I am fascinated by the controversy that has erupted over the 9/12 Freedom Works, March on Washington. To say the estimates of attendance vary wildly is to put it mildly. I've seen everything for 60K to 2 million. The MSNBC coverage makes it clear that whatever the number is, its a big one.

I'm not writing to lend weight either way, because its the dynamic that is the real fascinating issue.

If you describe the event as attended by "thousands" as Tonya Papanikolas of KSL TV did this morning in Salt Lake City, you simply affirm the large and growing opinion that the fix is in with the liberal media. The media could in fact be 'right', and no one would believe them at this point.

There are two ways to look at that of course--as chilling evidence of how perceptions can simply be immune to actual evidence; or as just desserts for a media industry that has completely abandoned their traditional responsibilities to "speak truth to power."

I suppose it depends on who you ask.

Regardless of who's right, there is no doubt about the power of the event. Republican politicians are scrambling to get in front of the parade, much like leading Democrats jumped on the anti-war bandwagon during the Bush administration.

Yet there is an important distinction between the tea party movement and the anti-war movement--one that has very important implications for the future of the country.

There is no George Soros laying astroturf for the Tea Party movement, no handlers exploiting a conservative version of Cindy Sheehan, no young people going along for the ride for free weed and the possibility of getting laid. Shockingly, the people attending these things are, well, my neighbors and friends--and they are making their own signs and footing their own bills. Moreover they are doing with in good order and cleaning up after themselves.

2,500 years ago, a thousand free men stood against hundreds of thousands slaves of Xerxes, the Persian King. While ultimately betrayed by a countryman into the hands of the Persians, they nevertheless resisted a far greater force long enough that Athens could be evacuated and the war continued until the Persians were finally defeated on the plains of Plataea.

Thermopylae was a defeat for the Greeks, but is nevertheless considered one of the greatest battles every fought, most obviously for the tactical lessons, but more importantly for what it teaches us about the resolve and power of freemen.

Some say that the Spartans, Thespians and Thebans changed the world that day. We may look back in a year or two and say the same thing about 9/12.

Who said this?

I loved President Bush. He is my No. 1 man in my life because he helped me when I really needed that help.

Who said this?

I am a Christian.

I like Obama's Auntie and Grandma. They seem feisty, decent people, albeit protective of the family's black sheep.

I got a kick out of this.

Looking back on the decade:

Ten years ago I was a very far left liberal. Probably more of a communist. And an atheist. And wanted to work for the government.

Heh.

Sounds familiar.

As an adolescent, I was indoctrinated to be a good socialist and a believing Christian. My socialist sympathies gave way to rock-ribbed conservativism, and have since moderated to a kind of practical center-right sensibility.

My relationship with God has been a lot like my marriage--love, fights, contemplation of divorce, reconciliations and ultimately settling into a deep and comfortable affection.

Looking back, I got this way because of the diversity of my experiences. The left thinks diversity is different skin colors engaged in groupthink, but real diversity consists of experiencing alternate points of view.

We used to call that an education.

I'd recommend that every young person go walkabout for two or three years. Spend some time with people of a different culture. Learn a new language, or two, or three. Read history. Read the classics. Read the Bible. Try new things. Eat strange food. Go to church. Find interesting people and ask them questions.

University is a good place to get qualified for a career, but its increasingly a lousy place to get an education. Their libraries on the other hand are Holy Temples. Spend a lot of time there.

Happy New Year.

medicalizing normal human behavior

...the treatment for sexual addiction is a form of pseudo-redemptive window dressing in which no one, especially the addict himself, really believes. But what choices does the wife have? One potential “cure” is chemical or surgical castration—no man volunteers, not to mention the wronged wife would be deprived of sex anyway, a sort of cutting off your nose to spite your face. The second choice is to view the addiction as a time-limited condition, accept the man for who he is, and wait until his desires extinguish. Let's stop pathologizing every human behavior, like male libido.

Well I'm glad someone said it. Sexual fidelity is a social construct, and thus infidelity is a social rather than medical problem. Anyone who I know that has resisted the invitation to extramarital sex, knows two things. The first is that every instinct is saying yes, yes, yes, and the second is that succumbing to temptation presents enormous professional and social complications.

What we are really talking about is poor impulse control, and it just so happens that this underlies drug and other addictions as well.

The irony is that poor impulse control is just another way of saying 'risk-taker', which happens to be something women like in men. Risk-takers lose big, but they also win big and do well in the reproductive Olympics.

Men are simple, women are complicated--they hate the beast, but love him as well.

Like you, my biggest enemy has always been myself. That enemy's more effective weapon is a temptation--an distortion field that keeps out unpleasant realities and allows us to, temporarily at least, to believe that we live in an ordered universe where our place and destiny are secure.

All dogmatism, religious, political and otherwise, is the result of this distortion field.

Nancy Pelosi has it bad.

Pelosi was also asked if the Democratic Party was in crisis, to which she responded, "I feel strong. We were very effective in passing the Obama agenda in 2009," but she said, "When you're effective, you're a target.

She is clearly not living in the same world the rest of us are.

Walking to play football near Old Street, London, I passed through Bunhill Fields, a small cemetery for 17th and 18th century Non-Conformists and Dissenters. I heard a little girl ask her father "Why do they bury people?" and he said "Well they have to put them somewhere."

I suppose it's a sign of age that I find cemeteries friendly and welcoming as I slip into something like the Hindu 3rd stage of life when "one gradually withdraws from the world, freely shares wisdom with others, and prepares for the complete renunciation of the final stage."

I prefer cemeteries which allow nature to feed off the graves, moss-eaten English country churchyards, rather than the tidy type I find in America. I also like cemeteries which offer sublime views to their guests as sometimes in France. I myself hope to end up ground to dust in a high glacier somewhere or as fishfood by a coral reef.

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

At Bunhill Fields lies John Bunyan, author of the allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come.

The images Bunyan uses in Pilgrim's Progress are but reflections of images from his own world; the strait gate is a version of the wicket gate at Elstow church, the Slough of Despond is a reflection of Squitch Fen, a wet and mossy area near his cottage in Harrowden, the Delectable Mountains are an image of the Chiltern Hills surrounding Bedfordshire. Even his characters, like the Evangelist as influenced by John Gifford, are reflections of real people. This pilgrimage was not only real for Bunyan as he lived it, but his portrait evoked this reality for his readers. Rudyard Kipling once referred to Bunyan as “the father of the novel, salvation's first Defoe.”

Another long-term resident is Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, sometimes considered the first novel in English; also of Moll Flanders and Journal of the Plague Year.

In Defoe's early life he experienced first-hand some of the most unusual occurrences in English history: in 1665, 70,000 were killed by the Great Plague of London. On top of all these catastrophes, the Great Fire of London (1666) hit Defoe's neighborhood hard, leaving only his and two other homes standing in the area. In 1667, when Defoe was probably about seven years old, a Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway via the River Thames and attacked Chatham. All of this happened before Defoe was around seven years old, and by the time he was about thirteen years old, Defoe's mother had died.

“No man in England but Defoe ever stood in the pillory and later rose to eminence among his fellow men.”

And most modest in monument, but most splendid in works is William Blake, arguably both the greatest English lyric poet and the greatest English artist. Wordsworth said:

There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.

Blake worked relentlessly on his Dante series. Eventually...he ceased working and turned to his wife, who was in tears by his bedside. Beholding her, Blake is said to have cried, "Stay Kate! Keep just as you are – I will draw your portrait – for you have ever been an angel to me." Having completed this portrait (now lost), Blake laid down his tools and began to sing hymns and verses. At six that evening, after promising his wife that he would be with her always. Blake died.