These Guys are Good, Too!

Readers write!
by Charlie Leck

Jeffrey, from California wrote about my blog that dealt with the generosity of professional golfers. He wanted me to be aware that Tiger's Woods' caddy, Steve Williams, gave one million New Zealand dollars to the Starship Children's Hospital in Auckland. Remember when caddies were guys who drank almost all night but got themselves sobered up enough during the day to lug a bag around the course in order to get a few bucks that they could spend on drinks that night? The day of the professional caddy is upon us and some of these guys really make the big bucks. So, the players are indeed good, but so are their caddies. Thanks Jeffrey!

Marv, from Massachusetts, also wanted to comment about the blog. He thought I should have mentioned that the First Tee Program is celebrating its 10^th Anniversary.

"I enjoy supporting the First Tee program both by contributing money and by volunteering. I hope people understand that the program is about more than teaching golf. We believe the program has to do with teaching life skills and setting behavior standards. We're teaching good decision making and the importance of honesty and cooperation in everything that one does."

Congratulations to the First Tee organization and to you too, Marv, for your involvement in it.

We also heard from the President of Homes for our Troops. He wanted to thank us for mentioning that organization in our blog about the Good Guys.

Knowing that so many people are reading the blog keeps me going. I have an important new piece about Classical Conservatism that is almost ready to be posted.

The Wisdom of Twain

Don't fiddle with it!
by Charlie Leck

Sometimes, somewhere, someone says it so well that you don't need to analyze it or fiddle with it.

"It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible." [Mark Twain, Eruption]

"Americans too often teach their children to despise those who hold unpopular opinions. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place - the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan." [Mark Twain]

"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them." [Mark Twain, Notebook, 1898]"

"I am plenty safe enough in his hands; I am not in any danger from that kind of a Diety. The one that I want to keep out of the reach of, is the caricature of him which one finds in the Bible. We (that one and I) could never respect each other, never get along together. I have met his superior a hundred times-- in fact I amount to that myself." [Mark Twain, in a letter to Olivia Clemens, 17 July 1889]

"To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, 'Our country, right or wrong,' and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?… An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war." [Mark Twain, Glances at History]

"So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: "Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is." Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code." [Mark Twain, A Biography]

"We easily perceive that the peoples furthest from civilization are the ones where equality between man and woman are furthest apart--and we consider this one of the signs of savagery. But we are so stupid that we can't see that we thus plainly admit that no civilization can be perfect until exact equality between man and woman is included." [Mark Twain, Notebook]

"We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove." [Mark Twain, Autobiography]

"One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed in it. They have also believed the world was flat." [Mark Twain, Notebook, 1900]

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know." [Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi]

"The motto stated a lie. If this nation has ever trusted in God, that time has gone by; for nearly half a century almost its entire trust has been in the Republican party and the dollar – mainly the dollar. I recognize that I am only making an assertion and furnishing no proof; I am sorry, but this is a habit of mine; sorry also that I am not alone in it; everybody seems to have this disease." [Mark Twain, Eruption]

"Like all the other nations, we worship money and the possessors of it- they being our aristocracy, and we have to have one." [Mark Twain, Eruption]

"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained." [Mark Twain, Notebook, 1898]

"Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass. [Mark Twain, Notebook]

"If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times." [Mark Twain, Autobiography]

"The happy phrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts, and the happy delivery of it another. [Mark Twain, Autobiography]

"The observance of Thanksgiving Day--as a function--has become general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm." [Mark Twain, Following the Equator]

"Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. ..And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man – with his mouth." [Mark Twain, What Is Man?]

"When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved." [Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper]

"What God lacks is convictions- stability of character. He ought to be a Presbyterian or a Catholic or something- not try to be everything." [Mark Twain, Notebook]

"I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell." [Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad]

"Well enough for old folks to rise early, because they have done so many mean things all their lives they can't sleep anyhow." [Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Notebook]

Mark Twain may have been the most quotable man ever to use the English language – perhaps second to Shakespeare anyway! In terms of wisdom, I think Shakespeare comes in behind him.

These Guys Are Really Good

Read this even if you're not a golfer, please!
by Charlie Leck

Professional golf gets my attention. The Professional Golf Association Tour (PGA Tour) does too. The organization runs television ads that show off the extraordinary skills of these players and closes the ads with the tag line, "These guys are good!"

Unlike the impression we get from most of the leading, well televised professional sports (baseball, basketball and football), where we read regularly of guys getting into deep do-do, golf gives you a picture of players earning big money and giving a lot of it back to help people all over the world. It seems that professional football teams each have a few scandals every year involving serious delinquency on the part of a few of their players. Michael Vick, given 25 million dollar bonus just for signing his contract is only a recent example of such heartless stupidity. Professional basketball will give us a dozen or so explosive acts of misbehavior each year. Baseball is not immune as it, too, provides us with annual blemishes on the character of its players.

Take a look at some of the top ranked players in professional golf, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh and Ernie Els. These guys are just examples of what all the super stars in the sport are doing.

Phil Mickelson
Go to the official Phil Mickelson website and you'll find it's all about the charities he and his wife, Amy, support through the foundation they've established. These are not just random organizations. The Mickelson have carefully thought through what they do. Their generosity is enormous and it shows them to be dedicated and concerned citizens of the globe. Though they are extremely diversified in their giving, they put heavy emphasis right now on supporting the troops who return from the war in great need. Phil and Amy give heavily to these programs: Homes for Our Troops; Special Operations Warrior Foundation and America Supports You. Phil has been known to win a purse of a million dollars or more at a professional golf tournament and turn the check back to the sponsor's supporting charity. "These guys are good!"

[Addition of 25 October 2007: We received a kind comment from John Gosalves, the President of Homes for Our Troops. He thanked us for putting a link up to the organization and said that Phil and Amy Mickelson are "simply put wonderful people with big hearts.”]

Ernie Els
The big guys all have official web sites. Ernie Els.Com is very well designed. If you visit the site, go right to the page about Ernie's Foundation. Though the emphasis is on golf, the whole point is Ernie's effort to introduce the game to young people who would not otherwise be able to afford to take up the game. A group of players from these people is selected each year to play in a championship against players who come out of the Tiger Woods Learning Center.

Vijay Singh
Veej, as many of the golfers call him, doesn't have an official web site. One could almost have guessed that. He's more laid back than most of the players and doesn't much like the limelight and notoriety. He's not known to be as generous as many of the players, but he did seed a foundation that bears his name with a 100 thousand dollar start-up gift.

Tiger Woods
"To whom much is given, much is expected!" Woods earns more money that any athlete on earth. Tiger earned over 10 million dollars in purse money in 2007. It's reported that his endorsements and other ventures brought him in over 100 million. You can go to the home page of the PGA Tour if you want to see what the top ten golfers earned. Mickelson was the second highest earner on the tour and he was 5 million bucks behind Tiger. In addition to the money listed there, Tiger won a 7 million dollar annuity fund for winning the year's FedEX Cup Championship. The player listed 32 on the list still took home more than 2 million dollars in prize money.

Be sure to look at the web site of the Tiger Woods Foundation and that will lead you to the slick, but impressive, 2006 Annual Report of the Tiger Woods Foundation. Together this will give you an idea of just how much Tiger gives and does. The mission of his foundation is to "…empower young people to reach their highest potential by initiating and support community-based programs that promote the health, education and welfare of all of America's children." That sounds ordinary and much like thousands of non-profits around America, but the results this foundation gets are extraordinary. Target Corporation (of Minneapolis) and the Tiger Woods Foundation have teamed up on a fascinating and successful program called Start Something. The idea was that of Tiger's father, Earl Woods, and he capitalized on Tiger's great success to talk Target into cosponsoring this extraordinary concept. The program "dares" kids to start something – something creative, productive and exciting. Scholarships or grants are given to those kids with unique and great ideas, to fund their dream. Some of the stories, like those listed on TWF, will actually bring a tear to your eye – even if you're a big tough guy.

You'll find many golfers who have set up foundations and give very heavily to the work of those foundations. A lot of these guys, like David Toms, Stuart Cink, Mark Calcavecchia and Tom Lehman are legendary for how much they help various charitable endeavors across the nation. "These guys are good!"

The Center Wins

Analyzing Hillary
by Charlie Leck

I've received several more responses about the few blogs I've written lately about the three very acceptable Democratic Party candidates for President. These responses were from people who appear to be Democrats or who want to vote with the Democrats in 2008. There continues to be the nagging feeling that Senator Clinton would be a successful President but not a successful candidate. My regular reaction is to view that concept as Republican Party propaganda. It is extraordinary that the GOP is succeeding in making people think this is true.

Consider the two propositions here. (1) Senator Clinton would be successful as a President. (2) Senator Clinton cannot get elected.

Both of the above are very possible; however, if more than a majority of the voters truly believe she can be a successful President, and wish to vote for her, that is going to show up in the national opinion polls. Once the polls were to show that Senator Clinton has a 7 or 8 point lead over her Republican opponent, the feeling of confidence that she can win will spread among those who wish to vote for her.

I am convinced that the "Hillary can't win!" theme is driven by the Republican Party. They do not want to run against her. They would much prefer to run against Senator Obama or Senator Edwards. Why?

(1) Hillary has the money! (2) Hillary has a vast volunteer army! (3) Hillary has the muscle, in terms of a blue ribbon, experienced campaign organization! (4) Hillary has Bill Clinton.

"Let me be perfectly clear," as a former President used to say before he'd tell one of his whopping lies, I am not saying that Senator Obama or Senator Edwards cannot win. They can, too. My point is that I think it would be a shame if supporters drifted away from Senator Clinton just because they begin to believe this ludicrous Republican propaganda.

Let me expand on my comment about the influence of Bill Clinton in this election. Dozens of the best political minds in the country, from both parties, call Bill Clinton one of the best political strategists of the last century. I agree with them. A couple of years ago I carefully read the former President's autobiography, My Life. As a matter of fact, I read it through twice – quickly once and for pure pleasure and then a second time in a plodding, studious fashion. Clinton adored President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. He was a young man when each of them was murdered and he grieved enormously. He modeled his political style after them and he learned his political philosophy from studying them. The keystone of his political strategy became that which the Kennedys also adopted: "The center wins!" That doesn't necessarily mean that the winning candidate has to be the most centrist. It means that he, or she, has to appear to be closest to the middle.

If you understand and accept that Senator Clinton, under advice and guidance from her husband, is following that same strategy, then you can understand some of her recent positions on issues. Other candidates are charging that she is too supportive of the President. They claim she wants to go too slowly on the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. She has modified her approach to universal health care. She is not in attack mode.

Senator Clinton is seeking the center ground. Bill Clinton's belief is that the candidate who appears closest to the center ground wins! Forgive me for repeating myself there, but it is a crucial point to understand about the current campaign among the Democratic candidates for President.

I think we will see this Clinton strategy right through the Democratic Convention. Should she win the nomination, she'll continue the procedure throughout the remainder of the year against the Republican nominee.

Here's the one way Senator Clinton could lose. Her organization is huge and is basking in money. It may become unwieldy. The head may not realize what the tail is doing. We are seeing some of that in the current issues concerning questionable financial contributions. Just how are financial contributions being accounted for? The tail may know and the head may not. That is a dangerous situation that needs to be both managed and monitored carefully. The Senator does not need to engage in corrupt campaign financing practices. She knows that! So does the head of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean. So does her campaign manager, Terry McAuliffe. There may be workers who don't care that they don't need to do it. Their excitement comes from doing it anyway!

I continue to look at all three candidates carefully. I want the one who has the biggest chance of winning in November of 2008 to get the nomination. Stay tuned.

Do not buy into the Republican propaganda about Senator Clinton's inability to win! Hillary Clinton can win!

A Catholic’s Rage

Jimmy Breslin, a great writer and a greater Catholic, rages at his Church!
by Charlie Leck

I've read a number of good and bad books I want to tell you about: Suite Francais {by Irene Nemirovsky]; Fire in the Blood [also by Nemirovsky]; Bridges of Sighs [by Richard Russo]; Q-School [by John Feinstein]; and The Second Objective [by Mark Frost]. I'll get to them in the next couple of weeks; however, right now, I've just got to write about Jimmy Breslin's book, The Church that Forgot Christ.

"Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers." [Jimmy Breslin]

Jimmy Breslin is one of the great characters of my life time. I fell for him when I read his book, The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight. What a book! I laughed my butt off. I adored the crisp, staccato style of his writing and, on top of everything, it was a remarkable story. Jimmy Breslin is an extremely witty guy. What I learned after reading a lot of him is that he is also passionate, compassionate and he says a lot of important things.

I just finished reading a book he wrote in 2004, The Church that Forgot Christ. Darn, it's really good. The shame of it is that very few of the "right people" will read what he has to say. I'll send a copy of the book to the first one-hundred Roman Catholics who promise me they will carefully read the book from cover to cover. Don't worry; it's a small book in terms of pages (239). It's a very large book in terms of importance. It's an important book for Christians other than Roman Catholics, too.

The book is written with a sense of outrage; yet it is written in Breslin's usual and wonderfully witty style. He brought tears to my eyes and had me chuckling aloud. I was reading some of it in a Panera's shop and a fellow at the next table was looking at me as if I might be a little off my rocker.

Here's some of what I learned in the book and some of what was reconfirmed for me about Jimmy Breslin. He's an awfully good man. He loves his town (New York). He has great compassion for the common guy and the person down on his or her luck. He is a man of faith and his Christ means a great deal to him. He knows more about Christ that the average guy. He is furious at his Church (the Roman Catholic Church) for where it has ended up in this world. He figures a guy can just take so much. He is in a furious struggle with two people who reside within him – the boy taught by nuns to be a good Catholic and man who is outraged at the untruthfulness of the leaders of his Church.

"Do I keep on in a church that I mistrust or remain outside and follow a religion I love?

In his prologue he says: "I qualify for the rank of bishop because I'm not a pedophile."

"In this match between Bishop Breslin and his religion and the old, established church, let me tell you something: The Other Guys Are the Joke.

And as bishop, I called my friend Danny Collins up one day and told him that he was the auxiliary bishop. He was extraordinarily qualified. Certainly, he is no pedophile or pimp. Let's get that out of the way. He does know Latin and Greek.

'Do we have vestments? I have no money for wardrobes,' he said.

'No, Christ never had them.'

'Good. You're not going to have us swinging a can of incense around?'

'Never.'…

'Let people listen to them [clergy] and then listen to me. I know what religion has to do,' I said. 'You have to have women priests. And women from the outside, not restricted to nuns. Too many nuns need to have the past shaken out of them. All they do is bow to priests. A parish is a great job for a man and wife. Great housing. Sermons on Sunday. Major sermons. I'll write them with such spirit that they'll ring
through the ages to come of Catholicism in America. The constituent work all week is the work of the Lord. You serve the poor, not the country clubs. Turn your parish into a church following the life of Christ.'

I finished with my favorite expletive: 'Beautiful. You mean to tell me that I don't have a better idea than the people in Rome do?' [Jimmy Breslin: The Church that Forgot Christ]

The book deals a great deal with the crisis of pedophilia among Catholic clergy. Breslin has followed this issue carefully, including a trip to Rome to cover the papal conference about the problem in the American church. Breslin was close to it and couldn't smell it out. His daughter had even tried to tell him about it – and the pain boys she knew were going through as a result of it – but he wasn't listening back then because it was all too impossible within the Church he loved.

"Woe is to he who does harm to a child. It is better that he ties a millstone around his neck and jumps off a cliff." [Luke 17:2]

As the crisis grew and the numbers of priests involved exploded, Breslin began withdrawing. He joined others who believed they could simply do "Mass right here on a card table." Many swore they would never go into "one of those buildings" again. But, he couldn't shake the Church completely. It was a sense of habit. On Sunday mornings he was drawn. The nuns had taught him it was a mortal sin to miss mass. Now they say it's not a sin. Nevertheless, mass is a part of the very visceral innards of Jimmy Breslin. It might be tedious and boring, and the homilies the product of lazy priests, but it was what one did on Sunday morning.

"If I had one shot a delivering a sermon, I would have them rising from the pews and interrupting me with crescendo of applause and shouts of 'Good boy, Bishop Breslin!' for I would not come out there in the usual style of priests, who put ideas in big letters on index cards and then drone on for a half hour. I would have a tightly scripted and rehearsed sermon that would be on something new and vital…. My sermons would be of the moment, with names and addresses of the poor who are suffering, and with finger-pointing, shouting at the parishioners that it is their responsibility before their god to help these people." [Jimmy Breslin: The Church that Forgot Christ]

The litany of sexual abuses by priests that Breslin reports in his book seems to have no conclusion. Estimates run as high as 25,000 cases around the nation. So many Bishops and Archbishops are tainted by either their own involvement or their failure to act against priests who they knew where guilty. The book would be shocking if that is all it was about, but it would not necessarily be good. The book is good because it deals with a bigger matter; and that is that this Church to which he gave his complete and unquestioning faith has simply forgotten Christ. They know nothing of the Christ who commanded his disciples to care for the needy, the diseased and the broken of spirit. The Church is more interested in vestments and things that glitter. Where has it led? Breslin recites the alarming statistics.

"The Brooklyn diocese says there are 187 priests for 217 parishes. The priests are at least aging… In the nation only one-third of the Catholic parishes, once the battleships of the religion, have priests. Around the world, one parish in six has a priest. In the seminaries around New York, there are perhaps a half dozen hopeful priests in training… Now, the religion withers and the sexual crimes enrage. The dismissal of them as merely unfortunate transgressions, and the cover-up and obstruction by people running the church causes underground fires that maybe never can be extinguished." [Jimmy Breslin: The Church that Forgot Christ]

Breslin has some genuine praise for some of the priests of the Church. He singles out a few who understood Christ and model their lives and their service after their Lord. These, Breslin says, are true disciples. The Church's problem is that there are so few of them. As word leaked out that Breslin was working on this book, he was inundated with calls from parishioners who wanted to talk to him about the horrible sins of a priest. The overwhelming number of priests who had been involved in these sexual abuses of children all over America is bad enough, but Breslin's real rage is reserved for the hierarchy of the Church who looked the other way and moved priests about from one parish to another to try to hide them from the accusations of parents. So many bishops and archbishops were involved in the deception. Breslin's detailed accounts of this deception and the strategies used by these leaders of the Church are revolting. These leaders have gone unpunished. May their judgment days be terrible indeed.

Other sins of the Church do not escape Breslin's attention. The sale of grave plots is one of the largest money making tools the Church has. This institution of Christ is ruthless in demanding payment for plots and it is a very cold day in hell when a poor person gets by without paying the appropriate costs, even if it means going into significant debt to do it. Breslin explains the racket and how lucrative it is. He gives plenty of attention to the palatial mansions of the archbishops and cardinals as well. He takes his readers on a trip to Long Island to see the work that was done to turn a rectory into a mansion for the Bishop of Long Island. The price tag would exceed 5 million dollars. Of course, a group of nuns had to be removed from the building in order to allow for its remodeling into the bishop's palace. Christ, Breslin reminds us, did not wear gold rings or robes bedecked in golden thread or fancy head wear or Italian leather slippers. He wore the humble clothing of a working man.

"By tradition, as you get older you draw closer to the Church. It looks like I am going the other way." [Jimmy Breslin: The Church that Forgot Christ]

The Church's anti-abortion policy also comes under Breslin's magnifying glass. He feels the Church is obsessed with the subject, making it the number one concern in all its work. This at a time when serious issues of poverty and homelessness go pretty much unaddressed except by a few abnormally ambitious parishes.

And Breslin is an advocate of ending the celibacy of priests. Some would like to claim that sexual abuse is strictly an American phenomenon. That is silly. The lid is simply being held on more tightly in most other parts of the world. Here and there, however, cases work their way into the news and into the justice systems. Celibacy could be a large part of the problem. The sad thing about the Roman Catholic Church is that it is not willing to openly and honestly look at the possibility. It ignores the issue.

Here's a Salon.Com review of Breslin's book.
Andrew O'Hehir says: "New York's greatest living newspaper columnist says the Catholic Church, corrupted by sexual scandal and creeping right-wing ideology, is dying out in America. And he sheds no tears."

Thinking about Malcolm X

It's all about reading!
by Charlie Leck

A long, long time ago, when I was but a teenager, a cousin of mine, someone two years younger than I, explained to me the most important thing I'd need to know about education. "If you can read well, you can learn anything and nothing will stop you from learning!" I went along for years, through high school and college, remembering what my dear cousin said, but not really achieving that ability to read. I was a very average student. In graduate school, the finest teacher I ever encountered taught me how to read. Together we would mentally tear a book apart and understand every phase of it, beginning with the usually obvious presuppositions of the writer and then going on to clearly understanding its thesis and objectives. Learning to read scholarly works this way translated itself easily to reading for pleasure. I have a couple of books that my cousin gave me – one when I was a teenager and another while I was in in college – with which I was unable to grapple back then. These days I find it pleasant to pull them from the shelf to read them and see how they are really just child's play. My dear cousin was so correct!

It's a pity if you haven't read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It is required reading, you know, for this terribly difficult class we are taking – the one call "life." Do not proceed further in this class until you have tackled this extraordinary book. You will not be given a passing grade by this instructor unless you have read and understood this book written by Malcolm X in collaboration with Alex Haley.

I am not going to dissect the book here and now, but you can count on this in an upcoming blog. Right now, I want to write about the importance of reading and the power that it unleashes. A teacher can teach a student nothing more important than how to read a book carefully and thoroughly. One of our children is right now teaching 8^th grade English in a school in Harlem (NY) and I want her to understand this – she can teach her students nothing more valuable than how to read a book.

Malcolm X was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1925. His father died when he was six and his mother was sent to a mental institution when he was twelve. The siblings were split up and sent to various foster homes. Malcolm ended up in Harlem when he was only seventeen. With no real tools of production, he slipped smoothly into a life of crime – prostitution, drugs and burglary. By the time he was nineteen he was in prison, sentenced to spend ten years there. It was the beginning of a new life for him there and it changed him thoroughly and fundamentally.

What changed him? Yes! You ask the best questions!

It was reading that changed this young man. Reading took him from being an uneducated fool to the level of absolute brilliance. "On the street," he said, "I had been the most articulate hustler out there, but now, trying to write simple English, I not only wasn't articulate, I wasn't even functional!" He turned to books, hoping to learn how to write. He discovered that virtually every sentence in every book that he tried to read contained some word or phrase that he could not comprehend. He said that they may as well have been written in Chinese. Skipping the words he did not know caused him to not understand anything he read. So, he began reading with a dictionary at his side, copying down every single word or phrase he did not understand and working on it until he did understand. He felt that he was learning so much that he decided to copy the entire dictionary – at least every single word that he did not understand. He wrote them down and studied each of them until he understood the word and its meanings completely.

Naturally, Malcom X was then able to turn to books. He read them and understood them and a huge, broad door was opened to him and he walked through it. He spent his time in prison reading and reading. He read history, sociology, law and sciences. He became fascinated with books about black civilization. He read about Mahatma Ghandi. He read about the colonization of Africa and about politics, history and culture in Asia. He read everything about American slavery that he could get his hands on. He read about philosophy and psychology. "I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me," he once said to Alex Haley. "I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life."

In 1948 he was transferred to a prison in Massachusetts that had a spectacular library. It was as if it was ordained that he should be there. Between then and his release in 1952, he devoured everything.

It was as a result of his reading in prison that he converted to the Muslim faith and he became the leading spokesman in America for Black Muslims. He was a tough leader and brilliant student of community organization. He eventually parted with the Black Muslim organization and formed a group of his own: the Organization for Afro-American Unity. We can read a great deal about his political clashes and his community organization victories, but he was most proud of the fact that he became a teacher and taught a regular class on reading for young people. "Read everything! You never know where you're going to get an idea!"

I close with this quotation from Malcolm X: "My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."

Much of the material cited in this blog comes from Malcolm X on Education: the encyclopedia of informal education [http://www.infed.org/thinkers/malcolm.htm] ©Barry Burke, 2004

Keep Your Eyes on Russia

Vladimir Putin is gathering awesome power!
by Charlie Leck

Just when we finally thought Russia might be a friendly companion nation in the struggle for world peace and justice, there are signs of trouble that threaten the development of democracy in that nation. These developments are worth keeping our eyes on.

An election for parliamentary representatives is coming up in December and it will not be a fair one. The balloting procedure is too closely controlled by Vladimir Putin, the nation's incredibly powerful and unchecked President. Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the hopeful members of Parliament who was elected soon after the fall of the old Soviet Union, calls the process happening now "Selection Before the Election." Putin has the power to select which political parties are legitimate and which are not. It is not like a difficult chess game for him to figure out how to make the proper moves; rather it's less complex than Chinese checkers.

The ballot is so rigged this time that major players in Russia's democracy movement, including Ryzhkov, will lose. Sergei Mironov, a former staunch support of Putin, is now suggesting that the nation is looking like a certain forerunner well-know to all elderly Russians.

Anatoly Yermolin, who has been a significant opponent of Putin's ever expanding power, will lose. So will Viktor Pokhmelkin, who has been a consistent voice against corruption in law enforcement. Putin is about to sweep away the last vestiges of opposition. The election rules he developed are too favorable to the person in control. He has a firm grip on the Russian news media and over all the agencies of government.

United Russia, the party created by Putin will sweep into victory and sweep out nearly all significant opposition.

Mironov is quoted by the NY Times as saying: "I think the television broadcasts from the United Russia convention remind a lot of people of long-forgotten pictures from the era of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union."

Now, here's what may be happening. Constitutionally, Putin cannot run again next year. He's already served two consecutive terms. If the base of power gets transferred to his political party, however, Putin could become its powerful chairman and still essentially run the country. In such a position, and possibly combining it with the Prime Minister's position, Putin would become far more powerful than the next President of Russia.

Make no mistake! Russia's economy is relatively strong right now. Russia is freer than it was under communism. Many Russians credit Putin for this and his approval rating is very high. Yet, the incredible height and force of power that he is creating in one office of government is frighteningly reminiscent of past Soviet history.

What has all this to do with America and with you and me? Good question. I'm proud of you for asking. For almost seven years we have had an administration manipulating the strings of government that has essentially divorced itself from foreign policy issues. It has had no influence over Russian government and has not even been able to suggest more favorable and democratic policy. We have had no allies that we could rally as a counter-point to Putin's policy.

America loves to call itself the most powerful nation on the globe. What makes for power? History has shown us that it is far more than the single element of military dominance. Our problem is a current occupant of the White House who does not read and does not understand history.

One can only hope that Americans are learning just how incredibly powerful the individual vote is in determining the future history of our nation and that of many others. Our next President must be capable in matters of foreign policy. We must never again elect a dummy to that great office.