In Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel Quo Vadis, the Apostle Peter, freeing Rome to avoid persecution, meets Christ and asks him, Quo vadis, Domine? Where are you going, Lord? The real question was where Peter was going.

Today we must ask ourselves, "Where are you going, man? Where are you going, human race?" Until now, we, like all of our fellow humans, were begotten of man; begotten, not made. It seems that we are almost at the point of beginning a race that is made, not begotten. When that happens, we shall no longer be people but products, a sorry end to what Sorokin described as our unique creative mission on earth. Where, indeed, is man headed? How have we reached the point when the greatest achievement of our most advanced science seems to be to have turned us into commodities?

This editor, and everyone who reads these lines, is a product not of manufacture, but of human begetting. That has been true of all humans since the days of Adam, but that situation may be coming to an end. It may not be much longer before we have among us representatives of what the late Paul Ramsey called "fabricated man," human beings no longer begotten, but made. A February decision of the British House of Lords opened the way in Britain for the cloning of human embryos for research purposes. In the United States, we do not clone, but we use artificially obtained embryos, arguing that their use as experimental subjects is justified because they do not come from abortions, but are "extra" embryos left over from efforts at in vitro fertilization.

The cover story in a February issue of The Weekly Standard addresses the "abolition of man" through modern

science. Is Western man, in the third millennium of history after Christ, about to transform human beings into products and human society into a cannibal culture? Is cutting organs out of still-living humans for transplant purposes morally that different from cutting up freshly killed people to use as food?

Throughout much of human history, human beings have taken themselves for granted, assuming that we have a special place in the order of things. Human nature was a given; everything was interpreted in the light of its relationship to us. The Greek philosopher Protagoras (ca. 480-410 B.C.) coined the phrase, "Man is the measure of all things," which has gone over into the history of philosophy as the Homo mensura rule. In order to do this, he had to assume that he knew what it means to be human.

The Bible explains this central position for man, but not for man as man, instead, for man in relationship to God. "What is man," the Psalmist asks, "that Thou art mindful of him?" (Psalm 8:4). Both Judaism and Christianity affirm the unique dignity of human beings, who are defined not in terms of biology or psychology, and certainly not in terms of athletic, intellectual, or artistic ability, but in terms of their relationship to God. Man and woman, male and female, are made in the image of the Creator (Genesis 1:26), and it is from this that their great dignity derives.

Today, the biblical understanding of Creation is banished from the public forum, replaced by naturalistic, purposeless evolution, although it is still cherished in millions of minds. For the time being, it is still possible to say,

The Christian idea of man has lost none of its power over minds which have rejected the faith; striking proof of this is found in the failure of minds, while accepting as true the hypothesis of natural selection, to give practical effect to it. If it is true that matter, having received life, progresses from lower to higher forms oforganization, two conclusions seem to flow from the fact. First, the progress of our species will be the better assured the more care and advantage we lavish upon the higher types without bothering about the lower types, whose reproduction it will be reasonable to prevent. Secondly, human societies themselves being regarded as living organisms, it will be reasonable, as in every other complex organism, to make the less developed cells serve to maintain and foster the higher forms of life. (Bertrand de Jouvenel)

This time of immunity may be drawing to an end, to be replaced by the exploitation at which de Jouvenel hints.

In recent centuries, people began to deny the previously assumed uniqueness of man, thinking of him not as a creature endowed with an immortal soul, but as a kind of machine (18th century). In the 19th century, Ludwig Büchner (Kraft und Stoff, 1854) taught a materialistic view of man: Man ist, was man isst: You are what you eat. This highly reductionist view appeared long before there was much scientific basis for it. In the eighteenth century, the difference between living organisms and the (relatively) simple machines that the people of that day could construct, such as clocks, was immense and man should not have compared himself to a machine or failed to see that there is something in him that has not come into being by eating.

Today these reductionist views are more plausible (although still entirely false). By the twentieth century, the functioning of the brain began to be understood, and the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick at mid-century seemed to open the possibility of explaining the reality of human life entirely in terms of biochemical and physical processes.

Under the influence of the behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner, author of Beyond Freedom and Dignity, a different kind of reductionism–psychological or behaviorist determinism–was popularized, despite the fact that it seems "self-referentially" false.1 Man should rid himself of the illusion that he is free and gracefully submit to guidance by wise scientists. This process of stripping man of the dignity and meaning with which the doctrine of creation in God’s image endowed him had already been foreshadowed in negative assertions such as those of Jean-Paul Sartre: "L’homme n’est qu’une passion inutile!" Man is nothing but a useless passion, and, in his play No Exit, "Hell is other people." Why should we entertain such debasing concepts of our human being? The answer is obvious: they relieve us of the responsibility we would have as rational creatures answerable to a divine Maker.

On an individual basis, many are happy to have this excuse for doing as they please, but society is moving more slowly. It has yet to decide to treat human beings as animals for selective breeding. When will human societies begin to act systematically on the principles that naturalistic evolution seems to suggest? The Germans did attempt this, in a crude way, under the Nazis, until, instead of being served by those they considered "lower types," they were crushed under the combined force of the British Empire, the U.S.S.R., and the U.S.A. For the Germans, the procedures for ennobling their race were primitive: extermination of some, and encouraged breeding of preferred types in the Strength through Joy program. All this was quickly rendered null and void by the Führer’s demented program of making war against most of the rest of the world and Germany’s resulting disastrous defeat. Now, in a more peaceful world, we are on the verge of trying to remake man not by such elementary means, but by the increasing control that scientific progress gives us over human reproduction.

Why is such a debasing view of human significance popular? For the same reasons that the subjects of E. Michael Jones’s Degenerate Moderns, such asMargaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, have enjoyed such influence. Teaching that man is nothing but a kind of biological machine makes it possible for us to "hide among the animals" and not answer for our conduct. Freud’s debasing view is popular for the same reason, but in the last analysis, man is not happy among the animals.

If man has little or no real value in himself as he now is, it would seem to make perfect sense to try to improve him. This begs the question: What is the true nature of man? A material body with a brain that secretes thought? A spiritual soul imprisoned in a material body? Soul and body, or soul, body, and spirit in combination? The soul was understood to be intimately connected with the body and dependent upon it, at least to some extent, although disembodied soul life was assumed to be a possibility. Unlike Greek Platonic thought, Christianity has always taught that the body belongs to the essence of man, and hence the Christian hope is not for the mere survival of the soul, but for the resurrection of the body with the soul. It is with the body that the scientists are working; for the moment, the soul is out of their reach. It can be ignored, can it not? On the contrary, without a soul man becomes nothing but a farm animal.

In the ninth chapter of the Bible, homicide is condemned with the explanation that man is made in the image of God, even after the Fall. But who qualifies as human? Throughout centuries of discussion of human rights and immunities, rights were deemed to accrue to human beings by virtue of their biology as human beings. During the era of Nazi persecutions of racial minorities, an effort was made to class certain biologically human races as "non-human" or as subhuman. Humanness is an indivisible reality: a being is either human or non-human, but never part human and part something else–at least not yet. In order to make human beings vulnerable to exploitation or elimination, as in abortion, a new language has been developed. A formal category, personhood, was substituted for the realistic category human being.

Initially, the discussion of abortion liberty centered on the question of when the fetus "becomes human." The 1973 decision of the U. S. Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade, stated that when medicine, biology, philosophy, and theology could not answer the question, the Court "could not speculate" as to when life begins, and therefore abortion becomes not pre-natal homicide, which it essentially is, but a medical act for the sake or convenience of the would-have-been mother. Today, as it has become increasingly mendacious to claim that we do not know when the fetus becomes human, the question has become, when must we consider it a person?

Traditionally, personhood has been associated with human being, not with human "capabilities." The language of Roe v. Wade introduced two fateful concepts, "capability" and "meaningful life." There are orders of capability. A person may not have the capability to speak Russian, for example, but may have the capability to gain the capability. As we still see, "meaningful life" is a very flexible concept indeed.2

Personhood is a more general category than human. It applies to some things that are not human, such as corporations, and it can be denied to some beings that are, such as unborn children or handicapped individuals of various kinds. The idea that personhood can be denied to beings that are biologically human has been facilitated by developments that result from the loss of the concept of the soul as the integrating or "animating" substance in man. The tendency to think of man no longer as a machine but as a kind of computer program has split the human being into a series of mental events, involving impressions, memories, decisions, reactions, etc. When a sufficient number of these events occurs and is present, one is a "person." The result is a loss of identity for those who have not attained a sufficient level, or who, having once possessed it, have lost it.

If personhood is defined as a collection of functions–mental awareness, consciousness, interaction with the environment, etc.–then one can deny personhood to human beings who are too young, too "defective," or in too great a state of deterioration. Ultimately it may be possible, as some enthusiastic for artificial intelligence argue, to find personhood in highly advanced machines. It will soon be possible, if it is not already so, to deny personhood to someone who does not come up to a defined level. Defining personhood in terms of functions and limiting human rights to only those who exhibit certain abilities is a very dangerous policy indeed. It is capable of almost indefinite extension, for example. Instead of saying, "You are what you eat," we will be saying, "You are what you do."

Implicit in this approach is the possibility that if certain individuals or races do not perform as is deemed necessary, then eventually they will be denied full personhood and, by implication, increasingly deprived of rights. Biologically, it is not possible to deny anyone human status, because all people are cross-fertile members of the same human species, but it may be possible to deny individuals or even whole races "full personhood." Newborn babies cannot do much. Prof. Crick of DNA fame suggested waiting three days after the birth of a newborn and subjecting it to some tests of its incipient mental functioning before assigning it human status. Prof. Singer of Princeton, the animal rights enthusiast, suggests 28 days. But why 28 days? Why not 28 months? Or 28 years?

The concept of cloning raises the possibility of making humans expressly to be exploited. The cannibals took existing human beings for food; some societies, such as the Aztec, have used them in large numbers for human sacrifice, after which they could be eaten. We think that our cannibal days are behind us, but we may be close to a point when human beings of various kinds will no longer be persons but commodities, useful for experiments, for organ transplants, and after that, perhaps even for food.

The only effective argument against the contentions that "you are what you eat," or "you are what you do," is to say that you are what God made you, namely a man or a woman bearing his image. That is the one thing, however, that we are no longer permitted to say. If dignity depends on our relationship to God, we must do without it, for that Person is one whose name may not be brought into the discussion. Perhaps we may recognize, before it is too late, that this is a decline from Jean-Paul Sartre’s melancholy observation; man is not even a useless passion, but instead a useful commodity.

This is the title of a book subtitled "Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering" by Norman G. Finkelstein. It is the most succinct critical discussion to date of the enormous plunder raids that have been conducted against financial and industrial establishments in Europe, notably against the Swiss, but subsequently against Germany, Austria, and now against the newly free countries of Eastern Europe, by a consortium of Jewish groups and lawyers, aided by American government bodies.

Mr. Finkelstein’s book has been subjected to criticism of guilt by association, because it has been greeted with enthusiasm by Holocaust revisionists, people who engage in varying degrees of denial that the Holocaust ever took place. Finkelstein has been accused of playing into their hands. The fact that this kind of an ad hominem accusation is used against him in a way supports his contention that his charges cannot be refuted by the facts. He argues that fraud and deception have been used to gain immense profits by exploiting the immense, but not unparalleled, crimes perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews (but not only against them) and treating others, beginning with the Swiss banks, as associated criminals.

The subject of the Holocaust and how this awful crime has been exploited for financial gain by those purporting to represent survivors and other victims has been treated in these pages on earlier occasions. With the publication of Finkelstein’s book, it becomes evident that the exploitation has been more extensive, more systematic, and even less principled than we thought.

In a period in which the State of Israel is under heavy assault by Palestinians who seek its destruction and is handicapped–if not hamstrung–by the heavy-handed mediation of former President Clinton and his Secretary of State, it is particularly troubling to learn of the degree to which the activities of Jewish organizations outside of Israel are giving the impression that Jews care only about money and not about truth, or, for that matter, very much about the actual remaining survivors of the Holocaust themselves. Whether the Holocaust attained the highest estimate of Jewish victims claimed, on the order of six million (in addition to millions of Gentiles), or a lesser number, it was a hideous crime. However, it was not the only such crime of our century: the Soviet Union and China killed more people, and our NATO ally Turkey had its Armenian genocide earlier in the century; but for those of us who are Gentiles and Christians, whether of German heritage or not, it is a source of immense shame. It is not necessary to accept the principle of collective responsibility or to suffer immense guilt for crimes perpetrated by other people in another time. However, the fact that it does lie in the history of "Christian" Europe should give those of us who are Christians a sense of obligation to stand by Israel, even while criticizing her for some of her faults, when she is surrounded by vast numbers of hostile forces.

The memory of the Holocaust should serve as a constant reminder of what the Prophet Jeremiah wrote: "The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (17:9). This applies to us all. It should move us constantly to examine our own actions and our own policies in light not of our current national interests, but of God’s standards. Nevertheless, as Finkelstein argues, crimes perpetrated against Jews of the past should not be used to justify and excuse everything that Jews of the present find it expedient to do, especially when it involves false accusations and plunder, as has been the case in "the Holocaust industry."

The plaintiffs have obtained–or, perhaps better, extorted–$1.25 billion from the Swiss. Very little of this has yet found its way to the injured parties, Finkelstein writes. In the process they have infuriated their victims and stimulated anti-Semitism where in the past there was little or none, and that in a day when the national home of the Jews may be in mortal danger. A recrudescence of anti-Jewish sentiment, taken alone, is a high price to pay in exchange for $1.25 billion; the possibility that the outrage and antipathy that the exploitation of the Holocaust has engendered may significantly weaken Israel’s own security is an even higher price.

One of the first moves made by the newly inaugurated President was the establishment of an office in the White House itself for liaison with the faith-based groups on which he pins high hopes for better results in dealing with many social problems. In addition to the "usual suspects" who regularly fly into fits at the mere mention of anything remotely resembling official recognition of religion, especially Christianity, Mr. Bush’s initiative has been criticized by conservatives, both Christians and secular, on the grounds that government assistance may make the recipients vulnerable to government control, perhaps of the kind that would force them to deny or dissimulate the faith commitment that brought them into action in the first place.

It is certainly true that government money generally comes with strings attached. Christians and adherents of other potentially affected religions could be unpleasantly surprised if government help turns out to mean government control. Nevertheless, it seems to us that this initiative deserves praise rather than criticism. For half a century virtually every move that government has made, both at the federal and state level, has used the argument of the separation of church and state to justify the muzzling of religion and the hobbling of religious institutions. The Supreme Court’s football game prayer decision of June 2000 is only the latest of a whole list of moves intended to give the impression that religion is more like an offensive habit than a worthy activity.

A number of religious leaders have expressed apprehension that the project will entangle churches and faith-based groups with government and, in the long run, mean that government will begin to prescribe what they may and may not do. The most vigorous opposition, however, comes from sources opposed to religion, particularly to Christianity. Speaking in Charlotte, February 10, Prof. Alan Dershowitz of Harvard described the project as a thinly veiled attempt to make America a Christian nation; Wendy Kaminer of Radcliffe offered similar objections in an interview on PBS, although concurrently she was cited in The Weekly Standard as being favorable to literature promoting pedophilia.

It will take a good deal more than government support of some faith-based public services to make the United States into a Christian nation, but President Bush’s initiative is significant: it signals a change in emphasis. Instead of being the target of harassment and interference, as has been increasingly the case, religion, including Christianity, will be given the opportunity to contribute to the life of the nation as it contributes to the life of people. When the Christian Constantine became undisputed Roman Emperor in 312, the active persecution of Christians pushed by his predecessor Galerius ceased.3 Is it unreasonable to expect that with a serious, practicing Christian in the White House, the widespread harassment of Christianity and the attempted suppression of all traces of religion in public life will lessen, perhaps even cease? Between the dreaded prospect of a state church–which as far as we know no one advocates–and the total eradication of religious influences from public life, there is, to use an expression of John Donne, a fair way for a moderate man to walk in.

Although the powerful states of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance are all more or less Christian, they give little or no thought to intervening against the persecution of Christians around the world, whether it is sporadic or systematic. Examples of this persecution abound. The Swiss Alliance Mission has founded fifty-seven medical centers in the southern part of the West African republic of Guinea in the past twenty years, including a hospital for patients suffering from leprosy or tuberculosis. Attacks by guerilla groups have forced many of the workers back into the northern part of the country, where conditions are more stable.

The losers, of course, are the sick of Guinea. According to Dr. Paul C. Murdoch, chairman of the commission Religious Freedom of the German Evangelical Alliance, 200 million Christians are regularly subject to discrimination, including arbitrary imprisonment, in more than sixty countries, mostly Muslim or communist. In 1999, 164,000 Christians were killed for their faith. Dr. Murdoch himself was kidnapped by Muslim guerrillas in Pakistan in 1990. In Muslim-controlled Sudan, Christians and adherents of native religions are subjected to kidnapping, and many are sold as slaves outside the country.

In the world’s most populous nation, China, repressive measures are in operation against members of the pacifistic Falun Gong sect, as well as against unregistered Christian groups, including Roman Catholics who remain loyal to the Pope instead of adhering to government-endorsed breakaway Catholicism. Less extensive, but nevertheless ominous, is activity that lumps evangelical Protestants and Jews together for abuse. In the village of Burg, near Magdeburg, a Baptist church was smeared with anti-Christian and anti-Semitic slogans: Christians were called "Jewish pigs." Although Burg was an isolated incident and the repression in Communist China is government sponsored, both incidents reveal the antagonism that religious or faith-oriented groups, however much they differ from one another, can evoke in a secular and materialistic society. Fundamentalist Christians are increasingly seen as pro-Jewish or friendly to Israel, and in this case, they were jointly made targets of abuse.

In addition, in nominally Orthodox areas of the former Soviet Union, evangelistic efforts by Protestants have been subjected to both governmental harassment and personal abuse. In one small village in the Ukraine, a different kind of opposition was tried: during an evangelistic service, an Orthodox individual appeared with a pail, made the sign of the cross, shouted "Are you singing? Sing on!" and splashed the participants with the contents, cattle dung and urine. After a few minutes the service resumed, and according to a report in the missionary magazine Friedenstimme, the fact that the Baptists did not react with violence gained them considerable respect in the village. Nevertheless, the militia (police) confiscated passports and ordered that their tent be taken down. The next day, the passports were returned, and the tent was permitted to be put up again; on the third day it was torn down again and all the participants arrested, only to be released after a short time. This sort of thing, even the splashing with dung and urine, falls far short of the bloody persecution that Christians are experiencing in some places, but it is only one example of the way in which religious freedom is curtailed, in spite of the guarantees of the Helsinki Accords.

One of the distinctive features of the American government is the fact that one individual, the president, occupies functions that in most other states are divided between two people: the president is both chief of state and head of government. In addition, after the exodus of the U.S.S.R. from the world stage, the American president is the only man in the world to have the military machine of a superpower at his fingertips. Most of us are aware of this almost supernatural power, but few notice the degree to which our republic lavishes on every current president honors that emperors and kings of other lands and other times hardly enjoyed, at times nearly divine. George F. Kennan has written of the "seduction of power," by which he means the hypnotic fascination that the mere presence of the president may impose on his counselors and advisors, sometimes rendering them incapable of opposing him, even when his plans are unwise or unjust. In his first few weeks in office, President George W. Bush gives the impression of being humble, as well as determined; perhaps the faith to which he has born eloquent witness will keep reminding him that he, too, is but a man and not a god.

In a very incisive work on the unsuccessful Southern struggle for independence, Charles Adams reminds us of what others have often noted, namely, that President Lincoln on his own initiative turned the North into a military dictatorship and by doing so, succeeded in crushing the briefly independent state of the South. Lincoln’s dictatorial qualities are generally excused, because they were deemed necessary to achieve his goal of"preserving the Union," which, as Adams points out, permanently transformed the United States from a continental federation of many states into a centrally ruled colossus with worldwide ambitions. Fifty years after the war, the Lincoln Memorial was erected in Washington, D.C., by those who fought in the Grand Army of the Republic. Adams comments, "This Greco-Roman temple, with a huge statue of Lincoln sitting on a throne like a deified Caesar, suits a Roman god more than a republican leader. Whether you love Lincoln or hate him, this monstrosity hardly befits the man or his era."

Lincoln is the only U.S. president to be so honored: the giant obelisk called the Washington Monument has no image of the first president, and the Jefferson Memorial, more modest, is less centrally located. Closer to our own day, another murdered president, John F. Kennedy, has been honored by an eternal flame at his gravesite in Arlington and avenues named in his honor in most cities, but no one but Lincoln has as nearly divine a temple.

In an incisive book published in the early 1970’s, Kapitalismus und Demokratie, German historian Helga Pross argued that where freedom exists, it is less because of the people’s love of freedom than of the moderation of the rulers. A system such as ours, in which so much power is concentrated in the hands of one individual, is hardly conducive to moderation. Therefore, it is to be applauded when a president is constantly reminded by his faith of the fact that he, too, is but a human being who must one day give up all his worldly honors power in order to, as the spiritual says, "Stand [his] test in the judgment/stand it all alone."

• At a Christian Leadership Conference (Führungs-Kongress) in Kassel, Germany, youth psychologist Dr. Christa Meves called for a transformation of society in the light of the collapse of moral norms: "We need something like a Christian cultural revolution," she said. Dr. Meves saw a fundamental evil in the fact that parents are virtually left to their own resources in the education of children. The reigning ideology calls for children to be able to make their own selections from the uncensored cafeteria of possibilities. This faith in the "autonomous child" leaves children disoriented and thereby threatens the very survival of society. The chairman of the congress, Pastor Horst Marquardt of idea, the Information Service of the Evangelical Alliance, warned that Christians have to get used to being branded as fanatics, while New Age ideas are usually considered "cool."

• The organization Saxon Friends of Israel criticized Wolfgang Thierse (Socialist), president of the German Bundestag, for his positive attitude towards what they call "Palestinian terrorism." In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Thierse had warned that the election of Ariel Sharon as prime minister would hamper the peace process. Sharon is now prime minister; we shall see whether Thierse was right. The Friends of Israel also demanded that Thierse take a more realistic look at his support for the proposals of former President Clinton, specifically for the division of Jerusalem, and that Israel should allow the return of 3.5 million Palestinian refugees, which would, they contend, destroy Israel as a Jewish state. Spokesman Winfried Amelung pointed out that Israel has resettled 820,000 Jewish refugees from several Arab lands and argued that the same sort of thing should be done by the Arab states for the Palestinian refugees. He added that from the point of view of international law, German refugees from the eastern territories turned over to Poland, the U.S.S.R., and other places could also demand to be allowed to return, an idea that no one wants to see implemented.

The Friends of Israel challenged the oft-repeated claim that Jerusalem is a holy city for Moslems. Apparently the word Jerusalem does not occur in the Koran, although it appears 800 times in the Bible. They also pointed out that in the years prior to 1967, when the Kingdom of Jordan was in control of East Jerusalem, it had no plans for making the city into a Muslim capital, intending instead to give Jericho this role.

• After earlier reports that fifteen civilians were on board the U. S. nuclear submarine that smashed into a Japanese fishing boat and sank it during a rapid surfacing operation, it was reported February 14 that it was retired Admiral Richard Macke who made the arrangements for the civilians to be on board. The news of the civilian presence apparently disturbs the Japanese still more, even though it does not appear that their presence contributed to the disaster. In 1995 Admiral Macke was commander of all United States forces in the Pacific. When three marines kidnapped and raped a 12-year-old Okinawan girl, Admiral Macke commented that it was a stupid thing to do, as they could have easily hired a prostitute for what they paid for the rental car. The Japanese foreign minister protested this lack of tact. Admiral Macke made a profuse apology, claiming that his words merely expressed his frustration and regret at the heinous crime committed by people under his command. However, not as in the case of his commander in chief, the apology did no good, and he was immediately forced to retire. If we may assume that no one gets to be commander of all the U.S. forces in the Pacific without having rendered long and valuable service to the country, it is amazing to see how one ill-considered sentence can destroy a man's career and deprive the nation of his services. If it ever comes to be the unwritten rule that one can occupy a high military post only by wearing a muzzle and avoiding all hasty speech, it will probably lead to fewer and fewer men of character aspiring for such a job. At times highly–placed eunuchs commanded Oriental armies–for example, the Emperor Justinian's successful general Narses was a eunuch. We have previously heard of an Air Force general who was refused promotion because, unsolicited, he embraced a female general. If he had been a eunuch, he might not have done that. The Department of Defense has not yet resorted to demanding physical emasculation of its high officers, but as the case of retired Admiral Macke reminds us, speechcrime cannot be tolerated. Verbal muzzling is the order of the day, and failure to mind the muzzle cannot be compensated by a record of twenty years of faithful and courageous service.

• One highly disturbed Palestinian crashed a bus into a group of pedestrians in Israel, February 14, killing 8. This was apparently in response to the election of Shimon Peres as prime minister. Every incident of this kind makes peace all the harder to obtain. If Yasser Arafat were to use his immense influence with the Palestinians to persuade them to cease and desist, it might not be altogether effective, but it would certainly give the Israelis more reason to pursue the so-called peace process.

For "Quo vadis, homo?" see Bertrand de Jouvenel, Sovereignty. An Inquiry into the Political Good (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997) p. 268; for "The Holocaust Industry," see the book of that title by Normal G. Finkelstein (London: Verso, 2000) ; for "Uncrowned Heads," see Charles Adams, When in the Course of Human Events. Arguing the Case for Southern Succession (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), pp 226. et passim; and for "In Addition to Which," see idea-spektrum, January 11, 2001, pp. 7, 9, 11.