American history tends to be ignored by Hollywood and therefore it is unusual for a battle to receive treatment in a Hollywood feature film.  It is doubly unusual for a battle to be treated in two Hollywood feature films, but that is the case for the battle of New Orleans.  The 1938 film was directed by the legendary Cecil B. Demille and had Frederic March, an actor largely forgotten today but a major star in his time, as Jean Lafitte.  Two future stars have bit parts in the film:  Anthony Quinn and Walter Brennan.  Hugh Sothern who portrayed Andrew Jackson would also portray Jackson in 1939 in the film Old Hickory.

The 1958 remake was also to have been directed by Cecille B. DeMille, but he was seriously ill at that time, and relegated himself to the role of executive producer, turning the director’s chair over to Anthony Quinn, his then son-in-law, the one and only film that Quinn ever directed.    DeMille was unhappy with the film and it received fairly negative reviews, although I think the battle sequences are superior to the first film.  Yul Brynner plays Jean Lafitte and Charlton Heston is a commanding Andrew Jackson.  Like Hugh Sothern, Heston would portray Jackson twice, the first time being in The President’s Lady (1953), the tale of the great love story of Rachel Jackson (Susan Hayward) and Andrew Jackson.  Future stars in this version include Inger Stevens, Claire Bloom and Lorne Green.

Adequate coverage of the battle is given in each film, although not much detail.  The battle of course is merely and adjunct for the romantic tale of Jean Lafitte.  Without the pirate turned patriot, I am certain the battle of New Orleans would have likely received the same indifference that Hollywood has shown for most of American history.

Andrew Jackson has always been controversial.  He is the only man in American history to spawn two political movements:  the Democrat Party which he founded, and the Whig Party, and after it the Republican Party, founded in opposition to Jackson and his policies.  In his lifetime he was celebrated as the brilliant general who won the battle of New Orleans, and condemned as a frontier duelist and near murderer;  he lived one of the great love stories of American history, and was condemned as an adulterer;  condemned as a pitiless persecutor of Indians, he is the only American president to adopt an Indian child;  a champion of freedom for the common man, he was a slaver-holder who never said a word against the Peculiar Institution.  Jackson and his legacy will be debated as long as there is a United States of America.

My own take on President Jackson is contained in the post The Devil and Andrew Jackson which may be read here.

Please consider signing a petition to have this ad removed from the commercials during the Superbowl.

From the Telegraph:

While he will restate the Catholic Church’s staunch objections to contraception because it believes it interferes with the creation of life, he will argue that using a condom to preserve life and avoid death can be a responsible act – even outside marriage.

In the meantime, be sure to read this book excerpt from Catholic World Report. For an early take on this book excerpt (but not the full context of the Pope’s statements), see Janet Smith’s piece, “Pope Benedict on Condoms in ‘Light of the World‘.

If you have stumbled by our humble blog by accident, know that we are still around at the-american-catholic.com.

Just click on this link and you will get the best in politics and culture from a Catholic perspective!

In Jesus, Mary, & Joseph,

The TAC Editors

The American Catholic is going through an upgrade this next week in order to better serve our readers and engage the world.

This means we will be down for roughly a 24 hour period and will return tomorrow evening, November 14 around 6pm Central time.

Thank you for your patience!

TAC Editors

Ed Parraz, the Superintendent of the Denair School District told us a school supervisor asked Cody to take down the flag. The supervisor will not be fired or face repercussions. Parraz says the supervisor had information that Cody Alicea’s safety was at risk because of the flag. Some students had complained about it and had apparently made threats.

“The last thing we wanted was to deny Cody his rights,” said Parraz speaking about the boy’s wish to fly the American flag.

Parraz said national flags were banned from campus after a Cinco De Mayo incident when tensions escalated between students displaying the Mexican flag and those waving the Stars and Stripes.  Recently, several students complained and there was even one threat.

“I think it would be irresponsible of us if we kind of shined it on and let him have the flag and he got jumped or something like that and got hurt,” said Parraz.

So the proper way to respond to threats is to cave in to the people doing the bullying?  Is that really the lesson we ought to be imparting to our children?

Of course, this rationale is probably a poor attempt by the school to cover its, err, behind.

Something for the weekend.  I have never been particularly fond of Country and Western music, a musical genre that my late parents perhaps overdosed me on as I was growing up.  However, I have always been fond of the rollicking Rocky Top.  The video at the beginning of this post melds the song with pictures from the Volunteer State.

The individual who posted the you tube video has detailed information about the song:

A video of Tennessee history. The Tennessee Theme song Rocky Top. There is so much spirit in Tennessee. Atlanta artist Corey Barksdale video about state of Tennessee. Corey Barksdale has lived in Atlanta for about 15 years and has become one of Atlanta’s premier artist. Corey Barksdale has exhibited his artwork at the Atlanta Dogwood festival, Decatur Art Festival, Virginia-Highlands Art Festival, National Black Art Festival, Atlanta Jazz Festival, Artsplosure in Raleigh North Carolina, Art Festival in Paducah, Kentucky, One of a Kind Show in Chicago, etc. Decatur, GA artist Corey Barksdale has painted for audiences in the city of Atlanta,

This video was created by Atlanta & Decatur Fine Artist Corey Barksdale. Please visit Corey’s website. http://www.coreybarksdale.com/

The song was written by a married couple, songwriters Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. They wrote “Rocky Top” in only ten minutes in 1967. The Bryants were working in Gatlinburg on a collection of slow-tempo songs for a project for Archie Campbell and Chet Atkins. Writing the fast-paced “Rocky Top” served as a temporary diversion for them. Recorded by the Osborne Brothers in 1967, the song was a top 40 hit on the country music charts in early 1968.

Although a staple of their concerts, the song did not achieve mass popularity until Lynn Anderson had a hit with it in 1970, and when the “Pride of the Southland” University of Tennessee marching band used it for one of their drills in 1972. The song was very popular and was officially adopted as a state song in 1982. In the 1970s, the song achieved such popularity among bar crowds that the Chapel Hill, North Carolina, old-time band the Red Clay Ramblers [1] national tours included a crowd-pleasing satire informally titled “Play ‘Rocky Top’ (or I’ll Punch Your Lights Out.)”[2]

The original “Rocky Top” song describes a place called Rocky Top, Tennessee, which is one of the three peaks of Thunderhead Mountain in Tennessee (located in the Smoky Mountains) in the eastern part of the state. The peak is actually located along the border between Tennessee and North Carolina.[3][4]

Despite its fast and upbeat tempo, the song’s first verse is actually a lament over a failed love affair and a vanishing way of life. The song’s second verse is an ode to two apparent revenuers and the illegal production of alcoholic beverages by moonshining, with a reference to “looking for a moonshine still.” These are all common country music themes. With its good-natured regional references to a carefree lifestyle, the singing of “Rocky Top” by Tennessee college students and alumni at sports venues such as Neyland Stadium is well established. The University of Tennessee has been granted a perpetual license to play the song as much and as often as success on the field dictates by the copyright holders, House of Bryant.

Contrary to popular belief, “Rocky Top” is not UT’s official fight song, although it is so closely identified with the university that many believe this to be the case. UT’s official fight song is a radically different tune called “Here’s To Old Tennessee”, adapted from the Yale University fight song “Down the Field”.

“Operation Rocky Top” was the FBI’s code name for a public corruption investigation into the Tennessee state government in the late 1980s which resulted in the eventual suicide of the Tennessee Secretary of State, Gentry Crowell, and the incarceration of several other individuals, most notably state House Majority Leader Tommy Burnette. The focus of the investigation was the illegal sale of bingo licenses.

The jam band Phish played “Rocky Top” regularly from 1987 to 2003. There have been additional cover versions of the song by such country music artists as Dolly Parton, Conway Twitty, and Billie Jo Spears. It can also be known as the official fight song of David Webb, a noted band director in Central Virginia at Jefferson Forest High.

Here is Lynn Anderson’s version which launched the song to fame:

I ask because I want to know what Christian discipleship looks like in all things in life. And because honestly, I’m not sure. Sometimes, it’s easy to know what Christian discipleship looks like. For example, I know that willingness to die for the faith is very Christ-like. I know that prayer is an essential part of Christian discipleship. And I know that adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is our highest good as human beings. But these are high and holy actions for our faith life; what about things not as obviously related to our faith life, like putting furniture in a house or apartment?

I look forward to hearing what you may think, or not think if the question totally bores you. So please let me know – am I the only one who asks these types of questions? Should I just chill out? Or what? In the meantime I think I will try to ask God in prayer.

MacIntyre has often given the impression of a robe-ripping Savonarola. He has lambasted the heirs to the principal western ethical schools: John Locke’s social contract, Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” Yet his is not a lone voice in the wilderness. He can claim connections with a trio of 20th-century intellectual heavyweights: the late Elizabeth Anscombe, her surviving husband, Peter Geach, and the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, winner in 2007 of the Templeton prize. What all four have in common is their Catholic faith, enthusiasm for Aristotle’s telos (life goals), and promotion of Thomism, the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas who married Christianity and Aristotle. Leo XIII (pope from 1878 to 1903), who revived Thomism while condemning communism and unfettered capitalism, is also an influence.

—

MacIntyre begins his Cambridge talk by asserting that the 2008 economic crisis was not due to a failure of business ethics. The opener is not a red herring. Ever since he published his key text After Virtue in 1981, he has argued that moral behaviour begins with the good practice of a profession, trade, or art: playing the violin, cutting hair, brick-laying, teaching philosophy. Through these everyday social practices, he maintains, people develop the appropriate virtues. In other words, the virtues necessary for human flourishing are not a result of the top-down application of abstract ethical principles, but the development of good character in everyday life. After Virtue, which is in essence an attack on the failings of the Enlightenment, has in its sights a catalogue of modern assumptions of beneficence: liberalism, humanism, individualism, capitalism. MacIntyre yearns for a single, shared view of the good life as opposed to modern pluralism’s assumption that there can be many competing views of how to live well.

—

This rift between economics and ethics, says MacIntyre, stems from the failure of our culture “to think coherently about money.” Instead, we should think like Aristotle and Aquinas, who saw the value of money “to be no more, no less than the value of the goods which can be exchanged, so there’s no reason for anyone to want money other than for the goods they buy.” Money affords more choices and choice is good. But when they are imposed by others whose interest is in getting us to spend, then money becomes the sole measure of human flourishing. “Goods are to be made and supplied, insofar as they can be turned into money… ultimately, money becomes the measure of all things, including itself.” Money can now be made “from the exchange of money for money… and trading in derivatives and in derivatives of derivatives.” And so those who work in the financial sector have become dislocated from the uses of money in everyday life. One symptom of this, MacIntyre contends, is gross inequality. In 2009, for instance, the chief executives of Britain’s 100 largest companies earned on average 81 times more than the average pay of a full-time worker.

MacIntyre’s After Virtue was a pivotal text for me, as I suspect it is for most. Its trenchant critiques of conservative and liberal liberalism, as well as of libertarianism, are as forceful now as they were 30 years ago. If you haven’t read any MacIntyre, get off the blogs, put away the computer, and do yourself the service of remedying that deficiency.

The appalling murder of dozens of Christians at Our Lady of Deliverance Cathedral by Al Qaeda on October 31, gives us another opportunity to look into the minds of these butchers.

Al Qaeda released a statement on the Internet claiming the attack.

“Upon guidance issued by the Ministry of War in the Islamic State of Iraq in support for our downtrodden Muslim sisters that are held captive in the Muslim land of Egypt and after accurate planning and selection, an angry group of righteous jihadists attacked a filthy den of polytheism,” according to the statement, which was obtained by The Long War Journal. “This den has been frequently used by the Christians of Iraq to fight Islam and support those who are fighting it. With the grace of God, the group was able to hold captive all those in the den and take over all its entrances.”

Based on the statement, it appears that al Qaeda in Iraq had hoped to hold the Christians in Baghdad hostage for at least two days, as a deadline for “the release” of Egyptian women supposedly being held in Coptic churches in Egypt was issued.

“The mujahidin in the Islamic State of Iraq give Egypt’s Christian and belligerent Church as well as its chief of infidelity a 48-hour ultimatum to disclose the status of our sisters in religion, who are held captive in Egypt’s monasteries of infidelity and churches of polytheism,” al Qaeda demanded. “The mujahidin further demand the release of all of them together with an announcement of the release via a media outlet that the mujahidin can access within the deadline.”

Al Qaeda said that if the demands were not met, “the lions of monotheism [al Qaeda's fighters], who wore their explosive belts, will not hesitate to kill the militant Iraqi Christian captives.”

Al Qaeda in Iraq also threatened to carry out attacks against Christian churches across the globe.

“Afterwards, various attacks will be launched against them inside and outside this country, in which their lands will be destroyed, their strength will be undermined, and they will be afflicted by the humiliation that God ordained for them,” al Qaeda said.

The jihadists want us dead because we are Christians.  They have absolutely no compunction about slaying Muslims who oppose them, and in their eyes Christians are fit only to be killed or to be slaves.  The alleged reasons given by Al Qaeda for the attack on the Cathedral are completely delusional and demonstrate yet again that to them the murder of Christians is, in itself, a positive good.

Father Raymond J. De Souza understands what we are up against.  His words may sound strident and strange to contemporary Catholics;  to most of our ancestors in the faith who confronted militant Islam for over a thousand years, they would have seemed completely accurate:

His Wrath Upon Their Heads

May we now speak of the Muslims who want to kill us?

Isn’t that way out of line? Surely Islam is a religion of peace, from which we have a lot to learn?

Let’s then dispense with the disclaimers: Christians and Muslims have often lived together in peace. Only a minority of Muslims are homicidal fanatics. Terrorism is a corruption of Islam. Fine.

But let us speak frankly of those Islamic jihadists who wish to kill Christians because they are not Muslims. On Oct. 31 in Baghdad, an al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group stormed into the cathedral of the Syriac Catholic Church, Our Lady of Salvation, during the evening Mass. They immediately killed the priest offering the Holy Mass – three priests in all were murdered. They began shooting and held the congregation hostage while security forces surrounded the church. When the police stormed the church, the jihadists began killing those inside; some of them set off suicide bombs on their belts. Dozens of Catholics were killed.

The blood of Abel, the first innocent to be killed, cried out to heaven. The blood of these latest Iraqi martyrs screams out to heaven and Earth. Does the world want to listen?

“Christians are slaughtered in Iraq, in their homes and churches, and the so-called ‘free’ world is watching in complete indifference, interested only in responding in a way that is politically correct and economically opportune, but in reality is hypocritical,” said Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan after these latest killings.

“There are a few churches and Christian institutions left in Baghdad, not so great a number that it is not unreasonable for them to be protected, security-wise,” he continued, noting that the security being provided by the government is “far less than what we have hoped for and requested.”

By now the killing of Christians by jihadists has become a regular feature of the landscape in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. Yet a massacre in a church, during the Holy Mass, surely would provoke a thunderous reaction?

“We condemn in the strongest terms those who would conduct such a cowardly, vicious and senseless attack on innocent civilians in a place of worship,” said the boilerplate statement from Lawrence Cannon, Canada’s foreign minister. No mention of who “those” attackers might be. The Rotary Club? Salvation Army?

The American State Department had no statement at all.

In the Church too, there is often a reluctance to support vigourously Christians under attack, and to call things by name.

“As in the past and still existent today, some imbalances are present in our relations,” is how the final statement of the recent Synod of Bishops on the Middle East characterized Christian-Muslim relations. Imbalances? As in the imbalance between the jihadist firing the gun and the Catholic mother being riddled with bullets?
Then there was the statement by Bishop Kevin Farrell of Dallas, which was utterly astonishing. After simply describing the massacre, he boldly pointed the finger of blame:

“The level of incivility in our national dialogue has reached a crescendo,” Farrell wrote. “Catholics in Iraq specifically link the violence against them by Muslim extremists to anti-Muslim demonstrations and threats to burn the Koran in the United States. Our actions have consequences far beyond our control. … I call upon all Catholics to tone down the level of hatred in their comments and conversations.”

The blood is still dripping from the walls of the Baghdad cathedral, and Bishop Farrell finds fault with a nutcase nobody pastor who threatened to burn the Koran, but did not do so after the whole world condemned him. Would that the Islamic radicals in Baghdad had only threatened to kill people at Mass. With all respect to the bishop of Dallas, the problem is not with overheated Catholic rhetoric, but with murderous Muslims. A Catholic bishop ought to know the difference. Indeed, a bishop might consider more muscular rhetoric, perhaps giving voice to the blood of Baghdad that screams out to heaven.

“Vengeance is mine says the Lord.” So Scripture teaches us, and so it must be for us, leaving vengeance to the Lord, and imploring the grace of reconciliation and mercy. But let us not blanch from raising our voices to the Lord, with righteous anger and hot tears, to visit His vengeance upon those who did this, to bring down His wrath upon their heads, to exact upon them a terrifying price in full measure for their grievous sins.

That’s not the language of hatred; it is the language of the shepherd when the flock is being slaughtered.

Bravo Father!  The time of comforting weasel words is passing, and the time of hard truths is upon us.

Should we care about equality as such? A lot of progressives say that we should. Here, for example, is a bit from Tony Judt’s posthumously published Ill Fares the Land (helpfully provided by my former co-blogger Morning’s Minion):

“Inequality, then, is not just unattractive in itself; it clearly corresponds to pathological social problems that we cannot hope to address unless we attend to their underlying cause. There is a reason why infant mortality, life expectancy, criminality, the prison population, mental illness, unemployment, obesity, malnutrition, teenage pregnancy, illegal drug use, economic insecurity, personal indebtedness and anxiety are so much more marked in the US and the UK than they are in continental Europe.

The wider the spread between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, the worse the social problems: a statement which appears to be true for rich and poor countries alike. What matters is not how affluent a country is but how unequal it is. Thus Sweden, or Finland, two of the world’s wealthiest countries by per capital income or GDP, have a very narrow gap separating their richest from their poorest citizens–and they consistently lead the world in indices of measurable wellbeing. Conversely, the United States, despite its huge aggregate wealth, always comes low on such measures.

Of course, if inequality leads to crime, mental illness, and so forth, then you might wonder: why the crime rate is higher in Finland than the U.S.,? Why is the suicide rate higher in Finland and Sweden than the U.S.? Etc.

I suspect that deep down progressives do not care about inequality. Or, rather, they care about inequality to the extent that it seems to support their policy prescriptions, and not one bit more (they are, of course, hardly unique in this).

For example, take immigration. Every time a poor kid from Guatemala swims across the Rio Grande, inequality in the U.S. goes up slightly. If several million immigrants do so, this increase in inequality is greatly magnified. If progressives really cared about inequality, then they ought to be stridently anti-immigration (as, in fact, were many of the original progressives). But they aren’t. So they don’t.

Or take Europe. It is a commonplace to say that while the U.S. may be wealthier Europe is at least more egalitarian. And this is true if you only look at inequality within individual countries. Yet if you look at Europe as a whole the gap between rich and poor is extremely large. Per capita income in the richest member of the European Union (Luxembourg, $78,409) is about 6.6 times as much as per capita income for the poorest member (Bulgaria, $11,883). For comparison, the richest state in the U.S. (DC, $66,000) has a per capita income that is roughly 2.2 times as large as the per capita income of the poorest state (Mississippi, $30,103).

Inequality between societies does not seem to bother progressives as much as inequality within societies, so perhaps this is not such a big deal. The goal of the European Union, however, is to integrate the different European societies with each other. At some point someone is going to calculate the gini for the European Union as a unit (rather than just averaging the ginis for the different member states) and be shocked to discover that inequality has exploded. If progressives really cared about inequality, then they would view the European Union as a huge disaster. Yet they don’t; so they don’t.

I could go on, but you get the picture.