From the lead editorial in today’s Washington Post:

Character is legitimate campaign fodder—up to a point. Is there something to be learned from Mr. Obama’s association in the 1990s with William Ayers, the unrepentant domestic terrorist to whom Ms. Palin referred? It’s certainly not that Mr. Obama hates America or shares responsibility for the bombing Mr. Ayers helped carry out. By the time Mr. Obama came on the Chicago scene, Mr. Ayers was a member of the liberal political establishment that Mr. Obama sought to join. Maybe someone of stronger character would have decided not to go with that flow—not to join a foundation board with Mr. Ayers or allow him to host a political coffee. It’s an arguable point, maybe a small brushstroke in a full portrait of Mr. Obama, in any case hardly disqualifying to his candidacy.

Here’s a question, especially for the honest liberal: Could you possibly imagine the Washington Post giving Republican presidential candidate such a pass if the “unrepentant domestic terrorist” in question had not been an accepted member of a local “liberal political establishment,” but rather an accepted member of some local (perhaps Southern) “conservative political establishment”?

Imagine, for a moment, that the violence of a hypothetical “unrepentant terrorist” were directed at African-American churches or ATF agents or perhaps abortion clinics rather than, per the non-hypothetical William Ayers, at the Pentagon or the Capitol. Imagine that a hypothetical Republican presidential candidate had close connections with an unrepentant leader of the KKK as the current Democratic presidential candidate has to an unrepentant leader of the Weatherman. Would this be dismissed “as maybe a small brushstroke,” one “hardly disqualifying to his candidacy”?

I doubt it.

Speaking of Chesterton poems, “The Arena” is my favorite, and is especially appropriate for this Fall, when the “Gladiators of God” (4-1) seem to be rising again:

There uprose a golden giant
On the gilded house of Nero
Even his far-flung flaming shadow and his image swollen large
Looking down on the dry whirlpool
Of the round Arena spinning
As a chariot-wheel goes spinning; and the chariots at the charge.

And the molten monstrous visage
Saw the pageants, saw the torments,
Down the golden dust undazzled saw the gladiators go,
Heard the cry in the closed desert
Te salutant morituri,
As the slaves of doom went stumbling, shuddering, to the shades below.

“Lord of Life, of lyres and laughter,
Those about to die salute thee,
At thy godlike fancy feeding men with bread and beasts with men,
But for us the Fates point deathward
In a thousand thumbs thrust downward,
And the Dog of Hell is roaring through the lions in their den.”

I have seen, where a strange country
Opened its secret plains about me,
One great golden dome stand lonely with its golden image, one
Seen afar, in strange fulfillment,
Through the sunlit Indian summer
That Apocalyptic portent that has clothed her with the Sun.

She too looks on the Arena
Sees the gladiators grapple,
She whose names are Seven Sorrows and the Cause of All Our Joy,
Sees the pit that stank with slaughter
Scoured to make the courts of morning
For the cheers of jesting kindred and the scampering of a boy.

“Queen of Death and deadly weeping
Those about to live salute thee,
Youth untroubled; youth untutored; hateless war and harmless mirth
And the New Lord’s larger largesse
Holier bread and happier circus,
Since the Queen of Sevenfold Sorrow has brought joy upon the earth.”

Burns above the broad arena
Where the whirling centuries circle,
Burns the Sun-clothed on the summit, golden-sheeted, golden shod,
Like a sun-burst on the mountains,
Like the flames upon the forest
Of the sunbeams of the sword-blades of the Gladiators of God.

And I saw them shock the whirlwind
Of the World of dust and dazzle:
And thrice they stamped, a thunderclap; and thrice the sand-wheel swirled;
And thrice they cried like thunder
On Our Lady of the Victories,
The Mother of the Master of the Masterers of the World.

“Queen of Death and Life undying
Those about to live salute thee;
Not the crawlers with the cattle; looking deathward with the swine,
But the shout upon the mountains
Of the men that live for ever
Who are free of all things living but a Child; and He was thine.”

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto. In this battle, allied Christian nations destroyed a vastly larger Turkish fleet. This battle inspired G.K. Chesterton to write one of his best poems. Here is the rousing first stanza:

White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

How many of us have sent an important email in the wee hours of the morning only to regret it the next day? Let’s face it: Submitting that paper or writing to that ex should have been reserved for a time when our brains were functioning properly. Enter “Mail Goggles” a new service from Google that tests your cognitive abilities before letting you send emails in the middle of the night.

I don’t know. For me, “early to bed, early to rise” works every time.

Gloria Cipollini Endres, a friend and correspondent, has written a charming reminiscence of being part of the first class at Saint Maria Goretti High School in Philadelphia. The piece, appearing in the Philadelphia Daily News, is a wonderful glimpse of life in better times:

The first principal, Father Tracey, was a stickler for ladylike decorum, especially at social events. Although Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando and James Dean were the sex symbols du jour, and “Bandstand” might be an “occasion of sin,” we were expected to remain chaste.

Our sex education consisted mostly of “cross your legs, wear mid-calf skirts and keep a phone book on the car seat between you and your date!” Even with all that, some girls dropped out quietly to await what was quaintly dubbed a “blessed event.”

Discipline was relentless. There was a rule against opening textbooks in the cafeteria, for example. Once, feeling unprepared for a post-lunch Latin test with Sister Mary Agnes, I sneaked a peek at my book.

I was caught by one of the disciplinarians and immediately handed a detention slip. Imagine! Others were disciplined for such far-out infractions as striking the “forbidden” backspace key on the typewriter or daring to apply lipstick in the lavatory at dismissal.

Talking back could get you suspended or expelled to the (shudder) public schools.

We can laugh now, but we were in awe of those religious women. (Mrs. Kane, our gym teacher, was the only lay person.) Other schools had college fairs–we had a “convent fair” in the cafeteria with booths competing for applicants to the many communities of nuns that staffed the school.

When I mentioned the Love and Fidelity Network yesterday I neglected to mention their first annual conference, “Sexuality, Integrity, and the University,” on November 7–8 at Princeton University.

The conference features talks by fine scholars such as Brad Wilcox, Miriam Grossman and First Things contributor Mary Eberstadt. It should be an edifying couple of days, and if you’re really lucky you’ll run into me. Registration ends October 13, so be sure to sign up soon! (Students will find the $30 registration offer–including materials, food, and hotel accommodations–especially appealing.)

A professor friend of mine at Notre Dame is working on a book about the British historian and MP Thomas Babington Macauley. When describing the book to me, he made special note of how the Classics replaced the Bible as the spiritual sustainance of many at that time. When Macauley’s beloved sister died, for example, he did not turn to the Bible or another spiritual work, but rather immersed himself in Thucydides. Thucydides, in this case, was what one might call Macauley’s “comfort book.”

The topic of comfort books–or more broadly of reading books to generate a specific feeling or atmosphere–came up between two colleagues yesterday. One said that she had read T.S. Eliot in England to help cope with being a stranger in a strange land–namely a strange British land with occasionally mean inhabitants, near-constant rain, and no sunlight. Another talked of reading Eliot on Ash Wednesday to put him in a contemplative and penitent mood.

I started to think about whether I had a comfort book. I have read excerpts of The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion for intended emotional effect at certain times. But by and large I don’t choose my books this way. Instead, I turn to music, and I imagine that most of my peers do as well. Given the rise of mp3s and playlists, you can easily evoke a mood or atmosphere for times of secular or sacred emotion with music without turning to literature. Hence we have a movie called Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and not Nick and Norah’s Infinite Library, which, come to think of it, sounds rather 1950s.

Do any other blog contributors turn to particular books or music for consolation or jubilation? Do people find a generational difference between those who choose books or those who choose music? Any thoughts?

The San Fransisco Chronicle reports:

The words, “bride” and “groom” will be restored on all California marriage licenses starting next month, state health officials announced Monday.

On June 16, when same-sex marriage became legal in the state, the Department of Public Health issued new gender-neutral marriage forms with the words “Party A,” and “Party B” in place of bride and groom.

That drew objections from some heterosexual couples, who wanted the more traditional wording to describe their unions. Several contacted the state, and one Roseville couple sued the county clerk of Placer County last week for rejecting their marriage license after they altered it by writing in “bride” and “groom.”

Those hoping the move is an implicit approval of the traditional definition of marriage, however, will be disappointed:

Beginning Nov. 17, couples can check boxes next to their names indicating whether they are a bride or a groom. Couples can check bride and bride, groom and groom, or bride and groom, allowing for same-sex and opposite-sex pairings. . . .

Geoff Kors of Equality California, a gay rights group, said “sounds like the perfect solution, this treats everybody equally.”

In Baghdad yesterday, some Christians, joined by Muslims and others, led a peaceful protest to restore minority representation in Iraq. One priest from the Sacred Heart Church in Baghdad exclaimed: “They told us we don’t have a place in our government, and we don’t know why.”

The protest was small but determined. About 75 Christians and others gathered at a church here on Monday to demand that the Iraqi Parliament reinstate a section of an earlier version of the provincial elections law that ensured political representation for Iraq’s minorities.

The provision, which allowed for provincial council seats for Christians and two other minority groups, was dropped before Parliament approved the elections law on Sept. 24.

. . .

Many Christians stayed away out of fear of bombings or other violence, they said.

“My friends are afraid, and they said I was mad to come here,” said a 50-year old woman. . . . “But I don’t care about death,” the woman said, adding that she came to stand up for her religion and her political rights.

Marwan Arkan, 20, said that the situation for Christians in Iraq was still perilous. Last week, he said, he was kidnapped by gunmen as he walked to Sacred Heart Church, where he works. The kidnappers held him for three days, he said, beat him and finally let him go, for reasons that were unclear to him.

“I thought that they kidnapped me because they wanted to reach our priest, but why did they do that?” Mr. Arkan asked. “Did they want to threaten us?”