Red Baiting Tribune - and that ain't all bad. 1934 Cartoon

Given "the context" of criticism of the President, it is charming to note that now the Chicago Tribune has the full-time White House cheerleaders of the The Swamp ( Mark Silva) whirling dervishly for President Obama. Thanks to Max Weissman of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas.

Max writes:

Chicago Tribune cartoon from 1934

Here is an editorial cartoon 75 years old! Seem familiar? Most all of us know what happened and how long it took to get things straightened out. Most of those in DC weren't even born then!

Look at this cartoon from 1934, and look especially at the plan of action.
Remember the adage, "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it". Looks like we could be in for difficult times.

Mortimer Jerome Adler- Old and New Testament to a Happy Life

Eight years ago today, America lost Mortimer Adler. Mortimer Adler* challenged the world to lead a happy life based upon some understanding of the Great Ideas passed on to all of us through the history of human thought.

εὐδαιμονία -EuDaimonia ( which I can never, ever pronounce correctly) comes from two Greek words: Eu -Good,or well-being and Daimon - a person's total spirit or place in the world.

This weekend, the world snoops into the death of Michael Jackson, a terminally unhappy fifty year old pop-singer from Gary, Indiana. The late Mr. Jackson's ability to garner 98% of all news coverage is miraculous. MSNBC will report on the white smoke billowing from Neverland, or whatever Jackson Family compound not under receivership, when a new King of Pop is elected. Mortimer Adler was happy man. He was surrounded by the good works of life -in theory,output and practice.

Leading a happy life is hard work. There are no 'Atta-Boy's' for doing your job, being a good and decent citizen, loving,caring and providing for your children, living up to your obligations and making a difference while your walk on this earth.

We mistake 'enjoyment' for happiness. Michael Jackson and the attention his very unhappy life exuded is testimony to just that.

Mortimer Adler welded the Testaments of our Western Culture - he was born Jewish and died with the last rites of Roman Catholic Church. What brought Mr. Adler to the New Testament seems to have been his life-long study of a Pagan -Aristotle. From Aristotle, Adler employed the Jewish scholar Maimonides and Muslim Averroes to understand St. Thomas Aquinas. Adler was the greatest Aquinas Scholar of our time.

Rolling through the ages of thought, Adler dismissed the radical Hegelian paganism of the 19th Century, which is the basis for Progressive thought in America, forged by John Dewey and bowdlerized by political activists and tin-horn academics.

This Hegelian nonsense dismisses piety and humility in thought. It makes the individual God - it is what Bertrand Russell (an atheist by the way) called our 'Cosmic Impiety).

Respect for the gods, God, Great Ideas and better persons than ourselves is piety. Not a mealy-mouthed, pharisaic bead rattling show-off, but a person dedicated to qualities of virtue and obligation. Respect in America is as disposable as a plastic razor bought at Dollar Bill's.

Piety, which teaches how to respect ourselves, is what allows a person to be 'happy' - piety, virtue and dignity are what gives a person Authority; not alphabets after your name, scoops of cash, or the most toys, or the most ink.

Mortimer Adler reminded us that humility leads to authority.

Here are two American authorities on Mortimer J. Adler - in testimonies to Adler's welding of Man's Testament with God, given at his funeral service in St. Chrysostom Church in 2001.

Remembrances
Charles Van Doren

I met Mortimer for the first time more than seventy-five
years ago. I know the place and date exactly: Lennox Hill
Hospital, New York City, February 14, 1926. Mortimer
was a little over twenty-five years old. I was two—two days,
that is. My father and Mortimer were colleagues at Columbia,
leading a great-books seminar together. Dad had
brought Mortimer to see his first born, and Mortimer entertained me by neologizing. To neologize is to speak employing
words that you make up as you go along. The
meaning is not important; it is the sound that counts. I
loved the sound of Mortimer’s voice then, and I never
ceased to do so. At that time he spoke too fast for most
people to understand him, unless they paid very special attention,
which many people do not like to have to do.
Later, he slowed down and spoke in short, simple, direct
sentences—and wrote them too. The mellifluousness that
had charmed me as a two-day-old then began to charm
everyone else. What a speaker he was. You never had any
doubt what he was saying. But, if you disagreed, it was because
you did not quite understand. This was also true of
his books. With a single exception, every book that he
wrote after his sixtieth birthday was distinct and clear, its
language perfectly conformed to its meaning. As a reward,
almost every book was a best seller (comparatively speaking,
no bodice ripper he).
And what a teacher, too. In his autobiography, he wrote
about what he had learned from my father about leading a
seminar. And in every one of the more than two hundred
seminars Mortimer and I led together over thirty years in
Chicago, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and other places, I
always learned something important about something important—
as his friend Arthur Ruben used to say.
When I was a child, Mortimer astounded and fascinated
me. He would visit us, whenever he came to New York on
business—always with an agenda in hand of items to discuss.
I thought that was astonishing. We visited him at
Stone Pond in New Hampshire, and I was again astonished,
to see him happily splashing about with water wings
above his head, like Mickey Mouse ears. He never sneezed
just once, always three times, never more, never less. And
when I learned about his work with the Hayes Office,
which among other things ordained that a movie actress
could not show her legs more than a few inches above the
knee, and especially not the inside of her thighs, I was kerflummoxed.
(That’s not a neologism.) Since the inside of a
woman’s thigh was at time (I was thirteen) a matter of
enormous interest, I envied Mortimer. I imagined that he
had to check out all those beautiful thighs and make sure
they were not breaking the rules.
And then there came the time when I fell down, face down
in the mud, and he picked me up, brushed me off, and gave
me a job. It was the best kind of job: as he described it, one
you would do anyway, if you did not need the money. And
I did it for thirty years. First we worked together making
books for Encyclopædia Britannica. Then I, and many others,
helped him to design and edit the greatest encyclopedia
the world has ever seen. It has fallen on bad days, but it
will rise again and outlive us all—just as Mortimer’s philosophical
work will do.
I remember the first seminar we led together, nearly forty
years ago. The text was Plato’s dialogue, The Sophist. I had
read it twice or three times and struggled to get the point. It
could not be what it seemed to be. But Mortimer helped us
all to understand it was. The true sophist, Plato is saying,
cannot be trapped—if he is willing to say anything whatsoever
to win the argument. If he wants to win at all costs
and does not care what is true, and if he is adept at fending
off the truth when it is presented, the sophist will triumph,
and you will fail. I asked Mortimer after the seminar
whether he agreed. “Yes,” he said, surprisingly, “Plato is
right.” But he believed (and I do to) that this is the tragedy
of intellect. In other words, truth must be fought for, even
though one may not be able to win. Mortimer fought for
the truth all of his life, although he believed in the end that
he had been defeated. We tried to persuade him that this
was not so, but we failed. Time, merciless and remorseless,
betrayed him—as eventually it betrays us all.
And now, having said that, I want to praise him. As another
man, a great general, praised another philosopher,
long ago. The general compared that other philosopher to a
satyr. (And, indeed, there was a certain rotundity of body
and an amused, ironic look on Mortimer’s face most of the
4ime.) That general said that that other philosopher was like
Marsyas, the great flute player who challenged Apollo, and
whose melodies charmed all who heard them. But the general
said that this philosopher produced the same effect
with his words only, and did not require a flute. “When we
hear any other speaker,” the general said, addressing his
friend, “His words produce absolutely no effect on us, or
not much. Whereas, the mere fragment of you and your
words, even at second hand, and however imperfectly reported,
amaze and possess every man and woman and
make them confess that they ought not to live as they do.
Your words seem simple when we first hear them,” the
general said, “and not worthy or appropriate for their matter,
and are even laughed at, because you are always repeating
the same thing, in the same words. But when we look
within those words,” the general said to that other philosopher,
his friend, “We find that they are the only words that
have a meaning in them, abounding in fair images of virtue
and of the widest comprehension, or rather extending to
the whole duty of a good and honorable man.” Thus did
Alcibiades praise Socrates, Mortimer, and thus do I praise
you. Your words, simple, direct, and clear, still tell us we
ought not to live as we do and describe the whole duty of a
good and honorable man.
I will not end with Plato, who, although he may have
started Mortimer on the road to philosophy, did not accompany
him for long. Mortimer would refute me is I did
not mention his nearly lifelong admiration for Plato’s famous
pupil. Many times he told me, as I imagine he told
you, that he hoped to meet Aristotle in the afterlife, so he
correct his errors—and also have the opportunity to talk
about all the most important things with a man who knew,
as Mortimer did, what they were and why they were important.
Mortimer and I agreed, when St. Christopher was struck
from the list of proper saints, that the action, although
probably correct, was a pity. I myself have stubbornly per5
sisted in addressing the benevolent giant every day of my
life. You know the gentle, little prayer:
St. Christopher be my guide,
In my most need,
Go by my side.
I have modified it in various ways over the years, and I offer
you another modification now:
St. Christopher, be Mortimer’s guide,
and Aristotle’s too,
In their most need.
If they are wandering in some
dark, cold, and lonely place
and cannot find one another,
Bring them together,
Join their hands,
Shed warmth and light upon them.
Go by their side
And from time to time,
Let Thomas Aquinas come for lunch.
Mortimer, we miss you, and we need your help. We all pursue
happiness, but we do not know what it is or how to
find it. We need you to remind us that happiness is not a
moment of ecstasy or a feeling of contentment that can
come and go. Instead, happiness is the product of a whole
life—a life lived in accordance with the two kinds of virtue:
intellectual and moral. We have to use our minds and not
waste them. And we have to acquire the habit of desiring
the right things, the things we really need and are good for
us, not the wrong things, which are bad for us and for everybody
else. In addition to all that, we need to be lucky—in
our country, in our friends, and in our loves. You were
lucky in all these, dear friend, and therefore we can conclude
that yours was a happy life. It is our great loss, not
yours, that it had to end.

Remembrances
Peter NortonPast President and CEO,
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

I spent something over thirty years with The Encyclopædia
Britannica, and, of course, in that time I met many
very intelligent, very smart, very well-read intellectuals
and people generally. Unfortunately, I fell into none of
those categories. So, when I first knew that I was going to
meet Mortimer Adler, back in London in the early Sixties, I
was decidedly nervous. In fact, the feeling I really had was
one of great awe. I spent all my time trying to talk in sentences
as short as possible, so that he would not work out
quite what a nitwit was running the London company. But
we got on really quite well, and Mortimer, of course, as always,
was charming. Here was a man who had not just read
but had written more books—and was still writing at that
stage—than a lot of people have read in their lives. Now,
that’s not Britannica people, of course, because we had all
been weaned on How to Read a Book, and Mortimer had
made sure we all read the great books of the Western
world, to keep up with it. Consequently, I had quite a lot to
be nervous about.
But I am not going to talk about what Mortimer achieved,
and what he did. I am sure the others who follow me will
do that much better than I can. But I would like to talk a
little while about a Mortimer that I knew. In the early Seventies,
after I had relocated to the United States, at one of
Britannica’s international functions in Hawaii—we always
chose the best places to have our functions—sin attacked
me. In the course of an afternoon session, when I should
have been working with everybody else, I snuck out of the
meeting because there was the allure of a great and wonderful
ice-cream parlor. And I went down to the ice-cream
parlor, and I crept in very quietly to make sure there was
nobody there. And it was empty—except in the far corner
there was one very large ice-cream and chocolate concoc-
tion, out from behind which came a wonderful, very large,
ear-splitting grin on this wonderful, elfin-like face. And that
was when I met the other Mortimer.
As the years passed, Mortimer and I managed to commit all
sorts of terrible sins of gluttony, in all sorts of different
parts of the world, in ice-cream parlors and candy shops
and places like that. And what I came to find out was that
behind this austere intellectual facade was a fun-loving, excitable,
and very happy, life-loving little boy. This was the
little boy who, after having some problems in his youth
with swimming, at an age when most people had given up
swimming, succumbed to the challenge of a great marathon
swimming match at another Britannica meeting. He agreed
that he would do this, and he not only took on this challenge,
but he won it in great style and was triumphant.
(Now I must point out that the pool he swam in was approximately
fifteen feet long, and it was not more than
three feet deep, and there were at least twenty people ready
to jump in to save him if anything happened). At the end of
the course there was a bottle of champagne for the winner,
and that, of course, was the sort of incentive that Mortimer
always liked.
This was the Mortimer who not only liked to joke but
could take a joke when it was aimed at him. This was the
Mortimer who could walk with crowds and talk with kings,
and, although I cannot talk about his virtue, I can absolutely
guaranty that he never lost that common touch, that
common touch that made so many people love him, and
why so many people are here today who miss him. I shall
miss my young friend. But I have one remaining regret. I
have no doubt that, at this particular moment, Mortimer
and his God are in very deep discussions, which I would
love to be able to hear. I only hope that God is up to it.

Happy man! Thanks to Max Weissmann of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas

* Mortimer J. Adler dropped out of school at the age of fourteen (14).

Ben Stein,Mensch- UnDamaged by Celebrity and Touched With Humanity

This is a full text of Ben Stein's Last column Monday Nights at Mortons a glimpse at celebrity lifestyles in Hollywood.

Ben Stein, like my pals Mike Houlihan, Tom Roeser, Elias Crim, Steve Rhodes, John Powers and Max Weismann, is a Renaissance Man. Mr. Stein is a film maker, comic, wit, economist, professor and political analyst. More importantly, Mr. Stein is a Mensch* - a human being to the backbone! Read this fine analysis of fame, fortune and fraility.

Huge Hat Tip to Leo Hero - Robert Hylard ( Leo '44):

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is 'eonlineFINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened.
I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq . He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad . He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordinance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad .

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer co mfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York . I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.


Faith is not believing that God can.
It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein

* "Reason in man is rather like God in the world."- St. Thomas Aquinas

Click my post title for Ben's House!

Quigley and Claypool - Southern Illinois University - Early Eighties - with a Sears Catalog

An imaginative fictive turn* of the lives of the Self-absorbed:

Roosevelt University student Mike Quigley visited Forrest Claypool of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale for the summer where both worked as fry cooks for Dave's 'Every Picture Tells a Story -Donut!'

Both chaps were engaged in the study of Government and how government can best separate the wallets from citizens. They learned well. Nevertheless, the ardent Progressive scholars busied their days at Dave's dropping dough - the flour, egg and soda variety.

Their evenings were spent in mutual salvos of political tactics and strategies, and in the wistful exercises of jejune male fantasies.

The Sears Catlog arrived at the trailer Claypool.

FC- "Mike did you see how beautiful these models are in the Sears Catalog?"

MQ - " I did, Forrest, and they are not all that expensive!"

FC- "It says, 'Immediate Delivery' - Let's Order, today!"

The winsome youths pooled their coppers and silver and Rushed a Money Order to Sears Roebuck & Company Headquartered in Mike's hometown of Chicago - at the newly opened Sears Tower.

Days passed and quality Donuts were scooped from the bubbling cauldron in Dave's 'Every Picture Tells A Story -Donut' and nights melted in dreamy expectation.

Mike Quigley worked the late shift and received a Call from his buddy landlord -"Packages Here!"

After work Mike stumped his way to the Rolling Cloud Trailer Park outside of Carbondale on the road to Cobden.

Moist with anticipation, the future Cook County Board Pit Bull and U.S. Congressman shouted to his equally ambitious and horny pal, " Are the Girls Here, Yet?"

The tall and stylishly attired Progressive Cub Scout replied, " No Mike, but they should be here soon! Their clothes arrived!"

. . .and Illinois was the better for these earnest youths!

* Many thanks to Max Weissmann of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas! Also, click my post title for other ripping yarns.

Pentecost,Memorial Day and a Young Man's Death

Veni, Creator Spiritus is the hymn that Terry McEldowney will sing at today's 10:30 Mass for Sacred Heart Church at 116th & Church here on the south side.

Terry McEldowney has one of the most powerful and rich baritones in Western Civilization - he is especially poignant when remembering our Fallen Veterans and in reminding weak Catholics like me of the power of the Holy Spirit.

Max Weissmann is the Director of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas at University of Chicago. Mr. Weissmann, an architect and philosopher, helped Mortimer Adler develop the Center. Max sent me the photos posted above.

Terry and Max know loss. Terry and Max know the power of Faith. I am proud to call each man my friend.

This is the Feast of The Ascension of Christ.

Next Sunday is the Feast of the Pentecost, which memorializes the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon Mary the Mother of God and the Twelve Apostles. This might be considered a more powerful Feast than Christmas or Easter to Christians, as it recounts the sense of loss experienced by the Apostles and Christ's Mother following the Ascension of Christ. All of us lose those we love. The saddest of us are the ones who lose themselves - forget our roots, our family, our obligations and our place in God's Hands.

Tomorrow, we also celebrate the loss of men and women who have given their lives for our Country. My Dad was a seventeen year old who went to the Solomon Islands in 1943 with the 3rd Marines, and then fought at Bougainville, Guam and Iwo Jima and mopped up Guam some more until he was mustered out of the service. He is now a seventeen year old octogenarian, who has witnessed the ascension of his mother, father, brothers and sisters, friends, and daughter in law ( my wife Mary). He will be at 9AM Mass in Orland Park with his bride. He will hear Veni, Creator Spiritus

A family near me, lost their baby. Jack Callahan was a big strapping eighteen year old Marist football player who died following a seizure hours before his graduation from high school. ( click my post title for Mark Konkol's touching story)

My baby son, who worked at Di Cola's Fish Market until late last night, is sleeping. My baby girls are sleeping.

On the Pentecost, God sent his Spirit to revive us. On Memorial Day, we as a nation recall the babies who sacrificed themselves for Liberty.

Tell me God does not know what He is doing. Tell me that God not only sent the Holy Ghost, but also Terry McEldowney and Max Weissmann, outside of His Plan. Faith happens, when we let go of what is meant to return to Him according to that plan and also, when we try to make sense of the beautiful, as well as the terrible, sent as a gift to each of us.

Veni, Creator! We'll remember.

Veni, creator Spiritus
mentes tuorum visita,
imple superna gratia,
quae tu creasti pectora.

Come Holy Spirit, creator, come
from your bright heavenly throne,
come take possession of our souls
and make them all your own

Pooh! Swine Flu.