Mike Swisher

Mike Swisher is Chairman of the Board of Religion and Society, the educational foundation that publishes The St. Croix Review, and he owns Bayport Printing House, Inc. Mike Swisher delivered this speech at Angus MacDonald's memorial in December.

Angus MacDonald had already lived more than half of his long and remarkable life by the time I became acquainted with him. He had been born and grown up in Australia, had been ordained a clergyman, had emigrated to the United States on the first ship to carry civilian passengers to this country after World War II, had earned degrees from Butler University and Columbia University - the latter a Ph.D. in philosophy - and had served several churches as a minister, before he accepted a position as the pastor of People's Congregational Church in Bayport, Minnesota. My family were not members of that church, but came to know Angus when he brought the first issue of his journal, then called Religion and Society, to my father's printing plant which was delivered (comprising 32 pages plus covers) on January 3, 1968, and billed at a total cost of $252.55.

Back at that time, the contents of the publication were set up in metal type and printed by letterpress, much as printing had been done for the preceding 500 years. Reflecting on the technology we used to print those journals, I'm reminded of how greatly life has changed in the past four decades. Not only those old methods, but also much else that then seemed just as settled and solidly established, are now "one with Nineveh and Tyre." Some of the changes have been for the good, and others have not been.

What Angus made his life's work at The St. Croix Review has to be considered in light of the condition in which religion and society - his great concerns - stood back then in 1968. With the rapid economic growth that followed World War II, and the prosperity it brought, also had come serious social unrest. The Vietnam War was at its height, race riots marred the order of our cities, and Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs had just been enacted, putting in place the modern welfare state which has burgeoned so expensively since then. Today, when we hear anything about the involvement of religion with politics, it is usually in connection with the so-called religious right. That was not so in the 1960s. The "social gospel" movement was at its apogee amongst the mainstream Protestant denominations and had strong adherence amongst Roman Catholics as well. It basically jettisoned the traditional concerns of Christianity with personal virtues and the transcendent aspects of religion, substituting in their stead a program of social change and reorganization. Nationally prominent religious leaders of the day included such anti-war figures as the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, the Quaker Staughton Lynd, Fathers Phillip and Daniel Berrigan, as well as civil rights organizers such as the Reverends Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, and Adam Clayton Powell. These members of the "religious left" unapologetically made common cause with atheistic Communism. Staughton Lynd, for example, visited Hanoi, while Martin Luther King, who recently has been portrayed as a sort of secular saint, did not scruple to associate with known Communists such as Stanley Levison and Hunter Pitts O'Dell.

Sometimes immigrants - as Angus was - appreciate America and its heritage better than the native-born do. Angus valued the American way of life, and was proud to be an American citizen. He knew the value of American freedom and opportunity, which those of us who have lived all our lives here so often take for granted. And he rejected the viewpoint of the 1960s religious left, not only because it set historic American principles at naught (or less), but also because he understood that one cannot have a decent and honorable society without decent and honorable individuals. In abandoning, even rejecting, the cultivation of personal virtues, the religious left had abandoned the sine qua non of the good society. In this, it made the mistake that materialists always do, and which we have seen in one failed socialist country after another. As Andrei Navrozov observed, the Soviet Union tried for seven decades to create New Socialist Man, and the result was only to produce a race of proficient thieves.

It was personal virtue that Angus held paramount, in his own life and in that of others. One of Angus's most characteristic moments was a time when an acquaintance wished to dispute some abstruse point of theology with him. Angus could easily have done it, with his great store of academic knowledge; but instead, he said to this person, "Don't tell me what you believe - I'll watch how you behave, and I'll tell you what you believe." The University of Chicago scholar Richard Weaver wrote a book many years ago, entitled Ideas Have Consequences. This book title has become a sort of slogan amongst conservatives, many of whom have never read the book. Angus would have said that ideas that don't have consequences are just idle chatter - and he was impatient with idle chatter. Of course, many ideas have had bad consequences, and it's important to know what these are; but our efforts should be focused on those ideas that have good consequences, and on achieving those good consequences. Translating right belief into right behavior is always a challenge, and it was explaining and exemplifying this to which Angus devoted his life.

We are still in the midst of Christmas's twelve days, and Christmas is above all the season of giving. The best gifts we receive are those that we didn't expect, and probably didn't deserve. That's the way God's grace works, and God's grace is after all the point of the holiday. I can only conclude by saying that it was certainly by such grace that I enjoyed the good fortune to have known Angus, and that all his friends and his readers did. Today, we say a regretful farewell to this wise and good man - tomorrow, and in the future, let us honor his memory by continuing his work. *

Barry MacDonald - Editorial

My dad, Angus MacDonald, founder of The St. Croix Review 45 years ago, died on December 4th. He was 88 years old and had lived an energetic and purposeful life. He was an Australian immigrant who loved America because after WW II America was large, and there was freedom here. America offered him the education he hungered for.

Most of us don't write an autobiography, and readers of The St. Croix Review are lucky that Angus did (A Straight Line) because his story not only sketches his extraordinary character but also reflects America, the wide-open nation where a person of ambition and courage could claim a bright future through hard work. America after WW II and the Great Depression did offer unlimited potential, and Angus traveled far down a career path, being a minister in a Congregational Church, but eventually, his youthful idealism encountered bitter opposition in the form of bureaucratic power structures. He became discouraged with the ministry after 25 years and left the church to found The St. Croix Review, which he made the focus of his life's work.

Angus was "honest as the day" (one of his habitual phrases), he searched for a religious faith that was intellectually honest (a life-long pursuit), and he was a rebel against the ignorant and dishonest, power-driven lust for control that he found first in a labor union in Australia, in church hierarchies, and finally in the burgeoning multitudes of politicians at all levels who are willing to say and do anything so that they could wield power.

Dad was fiercely independent, and he hated dishonesty in powerful people; it became his life's work to fight back, as he saw how government control stunts and ruins peoples' lives. Under cover of rhetoric about uplifting and educating the poor he saw clearly how the politician's main interest is in reelection, and the acquisition and maintenance of authority - any good politicians do is accidental, a happy coincidence.

It is ironic that my dad was a much better rebel than any of the 1960s hippies whom he opposed; the hippies who fought "the establishment" are now clamoring for government healthcare and pensions. Today the wrinkled hippies are yearning to be wards of the state. My dad never stopped fighting - when he read articles on politics at his desk up to the end of his life he scowled at the arrogance and foolishness of politicians.

Angus got a good portion of his moral fiber from his father. Angus was born on November 24, 1923, in Melbourne, Australia, to Herbert George and Dorothy May MacDonald. He was the youngest of three children. Angus' father began work at age 14 in a piano factory. In his early 20s Herbert courted Dorothy by riding into town on a draft horse; they married at age 23. Herbert worked on the family farm for a time but left home because his father, Duncan, took all his money. Herbert opened a fruit and greengrocer's shop, getting up between 2 and 3 a.m. and working all day, but he tired of the hours.

Herbert bought a truck and went into the trucking business - his new venture coincided with the onset of the Great Depression, and everyone in Australia was hard hit. The drivers would line up "one behind the other" in the hopes of finding work. After years of effort the business grew and Herbert could buy additional trucks. Angus, in his autobiography, A Straight Line, writes of his father:

He bought the chassis and engine, and that was all. Cabs were silly, he thought. When you made a delivery, you had to climb out of the cab, walk to the back, and climb onto the tray to get your merchandise. The sensible thing was to build an open van and walk from the driver's seat into the back seat. He never liked those crude bodies with square fronts, so he curved his from the top of the body down to the windshield. His were the only ones of their kind in the city of Melbourne.

The business Herbert started in Australia during the depression is ongoing, with Herbert's grandchildren continuing a prospering operation. Angus' brother Donald continued the business after Herbert; Angus chose not to be a trucker.

The MacDonald family was poor during the depression though they did not know it, as everyone was poor. They had no butter, ham, chicken, turkey, or corn (corn was pig's food). Angus' first bicycle was held together by hose clamps. One of the games Angus played was "cherry bobs" - they dug a hole and flipped cherry stones in. Angus was a reckless, boisterous lad, breaking his arm one day, breaking his nose another, and skinning his nose later. He must have drawn attention to himself, as his English teacher asked him to behave, saying "Angus, if you misbehave so will the whole class." She set him up front, prompting him to be a good example - it worked! Although outside English class Angus apparently needed additional attention. The principal set him the task of writing the school slogan "hundreds, perhaps even a few thousand times": "If all the school were just like me, what kind of school would this school be?" Angus had to walk between three to four miles to school. Despite having epilepsy as a child he did develop into a very good long-distance runner, becoming a top runner of his school and club.

After graduating from high school Angus worked in factories. At the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation his first job was to hand out requisition numbers to workers for spare parts. Not far into the first morning he was visited by a union representative who told him he made the job look too easy. He was told to slow down; this was his first brush with union methodology. Angus quit on the spot and was transferred to the mailroom, later to the engine factory, and then to labor costing of aircraft frames - he was placed in charge of the department. But his heart wasn't into factory work.

His heart was in the church that

. . . has been a large part of my life from as early as I can remember, and I was a simple little boy who accepted the ideals that were presented to us. For some reason or another, I was called "the little minister" when I was only eight years old. . . . The church and its fellowship gave us what intellectual stimulation we received. The school gave us learning but not idealism and inspiration. I was asked to give a sermon when I was about eleven and was comfortable doing so. . . . I did have the ability to bring separate things together. I guess I was always preachy and always an arguer, and I suppose I was always conservative, not in ideology but in temperament.

Leaving factories behind he enrolled in the College of the Bible to become a clergyman, a decision that angered his father:

No one in the world was more honest than my father, but he would never go to church because he did not believe the nonsense handed out. He did not approve of my becoming one of that "starving bunch of hypocrites."

The respect Angus had for his father gave bite to his father's words, "starving bunch of hypocrites," that compelled Angus to seek solid substance for his faith, to seek intellectual respectability. Angus was not to be satisfied with rote theology.

The College of the Bible was small by America's standards with fifty students and three or four faculty. But the studies were worthy: church history, ancient history, Greek, New Testament, Old Testament, comparative religion, pastoral theology (how to behave with your congregation), and the art of preaching. Angus acquired a thirst for learning. He had to be convinced that a position or an argument was true. In New Testament class he asked Mr. Pittman why "we" had to believe Christ rose from the dead:

Little Mr. Pittman went red in the face and said, St. Paul hath said, "If Christ did not rise from the dead, then our faith is in vain." That did not impress me as a valid reply. I wasn't asking for a quotation but a reason for belief in immortality. Later on, in "secular studies," I found some answers one could legitimately accept. Mr. Pittman was so upset by my question that, in other classes, he lost his temper about some of the young students who did not believe the faith.

Angus was given a student pastorate at Kyneton Church of Christ sixty miles out of Melbourne that could hold sixty people. There were two services every Sunday, and Sunday school in the afternoon. Judging by my knowledge of his views, and the numbers of words devoted to her in A Straight Line, my dad was more deeply inspired in his faith by the organist of the tiny church than by his theology teachers:

Jessie Goudie was our organist, a single woman probably in her late fifties, tall, thin, her long grey hair tied in a bun at the back of her head; she sang with a loud voice to accompany her playing. She was great on the "steps of salvation," and she sang loud and clear with the hope that some sinner might hear and be saved. The steps of salvation were hearing the word of God, repenting of your sins, confessing them, being baptized, and rising to walk in the newness of life. We smile improperly at the mechanical simplicity because what Miss Goudie believed and was conventional belief in our churches was as sound as anything could be - and the mechanical simplicity was of help to those in trouble.

Upon graduation from the College of the Bible a kind principal, E. Lyall Williams, wished him well and said: "You believe in Jesus of Nazareth don't you? See how far you can go from there."

On May 12, 1946, Angus boarded the S.S. Marine Lynx, the first civilian crossing from Australia to the U.S. after WW II. He came to America for an advanced education. There were no comforts on the ship and the passengers amused themselves by giving lectures to each other. Angus talked for forty-five minutes on the need of religion for a philosophical basis.

Angus spent a couple years at Butler University, Indianapolis, to adjust his Australian degree to U.S. standards. He paid his own way by loading apples in a store, working at Butler's kitchen, and as an assistant pastor. His sparse meals were capped by suppers of "a small container of milk and half a packet of raisins" - he ate in the cemetery as it was "delightful in warm weather."

Angus had a choice: he could take a Ph.D. in philosophy of religion at Chicago Theological Seminary, or he could go for a Ph.D. in philosophy at Columbia University in New York - he chose Columbia and philosophy. Years later he encountered a professor from Chicago Theological Seminary who spent several hours trying to convince him that religion had nothing to do with behavior or morality.

Angus' description of his professors and his courses at Columbia, and of his time as a pastor in various churches in the area are the most lovingly told sections of A Straight Line. He began a life-long love of music. He sang in choir while at Butler, and in New York he came across first-rate musicians and composers. At this stage he learned to play the piano, a habit he was to exercise until the last years of his life. I have memories of him playing Shubert, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, etc. for an hour after lunch everyday while I was working for The St. Croix Review twenty years ago. He also took up golf during this period; in Stillwater, across the street and up a hill from his home and office is Stillwater Country Club, where he played golf many afternoons for four decades.

At Columbia he studied the history of political philosophy, post-Aristotelian philosophy to Plotinus, the history of British empiricism, nineteenth century idealism, modern philosophy, the philosophy of St. Thomas, etc.

Here is my dad at his height of enthusiasm:

Ernest Nagel amused me. He taught mathematical logic and argued that logic was deductive. To prove the point he wrote theorems on the board and deduced marvelous conclusions. I visited him in his office and claimed that the deductions were from dogmatically asserted inductions and that made his basic argument false. Logic was just as much induction as deduction. That was obvious as the nose on one's face, it seemed to me then and seems to me now, but he wouldn't admit it.

Here is my dad at his most idealistic:

It dawned on me after a while that these learned men to a man . . . knew the history of intellectual thought as well as the palms of their hands, and had long since come to their particular, and various, points of view. There was no reason having an argument about anything, and besides, at their level of sophistication, the only way argument could be advanced was through the printed word. They met, not to disagree, but to explore with sympathy even the most absurd kind of human behavior. This was a lesson in tolerance I hope never to forget.

Angus relates that Columbia professors of this time never taught using their own books, and never shared what their own beliefs were, the focus always being on what a historically prominent intellectual, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, believed. Angus never knew what his professors themselves believed! The contrast with today's completely politicized universities could not be starker.

Angus first met opposition as an assistant in the Methodist church. A pastor he knew applied to the bishop for permission to go to a conference on alcoholism - permission denied.

I began the quarrel with authority that was to be a mark of my life. . . . I was beginning to learn that, in a controlled church, or any other controlled organization, one does what he is told rather than what he believes.

There were annual meetings of the Methodist conference in New York; attendance was "compulsory - among grown men." He heard stories about disobedient pastors who were sent to pastorates that paid a pittance. He knew servile pastors. Once he was told to give a sermon prepared by the central office; it was decided that all the clergymen would present the same sermon. He refused, and his disobedience was noticed. Angus' mother and father visited from Australia and he needed an extra week off. The district superintendent had waited some time to retaliate. He said: "We had a man like you in Long Island. . . . We took care of him and we'll take care of you."

The next day Angus went to New York to inquire about becoming a Congregational minister. There were no canned sermons in the Congregational Church; attendance at conferences was not compulsory. Angus could be a "lone wolf," and he could work out his faith as best he could. In the Congregational Church there were no politics and no fear of where the bishop might send him, or so it seemed at the time.

Upon the completion of his studies he became an assistant pastor at two different churches in Toledo, Ohio. These were happy years, during which he got married to his lovely wife Rema, to whom he would remain married for fifty-five years, having three children: Barry, Gregor, and Beth. Angus enjoyed starting single's groups and taking part in the choir.

It was during his time in Ohio that Angus encountered jealousy from a more senior minster, but a far more troublesome development began in the Congregational Church: there was a movement to merge Congregational churches with the Evangelical and Reformed Church to form the United Church of Christ. The move was an attempt to create the same type of power-driven hierarchy as the Methodist Church. Angus took part in a suit against the merger. The resulting conflict began years of stress. Writing of a national meeting Angus wrote:

Those who tried to speak were hooted at with sneering comments made about them. It came to the place where I could not associate with ministers of the opposing point of view because the animosity and characterization of us as radicals was so violent that I became ill.

There was also a drive among church hierarchy to make politics a prominent feature of church doctrine:

The Christian faith had long since been forgot, for the interest of the day was in politics, where it remains. I had no objection to social action, for I agreed that the church without applications to social life was incomplete, but I was not a left-wing radical as they were, arguing for socialism, pacifism, bringing down of governments, taking side in issues that could be variously interpreted. . . . My objection was their demand that the denomination speak with one voice rather than the voices of thousands of churches that were not of the same mind. I was for liberty; they were for totalitarianism.

Angus lost faith not only in Church "officials," who wanted power, but also in the majority of the clergy. Leaving Ohio he took pastorates in Hutchinson, Kansas, and lastly in Bayport, Minnesota. The sermons he has left us are of high intellectual caliber. They mix history, philosophy, economics, ethics, and bedrock Christian values. They are timeless and well worth republishing from time to time, as I will do.

Angus decided to leave the church, and 45 years ago he founded the St. Croix Review. William Rickenbacker, who was a regular author for The National Review, wrote an introductory ad in National Review in 1967 that got Angus off on the right foot. The first issue was published on January 3, 1968, with 500 some subscribers. Angus' aim was to publish the most intelligent and better-educated people in the United States:

I never ask their sex or race or religion or background. If they say something sensible and simple that is constructive I shall publish them.

Angus made friends with some of the leading conservative thinkers of the time through his membership in the Philadelphia Society, and they became his authors. These writers include William Rickenbacker, Russell Kirk, Yale Brozen, and Milton Friedman.

Angus was recklessly courageous and blissfully ignorant of the task ahead of him in the difficulty of publishing a journal, national in scope, from the Midwest. How does one earn prominence with a small budget? (Still a problem today.) Survival is an astounding accomplishment. There were no computers in 1968. Subscriptions were managed on index cards, sorted and tracked in monthly files. Each label on each billing card individually typed - imagine the time consumed with menial tasks.

Characteristically bold, Angus decided that he would cut costs by printing the Review himself, so he bought a printing press, even though he knew not the first thing about printing. Angus printed the next issue - another astounding accomplishment. Up to fifteen years ago my father and I continued to print the Review ourselves taking three weeks in the process. Looking back I don't know how we did it, and I cannot imagine those early days with the operation run through index cards. (How were the typesetting, proof reading, and editing squeezed in?) I know now that printing is a craft best learned within the company of more experienced printers, and without knowing experience the novice is often left befuddled - and my dad and I often were. Thankfully now we leave most of our printing to Mike Swisher (who wrote the following essay) and Bayport Printing.

I remember when I was 14 my dad coming upstairs to show me some printing he had done, proudly saying: "No one can do better than that!"

Then there was the time in the 1970s that the IRS tried to put us out of business by taking away our nonprofit status. A powerful person who has remained anonymous made a complaint against us. Minnesota State Governor Al Quie came to our defense and, as best I remember, the Heritage Foundation came to our aid by finding us legal aid.

Angus MacDonald embodied the best American ideal: the rugged individual of strong faith. What he founded continues, into the third generation, with my daughter Jocelyn's pencil drawings adorning our covers.

The amount of influence my father had on America is beyond knowing. Walter Cronkite, as famous as he was, is unknown to our young generation. My father touched people who touched people, who touched people like ripples . . . as do we all. I am working in two rooms full of books, and in each book there are marking that my father left behind. *

We would like to thank the following people for their generous support of this journal (from 11/16/2011 to 1/13/2012): Mary Ellen Alt, Larry G. Anderson, The Andersen Foundation, George E. Andrews, William D. Andrews, William A. Barr, Margaret Barrett, Henry Bass, Alexis I. Dup Bayard, Bud & Carol Belz, Charles L. Blilie, Lind Boyles, Gary & Sue Bressler, Mary & Fred Budworth, Price B. Burgess, Terry Cahill, Dino Casali, John B. Charlton, Laurence Christenson, Thomas J. Ciotola, John D'Aloia, Peter R. De Marco, Francis P. Destefano, Jeanne L. Dipaola, Alive DiVittorio, Robert M. Ducey, Paul Warren Dynis, Ellen & Brian Feeney, Joseph C. Firey, Robert C. Gerken, Gary D. Gillespie, Richard P. Grossman, Judith E. Haglund, Robert L. Hale, Violet H. Hall, James E. Hartman, David L. & Mary L. Hauser, Paul J. Hauser. John H. Hearding, Bernhard Heersink, Quentin O. Heimerman, Norman D. Howard, Thomas E. Humphreys, David Ihle, James R. Johnson, Louise Hinrichsen Jones, Margaret Kelly, Joseph D. Kluchinsky, Gloria Knoblauch, Ralph Kramer, Robert M. Kubow, John S. Kundrat, Alan H. Lee, Don & Gayle Lobitz, Gregor MacDonald, Paul T. Manrodt, Thomas J. McGreevy, Karen McNeil, Roberta R. McQuade, Edwin Meese, Albert D. & Norma J. Miller, Donald J. Miske, Robert L. Morris, Richard S. Mulligan, Ray D. Nelson, Lester C. O'Quinn, King Odell, John A. Paller, Frank Palumbo, Frederick D. Pfau, Gary J. Pressley, Richard O. Ranheim, Seppo Rapo, David P. Renkert, Kathryn Hubbard Rominski, Joseph Schrandt, John A. Schulte, Irene L. Schultz, Harry Richard Schumache, Alvan I. Shane, Dave Smith, Elsbeth G. Smith, Thomas E. Snee, Thomas S. Steele, Frank T. Street, Susan & Ron Stow, Dennis J. Sullivan, Michael S. Swisher, W. G. Thompson, Paul B. Thompson, Elizabeth E. Torrance, Thomas Warth, Alan Rufus Waters, Donald E. Westling, Gaylord T. Willett, Robert F. Williams, Max L. Williamson, Lee Wishing, Piers Woodriff, W. Raymond Worman, Michiko Yoshizumi, David W. Ziedrich.

The following is a summary of the April 2012 issue of The St. Croix Review.

In "Steve Jobs, A Life of Consequence," Barry MacDonald pins down from where the torrent of creativity came.

Paul Kengor, in "The Obama Mandate to Catholics: 'To Hell with You!'" reports on the arrogance of President Obama in forcing Catholics to pay for contraceptives and abortifaciets; in "Readying Romney for the Class-Warfare Machine," he writes about President Obama's strategy for reelection: paint Mitt Romney as a "Wall Street Raider"; in "On Santorum, Democrats, and 'God's Will,'" he puts the media upset with Rick Santorum's religiosity in perspective: the media ignore or support the many occasions when Democrats sermonize on God; in "Satan and Santorum: Perspective from Reagan's Evil Empire Speech," he compares Rick Santorum with Ronald Reagan.

Herbert London, in "Armageddon 2012" forecasts an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities - the Obama administration will get a 24-notice; in "The Tipping Point," he says we are reaching the point where a majority of Americans are becoming dependent on government services; in "The Jeremy Lin Story," he tells how Jeremy Lin rose from nowhere to lead the New York Knicks, and shows what makes him different from every other basketball star; in "College Tuition Rates and the Free Market," he advocates reduced subsidies and market forces as a method for making college affordable again; in "The Other University Bubble," he sees a profusion of worthless courses under the umbrella of the Liberal Arts - he believes we need to return to timeless quality.

Mark W. Hendrickson, in "The Election-Year Politics of Energy," shows how illogical, self-defeating, and unnecessary the President's energy policies are; in "Upheavals in American Education: The Start of Something Big?" he notes sprouting movements against teacher's unions; in "People Say the Darnedest Things," he quotes some revealing comments made by President Obama and his top aides; in "Sports, Concussions, and Contemporary American Culture," he says professional hockey and football should take care to limit brain damage of players; in "A Whiff of Privatization," he believes there are many, many portions of the federal government that could be moved into the competitive market; in "The Tax Rate Scandal," he reveals how capital benefits wage earners, and how both parties are unwilling to face the dire consequences of out-of-control spending - the real scandal.

Allan Brownfeld, in "Eighty-four Percent of Americans Disapprove of Congress: Their Contempt Is Justified," describes a bipartisan system that channels money to politicians both while in office and once they retire to become lobbyists; in "We Must Recognize a New Threat to Freedom in the Name of 'National Security'" he warns that a new law allows the President to detain indefinitely any American citizen on U.S. soil, without a hearing before a judge or a charge filed, if the American is suspected of ties to terrorists; in "The Arab Spring: Understanding the Promise and Peril of Revolution in the Middle East" he describes unfolding events, youthful actors, and the part new media, such as Facebook, is playing.

Robert L. Wichterman, in "Our Two Wars with Radical Islam," looks at our present-day conflict with al Qaeda through an historical lens.

In "The Plight of Afghan Women," Edith E. Muesing-Ellwood describes the hardships women endure.

In "Partner Benefits at the University of Nebraska," Thomas Martin comments on the extension of health care benefits for same-sex and opposite-sex partners to employees of the university.

Jigs Gardner, in "The Test of Winter, Part II," describes the lengths he and his wife went to get water to the farm, once the pipes froze, and tells how he learned to tap and prepare maple syrup.

In "Francis Parkman, 1823-93," Jigs Gardner shares descriptions, by the American historian, of the first European pioneers of America, especially of the French, and shows why the British fared best.

In "Survey of Conservative Magazines: On Same-Sex Science and Other Things," Fayette Durlin and Peter Jenkin touch on known facts about homosexuality, implications of the "adversary culture," Obamacare's impositions on religious freedom, Ron Paul, and more.

In "The American Pantry - Exploring Melting Pot Cookery," Cornelia Wynne passes on a Chippewa recipe for Venison Chili.

Michael S. Swisher reviews The Man in the Middle, by Timothy S. Goeglein, who wrote an insider's account of the Bush White House where he served as an assistant to the president.

Michael S. Swisher

Michael S. Swisher is Chairman of St. Croix Review's Board of Directors

The Man in the Middle, by Timothy S. Goeglein. Nashville, Tennessee, 2011: B&H Publishing Group, 241 pp., cloth $19.99.

The Man in the Middle is Timothy Goeglein's memoir of his service on the campaign staff, and later the White House staff of George W. Bush, from 2000 to 2008. It is also a memoir of the early growth of his conservative convictions, and his entry into politics first as a staffer for Sen. Dan Coats (R, IN), then for Gary Bauer during his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. Finally, it is a memoir of what has been called "the politics of personal destruction" from the point of view of one of its victims.

Goeglein, who will be familiar to long-time readers of The St. Croix Review as the author of a number of articles, and as the speaker at our 2006 annual meeting, came to conservatism at an early age. Neither his father, a painting contractor, or his mother, a housewife, had university degrees, but both were intelligent people with much practical experience in life. His father dealt daily with the economic realities of operating a small business. His mother, the child of Macedonian immigrants, had an intellectual curiosity that led her to undertake courses of study at the local campus of a state university, where she was astonished to discover the hostility of one of her professors towards the traditional family. Both parents were Lutherans, and eventually the family joined the conservative Missouri Synod, typifying the drift of many Protestants away from "mainstream" denominations that had become increasingly captivated by the "social gospel" even as they abandoned the bedrock teachings of Christianity. Reading was important to the Goeglein household, which was filled with books, and subscribed to two daily newspapers and a variety of magazines.

It was in this literate but mostly apolitical environment that Goeglein first discovered National Review at the newsstand of an old-fashioned tobacconist where his father, a pipe smoker, occasionally traded. This was young Tim's first exposure to the writers published by William F. Buckley, Jr., and through them to the Founding documents of the United States, the expository works of the Founders, and Anglo-American conservative thinkers such as Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke. Discovering them, together with his sincere religious belief, worked together to shape his views as he eventually completed his university education and served a summer internship in Washington in the office of the then U.S. Senator Dan Quayle, later vice-president under George H.W. Bush. These experiences led, as noted, to Goeglein's later work for Coats, Bauer, and ultimately to a position in the Bush campaign and on the White House staff for George W. Bush.

Goeglein's account of his work for Bush begins with the lengthy and acrimonious Florida recount following the 2000 election. While other presidents have won the electoral vote without winning the popular vote (John Quincy Adams and Rutherford B. Hayes), this atypical result enabled Bush's opponents to characterize his presidency as somehow illegitimate from the start. As a result, with the exception of a few months following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which shocked the country into temporary unity, the entire eight years of George W. Bush's presidency were a period of great partisan antagonism. Probably no president of the post-World War II era except Richard Nixon has been the object of such hostility from his political opposition and from the press.

The picture painted of Bush by the news media as a tongue-tied dullard in the thrall of sinister forces and retrograde causes is amply and refreshingly contradicted by Goeglein's first-hand account. It touches on many of the controversies the administration dealt with, ranging from stem-cell research, faith-based initiatives, the war in Iraq, judicial and other high-level appointments, abortion, and the definition of marriage. In these, and in his personal interaction with his staff and with the many political figures he encountered in the course of his presidency, George W. Bush appears as a thoughtful and decent man. Like all of us, prominent people in public life make errors in judgment and have flaws. Bush is no exception, but is very far from being the man so unflatteringly, indeed maliciously, caricatured in the press.

Goeglein's departure from the Bush White House was brought about by the discovery that an article he wrote for his local newspaper had been plagiarized. Almost at once what he describes as an "avalanche of media coverage" began. To his credit, Goeglein made no effort to deny or to minimize his offense; he had done wrong, and in the process had brought embarrassment to the administration. He knew he had only one course, which was to resign at once. Yet, on doing so, he found that Bush received him with forgiveness, and treated his family with great kindness. Goeglein writes that

. . . his grace was an extension of a casual, warm, earthy, companionable, and self-effacing man who always understood that power is ephemeral, the source of his genuine humility.

We have seen the politics of personal destruction played out for decades in Washington. It is the inheritance of a political and media culture that traces its immediate origins to the New Left slogan of the 1960s, "the personal is political." Rather than debating the issues and principles of the opposing parties, it diverts the discussion to the personal failings, be they great or small, of controversial politicians - and their subordinates. It is not to excuse or to palliate Goeglein's episode of plagiarism to point out that its very discovery arose as a consequence of this political climate. "Opposition research," designed to unearth such failings, and to portray them in as bad a light as possible, is practically an industry in Washington. Brought to the fore by the enemies of Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, it has never since then ceased to be part of the political scene.

At that time, the technique of sniping at the president's staff became a commonplace tactical move: to take down the chief, first take down his assistants - the more able they are, the more urgent is the effort. It is really a revival of the technique of the parliamentary faction in the years before the English civil war, which brought the earl of Strafford and the Archbishop of Canterbury to the block as preludes to the judicial murder of Charles I. Today, no one is decapitated; it suffices to destroy their careers, and in some cases to ruin them economically. Because of what he himself describes as his "comparatively little influence," and by his prompt resignation, Goeglein was spared the worst of this, and he is today a vice-president of Focus on the Family.

Finally, that plagiarism is an offense cannot be denied; but it seems to be one for which only some suffer. We might with profit consider Goeglein's case alongside two others. The first is that of a then U.S. Senator, who, during an unsuccessful campaign for his party's presidential nomination, cribbed one of his speeches from a speech given by Neil Kinnock, then a leader of the British Labour Party. The second is that of a public figure who, though never elected to public office, exerted great influence and moral leadership in a popular movement at a time of great social disorder. This man was shown by detailed textual analysis to have plagiarized most of the dissertation by which he obtained the title of Doctor, an honorific by which he was, and remains, invariably identified. The former individual, Joe Biden, is now Vice President of the United States; the latter, Martin Luther King, is the only person whose birthday is officially observed in this country as a public holiday, and the closest thing we have to a secular saint. Biden just "brazened it out." King's plagiarism was not discovered during his lifetime; however, he has innumerable defenders who not only make excuses for it, but suggest that anyone who mentions it must have unworthy motives.

A hallmark of justice is supposed to be that equal cases are treated equally. Are they? *

Cornelia Wynne

Cornelia Wynne's lifelong interest in cooking was inspired by growing up on a farm in the midwest where her family raised most of their food. After the death of her mother, she took over the household chores, raising and feeding the family. She raised eight children of her own, and in recent years ran a boarding house in New Jersey, famed for its robust American menu.

As I wrote in the introductory column, The American Pantry is about all of us, wherever we came from, however we got here, and the cooking traditions that came with us from our various ethnic backgrounds. It is also about who we are as a people, our defining traits of independence, resourcefulness, and a can-do spirit, characteristics that are reflected, I think, in the recipes themselves. Mike Swisher's unique Dutch family pie crust exemplifies this tradition, coming from a background of fruit farmers in Virginia. With a surplus of large, ripe juicy peaches, they naturally wanted to use them to great effect. What better way than between never-fail flaky pie crusts? Who, I wonder, first thought up the idea of making a paste of the dough and working it back into the rest of the ice-cold ingredients for sure success?

In this second installment I would like to introduce you to Kenneth Goodemoot, Jr. from Barton City in northern Michigan. Kenneth is married, with two sons in the armed forces, is a successful independent trucker, and a proud Chippewa.

My husband and I met Kenneth in, of all places, the Detroit airport, where he was waiting for a flight to Alabama to buy a truck. I had already noticed him, a striking figure with dark eyes and a swarthy complexion, a solid-looking man probably in his early forties, dressed in black jeans, boots, and a black Western hat, like someone out of a John Wayne movie, someone who I would want to have on my side. I didn't pay much attention to the conversation between him and my husband about hunting, but when I heard Mr. Goodemoot proclaim:

If it comes off the land, I know how to fix it. I've eaten turtles, rabbits, squirrels, deer, coons, possums, bobcat, and rattlesnakes,"

I knew I'd found a winner, another great contribution to the "American Pantry."

Ken Goodemoot's Venison Chili

Ken raises his own tomatoes as well as the medium-hot peppers for this dish, the seed for the peppers passed on to him from his father. When amounts aren't specified use your judgment.

Grind 2 quarts venison meat.

Cook together in a large saucepan: tomatoes, preferably fresh from the garden, medium-hot peppers, garlic powder, onions (all cut up, of course). Cook red kidney beans separately, then add to the saucepan. [If you're using dried beans, soak them overnight, cook until tender, drain. Note that 1 pound dried beans makes about 6 cups when cooked.] When everything is cooking nicely, say after a half an hour, add a quart of tomato juice and the ground venison. Cook for an hour or to taste.

Serve with thick rounds of freshly baked bread.

If you have a family recipe and history to share, send your material to the editor at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or mail to The American Pantry/St. Croix Review/P.O. Box 244/Stillwater, Minnesota 55082.

Next time: Chicken Fricassee and the frontier spirit.

Fayette Durlin and Peter Jenkin

Fayette Durlin and Peter Jenkin write from Brownsville, Minnesota.

We had pretty well written off First Things under its new editor as a useful conservative magazine, but we spoke too soon. The February issue contains not only a sharp editorial on the State Department's decision to make homosexual rights a principle guiding the American effort to influence and shape culture throughout the world, a disastrous notion typical of this administration, but two excellent essays, one on "Same-Sex Science" and one on the thought of Michael Oakeshott, the British political philosopher who died in 1990.

"Same-Sex Science," by Stanton Jones, summarizes and explains the little we know about same-sex relations in a remarkably sensible and enlightening way. In this space we cannot go into detail, but we shall summarize the author's points. It is understood that there is a dense smokescreen of pro-homosexual propaganda emanating from the American Psychiatric Association, and Professor Jones, while not engaged in a polemic, necessarily exposes the inadequacy of APA research. This is a scientific article, and questions of research are important because, as the author points out, it's hard to find representative samples when only 1.8 percent are bisexual men, 1.1 percent homosexual men, and 0.6 percent lesbians among adults in Europe and the United States. These conclusions, however, can be drawn: depression and substance abuse is 20-30 percent more prevalent among homosexuals (including lesbians and bisexuals); homosexualism is mildly determined by biology and mildly determined by environmental factors; homosexualism is sometimes mutable; homosexual relations are unstable relative to heterosexual relations. All the propaganda works toward the conclusion that homosexualism is normal, positive, and legitimate, but the author draws a fine line here, pointing out that this is not a scientific judgment but one that belongs to the realms of religion, theology, and philosophy. He ends by pointing out that we made a mistake by acquiescing in the disease conception of homosexuality, which prevailed into the 1970s, so were left flatfooted when that was discredited. This is the final sentence:

The best ecclesiastical, professional, legal, and social policy will be founded not on falsehoods or grotesque and indefensible simplifications but on a clearheaded grasp of reality in all its complexities, as well as on a humble recognition of all that we do not know.

Michael Oakeshott stands out among conservative thinkers because he has no program, no ideology. In fact, he didn't even believe conservatism was a cause, accepting it as a way of living and of looking at life. He thought the importance of politics was exaggerated, a great fuss on the surface of life that made little impression below the surface. Political activity encourages a "limitation of view which appears so clear and practical but which amounts to little more than a mental fog." We think our readers, if they are honest with themselves, will ruefully admit that truth of that observation, especially at this time. The strength of ideas, he felt, derived from lived experience that gave the ideas form, not from theories or polemics. He thought that society is sustained, not by politicians but by artists, poets, philosophers, and scholars. As the writer observes, the conservative is not primarily defined by taking the right political positions but by recognizing and preserving

. . . the beauty the world has to offer, and by engaging as much as possible in activities that are worthwhile in themselves, especially friendship, love, esthetic contemplation, conversation, and liberal learning.

Now attractive as Oakeshott's views are to us, we must admit that they seem naively unworldly. Gertrude Himmelfarb, writing in 1975, wondered about that. "What happens when the 'adversary culture'. . . has become the dominant culture?" Especially now, 35 years later, when the artists, poets, philosophers, and scholars have so corrupted themselves that they have destroyed their vocations? We think Oakeshott is correct to direct us to the appreciation of cultural sources of our thoughts and desires, to understand how our politics is informed thereby, but we fear it is not enough: we must engage in politics, but if we keep Oakeshott's reservations in mind, we shall not wholly succumb to its rancor.

The first thing we turn to in National Review is the last page, Mark Steyn's "Happy Warrior." In the February 20 issue he writes about the latest Obamacare decision that religious institutions must offer their workers free contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients, showing how the ever-encroaching state is doing its utmost to force religious views out of the public square, pointing out how parents cannot prevent their children from being taught in school about the "joys of same-sex marriage." There is, however, an exception: Moslems. In England, when Moslems objected to such teaching, the books were quickly removed. Then he tells of an "honor" killing in Montreal when a couple drowned their three daughters, who had pleaded with teachers, social workers, and police to be taken away from their abusive parents. Deference to Islam stopped authorities from doing anything. And of course the media played down the Moslem attitude toward women. Finally, he recounts how Moslem students participate in a Friday prayer service in a Toronto public school: menstruating girls, in the back, do not take part. A chilling essay.

In the February issue Steyn has an incisive piece on Ron Paul, "Paul the Parochial," the best I've ever seen on the man, cleverly set up in the beginning where Steyn writes critically of our Afghan adventure, concluding:

It is two thirds of a century since the alleged hyperpower last unambiguously won a war, and that ought to prompt a little serious consideration of the matter. Instead, we have Ron Paul, who says all would be well if we stopped "endlessly bombing these countries!"

And that's the extent of Paul's analysis of our foreign policy. Steyn ends the column:

I wish I could like Ron Paul more, really I do. But libertarian narcissism is as banal as any other strain. Ten years of desultory, inconclusive, transnationally constrained warmongering is certainly a problem. But know-nothing parochial delusion is not the solution.

In the February 20 issue of National Review, the cover story, "The Truth About Fracking" by Kevin Williamson, is excellent, a thorough explanation of the process and its proponents and enemies. He is particularly good on the latter, finally pointing out:

The opposition to fracking isn't at its heart environmental or economic or scientific. It's ideological, and that ideology is nihilism. . . . [They are] opposed to energy and most of what it enables. . . . We can't really debate the course of modern technological civilization with people who are opposed to modern technological civilization per se, your mostly middle-class and expensively miseducated . . . types afflicted with the ennui of affluence.

That's bang on target, and good to see in a conservative magazine.

Andrew Ferguson, in his February column in Commentary, is the only writer we've seen who says that Chrisopher Hitchens was a crank; everyone else eulogizes him sentimentally and dishonestly. *

Jigs Gardner

Jigs Gardner is an Associate Editor of the St. Croix Review. Jigs Gardner writes on literature from the Adirondacks where he may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

On the morning of January twenty-first, during a blizzard that had begun the day before, the water froze. We had had trouble with it as early as November, when the plastic pipe coming up from the cellar had frozen, so we had learned to leave the water running in one side of the double sink. A guest was doing the dishes, and he turned off the water for fifteen or twenty minutes, with the result that it froze in the cellar and farther back underground. It must have been partially frozen for some time. We immediately snowshoed across the Big Meadow to the woods on the other side, where we were able to open the water pipe at a joint where it crossed a stream. The water was running freely there, so we decided to dig a trench through the snow from there to the house (about two-hundred and fifty yards), line it with hay, and bury in it another line of hose. Struggling in the storm, we managed to do it, but the hose froze. We kept the water running in the first hundred feet of hose, and the rest we took up and brought to the house, a tangle under our feet in the room, to thaw. For the time being, we melted snow, hardly sufficient for us and wholly inadequate for the cow. It takes a lot of snow to make a little water.

After the guests left we had a day's respite from the stormy weather, and I went at it again, working desperately to get the hoses connected and buried. I did not know that a still clear day at that season would be intensely cold, with an even colder night to follow. By the time the system was all hooked up, darkness had fallen and the lamps were lit. Standing at the sink, watching a feeble trickle of water drip from the faucet, I held the lamp up to the window to read the thermometer outside. I stared: thirty-seven below, as cold as I ever saw it in nine years in Vermont. Then the water stopped running.

I went to the shop in the barn next morning to build a sled with a box on it to hold a twenty gallon galvanized garbage can, and as amateur carpenters will often do, I made it heavier than it had to be, but I could pull it - just. At least it would be empty going uphill. Dragging the sled to the end of the hose where the water was still running, I filled the can. Turning back I inched across the Big Meadow on my snowshoes, leaning forward into the tow rope, staring down at the track in front of me, stopping every few minutes to hang limply over the sled, trying to get some strength and breath back. Finally I passed the pasture fence corner, then I was on the downhill behind the barn, then I passed the barn, and at last I reached the porch where I collapsed, panting and trembling. When I could stand up, I carried the water in buckets into the house where I poured them into the garbage can beside the kitchen counter. We stood around it, looking at the clear cold water, a cheering sight. I took a long rest before I went back and did it again, this time filling a tub in the stable.

The job was so taxing that I didn't know if I could keep it up, but I was tougher than I thought. I went through that routine every second day, sometimes making three trips, and it was the best thing I did that winter, physically, because it built up my muscles for the tasks to come, mentally, because it forced me to fight actively against winter's forces. I hauled water for two months, and within a couple of weeks it was no longer a hardship. By the end of February, as the sun climbed perceptibly higher, I would sit on my snowshoes on the south side of the sled, sheltered from the wind, and soak up the sun, feeling its warmth as I waited for the can to fill.

Back in November, the first time the water froze in the cellar, Jo Ann had declared that she could endure every deprivation but she couldn't get along without water. The January freeze was like a fated blow held back for two months, hoarded by the gods of Simple Living to break her spirit. The gods mistook their woman. Jo Ann melted snow and hoped for the best. Even if all my efforts had failed, she would have found a way. Just as she performed extraordinary feats of skill and ingenuity in the kitchen every day, feeding us well from a larder that was always low. As I mentioned earlier, the cellar wasn't insulated in any way against the cold, something I failed to discover until too late, when what looked like a wall was revealed to be nothing more substantial than some old feed bags hung across a gaping hole. Our home-canned vegetables were in the pantry, but carrots, beets, cabbages, and potatoes were stored down cellar in barrels and nail kegs, and by December everything was frozen. Jo Ann salvaged nearly all of it, finding fresh ways to serve what by Spring was desperate stuff to work with. She baked wonderful bread and cake and cookies, and we always had eggs and just enough milk and butter. My mother used to say that it was easy to be a good cook with the best ingredients; that winter I learned that to do well with next to nothing is to be a master.

Towards the end of March in northern Vermont, when the snow still lies deep on the land, when the earliest daffodils cannot even be imagined, when the only prospect is a month more of winter, then the northward-creeping sun gives us those bright days, just above freezing, that combine with cold nights to pull the sap up the trunks of sugar maples. Then is the time to shake off the staleness of winter lethargy, to step out purposefully into the wind and weather, to go forth into the sugar bush with brace and bit and a pailful of taps, to make snowshoe tracks from tree to tree, to watch the first drops of clear sap drip from the taps. Then pity those who must wear winter out to its drudging end without the solace of a sugar bush, where sugaring time is a spring before spring, its sweetest boon!

My first sugaring experience came about the year before in Tweedyville, just by chance. In the hardware store one day with a local friend, I noticed a tray of shining metal things on the counter and asked him what they were. Maple sugar taps, he said, going on to tell me how his father had sugared during the war years, making syrup for the family. You know me well enough by now to guess how that caught my attention, so when he ended by saying that his father still had the equipment in his barn, you know the deed was practically done. We went at once to see his father, just up the road from our house, and he kindly gave me twenty-five wooden buckets the pie filling for bakeries used to come in, a bunch of taps, and a twenty-gallon galvanized tub for boiling. Then he guided me to a maple grove in the nearby woods, showed me how to tap out, and gave me a few simple instructions. That very day I hung the buckets and tasted the first drops of the faintly sweet watery sap.

Students were interested, and we'd go up every afternoon when the sap was running, collect it in a garbage can, and haul it in a student's station wagon to our house, where we'd boil it down over an open fire in the backyard, roasting hot dogs, making a party of it. There was one flaw. My friend's father did not teach me the crucial point in the process, how to tell when the syrup was done, probably because, like every backyard sugar maker I've ever met, he didn't know it. We simply boiled the sap until it seemed like syrup, thus producing a thin pre-syrup with a mildly maple flavor, the sort of wretched stuff most amateurs make. Of course we thought it was terrific and we proudly gave it to all our friends, who probably poured it down the sink, remarking that it was another of my harebrained follies. Well, no harm was done, not then; that would come a year later.

As with the slaughter of the pig, I prepared for sugaring by studying a government pamphlet, but with this difference: about the pig I knew nothing and knew it, so I submitted myself to the instructions unquestioningly. In this case I thought I knew all about it - hadn't I acquitted myself superbly a year ago? I did not deliberately ignore all the directions, because I was trying to adapt them to my rough circumstances. The operations described in the pamphlet took place in a modern sugarhouse using the relatively sophisticated technology of the day, so it was not easy to recognize which information was relevant and translatable into my primitive situation. My previous experience made me complacent in a way I never was in regard to the pig.

Willie came over to help me tap out, and between us we hung ninety-eight buckets, a motley collection of wooden buckets, rusty sap buckets, and number ten cans from the Tweedy Student Union kitchen. There was much snow that year - more than twelve feet had fallen and there was four feet on the level then - which eased our labor because all obstructions and inequalities in the ground were buried beneath our gliding snowshoes. In the stillness we could hear the steady tap-tap as the first drops fell into the empty buckets. Chickadees were singing "Spring soon, spring soon," the sun sparkled on the snow, and by the end of the morning our faces were flushed with the first sunburn of the season. Willie lent me a yoke, a simple device of thin ash strips and leather straps that moved the weight of laden buckets from the arms to the shoulders and back. It was so useful that I made one for myself which I still use, and later made them for the children, too, for use in later sugaring operations.

Jo Ann made a special lunch in appreciation for Willie's help, a meal that featured Clay's cured and smoked shoulder ham. As we sat down, Willie had the gall to ask Jo Ann why she didn't "help out in the woods" His sister always helped Bob tap out.

"She has much more important things to do in the house," I quickly answered, "like this lunch."

I was surprised when she thanked me later; she had shown no sign, but she was annoyed by Willie's remark; as she pointed out, Ann could work in the woods because she had a hired girl. It was another demonstration of his insensitivity to material differences and their consequences, and also of the gulf between us. In later years, when the children were grown up and gone, then Jo Ann would assume, in addition to household tasks, such as the baking and preparing meals from scratch and all the preserving work in the barn, in the fields, and in the woods, far beyond what Ann Woodwright had ever done in her Simple Living life.

Next morning I made the fireplace, clearing an area in the middle of the woods eight feet on a side right down to the ground. I cut six hardwood poles three inches in diameter and ten feet long that I formed into tripods tied together at the top with baling twine. Then I laid a slightly stouter pole, eight feet long, across their tops. For boiling, I had two oblong twenty-gallon galvanized tubs with handles at their end, and these I suspended from the horizontal pole with logging chains, adjusting them until they were level about thirty inches from the ground. By enclosing the space under the tubs on three sides with scraps of metal roofing shored up with stones and a few cinder blocks, I had a fireplace. Two garbage cans were my storage tanks.

Sap runs in fits and starts, depending on weather and temperature. We had a short run right away, accumulating forty gallons of sap, but it was stopped by a cold north wind for several days, so I cut wood while I waited. When the next run began, I filled the tubs, lit the fire, and went my sap-gathering round, a much more difficult task than I had expected because the woods were not maintained for sugaring: there were no paths to the trees, nor were spaces cleared around each tree. It had been a sugar bush once, probably as late as the 1930s, as I could tell from old tap holes in some big dying maples I felled for firewood, and there was the ruin of an old sugarhouse just below the road. Now, wearing snowshoes and with a wide yoke on my shoulders, carrying two five-gallon buckets, it was a hard struggle to get around. Think of me, snagged in brush, caught by a limb, trying to turn in a narrow space, falling down, spilling the buckets, getting soaked. As the warming weather began to melt the snow; not only did obstacles appear, but I sank more deeply, the snowshoes would catch on something, and down I would go. Collecting all the sap could take as much as two exhausting hours, and if it hadn't been for the toughening exercise of hauling water, I don't think I could have done it.

I boiled constantly for five days during that run, and well into the night. After the children had been put to bed I would set off, on snowshoes if necessary, but if the day had been warmish and the night were cold enough, the surface would freeze so hard that I could step briskly along the rough icy snow in moccasins, following my nose uphill toward the mingled smells of wood smoke and boiling sap. Pulling aside the fire door to uncover a glowing bed of coals, I would pile on the wood until the fire was roaring and the sap was boiling. From time to time I would skim the foam with a skimmer I made from screening stretched over a forked branch. I sat on an upturned bucket and smoked my pipe, staring into the flames or watching the play of light and shadow on the surrounding trees. I could look across the gorge towards Otis's empty house or down towards the valley, and all I saw was darkness. And from there, how would my fire show up? What would a benighted traveler see? A wavering spark in the woods? But there were no such travelers, and I was alone in all that darkness, a silent watcher by my fire. I might stay an hour, and then I would load the fire and close the doors, fill the pans with sap and turn homewards, following the path, looking up at the stars in the strip of sky above the woods road.

Every day I gathered sap, much or little, adding it to the storage cans, eventually to the boiling tubs, gradually concentrating it into syrup. At the start of the season, when the sap is most sugary, the ratio of sap to sugar can be as high as twenty-five to one, falling later to forty to one or higher. When I had boiled down two-hundred gallons, therefore, I might have as much as six or seven gallons of syrup. A cold snap brought the run to an end when I had put that much sap into the pans, so I directed all my efforts to reducing the last forty gallons. The year before, you will recall, I had unknowingly failed to boil it down to real syrup. Now, thanks to the pamphlet, I knew there was a specific point of concentration I had to reach, and there were ways to know when that point was reached. An experienced sugar maker knows by the look of the syrup as it is poured from a ladle, but for the rest of us the surest way is to use a hydrometer to measure its specific gravity. That I didn't have, but a thermometer can be used: when the temperature is seven degrees above boiling point, adjusted for altitude above sea level, the syrup is made. So I boiled and boiled, and when the magic moment came, Jo Ann and I poured off the syrup, not so easy as it sounds. The fire had to be kept high right to the end, then the hot, cumbersome tubs had to be lifted quickly, one at a time from the blazing fire and held firmly as the contents were carefully poured off. I carried the buckets down to the house at once in order to strain it while it was still hot. The strainer, a long cone of sheeting, was already set up in the mud room, and when I poured in the syrup there was revealed, with no possibility of evasion, the full consequences of my lighthearted ignorance: the stuff was so thick with dirt it would not strain. Of course, there was bound to be some dirt from the open fire, but because my past "success" had led me to ignore the pamphlet's insistence on thorough cleanliness, lots of avoidable debris had gotten into the syrup, and all I had to show for my hard labor was some nasty black gunk! If I had really boiled the syrup down last year, I would have had the same result.

I studied the pamphlet again, and the next day I went back to the fireplace, rehung the tubs, packed them with snow, started the fire, and melted snow until I had two tubs of scalding water. In the meantime, I slogged around the woods retrieving all the buckets. Everything - buckets, tubs, utensils - was remorselessly scrubbed and the buckets were replaced on the trees. I had a few covers, necessary for keeping out twigs, bark, snow, rain, and now I made more from anything I could find. Finally, I tightened up the fireplace to reduce the sparks and ash flying up into the tubs.

During the next sap run I went through he same routine as before, taking care to exclude all visible dirt, and when we poured it off we strained it right there in the woods, warily and anxiously. In a moment, golden brown syrup poured in a thick stream from the strainer, and we knew we had finally done the job right. It was, to be sure, Grade B, but making a better grade over an open fire is probably impossible. Ignoramuses often claim that Grade B is tastier, but they are confusing crude strength with the delicate essence of maple flavor that only the fancy grade has. In all the years we sugared in Vermont I made a few small improvements in technique and equipment, and eventually we hung three-hundred buckets, but the operation remained essentially as I have described it.

We never had an adequate wood supply that winter, and I regularly went to the woods to cut more. The woodshed was never absolutely bare, but it was always a reproach to me. Once in late winter Willie and his sister kindly brought us some blocks cut from a dead elm stub beside the road, at a time when our supply was especially low, and we were very grateful. Ann wanted to see Aster (she had been Ann's first cow), and when I took her to the stable, I could tell from her dismayed expression, although she said nothing, that something was wrong. Cows, when they lie down in a stable, will sometimes get manure on their hip, where it dries and cakes. With my usual ignorance and carelessness I had thought nothing of it, but I guessed that this was what distressed Ann. From then on, Aster (and all our succeeding cows) was always kept curried and clean.

One morning on my way up to the woods, passing a south-facing bank in an open place fully exposed to the sun, I saw earth again, not the frozen surface I had uncovered when I shoveled away the snow for the fireplace, but damp brown soil, gray pebbles, tan roots, beige leaves, brownish-gray twigs, and yellowing stems, a collection brought to light gradually, steadily, irresistibly by the force of the sun alone. Kneeling, I peered closely at the assemblage, tentatively touching the cold, rough, smooth, damp surfaces, pressing my face close, smelling its earthiness.

I snowshoed across the Big Meadow a few days later, paying out lengths of hose behind me, heading for the place where I filled the garbage can. When I made the connection, we had water to the house. Not in the house, but running night and day into a tub by the side of the porch. On a couple of cold nights after that it froze, but the sun, warming the dark hose where it lay atop the snow, thawed it without my bothering.

By the end of April, sugaring was over, and early one morning Nell and I were up at the top of the woods, collecting buckets and pulling taps, when we heard raucous cries. Looking down through the woods, down into the wide gorge, we saw below us a flock in the V formation of thirty or so Snow Geese, white with black primaries, flying up the gorge. I had never looked down on a flock of geese before. Onward they flew, rising, the dark spruce woods of the gorge their background, coming level with us, then soaring over the hill beyond our sight. Spring was coming. *

Thomas Martin

Thomas Martin is the O.K. Bouwsma Chair in Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Along with his fellow colleagues who are dedicated to the study of the Great Books, he teaches the works of Plato, Aristotle, G.K. Chesterton, Dostoyevsky, and Solzhenitsyn, to mention a few.

As a professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, I recently received an email from the President of the University, J. B. Milliken, on employee benefits. He notified me, as well as all other faculty and staff, of his proposal that university benefits should include same-sex partners and opposite-sex partners and their dependent children.

He did so because, in his own words:

I believe our proposal would put the University in a stronger position to attract and retain talented faculty and staff, address the changing needs of our employees, and help us to fulfill our goal to serve Nebraska.

His proposal, "Employee Plus One," would also allow those who are "unmarried [in addition to the same-sex and opposite-sex partners] to elect coverage for a partner who shares the employee's household."

He justifies this expansion of University benefits because every other Big Ten university provides "partner benefits."

He concluded with, "We are in a global marketplace for talent, and I believe that by not offering partner benefits, we will be at a competitive disadvantage."

As such a proponent, President Milliken obfuscates the institution of marriage by using the terminology "same and opposite-sex partners." This is like calling bachelors single - it is a redundancy. Married people do not have an "opposite-sex partner." They are married.

Milliken is using this politically correct terminology, ever popular on university campuses, in place of the traditional term "marriage," as if that is all marriage is - a partnership. Having established this line of reasoning, he further slides down the slippery slope to unmarried partners. He then concludes that any and all relationships between "partners" that include a member of the faculty or staff of the university is justification for health insurance.

In all of this, Milliken purports to be fulfilling his goal as the President of University of Nebraska serving Nebraskans. Mind you, this is a state that has a Defense of Marriage Act that does not recognize homosexual marriage, or people who are, in what was commonly known in the free-love 1960s, before the terminology of partnering, as shacking-up.

J. B. Milliken's proposal follows the doctrine of pragmatism which, simply put, means "what is profitable is permissible." We are, after all, competing in the Big Ten and the global marketplace.

Those entrusted with serving the citizens of Nebraska ought to be asked several questions, by any rational person who as a citizen of Nebraska may choose to send children to this prestigious University and support its policies with tuition payments, contributions and tax dollars.

How does one qualify to be a same-sex, opposite-sex, or unmarried-sex partner?

Can a person who is bi-sexual have a same-sex and opposite-sex partnership and have health insurance for both of his/her partners?

Who decides how many partners any one person may have in his/her household within the course of being employed at the University of Nebraska?

The people of Nebraska need to see the university's document which defines partnerships, their limits, and their benefits. This needs to be printed and published in the newspapers of the state.

The next logical step for the Nebraska Board of Regents will be to approve the construction of "unmarried student partner" resident halls for same-sex partners, opposite-sex partners, unmarried-sex partners - dare we discriminate - which President Milliken will justify using the logic that it levels the playing field for competing for students in the Big Ten as well as the global marketplace.

This liberal interpretation of marriage, in the sense of liberating man from any moral boundaries for the union of the sexes, is not an absolute union authored by God; it is a social convention, a relative union sanctioned by emotional needs, and is thereby, subject to change as suits the times.

What is fashionable in one age is not necessarily fashionable in another. In this respect our relationships are emotional fads, here today and gone tomorrow. Agreements are not vows.

There is no promise in promiscuity.

This all comes at a time when our nation is facing the crisis of children being born out of wedlock in epidemic proportion. This proposal is one further occurrence of a state government official dismissing the family as the heart of a stable nation while the media is clamoring about the disadvantages of children who are living in poverty, often with a single parent.

Aristotle long ago noted that the natural domestic society, a family of father, mother and children, precedes the political society. It is the social relationship of a father and mother into which each child is naturally born. This is the root of natural law, what is natural to man, and can plainly be seen as the natural function, for example, of the sexual organs.

In conclusion, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? " Not for the world, and certainly not for the Big Ten. *

Edith E. Muesing-Ellwood

Edith Muesing-Ellwood is a freelance writer residing in the Poconos. She has two degrees in political science and has written three books and numerous articles on political and social issues.

Ten years ago the United States and its NATO allies began sending armed forces to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and end al Qaeda's presence there. Close to $100 billion per year is spent in aid to the country. Particularly disheartening is the fact that many Afghans do not want a foreign presence in their country. Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai's rhetoric against the United States echoes throughout the world.

In part because of the war, the plight of Afghan women has come to light. The root of female subservience in Afghanistan is foremost cultural. Afghanistan is a tribal culture as well as being steeped in Islamic tradition. Women do not see themselves as independent individuals but rather as objects of their husbands, of men in general, and of the social order men control.

The holy Islamic book, the Koran, is important to the Afghan people not only as the source of their religion but also as their cultural heritage. According their interpretation of the Koran, a woman is worth only half a man, hence men control women and may have several wives, which further diminishes a woman's worth. Women for Women International reports that in today's Afghanistan over 60 percent of marriages are forced on women, and half of all girls marry before the age of sixteen. Many women do not know they should have marital rights, the right to earn a living, and political representation and participation. They are held back by tribalism and poverty.

A brief look at Afghan history points out important turning points for Afghan women: In 1964 Afghanistan's constitution gave women the right to vote and allowed them to enter politics.

From 1979-1989 the Soviet Union ruled Afghanistan. During the Soviet war some rights were granted to women, but many women and children were killed.

When the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1992, women were denied education and employment and were confined to their homes. They could not leave the home unless accompanied by a mahram, a close male relative. There were beatings, whippings, and stoning of women who broke Taliban law, for example, by committing adultery. If a woman became ill, her husband had to accompany her to the medical facility. If the medicine cost too much, he could refuse to buy it, often with the consequence that she would die.

Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the political and cultural conditions of women have improved, yet the repression of women is especially common in rural areas. While Afghan law bans violence against women, women's rights are not enforced due to the ambivalence, weak will, and corruption of the Karzai government. This corruption includes ballot stuffing, money laundering, and bribery. Rangina Hamidi, a strong women's rights advocate, has lost much hope for the women because of the corruption of the Karzai government.

Currently, Afghanistan is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman, and women's rights are nonexistent or in decline. The birthrate is high; Afghan women have an average of seven children, and the population has been doubling about every 20 years. Today it is 34 million. Population and poverty are growing.

Women cannot freely express their grievances in society, particularly when their actions are in conflict with the Koran and traditional practices. For women to achieve any kind of peace and fulfillment, they must cease to serve as objects of gratification for men.

To make matters worse, there is now the possibility of a compromise deal with the Taliban to end the Afghan war. To this end, President Karzai established a peace council in June of 2010. While the conditions of women improved after Taliban rule ended in 2001, many women now fear that their lives will take a turn for the worse should the Taliban gain power. It is already a challenge for women to attend school and work outside the home.

If the war against the Taliban fails or if the Taliban are given a role in governing as a result of a compromise for peace, Afghanistan could sink into a state of violence and misery, and the Koran would again be strictly interpreted. This would exacerbate the plight of women.

In general the population lives in single room mud huts with the opium crop as their only source of income. Once women reach puberty, they wear burkas - black or multi-colored garments which cover their entire bodies. While there are some schools for women, few women run businesses. Yet women are an untapped resource in Afghanistan that if encouraged could stem the tide of poverty and disarray. Unfortunately, women who do get ahead often are so busy securing careers that they lose touch with other Afghan women.

Women seek public office under threat of death. In September 2005 Malalai Joya became the youngest female member of the Wolesi Jirga (legislature). She suffered much intimidation and harassment and was finally suspended from office. Many women have been killed because of their political involvement. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported that Sitara Achekzai, a member of the Kandahar Provincial Council, was shot dead in April 2009, a few weeks after she shared her views with UN on the plight of women in Afghanistan.

Article 22 of Afghanistan's constitution states that men and women have equal rights and duties before the law. Yet, according to the Human Rights Watch report concerning a July 2009 law, if a wife refuses to obey her husband's sexual demands, he has the right to deny her basic support. She must have sex with him at least once every four days. Guardianship of children belongs to the husband. A woman must get permission from her husband to work. The law effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying her money. International condemnation forced the Karzai government to place the implementation of the law on hold until it is further reviewed.

However, inroads have been made. There is now a Ministry of Women's Affairs. There are local women's councils at the provincial level. Women hold three ministerial level positions. The Constitution sets a quota of 25 percent Afghan women's representation in the Parliament, and guarantees 50 percent for the presidential appointments to the Upper House. Of course, as mentioned before, women face harassment and have even been killed for holding office. While there is room for hope, Afghan women have a way to go before achieving equality.

In conclusion, it must be emphasized that the women of Afghanistan must gain a sense of self-worth and must learn to love themselves. Education can help accomplish this. Women must participate politically and exert pressure for change. Self-immolation out of a sense of futility is not the answer.

Rape must be criminalized. While in the past the Koran has been interpreted to put women in their place, this can no longer be tolerated. Imposing oppressive laws according to religious dogma is wrong.

Because of the little effect brought about by the billions of dollars already spent, aid agencies are reconsidering funding. Afghan women and men must take over their own destiny in a country riddled by government corruption and fundamentalist beliefs. It can be done.

Localities must reform. There must be a grassroots effort for change. It is up to each individual Afghan woman to take control. Women like Malalai Joya are trying. Each Afghan woman who fights subjugation leaves the path open for the next and the one after her until lasting change is achieved for all. *

Ellwood/Afghan women 1

Barry MacDonald - Editorial

Steve Jobs, by Walter Issaacson. Simon & Schuster, 627pp., $35 hardbound.

Steve Jobs was a difficult man to be around; he was often needlessly cruel - with the penetrating intelligence to deeply wound - but he was also inspiring, prompting those he worked with to accomplish the seemingly impossible.

Now it is hard to imagine life without computers or the Internet. Steve Jobs didn't invent the personal computer, his friend did, but he discovered how it could be used. He didn't invent the Internet, but he was pioneering in its use. Steve Jobs transformed our lives. Many Millions do business differently, do entertainment differently, through his influence.

Steve Jobs was inspired by the magic of electronics. His motivation was not to get rich, but to make wonderful products, and to build a lasting company. In his words he wanted to "put a dent in the universe." An early mentor taught him three guidelines: 1) understand and be intimate with the needs of customers better than any other company; 2) in order to do a good job focus only on essential services; and 3) because people really do judge a book by its cover, impute the high values of the company through all possible contact with customers, including advertising, sales, and even packaging.

His post-high school friend, Steve Wozniak, ("fifty times better than an average engineer" according to Steve Jobs) had the insight for the first stand-alone computer: a microprocessor, keyboard, and screen. Steve Jobs had the drive to sell the invention, the Apple I; they assembled fifty circuit boards in his parent's garage. Steve and Steve formed a partnership called Apple Computer - thus was the beginning in 1975 of what would become the world's most valuable company.

Steve Wozniak designed the Apple II with improved circuitry that became the first personal computer that ordinary people could use.

Apple took off with the introduction of the Macintosh. The Macintosh featured a bitmapped display, icons, and a point and click mouse. Steve Jobs refined Xerox's innovations to make the Macintosh user-friendly, so easy to use that customers could learn by doing, without needing a manual. He also gave priority to a pleasing design, making his engineers go to extraordinary lengths, and setting the Macintosh apart from the boxy versions of competitors. He aimed at a classic look that would never go out of style.

Steve Jobs excelled at "launching" products. He agonized over words, choreography, lighting. With the Macintosh, the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad he staged event presentations at prestigious venues, making the introduction of each new product seem epochal. With tension building to a peak he whipped off a cover, revealing a gleaming new device. Whatever the product was, it was the most amazing thing Apple had ever done. (Maybe he was right!) He maximized publicity by captivating the media. Dozens of times he played the same tricks to create "blasts of publicity that were so powerful the frenzy would feed on itself, like a chain reaction." He created buzz and the nation took notice.

The ad campaign for the Macintosh in 1984 was stunning. At the time there was fierce competition in the market for personal computers. The cover headline of Business Week was: "Personal Computers: And the Winner Is . . . IBM."

Steve arranged a showdown with IBM, then called "Big Blue." He cast IBM in the role of Big Brother from George Orwell's novel 1984. In a sales meeting to rally his team he asked:

Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell right about 1984?

He hired the movie producer Ridley Scott to do an ad in London. A mass sat enthralled with a huge screen, with dozens of real London skinheads in the crowd. The setting was dominated by metallic grey hues, imposing a "cold industrial setting." A blonde female discus thrower was the heroine. She wore a white tank top emblazoned with a Macintosh; she came running forward with a sledgehammer. Just as Big Brother announced "We shall prevail!" the hammer "smashes the screen and it vaporizes in a flash of light and smoke."

Steve Jobs' attached to the Apple brand a "cyberpunk ethos," with customers, and Apple employees also, seeing themselves as "renegades out to foil the establishment," "rebels and hackers who thought differently."

When Apple's board of directors saw the ad most thought it was dreadful. They told Steve to sell back the time slot they had reserved for a Super Bowl showing. Steve and his ad agency pretended they were unable to sell back the slot; they gambled and went ahead. Walter Isaacson describes the impact of its appearance during Super Bowl XVIII:

. . . television screens across the nation went black for an ominous two full seconds. Then an eerie black-and-white image of drones marching to spooky music began to fill the screen. More than ninety-six million people watched an ad that was unlike any they'd seen before. At its end, as the drones watched in horror the vaporizing of Big Brother, an announcer calmly intoned, "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you will see why 1984 won't be like 1984."

That night all three networks and fifty local news stories ran stories about the ad. The ad had unprecedented impact, eventually being selected by TV Guide and Advertising Age as the greatest commercial of all time. It was a smashing success.

Steve didn't invent everything himself, but he brought talented people together and led them, through terror or praise. He extracted every ounce of effort from his teams of "A players." The magic wouldn't have happened without him pushing. He didn't rely on market research, believing "customers don't know what they want until we've shown them."

Isaacson writes that Steve revolutionized six industries: "personal computers, animated movies (Toy Story, Cars, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, etc.), music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing." And he "reimagined" the way retail stores were operated.

The iPod featured a drive capable of holding 1000 songs, ("1000 songs in your pocket!") a scroll wheel for navigating songs quickly, a FireWire connection to a Macintosh where the songs were arranged, and a high powered battery; all in a tiny, thin case.

When the iPod came out the music industry was troubled by Internet piracy; people were downloading songs without paying for them. The record companies had no idea how to prevent theft. Steve saw an opportunity. He persuaded the five top companies to allow digital versions of their songs to be sold in the iTunes Stores he created. Each song bought through iTunes cost 99 cents, the record companies kept 70 cents. This was the beauty of Steve's "end-to-end strategy": Sales at iTunes drove sales of iPods that drove sales of Macintoshes.

Steve believed that people would rather pay for songs than steal them if they could do so easily and cheaply, and he was right. The iTunes Store sold one million songs in the first six days, seventy million songs in the first year. Steve Jobs changed the way the music industry operated.

But the innovation didn't stop there. Usually major musicians charged a lot of money to appear in ads but that was not the case with Apple. Apple had become a brand cooler than the brand of most artists. Steve Jobs didn't have to pay them to appear in his ads, they wanted the opportunity he afforded to reach new people. Bob Dylan appeared in a television ad for the iPod, and his new album, Modern Times, reached number one on the Billboard in the first week. It was the first time Dylan reached the top spot in thirty years. Lead Singer Bono and his band U2 did the same for the same reasons.

The genius of Steve Jobs was that he knew most people want devices that are attractive and easy to use. His efforts were directed at eliminating confusion and he simplified, simplified, simplified. He did away with the off switch! Apple devices just go dormant when they are not used - who else would have thought of that? He wanted access to be no more than three "clicks" away, whether the product were an iPod, iPhone, or iPad. Walter Isaacson relates the experience of Michael Noer, a writer for Forbes.com. While Michael Noer was staying at a dairy farm in a rural area north of Bogota, Colombia:

. . . a poor six-year-old boy who cleaned the stables came up to him. Curious, Noer handed him the device [an iPad]. With no instruction, and never having seen a computer before, the boy started using it intuitively. He began swiping the screen, launching apps, playing a pinball game. "Steve Jobs has designed a powerful computer that an illiterate six-year-old can use without instruction," Noer wrote. "If that isn't magical, I don't know what is."

At the time of his resignation as CEO from Apple, soon followed by his death from cancer, Apple had become the world's most valuable company. Walter Isaacson sums up:

Steve Jobs became the greatest business executive of our era, the one most certain to be remembered a century from now. History will place him in the pantheon right next to Edison and Ford. More than anyone else of his time, he made products that were completely innovative, combining the power of poetry and processors. With a ferocity that could make working with him as unsettling as it was inspiring, he also built the world's most creative company. And he was able to infuse into its DNA the design sensibilities, perfectionism, and imagination that make it likely to be, even decades from now, the company that thrives best at the intersection of artistry and technology.

Sincere soldiers read The Art of War, by Sun-tzu, an ancient Chinese General, to improve their skill. In the same way, anyone in business would benefit by reading Steve Jobs.

The following is from his "think different" ad campaign. It captures his, and Apple's, ethos:

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The Rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect of the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

Of course, the proper place for this spirit is the private sector. Steve Jobs gave us technological innovation. Our methods of communication are vastly improved in few years. But he didn't change the character of human nature. The quality of what we say to each other is not changed by technological innovation.

Steve Jobs was not a gentle man. He bruised people deeply, belittling employees who didn't measure up. His daughter, Lisa, was born out of wedlock and he denied parentage in the face of DNA evidence. He did provide financial support, and did establish a sometimes warm relationship with Lisa in between periods of inattention and neglect. When asked why he hurt people he responded: "This is who I am."

Steve Jobs was flawed. And he is among the few, precious, people who have improved the lives of hundreds of millions - most won't even know his name. *