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High Life

Taki

Wednesday, 15th October 2008

Paradise lost

New York

Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and is a graceful essayist and good Catholic lady who happens to be a political conservative. I haven’t seen her in years but sometimes we exchange emails. She has written a book about how badly Americans need Patriotic Grace, the title of her opus, and I bought it just as the news of a Catholic archbishop being found strangled on the Brighton Beach boardwalk came in. The killers took his wallet, his cellphone and his shoes. Peggy thinks that Washington is a city run by two rival gangs who have a great deal in common with each other, ‘including an essential lack of interest in the well-being of the turf on which they fight’.

Once upon a time the killing of a priest used to arouse such revulsion, even very bad people would come forward and provide info to the fuzz. But the recent assaults on God in general, and the Christian and Catholic religion in particular by scum like Christopher Hitchens and a clown by the name of Bill Maher, have clouded the issue. Mugging and killing a priest for a cellphone is now looked upon — well, like stealing an apple was during the good old days. Peggy wants a more amiable political discourse in order to improve our brutish impulses. Poor Peggy. Poor us. The killers of the priest are unknown, but I’ll bet my last dollar that they are either Russian gangsters or hoodlums on drugs as well as generous welfare. Open borders have not helped. The Brighton Beach area is crawling with ex-Soviet criminals, all welcomed here after the fall of the only system which knew how to handle them.

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David Short

October 17th, 2008 9:38am

'Small shops and even smaller family banks shut down, their windows shuttered with plywood, their customers driven away by African and Hispanic immigrants.'

I wonder what the African and Hispanic readers of the Spectator think of this racist comment?

Isn't it time you closed down Taki?

Joe Camel

October 22nd, 2008 12:45am

For the record, the Brighton Beach murder victim was not what most people would think of as a "Catholic archbishop". He was a bishop in a small church that uses the word "Catholic" in its name but is unconnected with the Vatican.

Trosty

October 25th, 2008 5:03pm

..hello Taki..I'm not quite sure why, but it looks to me that the septics are about to succumb to yet another sophist,just like that silver-tongued, slick, former Govenor of ..Arkansas.
As a Greek you intuitively have a feel for the bathos associated with the warp & weft of, shall we say -the human condition. If the yanks don't watch it , they'll end up electing Homer s. for pres.
Give me Socrates anyday & twice on Sundays. Yours, in the demos trosty