Loaves and Fishes ride to your left; Walk on Water Pavilion to your right; wear your gas mask

Let's agree that the incipient war in the Middle East is not funny.

But this may be:

Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel (February 2006) reports, "The ministry of tourism in Israel recently approved plans to set aside 125 acres to become a Holy Land theme park on the northern end of the Sea of Galilee."

Just at the moment, I cannot well envision Dad turning to Mom and saying, "Say, hon, why don't we give the kids a treat and take them to HolyLandland for the holidays?"

But my precognition doesn't have to work overtime to foresee the New York Times headline: "Tourists at HolyLandland Complain of Noise from Missile Strikes, Long Lines for First Aid." Editorial: "Stop the Cycle of Violence: Both Sides (But Especially Israel) Must Show Restraint in the Theme Park War."

This is not investment advice. Read the prospectus carefully before sending money.

Britain's dying nationhood

The State, which since the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) has been the most important and most characteristic of all modern institutions, is dying. … Inside their borders, it seems that many states will soon no longer be able to protect the political, military, economic, social, and cultural life of their citizens. These developments may lead to upheavals as profound as those that took humanity out of the Middle Ages and into the Modern World.

Martin van Creveld, "The Fate of the State" (1996)

Hardly more than 60 years after it withstood the punishment of the Blitz and went on to play a large role in defeating the Third Reich, today's United Kingdom seems more and more like a nation that exists only on paper.

Its answer to domestic terrorism perpetrated on behalf of Islam has been to define opposition to Muslim political goals as "hate speech" and to try to overcome the distrust of its Muslim citizens. Even more than the United States, Britain has no control over its borders. Every year, it tries to absorb still more dubious asylum seekers and economic refugees, many of them Muslims, into its generous social welfare system. European correspondent Fjordman writes in Dhimmi Watch:

Britain's population is projected to rise by more than seven million in the next 25 years. The predictions were even greater than those made by the Migrationwatch UK think-tank, whose forecasts had been dismissed in the past as alarmist. Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migrationwatch, said the figures were '"staggering." "They totally demolish the Government's claim that it has a 'managed migration' policy. In fact they show that immigration into the UK is out of control." British citizenship has been granted to nearly one million foreign nationals since Labour and Tony Blair came to power in 1997. "Grants of citizenship have quadrupled under the present Government. This is a direct result of their 'no limits' immigration policy." "Immigration on this scale is changing the nature of our society without public consent. It is no longer acceptable." …

"Asian youths," a British euphemism for Pakistanis and Muslims from South Asia, in parts of Oldham are trying to create no-go areas for white people. One of them told: "There are signs all around saying whites enter at your risk. It's a matter of revenge." However, it's not just the white natives that are targets of Muslim violence, but other non-Muslims, too. A report on Hindus being driven out of the English city of Bradford by young Muslims was described by some Hindus as "ethnic cleansing." Some of them want to leave the city to escape the "Talibanization of Bradford."

A line that should never be crossed has been. During the Muhammed Cartoon Festival, some British Muslims "protested" by carrying signs urging that their countrymen who were thought to have insulted the Prophet be beheaded. The British state's only response was to drive off and in some cases arrest other Britons protesting this incitement to murder. The Establishment behaved like true dhimmis, in a cowardly pretense that they were upholding free speech. A country that cannot distinguish between a political argument and threats of atrocity is a country that has given up, that knows no way of preserving order short of surrender.

But for the British people, the most immediate evidence that their nation is dissolving is that it can no longer protect them against crime. Britain now has the highest rates of violent crime in Europe, in most categories higher than the United States. The Sunday Telegraph assigned a reporter to catalog "a week in lawless Britain."

There was nothing extraordinary about it — just a typical seven-day period in which children were killed, old women mugged, youths stabbed, young women raped. We have space to list only around 100 of the worst cases.

Interposing the force of the state on behalf of the innocent against predators is the most basic duty of any political unit that wants to call itself a nation; the legal government must in theory, and to a large extent in reality, have a monopoly on violence. But that is no longer true of Britain, which in its dysfunctional social environment more and more resembles an African country-in-name-only where daily life is at the mercy of bandits.

That's particularly hard on a people who have been conditioned for several generations to expect the government to solve every problem and take care of them. When the government fails, neither it nor the citizens it is supposed to watch over know what to do. Danger and oppression are met with yet more "programmes" and "schemes" on the government's part, and continued passivity by the populace.

I don't enjoy pointing these things out. There is much about the British past, and some aspects of its present, that I like and appreciate. Britain's many good people deserve better. The saddest thing is not that their state has failed them, but that they have failed themselves.

Richard Strauss: Four Last Songs

You are Richard Strauss, and it's 1948. You're one of the great composers of the 20th century, yet you remember well the 19th and its spirit.

Gone. All gone. Devastated.

Still you remember the candlelight and elegance and the waltzes and the women in their ball gowns with the V-necklines and pearls.

Gone. Your Europe, and especially Germany, has been converted to husks of buildings by the American blockbuster bombs and the British incendiaries. The bodies and parts of bodies have been collected and removed, mostly.

You were never quite of your time, though. You shocked your contemporaries before the Great War with your operas Elektra and Salome. Now you are not of your time again, but in an opposite way. You knew Europe before the Apocalypse. Now, as vitality ebbs from you, you want to bear witness to a better age.

But you, too, were a bit player in the Apocalypse. You didn't have a lot of time for that Herr Hitler, an Austrian-Bavarian yob, but although he was rough around the edges, he wasn't totally uncultured. He appreciated Beethoven and Bruckner. So to save yourself some bother, you agreed to stay on in what the brown shirts called the "Motherland" and conduct at Beyreuth.

The Allied occupying forces, who have spent millions of lives to overcome the evil regime you made your peace with, are understandably not inclined to take your musical brilliance into account in their de-Nazification program. They tell you that if you want to conduct again you can go to hell and wait.

You understand hell but you don't have time to wait. Yet here you are, and if your soul is corroded, you are still Richard Strauss, artist. Not even the end of your world has erased Rosenkavalier and more from memory.

Memory. The ultimate seductress, she calls. Yes. Now, yes.

So, living past the age that kindled your flame, you bear witness. You write Four Last Songs. Frühling (Spring), September, Beim Schlafengehen (Going to Sleep) and Im Abendrot (at sunset), to texts by Hermann Hesse and Joseph von Eichendorf. The last notes of the musical Romantic Era until the seas grow tired and the mountains kneel on the plain.

They are as beautiful as anything earthly can be.

And those who have ears to hear, still do. Your last songs have been recorded by great sopranos like Kirsten Flagstad, Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, Gundula Janowitz, Kiri te Kanawa. Your world is gone but not lost. Thank you, Richard Strauss.

You can sleep now.

Tancredo: for president?

"People tell me I look taller on radio."

That's the first remark by Tom Tancredo in a radio show interview by host Jim Bohannon, which was also taped and broadcast yesterday on Book TV (the weekend avatar of CSPAN 2).

By which I take it he is shorter than average. I wouldn't know, because, while I have of course read quite a few print media and internet reports about Tancredo, I'd never seen him on the tube.

I'm not given to idolizing politicians. You can take it to the bank that they all have clay feet. Moreover, even the president of the United States is not an absolute dictator (a source of much regret to Jorge W. Bush-Gonzales). Even if your ideal politico wins, that doesn't mean the campaign promises win. A good deal of the perpetual silliness surrounding elections in this country has to do with the naive idea that if you just elect "the right man" (or woman) a new, Arcadian era of peace, prosperity, and cheap gas prices will ensue. So you get these ridiculous worshipful crusades for the likes of Eugene McCarthy, Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, and Howard Dean.

Nevertheless, Tom Tancredo seems to me spot-on in his unwavering stand for enforcing existing immigration laws, one of the two issues that will determine whether the United States will survive in anything like its historic form. On the other -- the response to Muslim aggression -- I am not aware of much that he's said, but what little he has suggests that he is realistic.

Not only is he right on illegal immigration, he isn't wishy-washy about it. And, given that his view has made him a public enemy in so-called progressive quarters, and widely denounced in the most vile terms, you can't help but acknowledge that he has guts in sticking to his principles.

Does he have what it takes to be a presidential candidate in '08, and if so, to win the general election? Not being by nature a political person, I don't claim to be any good at the kind of handicapping on which newspaper pundits rest their dubious reputations. That said, if Bizarro Bush-Gonzales continues for the next two years ignoring the overwhelming will of the people on immigration and promoting the combination of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada in a North American Union (as he is reported to be working toward), the Republican party wheelhorses just might go for Tancredo to save their skins.

I watched for clues about what kind of presidential candidate Tancredo would make. So many factors, aside from political positions, matter.

He remained seated in the guest's chair in the radio control room, so I still don't know his vertical dimension. He is neither handsome nor ugly, an asset in politics, since so many people can identify with it. The voice is pleasing; he stayed calm during the show and didn't rise to the bait under hostile questioning from several listeners. Good again.

Still, Bohannon was an acknowledged sympathizer, so there was no way to tell whether Tancredo would puddle if faced by an hour or more of loaded questions from the mainstream media. Needless to say, the MSM would respond to a Tancredo candidacy with a viciousness it used to reserve for Hitler or Mussolini. It would investigate him with a thoroughness that would do a forensic lab proud, and if he has ever gotten a speeding ticket, it would be on the front page of The New York Times.

I have a feeling Tancredo would come out of a media beating looking good. For one thing, he's heard all the attacks already a hundred times. (Not only in the American media; he remarked that he has visited Mexico often, and been used for target practice by the local press.) His answers have been polished by abrasion over the years. As his opening comment indicates, he is capable of a humorous quip, and unlike, say, -- who was that guy the Dems nominated in '04? Yes, him -- he can deliver it in a way that at least sounds spontaneous.

He hasn't asked for it yet, but so far, Tancredo has my vote.

Smoke gets in your lies

I'd always suspected that the issue of smoking in public places had escaped whatever gravitational pull rationality still exerts. But reading a newspaper piece recently about some town in California which has made smoking on the beach illegal has eliminated all doubt. (Sorry, no link because at the time I hadn't thought to blog about it and so didn't bookmark the article.)

I haven't smoked in 20 years. No, wait: a couple of years ago, during a visit to Miami's Little Havana district, perhaps the only place in the United States where you can do so without fear of incurring the Evil Eye, I smoked a cigar in one of those little store-front factories where they're rolled. Two other blokes were there doing the same, and it was as if we were members of a secret lodge indulging a Forbidden Pleasure. Hugely enjoyable.

As I say, that was a one-off experience. I have no desire to be a habitual smoker. But the holy fanaticism of the anti-smoking crusaders makes me sick. They have taken the issue so far beyond whatever legitimate health concerns there may be that they obviously operate from other, unstated motivations. Latching onto and sponsoring junk science at every turn, the smoke eradicator Warriors of God are themselves addicts: they're hooked on control.

True, the issues involved — not only in smoking itself but the Dictatorship of Virtue behind its prohibition — are complicated. Which is why I didn't intend to do a post; frankly, I just don't have the time or energy to go into it all. What changed my mind was running across an extraordinarily well argued essay on the subject by, of all people, the musician Joe Jackson. (Tip of the hat: Luxurious Misery.)

Regardless of how you personally feel about smoke, give Joe a few minutes of your time. He dishes the whole subject in all its ramifications, including those of health tyranny, elitist scorn for individual choice, and lying statistics.

New York's Morganatic marriage

The J.P. Morgan Library and Museum used to be one of those little-visited gems that can remain off the track in a huge city full of famous attractions like New York. Originally part of the Manhattan mansion of the Wall Street millionaire -- I suppose billionaire in today's terms -- J.P. Morgan, it was opened to a largely indifferent public by J.P.'s son, known as Jack.

With real estate taxes what they are today, though, no institution can afford to pass up maxing out on the arty visitor's coin. Like the Frick Art Museum in Manhattan, which was also once a civilized and quiet refuge that has lately courted the mass market with blockbuster exhibits, the Morgan has gone big time. Its principal drawing card at the moment for many is the new architectural addition by designer du jour Renzo Piano.

Piano's expansion space could hardly be more different than the original two rooms, Morgan's Library and study, as well as the hallway between them. The new Morgan is a marriage of incompatible extremes.

Original J.P. Morgan Library

The original library with its nearly floor-to-ceiling rare books and early editions, as well as the hallway, are brilliant evocations of the Italian Renaissance, designed in the early 20th century by the famous firm of McKim, Mead and White. Like so much of the 16th century architecture they are modeled after, they balance splendor with historical and mythological detail that helps make them human and accessible. Morgan's study is a surprisingly intimate space, containing little but a desk, old paintings on the walls and objets d'art on a shelf that runs around the room. Such furnishing as there is, is dark and restrained. The effect of the whole room is old wordly and restrained, far from the neo-Baroque frou-frou decor favored by most of the 19th century rich.

Both the library and study are comfortable rooms, not cold and intimidating: you can imagine sitting in either and actually reading or studying the old books and artistic treasures they hold. I don't know anything about J.P. Morgan, but no doubt his wealth was earned for him in part by exploitation. And surely the one-upmanship of collecting played a part in his acquisitions -- not even a dedicated scholar could possibly read all those books and manuscripts in a lifetime. For all that, when visiting his quarters, you get the impression that the man was a genuine connoisseur.

The new addition, opened just this past April, had the task of integrating the study, library, and hall; a 1920s annex; and Jack's townhouse. It added exhibition rooms and provided space for the facilities no modern arts complex can do without: a restaurant, performance hall, and of course a gift shop.

Piano's architectural contribution is ... is ... well, let's start with a picture of the outside entrance and the new central court:

Now, it's true that photographs don't do justice to architecture, but these two photos save me some explaining.

Piano's extension of the Morgan obviously couldn't have been in the Renaissance Revival style as the original -- neither the money nor, probably, the workmanship would have been available to replicate it. That isn't the issue. What bugs me is that Piano and the directors who hired him seem to have made no effort at compatibility. The spirit of the new section rejects the old.

A couple of gushing newspaper articles I read make a big deal out of the way light is used as an architectural element in Piano's design. In other words, he uses a lot of glass. (I wonder how impressive the light will be next winter when it's gray outside.) But the original wing deliberately doesn't admit external light. It chooses not to bring the outdoors indoors. The library and study were created in the spirit of introversion. They are places to read, contemplate, and think. Piano's contribution rejects that sensibility -- it's made for high-class, adult mall rats, not scholars or philosophers.

Piano's glass is empty.

It would have been possible to design a fully contemporary expansion that would complement the original rooms, using darker, richly colored materials, updating Renaissance design elements. Piano's architecture isn't even contemporary. The closest thing you can compare it to is Swedish modern, circa 1950, a refinement of the Bauhaus. Piano has given us severe straight lines, blond wood, and -- are you ready for this? -- glass enclosed elevators! I'll bet one of these days, Radisson and Westin hotels will be copying that idea!

The entrance is now from Madison Avenue into the late-neo-Sauna court, which takes center stage. J.P. Morgan's glorious rooms are out of the view, their entrance tucked away in a far corner. Maybe some visitors never even discover them.

The best I can say for the Piano contribution is that it's tasteful, in a bland, unsurprising way. New Yorkers have an expression to indicate casual disdain: "Eh." I couldn't say it better.

On a purely functional level, the renovation is successful. It's opened up plenty of new fiendishly sterile, well-lighted space for the exhibits; the library no longer is forced to house display cases. And you can now walk inside the study, which was formerly roped off, a definite improvement.

None of my complaints should discourage you from visiting the Morgan if you are interested in its illuminated manuscripts and early books, including transitionary books that were typeset but still had hand-painted illustrations and initials. The collection is breathtaking. There is nothing like an illuminated manuscript to give you an exact idea of the decorative ideal of the Middle Ages (and in a few exhibits on display, even earlier). Paintings that old have inevitably faded with time or been restored, but the inks of almost a millennium ago appear to be perfectly preserved, as though the illuminations were painted last week. You cannot doubt that the artists and craftsmen of the monasteries and workshops, as well as their ecclesiastical and noble patrons, were in love with glowing color. The angels with multiply tinted, iridescent wings were part of their lives.