That's it, I give! Not only have non-Masons now made pronouncements about the nature of Freemasonry and the Masonic position on the Catholic Church ("I'm not a member, but..." blah, blah..). It's not like it's not OUT there to read about! Pick up a copy of "Born In Blood" for some history. Freemasonry descended from the original Knights Templar (although most Masons will adamantly deny this if asked) and back there is where the schism existed between Templars and the Church, almost 700 years ago; I AM a Mason, and one of my brothers, "raised" at the same time I was, and who went on to become Master of his lodge, is a Roman Catholic. Hell, in the story (you should have read it or seen the movie!) a member of Opus Dei comes through for the "good guys", so this is not just another Catholic-bashing free-for-all, regardless of the idiotic comments of some posters here ("Thanks, Dan Brown and Tom Hanks, for proving mediocrity can destroy")!! Sweet Jesus! This writer assumes it's a foregone conclusion the release of the movie, on top of the book, will incite the brain-dead American masses to rise up and not only look askance at the Catholic Church, but will likely DESTROY it?? WHAAT?? But next letter after that one contained things like "As refined Salon readers we know the Da Vinci Code is a silly book, clumsily written..." etc. REALLY? Well free the slaves! And this one goes on, in the next breath, to remind us that "...as liberals we should know that even bad fiction may have the power to incite or offend.."!! So as good, enlightened, liberal intellectuals we should rush out and at the very least CONDEMN this atrocity posing as literature/cinema because God knows it could incite some of that DEATH DOOM DESTRUCTION that is bubbling just under the redneck surface of all of America that does not have the good sense to read Salon! Holy shit! I'm praying (is that allowed in here?) that post was a spoof, because imagine what might have happened!! If the Masons are running amok can the Moose Lodge be far behind? What about the K of C? Freedom of expression? Only if it's hip existentialist bullshit that can't offend anyone because of its powerful narcotic effect. Oh my but we're screwed! And I do! I rest ALL of my cases!

The plan for the 9/11 monument is not only obscenely costly, grandiose and just a little bizarre, but it also brings to mind the utter disconnect between what we need to be as a nation versus what we are (and you out there who are busy defending Bush over this, kindly put your heads back in the oven, because your bread ain't done). New York is hardly the perfect starting point for hoisting the agrarian banner - or is it? It may well be the best argument for it, at least, and this is precisely WHY the atrocious events of 9/11 took place anyway: because there were enough people with nothing to lose, and who fear the imperial juggernaught of Western "globalization" to fall prey to the livid hate of some articulate monsters (and our President, in strictly clinical terms, is no different from them). So it seems appropriate here to quote the greatest (and perhaps only) living Agrarian American, one who still has some purchase with the REAL intelligentsia in this country; his name is Wendell Berry, and what he has to say about memorializing heros and the "price" paid for freedom seems especially well-suited to this topic, so here it is:

"For one reason, it is done by the living on behalf of the dead. And I think we must be careful about too easily accepting, or being too easily grateful for, sacrifices made by others, especially if we have made none ourselves. For another reason, though our leaders in war always assume that there is an acceptable price, there is never a previously stated level of acceptability. The acceptable price, finally , is whatever is paid. It is easy to see the similarity between this accounting of the price of war and our usual accounting of "the price of progress." We seem to have agreed that whatever has been (or will be) paid for so-called progress is an acceptable price."

While Berry was speaking specifically of the "acceptable price" of war, this very monumnet is not only a part of the "acceptable price" of our current war, but, in fact, is commemorative of that war and the equally great price it has extracted, since the attack of 9/11, which was the "gift" the Bush administration received in terms of a useful pretext for waging some sort of war. This makes it all the greater an abomination and all the more monstrous the progenators of that war. The fact that the memorial in question will enshrine the dusty remains of those who were struck down that day, and that their "sacrficice" made plausible the war in which we are now engaged, only adds to the surreal and sinister feel of the drawings and the description of what the spot will be like for, perhpaps, centuries to come. And above it all, a giant "Fuck you!" to that sizable rest of the world which still fails to understand us nor to feel comfortable knowing "freedom is on the march." Especially when that freedom is marching away from its very wellspring and toward those who formerly had a choice as to whether or not freedom would be theirs.