You don’t need to be an inveterate Bush-basher to recognize that the Iraq War is far from a complete success. To be sure, it may yet come to a successful conclusion – successful from the American point of view – some years down the road. But more likely the outcome will be successful instead for some group at odds with our interests, for example Shi’ites and their Iranian allies, or Al Qaida. From its misconceived beginning to the present, the war has been riddled with mistakes and erroneous assumptions.

In my last column I distinguished between evolution and natural selection, which is the supposed mechanism by which evolution is accomplished. Evolution is established beyond question, in my opinion, but not natural selection. The crucial question is: What is the cause of evolution—natural selection? Intelligent Design? something else?

Never learned much biology. . . . But as time went on I came to understand that the accepted principles of a field of study contain, along with the true and profound, a certain amount of enshrined obtuseness bordering on stupidity. (The professions of academia and journalism are the chief examples in my catalogue, but there is no reason to believe that the sciences are exempt.) So there may be some advantage in looking at the Intelligent Design controversy from the outside.

“Patriotism” is such a brass-band word that it’s hard to get a handle on. We’re all familiar with the martial trappings of patriotism – the thrill of pride at our country’s triumphs, the urge to sacrifice, the homage to veterans who have made the sacrifice. But is that all? Where is patriotism when danger disappears? If patriotism is love of country, what kind of love is it? What, at bottom, is patriotism?

Before turning to the main subject, I would like to praise religious persons of uncommon good will. I am thinking of medical missionaries throughout the world. I am thinking of the missionary priests in Latin America during the 1500s who tried to save natives from the evils of European conquest, and of their latter-day counterparts who composed the Liberation Theology movement until it was squelched by the late pope. I am thinking of the four nuns killed in El Salvador. I am thinking of those religiously-inspired civil rights workers and martyrs, of whom Martin Luther King Jr. was only the most illustrious. And many, many others.

Like most people, I have a fairly casual attitude toward op-ed columns and letters to the editor in other publications. I read them and pass on. But occasionally a piece will appear that is so noxious it must be challenged and dissected. Kevin O’Brien’s column in the August 10 Plain Dealer, on the occasion of the memorial for troops lost in the Iraq War, is such a piece.

n the last issue I talked about supposedly “activist” judges, defined in three ways: 1) ignoring the original text of the Constitution; 2) overriding the decisions of Congress, the president and the states; 3) disregarding precedents. Activist judges, so-called, are usually thought to be liberal, but there is one group of activist judges, in the third sense listed, that is decidedly conservative. Bush’s second appointment to the Supreme Court may come from this group.

All right, class, here is your citizenship quiz. Who said the following:

Symbols are always worth noting, for they help bring into focus some of our half-formed ways of thinking and feeling. They clarify what had been indistinct; they solidify what had been scattered and amorphous.

In the last column I outlined the way in which Social Security works, including the progression of its benefit schedule, and suggested changes that could be made to remedy the solvency gap with which the system is faced. Let’s focus now on Bush’s proposal for private Social Security accounts.

Rarely if ever has a subject of public importance been so obscured by demagoguery, endlessly recycled rhetoric and misplaced emphasis as Social Security and its problems. But after some modest research and a great deal of thought I may have broken through the smoke and mirrors.

As a college freshman I took a Humanities course that dealt in large part with classical Greek literature. During one lecture, Professor Havelock, mentioned that the ancient Greeks, meaning primarily the Athenians, lived better than we do. There was no chance to discuss this remark in class, so through all these decades I have wondered what he meant. Perhaps Lakewood will show me.