Heidegger

Quartet of ladies shows where we’re headed
 http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/14952…)
November 26, 2006
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist

Have you seen a movie called ‘’Four Jills In A Jeep'’? Don’t worry, it’s
not at the multiplex. It came out in 1944. A wartime movie, about the
contribution of the gals to the big existential struggle. Great title,
and downhill after that. This column is, metaphorically speaking, four
Jills in a jeep: It’s about a quartet of ladies who provide useful
glimpses of where we’re heading.

The first is Fatma An-Najar, a 64-year-old grandmother who had a
livelier Thanksgiving than most grandmas. She marked the occasion by
self-detonating in the town of Jebaliya, and, although all she had to
show for splattering body parts over the neighborhood were three
“lightly wounded” Israeli soldiers, she will have an honored place in
the pantheon of Palestinian heroes. She was, according to the official
statistician from the Hamas Book Of Records, the oldest Palestinian
suicide bomber ever. And, naturally, her family’s pleased as punch.

“We are really happy,” her son Zuheir told Agence France-Presse. “She
told us last night that she would do a suicide operation. She prepared
her clothes for that operation, and we are proud. ‘I don’t want
anything, only to die a martyr.’ That’s what she said.”

Awww, bless the sweet l’il ol’ biddy. She wouldn’t have wanted to die a
long lingering death in some old folks’ home. This is the way she wanted
to go: quick and painless, except for any Zionists in the immediate
vicinity.

An-Najar gave birth to her first child at the age of 12. She had eight
others. She had 41 grandchildren. Keep that family tree in mind. By
contrast, in Spain, a 64-year old woman will have maybe one grandchild.
That’s four grandparents, one grandchild: a family tree with no
branches.

Which brings me to our second Jill: the new Presiding Bishop of the
Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to run a
national division of the Anglican Communion. Bishop Kate gave an
interview to the New York Times revealing what passes for orthodoxy in
this most flexible of faiths. She was asked a simple enough question:
“How many members of the Episcopal Church are there?”

“About 2.2 million,” replied the presiding bishop. “It used to be larger
percentage-wise, but Episcopalians tend to be better educated and tend
to reproduce at lower rates than other denominations.”

This was a bit of a jaw-dropper even for a New York Times hackette, so,
with vague memories of God saying something about going forth and
multiplying floating around the back of her head, a bewildered Deborah
Solomon said: “Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their
ranks by having children?”

“No,” agreed Bishop Kate. “It’s probably the opposite. We encourage
people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more
than their portion.”

Now, that may or may not be a great idea, but it’s nothing to do with
Christianity, only for eco-cultists like Al Gore. If Bishop Kate were an
Episcogorian, a member of the Alglican Communion, an elder of the Church
of Latter-Day Chads, this would be an unremarkable statement. But, even
in their vigorous embrace of gay bishoprics and all the rest, I don’t
recall the Episcopalians formally embracing the strategy that worked out
so swell for the Shakers and enshrining a disapproval of reproduction at
the heart of their doctrine.

Which brings me to our third Jill in the jeep: Scarlett Johansson. Like
every other sad middle-aged loser guy, I fell in love with Scarlett’s
fetchingly pert bottom in the opening of ‘’Lost In Translation,'’ and it
pains me to discover she’s no different from Bishop Kate’s generation
when it comes to being in thrall to the cobwebbed pieties of the 1960s.
In a bit of light Bush-bashing the other day, she attacked the president
for his opposition to “sex education.” If he had his way, she said,
“every woman would have six children and we wouldn’t be able to have
abortions.” Whereas Scarlett is so “socially aware” (as she puts it) she
gets tested for HIV twice a year.

Well, yes. If “sex education” is about knowing which concrete condom is
less likely to disintegrate during the livelier forms of penetrative
intercourse, then getting an AIDS test every few months may well be a
sign that you’re a Ph.D. (Doctor of Phenomenal horniness). But, if “sex
education” means an understanding of sexuality as anything other than an
act of transient self-expression, then Scarlett is talking through that
famously cute butt.

Here’s the question for Bishop Kate: If Fatma An-Najar has 41
grandchildren and a responsible “better educated” Episcopalian has one
or two, into whose hands are we delivering “the stewardship of the
earth”? If your crowd isn’t around in any numbers, how much influence
can they have in shaping the future?

Well, the Episcopal head honcho and even Scarlett Johansson are not the
most powerful figures in the world, so let’s usher on our fourth Jill:
Condoleezza Rice.

“The great majority of Palestinian people,” said the secretary of state
to Cal Thomas the other day, “they just want a better life. This is an
educated population. I mean, they have a kind of culture of education
and a culture of civil society. I just don’t believe mothers want their
children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want
their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the
right conditions, that’s what people are going to do.”

Cal Thomas asked a sharp follow-up: “Do you think this or do you know
this?”

“Well, I think I know it,” said Dr. Rice.

“You think you know it?”

“I think I know it.”

So many of our present woes are due to thinking we know things. To our
four Jills in the jeep, let’s add one Jim, apparently back at the
steering wheel in the current war: James Baker, renowned foreign policy
“realist” and the man Beltway wags are currently referring to as “the
acting secretary of state.” The “realists” think that “containment” and
“stability” are wise strategies. In fact, they’re the absence of
strategy. The fertility rate in the Gaza Strip is one of the highest on
earth. If you measure the births of the Muslim world against the dearth
of Bishop Kate’s Episcopalians, you have the perfect snapshot of why
there is no “stability”: With every passing month, there are more
Muslims and fewer Episcopalians, and the Muslims export their manpower
to Europe and other depopulating outposts of the West. It’s the
intersection of demography and Islamism that makes time a luxury we
can’t afford.

We can argue about exactly what this trend means, but not that it means
nothing. At the very minimum, I’d suggest, it means the Episcopal Church
is irrelevant to “the stewardship of the earth” and that Scarlett
Johansson will end her days on an earth whose stewards regard being
tested for HIV twice as a sign of many things, but not, on the whole,
“social awareness.”

(c)Mark Steyn 2006

Posted on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
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