Glenn K. Beaton is a writer and columnist living in Colorado. He has been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, RealClearPolitics, Powerline, Instapundit, Citizen Free Press, American Thinker, Fox News, The Federalist, and numerous other print, radio and television outlets. His most recent book is "High Attitude — How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen"
Political assassinations in America are usually committed by nutjobs. Lee Harvey Oswald was a communism-sympathizing loser. James Earl Ray was a career criminal who copped a guilty plea to avoid the death penalty and then falsely maintained his innocence until the day he died in prison.
This time feels different. This murderer looked normal. He earned college credits while in high school. He was a straight-A student. He had no criminal record.
He lived at home with his parents, two registered Republicans active in their Mormon church in conservative Utah. The family all talked ‘round the dinner table, as families used to.
One of those family dinner table talks early this week was about Charlie Kirk, who was due to visit the area on Thursday.
You know the rest of the story. As Charlie was talking in his trademark sort of way – not ranting, not raving, not cursing, but simply sitting and talking in a normal conversational way – the murderer shot him in the neck from a rooftop with a high-powered rifle. Charlie bled to death in seconds.
After video of the murder scene circulated, the murderer’s father turned him in with the help of a family friend who was retired from law enforcement.
Apart from the murder (but how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?) the whole scene looks like a Norman Rockwell painting – a perfect glimpse of Americana.
Over a half a century ago, philosopher and writer Hannah Arendt wrote Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. She was struck by the pedestrian personality of Eichmann in his trial and before his hanging in Jerusalem. He was not evil in the obvious ways. He had no horns, no cape, no devilish laugh, no foaming at the mouth, no apparent Hitlerisms.
Rather, Eichmann was a not-very-bright technocrat who’d dropped out of high school. He believed he was not just following orders (he was) but that he was following the law. He exhibited no hatred for the Jews, apart from his role in killing six million of them.
If Adolf Eichmann had been born into modern America, he might have become a mid-level manager in the EPA, the IRS or the Social Security Administration. He lacked both the credentials and ideology to be in the White House of either Joe Biden or Donald Trump, and he certainly lacked the passion.
Which brings me back to Charlie Kirk’s murderer. He was a devotee of the vapid echo chambers of online “discussion” but he exhibited little nuttiness or passion, until Thursday anyway.
Yes, he was a straight-A student, but in today’s schools that barely puts a kid in the top half of the class. Yes, he earned college credits while in high school, but then dropped out of a fourth-rate college. Yes, he participated in discussions at the family dinner table, but why was he living at home and eating his mother’s cooking at age 22?
The kid was a casual underachiever just going through the motions of an unlived life. He was the picture of banality.
The banal evil of Adolph Eichmann was six million times worse than the banal evil of Charlie Kirk’s murderer, but here’s what gives me pause: There are at least six million of these kids out there.
Why do Catholics still worship an old king in a palace?
I understand why they did in the old days. Everybody did. (Well, except Christ didn’t.) There was Henry VIII, Louis XIV, Charlemagne and, in folklore, King Arthur. There were also king-like rulers called emperors, such as Julius Caesar, Peter the Great, and Napoleon Bonaparte.
It was way back in the olden days that Catholics set up the papacy, their kingship. Their first Pope was said to be the Apostle named Peter, who used to be called Simon.
By the way, the names of the Apostles always have confused me. There was Paul, who was really Saul. There was Mark, who sometimes went by John. There was John, who always went by John even though Mark sometimes did, too. There was the aforementioned Simon whom Jesus called Peter even though that wasn’t his name and there was another Simon whom Jesus called Simon even though that was his name.
There were two James’s. One was James the Greater about whom we know a great deal of apocrypha and the other was James the Lesser about whom we know much less. James the Lesser went by Jim. (OK, that part is made up.)
Jesus must have had the patience of Job, considering how many times he had to say “No, the other one.”
As if Apostles are not complicated enough, let’s get back to popes. In case you encounter a pope, the proper form of address is not “Your Majesty.” That’s for kings and queens. Popes get addressed instead as “Your Holiness.” You see, kings and queens may be majestic, but popes are holy.
In fact, papal pronouncements on matters of Church doctrine are said to be “infallible.” Never mind that Church doctrine changes from time to time. The old doctrine was infallible when it was in effect, and the new, different one is infallible when it’s in effect.
As for all things, for infallibility there’s a season.
So, popes are holy. But there’s a bit of majesty in them, too. For a long time, infallible popes were also effectively the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, an area that stretched from Rome to the Baltic Sea.
Wars and intrigue gradually chipped away at the Empire. The establishment of the nation of Italy in the 1800s cost the Vatican almost all of the little land they still held. The earthly territory of the Holy Roman Empire now comprises 0.2 square miles within the city limits of downtown Rome.
But that 0.2 square miles holds some good stuff, such as Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, priceless art works, and St Peter’s Basilica.
And Nero’s Bathtub. Nero’s Bathtub is a massive bathtub about 25’ long made of stone quarried in Egypt and brought to Rome for Emperor Nero. What better place to fiddle through a fire than in a bathtub? The value of Nero’s Bathtub is estimated at around two billion dollars. That’s $2,000,000,000. (I’m not making this part up.)
Altogether, the Vatican is the most valuable 0.2 square miles this side of Heaven. Don’t ask how they acquired all this treasure, and don’t ask how to reconcile such material acquisitiveness with their incorporeal mission. We’re talking infallible, remember?
These material riches of the Vatican’s balance sheet are oddly juxtaposed with the sorry condition of its income statement. They’re rich but they spend far more than they make. In fact, their finances have been in bad shape for many years. They have fallible finances.
In their defense, back in those olden days they had a lot of expenses such as wars to fight and bribes to pay. But now they don’t fight earthly wars, and bribes have not been reported for years. Even so, well into modern times they’ve still had sloppy finances, money-laundering allegations, and what might be called, um, corruption.
During the tenure of newly departed Pope Francis, the Vatican’s operating deficit tripled. Maybe ballooning budgets come with the territory from which he originated – Argentina.
Whatever the reason, finance types warn that this Latin American spendathon cannot continue unless the Vatican sells off assets, which will fix finances only for a while, or resumes selling indulgences – to a flock that is no longer accustomed to having to pay for them.
In contrast to the papacy, the aforementioned kingships and empires of Europe have evolved. They’ve been replaced by indirectly elected technocrat parliamentarians in such countries as Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and most everywhere else. Only the throne of Peter the Great is still occupied by a despot.
So, what’s with the black smoke/white smoke ritual (“smoke-filled room” takes on a new meaning here) by a politburo of old men that are attired in plush red robes and lamp shade hats (let’s trust they’re not chomping cigars) to choose a new, infallible, male, old, dear leader in the richest corner of the globe even as that corner – and the globe – drift inexorably toward bankruptcy?
This is a heckuva way to save souls.
On the other hand . . .
The Catholic Church has probably been the greatest force for good in the history of the world. It has brought Good News to billions of people to enrich their lives if not save their souls.
The lucre and treasures the Church acquired along the way were from a different era, when that’s what powerful people did. It’s difficult for them to give it all away now, just because some Protestant blogger mocks Nero’s Bathtub.
And to whom would they give it? Secularist governments?
Sheesh, after the Notre Dame burned, the secular government of France proposed replacing it with a temple that would not offend (i.e., would pander to) the burgeoning Muslim population that seeks control of Europe. They backed down only when the remaining Catholic population of Paris (and France and the world) made a fuss.
My brother, a very smart guy with a Ph.D. in Physics, was a convert to Catholicism. I never really talked with him about his faith, but I respected his judgment. In that way, he reminds me of another very smart convert, JD Vance.
I confess that on my two long walks of the Camino de Santiago, there were times when I, too, considered converting to Catholicism. (There have been times when I’ve also thought about converting to Judaism, but that’s another column.) For now, I’m a die-hard Protestant.
So, the Church on balance has been a very good thing over the millennia.
Twenty-six years ago, the media reported that a young man named Matthew Shepard was beaten and strung up on a Wyoming barbed wire fence to die. The beating and murder were because Shepard was gay.
The perps were quickly found, tried for murder, convicted, and sentenced to prison. They’re still there.
It was a good news story about bad news and was widely reported. But it wasn’t true.
It has since been shown that Shepard and one of the perps were in the drug business together. Shepard was due to receive a $10,000 shipment of meth. The perp himself was gay and had been in a gay relationship with Shepard.
So, it wasn’t a hate crime by a straight Wyoming redneck against an innocent 21-year-old gay guy. It was a drug deal gone bad between two gay lovers.
But never mind that. Gay advocates seized on Shepard’s death as evidence of hatred in the heartland toward gays. His death spurred new federal hate crime laws, where criminally attacking someone becomes even more criminal if the someone is gay. (A friend in the law professor business is fond of saying that it’s impossible to commit just one federal crime.)
The flip side of that, of course, is that criminally attacking someone is now a little less criminal if the person is not gay.
Notably, the hate crime law passed in response to Shepard’s murder was, of course, not in effect at the time of his murder. The perps were nonetheless arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced – a sentence they’re still serving – for committing a crime.
It’s called murder, and the penalties are severe. Regardless of whether you hate the victim.
I’m guessing that you remember the Matthew Shepard story, but never saw the debunking of it. The debunking never got much coverage. Gee, I wonder why.
Fast forward four decades. Now we have the quadrennial spectacle called the Olympics. It’s become a little like the Superbowl. It’s infused with media money that wants to juice it up to sell you stuff.
In the Superbowl, that means a half-time show with celebrities who “accidentally” expose themselves and expensive television commercials that compete for edgy obscurity.
In the Olympics, we of course have doping scandals, but they’re not nearly as interesting ever since East Germany joined the Dark Force of capitalism. We do still have the mini-scandal of men winning women’s events on the pretense that they’re feeling feminine, that day, but that will sort itself out as the real women keep losing to them.
Today’s scandal is that the opening ceremonies included a bit where gay men dressed in drag mockingly imitated Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper.
For those of you who were raised in the Church of No-religion and went to the College of No-education, the Last Supper is a large mural painted at the end of the fifteenth century on a convent wall in Milan by an Italian who was the quintessential Renaissance Man – a creative genius of art, engineering, science and architecture. It depicts the artist’s imagination of the supper between Jesus and his disciples the night before his crucifixion. It’s considered a masterpiece of art and a treasure of Christianity. It’s worth seeing.
I’m sure the gay Parisian in charge of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics thought the mocking of an icon of Christianity and western culture was very edgy and, therefore, artistic. I’m surprised there wasn’t someone more sophisticated to say “Oh, the mocking of Christianity thing? Hasn’t that been done?”
Because yes, it has. About a thousand times. I suppose it was edgy when an “artist” made a jar of urine with a submerged crucifix and called it “Piss Christ.” But that was nearly forty years ago, for Chrissake. The latest “edginess” is fake nuns in drag at baseball games.
Yawn.
There’s a reason I bring up these stories of Matthew Shepard and this week’s opening ceremonies of the Olympics. (BTW, women’s beach volleyball is more entertaining than most other women’s sports. Superbowl wardrobe malfunctions have nothing on these gals.)
It’s because they raise a question in my mind.
I’ve never had an issue with gays, mind you. A few of my friends and family are gays. I admire the struggle it must have been and the courage it must have entailed.
Anyway, I have enough stuff in my bedroom and my past to avoid judging people for what’s in theirs. (I say these sorts of things just to ensure that I’ll never succumb to pressure to run for political office or even – especially! – to serve on my HOA.)
All that said, there’s something amiss about publicly mocking people’s religion, especially when the mockery is just for publicity, faux edginess, and to sell stuff.
I don’t mock gay people for being gay. Now that would be edgy in today’s culture. Gay people don’t mock Islam or the Prophet. That would be edgy in today’s culture. Nobody mocks transsexuals. That would be edgy.
Why is it OK to dig up the most overused trope of political correctness by mocking Christians and Christianity?
There’s nothing edgy about mocking Christians. It happens all the time now. In fact, it always has. The first mocking of a Christian was of Christ who died a humiliating death after an excruciating torture. Almost all his disciples were later mockingly tortured to death as well.
This mockery of Christianity continued unabated up to the present with fake nuns in drag at baseball games.
That said, I object to renewed mockery of my Lord and Savior by attention-seeking queers who are being paid to do so with public funds.
I understand that mocking Christians is part of your gig. It apparently gets your rocks off. You insult Christians to the point that they’re angry and hurt, and then you go home (I hope) to get your jollies about it in your bedroom.
I suggest that you masturbate to something else. I remind you that when it comes to mockery, you live in glass houses.
Sensational rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud appeared for an interview over the weekend immediately after leading his Houston Texans to a playoff win. The exhausted, battered, victorious 22-year-old opened with these words:
“First and foremost, I just want to give all glory to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
The game was carried by NBC. They posted Stroud’s postgame interview but, predictably, edited out his opening statement – the very statement that the player himself said was “first and foremost” to him and his terrific game.
Stroud is Black. It used to be that liberals tolerated Black displays of religion because they thought such displays were cute, as in Black churches with people dancing in the aisle and shouting “Hallelujah!”
Never mind that such displays were profound and spiritual for the Black participants; liberals condescendingly tolerated them only because they saw them as something like a kindergarten Christmas play.
Note: I first wrote and published this years ago. I occasionally revise and republish it.
Two thousand years ago, a carpenter lived a conventional life for 30 years in a tiny village in the Middle East. Then something got into him. He became, as they might say today, “radicalized” for the last three years of his short life.
Historians agree that Jesus did exist. There are reliable ancient records of him. But most of what we know are opaque and contradictory accounts written decades after his death in what we now call the Gospel of the New Testament.
In one sense, those Gospel accounts are profoundly simple. They say Jesus was the Messiah prophesized in the Hebrew Bible. As such, he performed miracles to save those needing saving. He came back from the dead. That’s the word.
But in a personal sense, the Gospels present a more complicated man than the one presented in Sunday School or even adult church services.
On Easter Sunday, I awoke with the thought that I would go to church, something I seldom do. Not just any church but the one where I grew up. Where the pastor of my youth was an intellectual and spiritual giant, and a very nice guy. Where my parents were members and volunteers for half a century. Where they still reside – their ashes dwell in the adjacent glen.
So I looked up the church to find the time of Easter service. Their website was plastered graffiti-like with the phrase, “We are love” in translucent cursive so you could still see the words and pictures of the page. I wasn’t sure of the biblical source of that phrase, or exactly what it means, but it’s not a bad marketing slogan for a church.
On the other hand, it seemed a little cheesy and self-important. It reminded me of the virtue-signalling yard signs that sprouted like weeds a year or two ago, shouting that the inhabitants of the houses where they were planted were very, very good and smart people – much more smart and good than the reader of the sign.
I clicked into a page on the church’s website entitled “What We Believe.” I saw nothing there about Jesus or God. But I did see their boast that “We are extravagantly inclusive.” Of everybody except Jesus and God, apparently. At that point, I abandoned my Easter mission.
Note: I first wrote and published this a few years ago. I occasionally revise and republish it.
Two thousand years ago, a carpenter lived a conventional life for 30 years in a tiny village in the Middle East. Then he somehow became as they might say today, “radicalized.”
Historians agree that Jesus did exist. There are reliable ancient records of him. But most of what we know are opaque and contradictory accounts written decades after his death in what we now call the Gospel of the New Testament.
In one sense, those Gospel accounts are profoundly simple. They say Jesus was the Messiah prophesized in the Hebrew Bible. As such, he performed miracles to save those needing saving. He came back from the dead. That’s the word.
But in a personal sense, the Gospels present a more complicated man than the one presented in Sunday School or even adult church services.
From issues of so-called wealth inequality to global warming to nukes in Iran, the Left is suddenly atwitter with that question.
Notably, however, many on the Left asking this question don’t even believe Jesus existed. (On that point, their position is contrary to the conclusions of most historians.)
So why are they asking what a person whom they think never existed would do two millennia after the end of his life that they believe didn’t happen, about issues in a country that hadn’t been created at the time he didn’t live?
Because they think the question helps them win certain political arguments, that’s why. They don’t believe in Jesus, but, on certain issues, they think he’s on their side.
The latest example is a law in Indiana allowing persons of religion to practice their faith.
This comes up in the ridiculous context of wedding cakes. Some little bakeries operated by Christians, Muslims and Jewish bakers Continue reading →
the Aspen beat 