email or phone call from anyone who knows Keller questioning my representation of his views—quite the contrary; the feedback I have received from people who know and have worked with him has been uniformly laudatory. This leads me to believe that the interview accurately reflects the pastor’s views.

I’d like to know what a “perfect” job would have looked like. If I had left in every single syllable uttered, the interview would have been a much more ponderous bit of business to work through. If I had described his intonations, facial expressions, and body language in robust, florid detail, I don’t believe for a minute it would have changed how anyone would have interpreted Keller’s remarks. After all, Pastor Keller is a plain talker. If in the course of the interview he did not go into even more detail in order to forestall criticism on some controversial matters, well, not my fault. For example, in the blog linked to above, he states unequivocally that he would never plant a Roman Catholic church, as if anyone who didn’t already have a cudgel ready to bludgeon him with ever thought he would attempt such a thing—as if such a thing were even feasible. (Last time I looked, the Catholic Church still had these folks called bishops.)

In other words, I could only reproduce what was there, not what wasn’t. Now, if my editorial skills were are at fault here, then I wish Pastor Keller had stated plainly what was left out of his responses to me that would have provided the context that would have staved off any misconstrual on a critical reader’s part. (In fact, the blogger who reproduced Keller’s response to the interview more or less says the same thing.)

But I don’t think that really is the issue. Tim Keller has had critics regarding his church-planting methods for a while. That he was described by Newsweek as someone who “believed” in evolution probably didn’t help him with many already disposed to question his Reformed “credentials.” I knew this going in, which is why I allowed him as much room as he needed to express himself in a variety of contentious areas. Read the interview again: There’s a whole lot of Tim Keller and relatively little of me. (And anyone who has read my stuff on this website knows that usually there’s a whole lot of me and virtually nothing of anyone else.)

I don’t want to pick a fight with Pastor Keller, and frankly I wasn’t all that bothered by his remarks. (And, given how gingerly he phrased his concerns about the interview, I sincerely doubt he’s trying to pick one with me.) I admire Tim Keller and what he has accomplished at Redeemer Presbyterian—in fact, I was a member of Redeemer for eight years and attended a Redeemer church plant for a short time afterward. (This will no doubt come as a surprise to many who, seeing that my name ends in a vowel, assume I am Catholic, no matter how many times I talk about my Lutheran/evangelical background.) But I also don’t want the impression left that somehow what Tim Keller actually said to me and what wound up online are two different things—even as a result of my admittedly manifold imperfections.

UPDATE (3/13—10:10 am) Just got off the phone with Pastor Keller. We both apologized to each other for misunderstandings that could have and should have been avoided. I especially apologized for fanning the flames of a fire that should never have been lit in the first place. Tim Keller is a good man with an important ministry. We’re friends. Everything is cool. End of story.

According to this story in the U.K. Telegraph, Gordon Brown’s Labour government is set to push through Parliament a bill that would, among other things, “allow the creation of animal-human embryos—created by injecting animal cells or DNA into human embryos or human cells into animal eggs—to be used in medical research and then discarded.” There is, however, a problem: Three of Brown’s cabinet ministers—Des Browne, the Defence Secretary; Ruth Kelly, the Transport Secretary; and Paul Murphy, the Welsh Secretary—are refusing to vote for the bill because they consider the practices it permits to be immoral. All three ministers are Roman Catholics.

As the Telegraph story makes clear, however, there is no question of the bill’s not passing; there are, apparently, quite enough votes to ensure its passage, even without the votes of the Catholic ministers. The issue is whether the government can tolerate some of its ministers voting in accordance with their consciences but against government policy.

Now, I agree with Browne, Kelly and Murphy that the bill in question is morally unacceptable, and I admire them for opposing it. But I understand too that people who accept positions of trust in a government have a duty to support the policies of that government. Government would quickly cease to function if inferior officials were permitted to disregard the policy decisions of their superiors. That’s one reason why in the United States Cabinet secretaries serve at the pleasure of the president. The government’s bill in this case is unreasonable and immoral; but, given that it is the government’s bill, the government’s demand that the ministers support it is not at all unreasonable.

The Telegraph story says that the government is seeking some kind of compromise solution, and we should all hope that this effort succeeds. If it fails, however, there may be nothing for it but for Browne, Kelly and Murphy to resign as ministers of the Labour government, though they could remain as members of Parliament and vote against the bill. This, I say, would be very regrettable. But there is, after all, ample precedent in England for high officials resigning from office when the chief executive of the realm embarked on policies that were inimical to morality and true religion.

David Mamet has had a political conversion . . . of sorts.

I remember an interview Mamet gave around the time Glengarry Glen Ross won the Pulitzer, to the effect that he found there to be many beautiful things about capitalism, which you would not have expected from the guy who seemed only to reference its more rapacious tendencies. Mamet was always an interesting not this/not that sort of guy, though. “A work in progress,” as some would say . . .

Thanks to Mark Steyn at NRO.