Hainan in the Living Room; A Just Mideast Peace; Easter, A Movable Feast; Vote Bloomberg
Classicus | [John Derbyshire](#derbyshire) | [Taki](#taki) | [Scott McConnell|](#mcconnell)
A Movable Feast
The dating of Easter isn't just one of your holiday games. You may think you know the formula: the first Sunday after the first calendar full moon following March 21. But you'll need a table of moon phases to work it out. Better, as in many such matters, to take it on faith from the church.
Besides, which Easter? The Western and Eastern Orthodox Christian churches more often than not observe different dates. (But not this year, informs Maitre Taki.) Easter's date determines when a number of other important observances occur. And as every schoolboy used to know, Easter can fall on any Sunday from March 22 to April 25. It is beyond the scope of this modest piece to delve completely into what is known in the church as the Easter Controversy. May it suffice to say that determining the date was a subject of recondite ecclesiastical scholarship from the second century to the 16th. It involved the date of Passover, the vernal equinox, the phases of the moon, astronomical and calendary, and the fact that it must fall on a Sunday. Under the inexact Julian calendar, this required certain fudge factors known as "golden numbers." Finally, with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, a new variable called an "epact" as well as centennial solar corrections come into play.
By the time of the Council of Trent in 1545, the Julian calendar had thrown off the vernal equinox by 10 days, so the Council authorized Pope Paul III to take corrective action. But it was not until later in the century that Pope Gregory XII, based on the studies of scholars and the observations of astronomers, produced a bull establishing his calendar, which made the correction and produced tables for the date of Easter for the next 7000 years (after which the cycle repeats itself). The human race may be living on Mars by that time, and only God knows how the church fathers will date Easter then.
The Council of Trent was a highly important conclave that lasted until 1563, with two interruptions for political and military events. It was convened in Trent in reaction to Martin Luther and the Protestant attack on the authority of the pope. It is the centerpiece in the Catholic counterreformation, as it issued decrees on reform and clarification on many of the doctrinal points contested by the Protestants. But just on two do we have humble observations and, we hope, not too blasphemous comment.
First, the Council of Trent affirmed the doctrine of transubstantiation, which states that Christ is really present in the bread and wine when consecrated by a priest during the taking of Communion. It must be pointed out that transubstantiation has troubled worshipers, even if one believes in miracles, because of the suggestion of cannibalism, as well as something quite low called stercoranism, after Sterculius, the Roman god of manure. Stercoranism is a term of ridicule used by those who asked that if God is truly present in the elements of the Eucharist, is he not also present in the post-digestive matter? This is the kind of question that comes up when fervid fundamental faith is involved.
Perhaps nothing provides more evidence of this than a second issue the Council of Trent dealt with: the problem of sacred relics and icons. The worship of idols is anathema to both Christian and Jewish faiths going back to Abraham. Images are one thing, but actual relics, the limbs and corpses of saints, vestiges of the cross on which Jesus was crucified, the nails, his robe, thorns from his crown, are quite another.
Since the Council of Trent the position of the Roman Catholic Church on relics and icons has been very much to distinguish between reverence and veneration, as opposed to worship. The faithful have often ignored this direction, and the saga of relic cults is truly curious. The most fascinating book on the subject of relics is Restless Bones (London, 1985) by Rev. Dr. James Bentley, former senior chaplain at Taki's old school, Eton College. Although, he says, in Christ's time to come into contact with a corpse rendered a man impure, 100 years later when St. Ignatius was savaged by wild beasts in the Roman arena and his remains collected, the cult of the relic had begun. To the medieval mind, he continues, a relic could heal the sick, cure cattle, ensure a good harvest and provide other miraculous effects. These relics were fought over, bought and sold, and divided up into smaller and smaller pieces for profit. In the Eastern Church it was a good thing to spread a saint around to as many churches as possible.
Most amazing are the stories of relics of Jesus' body, such as fingernails and clippings of hair and the teeth that fell from his mouth as a child, vials of his blood and tears that reposed in various churches. Supposedly the Virgin Mary picked up her son's navel after his birth and guarded this precious relic all her life. Eventually it became the property of Charlemagne, who cut it in two and gave one half to Pope Leo III and the other to a French church. Krafft-Ebing, in Psycopathia Sexualis, takes note of the case of a German nun who was obsessed with what became of that part of Christ that was removed at circumcision. She would have been stunned by Rev. Bentley's revelation that there have been at least eight churches that claimed to be in the possession of the holy foreskin. The last surviving sacred prepuce is believed to be at Calcata, a village north of Rome, but it cannot be seen. The Holy Office in Rome disapproves highly, and has threatened anyone writing or speaking of it with excommunication. Classicus is nervous.
Hainan at Home
In the interests of that latter, I carefully broached the recent dustup with China a couple of days in, when the Chinese had already demanded an apology. What did Rosie think of this demand? She: "Of course America should apologize. It's just a form of words. You know what we Chinese people are like, you have to give us some 'face.' If Bush gives them some face, everything will soon be settled."
I pointed out that in the game of international diplomacy, "face" is a tangible asset for any country, and needs to be husbanded with care. America should worry about its own "face" too. Rosie took this aboard without responding, and I thought I had got off Hainan Island alive.
I had better make clear before proceeding that Rosie is not a political person. She grew up in China in the 1960s and 1970s, when the Mao dictatorship was getting tired. Her parents were both Party members, Dad actually an officer in the People's Liberation Army, a veteran of the Korean War. By the time Rosie reached maturity, though, widespread cynicism had set in among the Chinese population, and people slept through Political Study lectures. When I first knew her, in China in the early 1980s, Rosie made me think of Julia in 1984:
Thus, when, a week into the crisis, it looked as though the U.S. was going to stand firm, I got into a spot of bother with my suggestion that perhaps George W. Bush should counter the Chinese demand for an apology by demanding an apology from them. After all, I pointed out, the U.S. plane was over international waters, and the F-8 must have been flying awfully close for the accident to have happened?close enough to fairly be accused of harassment, whatever the precise details of the mishap.
Rosie: "Nonsense! China give an apology to America? You're mad! What was that plane doing so close to our shore? Spying, that's what! You foreigners think you can just do as you like in China!" In less time than it takes to hit the Mayday button on an EP-3 control panel, we were into the Opium War and the suppression of the Boxers. Dialectical materialism may have passed undigested through Rosie's alimentary canal, but the xenophobic stuff went direct into her bloodstream.
It's okay. In the style of Mao Tse-tung, who was fond of comparing crises in the Party with earthquakes, this is no worse than a 4 on the Richter scale. It certainly doesn't compare with last Aug. 6, a Sunday, and a day that will live in infamy, when I woke early with the horrible realization that it was our wedding anniversary, crept out of the house, spent a frantic hour trying to find a card store that was open, and got home...too late. Harmony will reassert itself. I just have to follow the President's example: be patient, and do some measured groveling.
Vote Bloomberg
The last candidate I endorsed was Pat Buchanan, and although he failed to win the presidency, he did carry parts of Jewish Palm Beach, turning me into a Delphic oracle of sorts. My next fearless endorsement is Michael Bloomberg for mayor of the Big Bagel, as easy a choice to make as picking the Yankees to win their division.
Bloomberg, whom I have never met and know very little about, has one great advantage over the rest of the nonentities: he has never fed himself from the public trough, something no other candidate can claim, especially that phony busybody Mark Green. It really is elementary. When faced with a choice between a man who has never failed and others who have done nothing but fail, Bloomberg has to be the one. Forget about personalities or promises. Bloomberg's record speaks for itself. When Patton was closing in after D-Day, some of Rommel's staff tried to cheer him up by telling him that Patton had never been in a real fight. Rommel dismissed them as fools. "He has never lost," said the Field Marshal. Nor has Bloomberg.
Bloomberg the businessman must know that excessive taxation hampers economic growth. Not so the rest. Taxes to them are the proverbial manna from heaven. One thing that has remained in my mind was what took place after April 21, 1967, when some colonels executed a bloodless coup in the birthplace of selective democracy. Parliament was abolished and politicians had to go out and earn a living. Those without a private income did extremely badly. They used to come around the house and literally beg. My father, a generous man, always obliged, and never failed to remark how these people "who used to rule us can't do something everyone else seems to be doing, earn their daily bread."
After the colonels' collapse in 1974, the politicians came back with renewed arrogance. I remember writing about how none of them could hold a job in the real world, and being pilloried by a government newspaper as a result. Veritas obrium parit. I'd love to see Mark Green, or Hevesi, Vallone and Ferrer for that matter, try to make it in the real world. Bloomberg has made it, and made it big, which also means he will be incorruptible and not in hock to special interests.
New Yorkers are among the highest taxed in the land, shelling out for property taxes, commercial rent taxes, personal income taxes, sales taxes, mortgage recording taxes, property transfer taxes, utility taxes and so on. Powerful interest groups like the public-employee unions demand ever more. Green will fold quicker than you can say David Dinkins. Green, who once worked for Ramsey Clark and Gary Hart, looks to me the type who assumes the right to seize other people's wealth. The average American works nearly half the year in order to pay the state. People like Green do not see taxes as evil, but rather as a good thing. But taxation is just another form of slavery. George W. Bush understands that, and even after a modest tax reduction, the pigs in Washington are reacting with scorn and outrage.
Not so the Ancients. Greeks and Romans (like Americans until 1913) paid various kinds of duties and taxes on imported goods and slaves, or on public land rented for farming. Emergency taxes as in time of war were never imposed by the state, but paid for voluntarily. After the conquest of Macedonia by the Romans, the tax of 1 percent levied on property value for support of the army was done away with. In Greece taxation was regarded as derogatory to the dignity of a free man. The Athenians did collect taxes, but from city states that Athens had coerced into becoming tribute-paying allies. Ergo, free people do not pay taxes, slaves do.
Americans fought a war in order to do away with the system of taxation without representation. But what kind of representation does the average Joe have nowadays? None whatsoever. Party machines, lobbyists and media conglomerates control everything and everyone, no ifs or buts about it. The Ancients were free, we are not and we refuse to do anything about it.
Let's face it. There are no controls on government spending because the crooks who rule us have the power to impose limitless taxes on personal income. During the Reagan years it was proved that tax cuts gave the state more revenues through the "supply-side" approach. So what did the pigs in Washington do? They spent more than they needed in order to show that supply-side economics didn't work. As soon as revenues rose, so did the spending. It is a matter of principle of the slavemaster over the slave.
But back to Michael Bloomberg. Businessman that he is, he surely sympathizes with the backbone of capitalism, which is the small entrepreneur. If New York City taxes cripple the small businessman, he or she will go elsewhere, to the Southwest, for example. Bloomberg, of course, is no conservative, not even a Republican. His donations have been mostly to liberals, or liberal Republicans, but that's his business. As mayor he will be the only one among the candidates not to raise taxes in order to appease powerful interest groups. That's good enough for me. And one never knows. In Ancient Athens, the rich voluntarily undertook to subsidize the tragedies put on in the festivals, and to even build warships. Bloomberg, as the first billionaire mayor, might swing for a New York festival, or maybe the latest aircraft carrier called Bloomberg.
Come election day let's all send a message that we are free men.
A Just Mideast Peace
The peace process initiated at Oslo and launched by the famous Arafat-Rabin handshake is dead, but something needs to replace it. Now only intensifying violence fills the void, Palestinians firing rifles that seldom hit anyone (least of all Israeli soldiers) and an Israeli response with the full range of tanks and helicopters. Rashid Khalidi, the University of Chicago historian who spoke in Manhattan last week before a packed Foreign Policy Association forum, thinks the situation could deteriorate quickly: he recalled Israel's 1982 assault on Beirut, which left thousands dead and tens of thousands homeless, as a model for what Ariel Sharon may have in store for the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza.
The conventional wisdom is that former Israeli Prime Minister Barak gave the Palestinians an offer generous beyond reason, and the Palestinians responded with a renewed intifada. Israel is (reluctantly) now dealing with them with force?the only language they really understand. The U.S. Congress seems to buy this line: earlier this month 87 senators and almost half the House signed on to letters urging the administration to shun further talks with Arafat and begin to sever ties with the Palestinian Authority.
This time, however, Congress may be a lagging indicator of American sentiment, at least among educated people?where there is more understanding of Palestinian perspectives than ever before. I sense it at church?in the interest congregants displayed in Churches for a Middle East Peace, a Christian group favoring the sharing of Jerusalem. I was struck by how many people told me privately they were rooting for Taki in his squabble over Israel with London Spectator owner Conrad Black?something I hadn't expected and don't think would have happened five years ago.
How does one explain this? One answer is the Internet. Camille Paglia points out that many Americans now read the European papers (or, I would add, the Israeli daily Haaretz) as a matter of course, and are thus exposed to a far wider range of opinion about Israel-Palestinian relations than is commonly available in the U.S.
A second is deeper American newspaper coverage. It is true that in most major American dailies, Israel can count on a stable of columnists to support hawkish Israeli views. But the intifada?both the first and second?have led to far more substantial coverage of what the Israeli occupation means to average Palestinians. Deborah Sontag and Joel Greenberg in The New York Times, and in The Washington Post Keith Richburg and Lee Hockstader give a sense of Palestinian life under Israeli rule Americans never used to consider. One now reads, fairly regularly, what it is like to have Israeli soldiers show up at your home with a bulldozer and demolish it, or cut down olive trees that had sustained your family for generations, citing security concerns. One can read what it is like to try to reach a hospital for childbirth or some other emergency, and have to go through five Israeli checkpoints that turn a 20-mile drive into a four-hour journey. Or what it means to see the embryonic Palestinian state crisscrossed with new roads so occupants of Israel's burgeoning new settlements can whiz back and forth to Israel without having to lay eyes on a Palestinian. Or to have a wide trench dug around your village so people can't get in or out, or have it cut off from its water supply.
Such measures are not needed for the security of Israel proper, but to protect its new settlements on the occupied territories, land for which Israel has no legal claim. In fact, once the peace process began, Israel accelerated the growth of settlements?they've grown by 88,000 people, a near doubling?since 1993. Their growth, plus the roads needed to access them, the military bases needed to protect them, their expansive water needs?all this has led to a much expanded Israeli presence on the land that was to be the Palestinian state. Rashid Khalidi likens it to one person beginning to gobble up the pie at the very moment the two sides finally sit down to divide it.
The sorts of people who become settlers make peace more difficult. The Washington Post quotes Hillel Silvers, a Jewish settler from Arizona: "I think Jews are the chosen people. I think a Jewish life is worth more than an Arab life." Noam Federman, an inhabitant of the Jewish enclave in Hebron, wants Israel to deport the Palestinians to neighboring Arab countries. To conceive of the impact of such folks on Arab-Israeli relations, think of what New York would be like if Aryan Nations decided their promised land was at 125th St. and Lenox Ave., and they built a compound there and had the legal right to walk around the neighborhood armed with submachine guns. If they killed someone, they would be transported back to Birmingham 1964 for trial.
The contours of a just peace are obvious. The Palestinians should have a Palestinian state, without a constant Israeli military presence. Jerusalem should be its capital (and Israel's as well). Israel should have the right to a secure existence. If the United States doesn't want to force Israel to stop its settlements, we could at least stop subsidizing them.