Small pieces of evidence occasionally turn up in unexpected places to help make the case that the Republic has changed in unpleasant and unwelcome ways.

 

I recently bought a CD (a SuperAudio CD, in fact) of music by a great and undeservedly obscure American composer: Don Gillis, who died in 1978, but created most of his important pieces in the years before and just after World War II. For those who love the jazzy, explosively energetic, lyrical and instantly catchy scores of George Gershwin, or who savor the gentle, nostalgic Americana of Roy Harris (my one time mentor) or Aaron Copland (in his populist mode), Gillis delivers some of the same infectious rewards.

 

In any event, the new CD provides rousing, gorgeously recorded performances (by a fine Warsaw orchestra, surprisingly enough) of three of the most important Gillis symphonies: Number 1 (“An American Symphony”), Number 2 (“A Symphony of Faith”) and  Number 5 ½ (“A Symphony for Fun.”). The handsome 2006 release features notes by a writer named Roy Bono who writes admiringly of Gillis, a life-long Baptist and unabashed patriot,  and “the three aspects of his personal credo – love of country, love of God, love of a good laugh – separately or in combination – shining through piece after piece in his large repository of works.”

 

Bono even quotes Gillis’ own description of the stirring finale of his Symphony Number 1, “An American Symphony” (1941): “The music grows quiet, in the reverence of meditation. Suddenly again is heard the sound of approaching conflict – the struggle – and instead of uncertainty, the music closes on a tremendous note of victory and praise for democracy… symbol of life…liberty…and eternal freedom!”

 

But then, instead of allowing the composer and his music to speak for themselves,  Roy Bono feels the need to apologize for the enthusiastic prose from Gillis. “This may, to our cynical minds, seem like gushingly naïve nationalism,” he writes. “But it’s hard for us today to fairly assess the Zeitgeist of the first half of the 20^th century, when the mere sight of the flag could actually bring a lump to the throat, a tear to the eye, of many Americans, so potent and revered a symbol it was.”

 

I don’t know where Mr. Bono lives, but in the America I inhabit the flag still brings “a lump to the throat, a tear to the eye,” and it’s still a symbol that’s “potent and revered.”

 

Bono continues with his reflections (written in 2006) on the “lost” America of 65 years earlier that produced the Gillis symphony. “One’s patriotism then was as proudly cherished as, and often intertwined with, one’s religion,” the commentator sighs. “Both were deeply sincere professions of faith almost inseparable from the notion of good citizenship –as apparently they were for the 28-year-old Gillis.”

 

It astonishes me that a serious music critic would fail to acknowledge that for many, if not most Americans, faith and patriotism still interconnect, and still play an obvious if not central role in our conceptions of good citizenship.

 

In the New York-centered world that produced this latest album of heart-felt praise to America by Don Gillis (ALBANY RECORDS, TROY 888) the composer’s heart-on-the-sleeve love of country seems hopelessly dated, embarrassingly old-fashioned. That slightly patronizing view of the great passions that animated the life of the Missouri-born, Texas-based, master symphonist represent the only sad note in an otherwise sparkling and optimistic album of tuneful, enthusiastic orchestral celebration. Good music, like love of America, should never go out of style.. 

 

    It’s late on Monday night, and I’ve just spent several hours researching and organizing my upcoming Townhall column “Victory Lessons from Ronald Reagan” (to honor Reagan’s birthday, February 6^th).

    One odd little fact captured my attention, but it didn’t really fit into the column; instead, I’ll share it here with all those who can appreciate a strange but significant piece of political trivia.

    When Reagan won the Presidency in 1980, crushing the incumbent Jimmy Carter 51% to 41%, he not only overcame a third party vanity race by a former Republican Congressman named John Anderson (his “Independent” Party drew 6.6% of the vote), but he also triumphed over by far the strongest Libertarian Party candidate in Presidential history.

    Amazingly enough, Ed Clark, the Libertarian standard bearer, won almost a million votes (921,188) for 1.06% of the total.

    To rational observers, a national campaign that wins only 1% of the vote looks pointless and pathetic, but by Libertarian standards the Clark campaign represented a veritable juggernaut, and the party’s breathtaking summit of achievement. Clark’s performance more than doubled all subsequent Libertarian nominees, even though some of them (like two time loser Harry Browne) raised and spent far more money for their sad little races. In terms of their percentage of the popular vote, Libertarian presidential candidates since the high-water mark of 1980 have drawn between 0.24% (David Bergland in 1984) and 0.5 (Harry Browne in his first race of 1996). Most recently, that burning hunk of unstoppable charisma Michael Bednarik earned a paltry 0.3% of the popular vote – less than one-third the showing that Ed Clark managed 24 years earlier.

    The point isn’t merely that the Loser-tarian Party has moved decisively in the wrong direction (you don’t build majorities by losing two-thirds of your voters), it’s that they happened to succeed best against the finest conservative candidate in recent history.

    In other words, the Libertarians lie or at least delude themselves when they claim that they will win votes by drawing people who are disillusioned with both big government Democrats and me-too Republicans. They drew more votes when running against the unequivocally conservative Ronald Reagan than they did against the likes of Bob Dole, either President Bush, or Gerald Ford for that matter.

    Thus, the argument that they are pushing the Republican Party in a more conservative direction by taking away votes of die-hard conservatives is, like so much else about the Libertarian Party, a complete fraud.

    If Republicans ever became worried about defections to the lunatic fringe represented by the Loser-tarians, they should be sure to nominate relative moderates like Dole, Ford or the first President Bush. If Libertarians do best against Reagan then, if anything, their misguided political activism would lead Republicans to move toward the center, not to the right. When you move to the right, and nominate a strong conservative, it seems as if the Libertarians only take more of your votes.

   Of course, in the real world, neither Republicans nor anyone else need concern himself with the fortunes of the Libertarians. In 2008, these odd-ball adventurers will no doubt enjoy yet another election cycle of futility and fatuity. They stand little chance of ever-again reaching the glorious total of 1.06% they achieved against Reagan. And their relative success in gunning for the Gipper should in no way deter Republicans from fielding a candidate next time who best exemplifies the Reagan tradition and who can, in the true Reagan spirit, chuckle good-naturedly at the pitiful exertions of fifth party losers.

 

 

   Like 40% of my fellow Americans, I make it a point to attend religious services every week. Sometimes my secular friends ask me what I get out of this repetitious, predictable activity: in a busy schedule, it’s a big commitment of time.

   Usually, it takes between 35 and 40 minutes to walk 2.7 miles to my synagogue on Saturday morning. I then participate in Sabbath services that last two-and-a-half hours, socialize for a while with my neighbors and fellow congregants,  and then walk 2.7 miles back home (usually with guests) for the festive, midday Sabbath meal that Diane prepares every week.

    Yesterday, the benefits of Sabbath observance seemed more obvious than usual: God (or nature, or Global Warming) gave us a spectacularly sunny day (a rarity in Seattle in January) with deep blue sky and crisp delicious air, so my walk back and forth (some of it through a forest preserve) offered its own unmistakable rewards. Because of the bizarre balmy weather, we ate outside (with a total of 8 at the table) with a view of the sun glinting on the glaciered flanks of Mount Rainier.  And some of the table talk helped to clarify another advantage of attending Sabbath services every week: the chance to find new depth and meaning in familiar Biblical verses that easily can be taken for granted.

    The Jewish calendar is built around the weekly “portion” – the section of the Five Books of Moses read aloud in synagogue from the Torah scroll. Communities around the world read the same verses every week, progressing from the beginning of Genesis (at the end of the autumn holiday cycle) to the conclusion of Deuteronomy (just before the commencement of a new sequence the next year). Ideally, each week you should dig deeper (or at least differently) into the same verses that you’ve covered in previous years.

   At the moment, Jews around the world are near the beginning of the Book of Exodus and yesterday I took inspiration from some sentences that seem, on the surface, perplexing.

   In Chapter 11, Verse 4, Moses goes to Pharaoh and says, “So says the LORD: ‘At about midnight I shall go out in the midst of Egypt.  Every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on the throne to the firstborn of the maidservant who is behind the millstone and all the firstborn of beast. There will be a great outcry in the entire land of Egypt, such as there has never been and such as there shall never be again. But against all the children of Israel, no dog shall whet its tongue, against neither man nor beast, so that you shall know that The LORD will have differentiated between Egypt and Israel.”

   If we’re to take the Bible seriously, this passage raises some obvious questions. Rabbi Bernie Fox, the headmaster of the Northwest Yeshiva High School in our area, focuses on one of them. The Egyptians and the Israelite slaves have already gone through nine horrible plagues, with the Egyptians suffering terribly and the Children of Israel virtually unscathed. Now God is announcing the worst plague of all, with Egyptians experiencing the death of all firstborn but the Jews spared from this destruction. One would think, certainly, that Jewish survival in the midst of this horror would be enough to “differentiate between Egypt and Israel,” but the verse says that what really sets the Jews apart is that “no dog shall whet its tongue, against neither man nor beast”

    Does this mean that after all the dramatic experiences in Egypt, it was only their good relationship with canines that ultimately set the Israelite slaves apart?

   PETA might welcome this interpretation, but the text doesn’t support it.

   The idea that “no dog shall whet its tongue” actually expresses supernatural calm and unity in the Israelite camp. According to the Bible, there were 600,000 adult male Hebrews at the time of the Exodus – so counting women and children, that probably means some 2,000,000 souls. In any group this big, dogs bark – especially late at night, if Egyptians are howling and wailing around them, and their firstborn sons are dying by the thousands. I remember hiking thirty years ago on the Appalachian Trail on the crest of the mountains in Shenandoah National Park and looking down on the peaceful farming country of the Shenandoah Valley. Even there, overlooking the scenic, sparsely settled landscape of Virginia, you could hear dogs barking at all times of day, and the sound seemed to carry for miles. In a settlement of hundreds of thousands of slaves, surrounding by the most traumatic night in Egyptian history, the silence in the encampment and the quiet contentment even among the dogs, counts as an extraordinary feature of the Exodus story. Confident after marking their doorposts and affirming their unity, the Children of Israel (and even their animals) rested peacefully and silently despite the hideous turmoil around them.

   In other words, the Biblical verses suggest that the ultimate distinction between Israel and Egypt involved not the very different way God treated the two nations, but the contrast in their reaction to a time of tumult and crisis. The Egyptians issued “a great outcry” but among the Children of Israel, the settlements remained so quiet and confident that “no dog shall whet his tongue.”  We can’t control fate or fortune, challenge or tragedy, but we can shape the manner in which we respond.

   Over the years, the Jewish people have never seemed particularly blessed or lucky in terms of their ability to avoid catastrophic suffering. From the Egyptians and Babylonians and Romans, to the Nazis and Communists and Islamo-Nazi terrorists in our own era, the descendants of the Children of Israel have been among the most frequently victimized groups on the planet.

   What has set us apart has not been special riches or generosity from the Almighty, but the Jewish willingness and ability to continue to honor our tradition and our Torah, no matter how inconvenient or dangerous that commitment might be. In other words, it’s neither the presence nor absence of plagues and challenges that distinguishes a people: it’s the character with which that people confronts those difficulties.

   After World War II, for instance, no one could blame the Jewish people if most of us had abandoned our distinctive identity. Hitler killed two-thirds of the Jews of Europe and most Jews around the world came to understand that identification as part of the People Israel could lead to persecution or death. Nevertheless, the experience of the Holocaust didn’t lead to a mass abandonment of Jewish commitment, but an unexpected, proud, altogether illogical affirmation or a risky identity. Not only did the War inspire new emphasis on creating the first independent Jewish commonwealth (the State of Israel) in nearly 2,000 years, but the next generation gave birth to the “Ba’al Tshuvah movement” ---with massive numbers of younger Jews from non-religious homes suddenly discovering and embracing traditional faith and observance.

    No one could have predicted the explosive energy of Jewish renewal, immediately following some of the most deadly and devastating days of our history. The most important factor for the Jewish people wasn’t that God allowed millions of us to escape the devastations of Hitlerism, but rather the character and will and determination displayed by those survivors.

   Yesterday, we spoke of these things, related directly to this week’s Torah portion, while drinking our wine and consuming our fresh-baked bread, as the sunlight flickered and glimmered on the water of the lake and the light changed on Mount Rainier to a lurid purplish glow. 

  That’s part of what I get from our pattern of observance: not just magical moments, but occasionally deepened understanding of duty and destiny. In parallel to the message from Exodus, it’s not just receiving the gift of the Sabbath, and being spared from the various plagues and disasters of our time, but the peaceful spirit and unified energy with which we seek to grasp that gift for ourselves and our children..   

 

PLEASE, MR. PRESIDENT: Don’t Say “Health Care” When You Mean “Insurance”

 

Two days ago I expressed my general support for the President’s State of the Union Address, but one brief passage annoyed me deeply.

 

As he prepared to introduce the most publicized and innovative proposal of his speech, the President of the United States declared: “A future of opportunity requires that all our citizens have affordable and available health care.”

 

Mr. President, please! Don’t fall into the Democratic trap of using the term “health care” when you really mean “health insurance.”

 

In truth, all Americans already have access to “affordable and available health care”--- in fact, millions of us (including millions of illegal aliens, by the way) get their “health care” without cost. There is no evidence – none – that Americans fail to receive medical treatment when they need it and seek it. Our country boasts a gigantic network of overburdened emergency rooms, county hospitals, Medicaid, free clinics and other compassionate institutions that exist to provide health care to people who might otherwise be unable to afford it.

 

When Democrats rail about “47 million Americans without health care” it sounds like a sixth of the country doesn’t get to see doctors or manage to visit hospitals for necessary procedures. In fact, many (if not most) of that famous47 million pay for the health care they receive (what a concept!) because they’re in generally good health and they’ve decided that it’s cheaper to cough up the money directly to the docs than to fork over the funds needed for the “protection” of insurance. Some studies suggest that at least half of the uninsured earn family incomes of $50,000 or more – making it clear that they could acquire low cost, high deductible insurance if they chose to do so.

 

The President’s plan actually makes great sense as a means of encouraging such individuals and families to buy the insurance policies they might need to protect them from health catastrophes, while continuing to pay their own way when it comes to regular doctor visits and preventive care. For nearly all Americans, the tax deduction the administration proposes ($15,000 per couple) will save far money (because it’s also provides a deduction from payroll/social security expenses) than the cost of a high deductible insurance policy.

 

I know one family of five, for instance, where the yearly cost of catastrophic protection (despite the over-fifty status of both parents) comes to less than $6,000 a year, The tax saving through the proposed tax deduction – only available if one buys an appropriate policy – would more than cover the cost of such insurance. Rather than punishing those who don’t get insurance, the President’s plan rewards those who do. That’s usually a better way to encourage people to behave as the government wants them to behave.

 

Fortunately, Mr. Bush deployed the language more successfully in his speech after his initial, ill-considered, misleading declaration. “Many Americans cannot afford a health insurance policy,” he accurately observed. “And so tonight, I propose two new initiatives to help more Americans afford their own insurance.”

Here, he’s talking sense--- he speaks about affording “insurance,” not about affording “health care.”

 

As this debate unfolds, watch the way the Democrats distort this issue by referring to “millions with no health care” when they’re really talking about people without insurance.

 

Conservatives can’t stop lefties from playing such dishonest games with language but please, Mr. President, don’t make it easier for them by falling into the same pattern yourself.

 

John Kerry’s announcement today that he will not run for President in 2008 provides both bad news and good news for committed conservatives.

The bad news first: he removes an inviting, almost irresistible, target for talk radio, late night comedians, cartoonists, and others who enjoy indulging their gifts of ridicule. Throughout his Presidential campaign, and even more conspicuously afterward, the Massachusetts Senator provided incomparable displays of ponderous pomposity. Even though he had no chance at all of winning the Democratic nomination, his mere presence in the race would have hurt his party. Every time the big lug opens that long jaw, he reminds the public of the arrogant elitism that remains the most glaring weakness of the Democratic left. No one else – not even Hillary herself – so perfectly personifies the smug, loathsome, sanctimony of privileged, fabulously wealthy, wind-surfing leftists who claim to represent “the little guy.”

Kerry’s withdrawal from Presidential politics also, alas, removes his lovely wife Teresa from the public spotlight – removing another ditzy, off-putting figure of fun who helped associate the liberal cause with thin-skinned, frequently inebriated, unpredictable weirdness.

There’s also good news about the Kerry withdrawal, however.

His departure eliminates the only prominent Democratic candidate who actually served in the armed forces. (Did you know he served in Vietnam? With his characteristic modesty, Senator Kerry tried to keep knowledge his heroic tour of duty from the already adoring public, but the media somehow learned his little secret and began a subtle whispering campaign about his Southeast Asia experience).

In any event, with Kerry out of the way the Dems face an array of much more characteristic baby-boomers – since 90% of our generation never served in the military at all.

Obama and Edwards would claim they’re “too young” for the military, but Edwards reached 18 (draft age) in 1971 (with the Vietnam War still raging) and whoever said that you could only volunteer during time of war? Biden and Hillary managed to skip service, as did Kucinich, of course. Chris Dodd served in the Peace Corps and enlisted in the Army Reserve (his biography says) but never, apparently, made it to active duty.

The only present or potential Democratic candidate with any military credentials at all is, heaven help us, General Weasly Clark, whose truly impressive career in the Army doesn’t comport well with his slimy, obsequious, Uriah Heep/Eddie Haskell style of personal presentation. In any event, the Weasel Man stands no chance of raising the money to make a credible campaign.

On the GOP side, one of the frontrunners possesses far stronger, more inspiring military credentials than Jean Francois Kerri’: John McCain not only qualified as a hot shot pilot and swaggering officer in the Navy, not only survived the torments of hell as a POW, but has written eloquently about the Naval traditions of his family (with both his father and grandfather serving as top-ranking Admirals and the Senator’s own youngest son, Jimmy, likely to be deployed in the near future to the Middle East).

So what does it mean now that the only potential “war hero” in either Party is a candidate for the GOP?

It means that the media and Democrats will drop this obsessive, obnoxious harping on the “what-did-you-do-in-the-war-daddy?” theme, pretending that Bush’s service in the mere National Guard leaves him unqualified to lead the Free World, and that Vietnam service counts as more relevant than policy positions on the War on Terror. .

The cancellation of Kerry’s candidacy, in other words, is a great day for the nation, signifying a long overdue termination of the insipid and unspeakably annoying argument that those who failed to fight in Vietnam can’t possibly support our current military’s fight against Islamo-Nazism. Actually, the many Iraq-vets I know don’t reject my energetic and heart-felt support for their mission because I missed the conflict in Indo China. Given the current Democratic line-up of battle-hardened warriors, we may finally have heard the last of the beloved lefty term, “Chicken Hawk.”

Which candidate can liberals exalt as a contrast to, say, Mitt Romney’s lack of military experience?

With Kerry gone, and no Dem veterans set to take his place (unless former Army reporter and combat-avoider Al Gore decides to join the race), the Democrats will have to find a better, less idiotic means to affirm their national security credentials.

Yes, he beat the expectations game one more time.

With bitter enemies on the right as well as the left, with major pundits already arguing about whether he’s “the worst president in history’ or just “one of the worst,” with pronouncements that his troop surge plan won’t work and his health care reform is “Dead on Arrival,” the Leader of the Free World stepped up to the podium and delivered the strongest State of the Union Address of his Presidency.

Unlike his ill-fated speech about a “new direction” in Iraq, this talk with the Congress and the people showed his warmth, his energy, his unshakable optimism.

The Democrats showed off to the people what they could accomplish in 100 hours. Now Bush means to demonstrate what he can accomplish in 100 weeks – and yes, that’s how long he has left in the White House.

His detractors may call him “Chimpy” and worse, but the American people came close to seeing the real Bush tonight: from his gracious and winning  acknowledgment of Nancy Pelosi, to his introduction of four proud, beaming, telegenic and intelligently selected American heroes sitting in the box with Laura Bush.

If nothing else, he definitively deflated the idea that he’s now a whipped puppy, who’s waiting for the Democrats to “show him the way” (as Senator Jim Webb arrogantly suggested in his pugnacious Democratic response to the President’s remarks). This is a President determined to matter in the last two years of his term.

He will almost surely achieve major reforms on border security and immigration, energy independence, earmarks elimination, and deficit reduction. It’s also likely there will be  progress—based on bi-partisan compromise – in reaching some significant segment of the uninsured with health care coverage. Entitlement reform, tort reform and victory in Iraq (all mentioned by the President) may face more daunting odds, but it would be foolish to bet heavily against him.

The same people who’ve been saying for days that the State of the Union would show a beaten, frightened, insecure chief executive bumbling into his last two years of embarrassing gridlock, now say that the President’s bold words and self-assured, straight-talking delivery won’t amount to anything in the long term.

George W. Bush, however, has made a life-time habit of surprising (and defeating) those who persist in mis-understimating him. With luck, leadership, and some loyal support, he may prove them wrong once again.

With Hillary Clinton’s announcement of candidacy, there’s no doubt that the competition for the Democratic nomination is generating more excitement and drawing more attention than the wide-open race on the Republican side. This may discourage some GOP activists, but the ideological positioning of the various candidates ought to reassure those who hope to keep the White House out of Democratic hands.

All three of the top tier Democratic candidates (Clinton, Obama and Edwards) represent the party’s strident left wing with voting records and policy positions that express militant liberal orthodoxy. Hillary’s pose as a “moderate” or “centrist” (the Senator from New York emphasized in her announcement that she came from a “middle class family in the Midwest”) will fool no one – especially since that masquerade is currently contradicted by her unabashedly liberal Senate record and a lifetime of uncompromising activism. Edwards, with his North Carolina drawl, also impersonated a Southern moderate when he ran for President and then Vice President the last time but in this campaign, with his shrill anti-war pronouncements and redistributionist economic “populism,” he’s clearly positioned himself to run to Hillary’s left. Unfortunately for the Democrats, their more credible moderate prospects, former Governor Mark Warner of Virginia and Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, declined to make the race.

Among their second tier candidates, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico stands out with his pro-business, tax-cutting record and relatively centrist image, but his difficulty in raising big money will almost certainly drive him out of the race before Iowa, or shortly thereafter.

On the Republican side, on the other hand, each of the top tier candidates (McCain, Giuliani and Romney) looks mainstream, without strong identification with the party’s controversial right wing (what Democratic alarmists like to call “the radical right” or “the Christian right” or, when they’re feeling particularly threatened, “the Taliban wing of the Republican Party.”) All three GOP’ers display some weaknesses as candidates (Giuliani in particular takes positions on social issues that make him unthinkable to many conservatives), but none of them look “scary” to the voters in the middle who will decide this election. Even among the lesser-known, second and third tier candidates (Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, Tommy Thompson, Jim Gilmore, etc.) there’s no one who comes across as weird, fringey, extreme, or frightening in the style of some of the candidates in 2000 (remember Alan Keyes? Gary Bauer? Pat Buchanan – before he left the party? Even Steve “The Establishment Has Met Its Match in Me” Forbes, who ran substantive campaigns in ’96 and 2000 but still projected like an oddball? This time, the only Republican candidate who will come across as marginal and silly and polarizing will be Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. But the good news is that he decided to run for the Republican nomination, as opposed to his previous White House adventure as a typically pathetic Libertarian nominee.

In any event, the Republicans are well-positioned to recapture the swing voters – moderates and independents – that they lost by a two-to-one margin in 2006. These Congressional elections proved that it’s not enough to win a strong turnout of your partisan base and among religious conservatives: contrary to most predictions, the GOP did get a fine turnout of committed right-wingers (comparable to 2002 and 2004) , but still lost race after race because people in the center (some of whom actually liked Bush’s pitch as a “compassionate conservative” and a “uniter not a divider”) abandoned the party’s candidates.

A huge, forthcoming Stanford University study (featuring interviews with an astonishing 36,000 voters) probes political attitudes, asking citizens to rank themselves numerically between one (for most liberal) and seven (for most conservative), with four representing dead center. According to an advance report on NPR, a majority – more than 50% -- rated themselves as fours: neither liberal nor conservative. Yes, more of the remaining half of voters clustered on the conservative side (fives, sixes, sevens) than on the liberal side (threes, twos and ones), but the facts still indicate that in a deeply divided country no candidate can win without appealing to the center.

For years, Republicans have preached the gospel that if strong, uncompromising, clear-talking, tough-minded conservatives won the party’s nominations, they’d gain sure-thing victories in general elections—in the Ronald Reagan tradition. Unfortunately, 2006 destroyed that theory, with some truly outstanding and take-no-prisoners conservatives (Rick Santorum, Ken Blackwell, Michael Steele, Dick De Vos, and many, many more) going down to decisive defeat. The most successful Republican anywhere in 2006 was Arnold Schwarzenegger – a political hybrid who hardly counts as a conventional conservative. Concerning that previous actor-turned-California-governor (the one who won two landslide Presidential victories), Ronald Reagan possessed the rare gift of combining clear-cut conservative principles with a genial, unthreatening style and unapologetic attempts to reach out to party moderates (hence selecting his defeated rival, George H.W. Bush as his running mate in 1980.) It’s possible that former governor Romney may display the same ability to advance conservative ideas without scaring away centrist and independent voters. After all, he won handily in Massachusetts (where conservatives are an even more endangered species than in California). It’s also worth noting that Reagan managed to carry Massachusetts (and the state of New York, for that matter) in both 1980 and ’84.

One more point about the ferocious competition that’s shaping up on the Democratic side, compared to the less thrilling race for the GOP nomination: in some ways, there’s a resemblance to 1968. That year, all the excitement centered around the truly history-making contest for the Democratic nomination, with Eugene McCarthy and then Robert Kennedy challenging the incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson and then, after LBJ’s withdrawal, trying to wrest the frontrunner position from Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Meanwhile, on the Republican side Richard Nixon (who thrilled no one but also offended almost no one) quietly wrapped up primary victories (against a field that initially included Mitt Romney’s father, by the way) and then went on to win the White House, despite his thoroughgoing lack of charisma or likeability.

The ’68 Democrats, with their furious internal battles (and RFK’s assassination, and violent demonstrations surrounding their Chicago convention), came across to the public as out-of-touch and out-of-the mainstream. After all, Hubert Humphrey, who had always been associated with the party’s most liberal wing, suddenly stepped forward as the “moderate” alternative – the same position that life-long lefty Hillary wants to occupy.

For Democrats, there’s a simple message: any time that Hillary Rodham Clinton looks like the most centrist, mainstream candidate for the nomination, you know that the entire party has tilted disturbingly, self-destructively and dangerously to the left.

One of the great advantages of maintaining this Townhall blog involves the opportunity to share odd but intriguing little observations that wouldn’t fit on the radio show (my producers would rebel if I tried it) but nonetheless provoke my own curiosity and amazement.

In that context, I’ve just been blown away by the realization that the Presidency recently has been dominated by parents of girls.

What, exactly, is going on?

Before you click elsewhere, consider this: of the last six major party nominees for President of the United States (Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Al Gore, George Bush twice, John Kerry) five out of those six nominees have been fathers only of girls. (Al Gore is the exception – with three daughters and one son).

Going back to 1996, in other words, Presidential nominees have produced a total of nine girls and one boy.

Going back before ’96, and including all our chief executives since 1963, we’ve experienced eight Presidents. An amazing half of them (Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush) have been the parents only of females. NONE of them have been the fathers of male-only broods.

You have to go all the way back to Dwight Eisenhower—who left office in 1961 -- to find a President who’s been the father of boys-only (Ike had two sons). Meanwhile, if either of the Democratic front-runners (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama) succeed in capturing the White House, we’ll continue this trend of first families with no Presidential sons: the Obamas have produced two daughters and the Clintons, obviously, produced one.

In fact, the last occupant of the White House to produce male children ended up featuring a future President among his masculine progeny: the first-born child of George Herbert Walker Bush became the 43^rd President of the United States, George W. Bush.

The White House representation by fathers-of-daughters, in short, counts as wildly disproportional: with four girls-only first families and NO boys-only first families since 1961.This is particularly surprising since boy children are much more common than girl children (a reliable ratio of 105 or 106 boy babies for each 100 girl babies) to make up for the fact that males are far more likely to die in childhood or adolescence.

Is there any possible explanation for the plethora of girls-only Presidents (and candidates) among recent contenders?

Perhaps there is.

Anyone who has ever raised both male children and female children (Diane and I are blessed with two daughters and a son) will tell you that boys require vastly more attention, effort, energy, supervision and discipline than do their sisters. When I think of my own poor parents (with four rowdy, obstreperous sons, and no girls around to civilize them) I’m still amazed that they survived the experience.

Male children unquestionably distract their parents—and particularly their fathers – more than their female counterparts.

Given the overwhelming demands of today’s politics, the fathers of well behaved little girls (Luci and Lynda Johnson; Tricia and Julie Nixon; Chelsea Clinton; Barbara and Jenna Bush) may feel less distraction, fewer demands, from the business of child-rearing and can therefore focus more effectively on the obsessive requirements of running for office.

This is a tentative theory—and it may sound silly and forced when you look at the biographical specifics of the Presidents involved.

Nevertheless, the last half-century demonstrates an unmistakable and striking advantage for Presidential contenders with daughters but no sons.

That advantage appears so consistent and so disproportionate that it begs for some explanation.

Does anyone out there want to offer a more persuasive perspective?

It’s easy to see why the emerging Obama bandwagon fills Clintonistas with panic and desperation. Compare the smooth, communicative, cleverly constructed and punchy Obama announcement of his exploratory committee to Hillary’s rambling monotone in presenting her unfocused and ultimately incomprehensible comments upon returning from the Middle East.

In order to undermine the obvious momentum for the Illinois Senator, Clinton partisans have begun harping on his lack of experience as an obvious disqualifier for his presidential candidacy. Barack-backers deftly answer that charge with reference to another tall, skinny candidate from Illinois – Abe Lincoln – who won the Presidency (at age 51) after just two years in the House of Representatives and intermittent service in the Illinois legislature with comparable (and less prominent) office-holding experience to Obama's.

The best answer to the “inexperienced” indictment isn’t, however, making reference to a candidate from 148 years ago; it’s to turn the focus to Hillary herself.

On what basis does she claim more political or executive experience than Barack Obama?

He’s run for public office four times (with two successful State Senate races, an unsuccessful bid for the House, and a successful campaign for U.S. Senate). She’s run only twice – once in an easy race for U.S. Senate while her husband was still President, and the second time in a virtually uncontested re-election campaign (where she still managed to squander a record-breaking $36 million).

By the time of the 2008 electin, Obama will have served in public office for twelve years (eight as State Senator, four as U.S. Senator); Hillary will have served for only eight years (all as U.S. Senator).

In terms of preparation for the Presidency, neither of the Democratic frontrunners counts as even vaguely well-qualified. Comparisons with George W. Bush (however one judges his Presidency) only re-enforce the point: Bush had six years of executive experience (as Governor of Texas) before he became President, and he was the responsible chief  officer of several businesses (some of them, like the Texas Rangers baseball team, spectacularly successful) by the time he sought the White House.

Neither Clinton nor Obama has ever run anything – as executives, they’re unknown quantities. Functioning as a legislator involves an altogether different skill set from administering a state or a cabinet department or even a major corporation. That’s why a candidate like Mitt Romney (only four years as Massachusetts Governor, but more than twenty years of conspicuously successful corporate leadership) seems experienced and prepared, while the Democratic frontrunners (both of ‘em) raise legitimate questions.

Given the likelihood that the GOP will nominate a candidate with far more experience than either Obama or Clinton, should we make experience a major issue?

History suggests that’s a bad idea. Particularly at a time when the people crave new faces and fresh starts, stressing experience serves to remind the electorate that your candidate is older – conceding to the opposition the important advantages of youth, energy, and novelty. Making experience a major issue would be particularly ill-advised if the Republican candidate is John McCain who, at 72 (“old as dirt” in his own words) would be the oldest candidate ever elected to the White House.

Moreover, Republicans can look back on baleful experience in trying to make an issue of experience. In 1960, Vice President Richard Nixon (at 47, only four years older than his Democratic rival John Kennedy) used the slogan, EXPERIENCE COUNTS. This appeared on billboards, bumper stickers, even TV ads. Despite the popularity of the outgoing Eisenhower, the more youthful and dynamic JFK won the raice (narrowly).

In a substantive sense, it may be true that EXPERIENCE COUNTS but in the heat of Presidential battle it’s hardly the smartest or most effective selling point.

Republicans can't count on stressing inexperience to retain the White House. We'll need to develop far more potent weapons to deploy against Obama or, if we're fortunate, to help insure a landsclide victory over Hillary Clinton.

On Tuesday, January 16^th, 2007, the American people awoke to startling and disturbing news: for the first time ever, the majority of women in the country were living without a husband.

All the TV networks, radio news broadcasts, pundits, talk show hosts and leading newspapers reported on the devastating milestone, and saw it as yet another indication of the ongoing collapse of the traditional family. Some commentators hailed this development as an encouraging sign of newfound freedom, while others decried it as a reflection of decadence and dysfunction.

With all the debate and pontification about the new minority status of married women, it’s just too bad that no significant media outlet (beyond this writer, on my nationally syndicated radio show) made the single most important and salient observation about the big news---

That is, it’s not true.

The entire story (based on the work of one ax-grinding, irresponsible, agenda-driven journalist for the New York Times) has been cooked up from willful, blatant and shameful distortions. Amazingly enough, none of the most respected and purportedly responsible media authorities have taken the trouble to call him on it.

First, the truth—a truth that is easily accessible from the United States Census Bureau.

According to the most recent available figures (from 2005), a clear majority (56%) of all women over the age of 20 are currently married.

Moreover, nearly all women in this country will get married at one time or another. Among those above the age of 50 (a group that includes the celebrated Baby Boomers of the famously revolutionary ‘60’s generation), an astonishing 94% have been married at one time or another and some 79% are either currently married or widowed.

Even including the younger, supposedly “post-marriage” generation, and considering all women above the age of 30, some 61% are currently married and another 12% are widowed. In other words, nearly three-fourths (73%, a crushing majority) of all women who have reached the tender age of 30 now occupy a traditional female role as either current wives or widows – avoiding the supposedly trendy status of divorced, separated, co-habiting or single.

How, then, could America’s “Journal of Record,” the New York Times, possibly peddle the ridiculously distorted story that most females now count as unattached?

Reporter Sam Roberts begins his tendentious account with the following declarations: “For what experts say is probably the first time, more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results. In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000.”

This conclusion provided a shocking front-page headline (“51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse”) that gave rise to considerable cluck-clucking and tut-tting throughout the media echo-chamber.

So how could reporter Roberts read the same Census figures that any American can view (“according to a New York Times analysis”) and come up with such bizarre conclusions?

It’s all based on a fundamentally dishonest decision that Roberts never acknowledges in the entire course of his lengthy article. It turns out that in his analysis he chose to count some 10,154,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 19 as “women.” It should come as no surprise that this vast group of teenagers (yes, teenagers, most of whom live at home) are officially classified as “single.” In fact, 97% of the 15 to 19 year olds identify themselves as “never married.” The Census Bureau, by the way, doesn’t call these youngsters “women” – it labels them “females” (a far more appropriate designation).

Yet even the ridiculous inclusion of his ten million unmarried teenagers couldn’t give Sam Roberts the story he wanted to report – that most American “women” are now unmarried. As a matter of fact, the Census Bureau shows that among all females above 15 the majority (51%!) are still classified as “married.”

So the New York Times required yet another sneaky distortion to shave off that last 2% from the married majority, though this bit of statistical sleight-of-hand Sam Roberts had the decency to acknowledge. “In a relatively small number of cases, the living arrangement is temporary, because the husbands are working out of town, are in the military, or are institutionalized,” he writes. In other words, in his brave new majority of “women” without spouses, he includes all those thousands upon thousands of wives and mothers who are waiting and praying at home for the return of their husbands from Iraq or Afghanistan. By arbitrarily removing this 2% of all females (2,400,000 individuals) who are classified as “married/spouse absent” from the ranks of the married, and then designating as “unmarried” his millions of middle school and high school girls who are living with their parents, together with some 9 million elderly widows who have devoted much of their lives to marriage and husbands (42% of all women over 65 are widows), Roberts can finally arrive at his desired but meaningless conclusion that “most women” now “are living without a husbands.” Eureka!

If anyone doubts that this laughable analysis stems from a heavy-handed anti-marriage agenda, consider these quotes that Roberts features in his story, after declaring that today’s women are “sometimes delighting in their newfound freedom”:

“Sheila Jamison who also lives in the East Village and works for a media company, is 45 and single… ‘Considering all the weddings I attended in the ‘80’s that have ended so very, very badly, I consider myself straight up lucky,’ Ms. Jamison said. ‘I have not sworn off marriage, but if I do wed, it will be to have a companion with whom I can travel and play parlor games in my old age.’…

“Similarly, Shelly Fidler, 59, a public policy adviser at a law firm, has sworn off marriage. She moved from rural Virginia to the vibrant Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., when her 30-year marriage ended.

“’The benefits were completely unforeseen for me,’ Ms. Fidler said, ‘the free time, the amount of time I get to spend with friends, the time I have alone, which I value tremendously, the flexibility in terms of work, travel and cultural events.’…

“Elissa B. Terris, 59, of Marietta, Ga., divorced in 2005 after being married for 34 years and raising a daughter, who is now an adult.

“’A gentleman asked me to marry him and I said no,’ she recalled. ‘I told him, ‘I’m just beginning to fly again. I’m just beginning to be me. Don’t take that away.’

“’Marriage kind of aged me because there weren’t options,’ Ms. Terris said. ‘There was only one way to go. Now I have choices. One night I slept on the other side of the bed, and I thought, I like this side.’”

Ah, the indescribable joys of slumbering on either side of an empty big, bed! Such profound pleasures and blissful rewards obviously make up for fleeting inconvenience of growing old alone.

By featuring profile after profile of his joyously unattached females, Sam Roberts doesn’t just report on the purportedly husband-free majority; he celebrates it.

He did the same thing with a similarly misleading and propagandistic article on October 15, 2006, which appeared under the headline: “It’s Official: To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered.”

This “report” began with the claim: “Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of American households, have finally slipped into a minority, according to an analysis of new census figures by the New York Times.”

As with his “disappearing husbands” scoop of three months later, Roberts relied on twisting and squeezing numbers to reach his “marriage is dead” conclusion.

Among the “unmarried” households he featured as part of his “new majority,” more than half involved individuals living alone—many of them widows, by the way. In any event, far more people lived within “married households” than outside of such arrangements – despite his insipid and wretchedly misleading claim that “married couples” have “slipped to a minority.”

The Census Bureau reports (official 2005 numbers) that heavy majorities of individuals (male and female) in every age group over 30 are currently married --- not widowed, divorced, separated, or single. For instance, among those 34 to 39, 64.6% are married, and among those 40-44, 67.7% are married.

What Roberts does to reach his “revolutionary” conclusion is to count “households” rather than “people.” According to this numbering, a little cul de sac (Wisteria Lane?) with two homes--one including two married people with four children, the other with a single widow living alone-- would be evenly split between “married” and “unmarried” – a logical and statistical absurdity. In reality, the married household contains six people, and the other involves only one.

Despite tricky enumerations, the durability and significance of marriage becomes even more apparent when considering the status of children in the United States. The Census Bureau numbers from 2003 (the most recent available so far) show 68.4% of all children under 18 currently live with two parents; almost exactly three times the number (23%) who live with a single or divorced mother. Moreover, among “family households” (defined by the Census Bureau as “a home with at least two persons, the householder and one or more additional family members related to the householder through birth, adoption or marriage”) an overwhelming 75.7% still feature “married couple families.” In other words, for all the attention lavished by Sam Roberts and countless colleagues on “unconventional” living arrangements--- cohabiting couples, gay couples, single parents, and so forth – these alternatives taken together comprise less than 25% of all households, and involve far less than 20% of all individuals. The great bulk of adults are still either living as married couples, or living alone, often as widows.

These statistics may seem confusing (because of the deliberate attempts to obscure and spin the truth by anti-marriage fanatics) but they are incontrovertible and hugely important for the ongoing debate about the future of the family.

The endlessly repeated lies – that married people are now a minority, that most women don’t have husbands, that half of all first marriages end in divorce – exert a real world influence on young people trying to make decisions about their own intimate arrangements. The relentless media portrayal of matrimony as a wounded, collapsing, outmoded, dysfunctional institution discourages prospective husbands and wives from making the lifelong commitments on which societal health and effective childrearing depend.

Despite the journalistic malpractice by Sam Roberts and the New York Times, the real front-page news isn’t about marriage’s disappearance, it’s about the institution’s unexpected and encouraging durability.

During a discussion of media distortions concerning the institution of marriage, a caller to my radio show (Randy from Indianapolis) offered the startling conclusion that some 80% of married women have cheated on their husbands.

When pressed as to the basis for this figure, the caller could offer no scientific support: only his own “research” with many of the desperate housewives he had gotten to know over the years. When I insisted to Randy that the best scientific evidence pointed to vastly lower rates of infidelity for both females and males he suggested that I was living in “a dream world.”

That may be so, but at least I’ve got some distinguished company.

The New York Times Almanac for 2007 reported the following under the heading “Extramarital sex”:

“The percentage of currently married people admitting to extramarital sex within the last year (3.0% in 2002) has fluctuated very little since 1988. More people were willing to admit having an affair at one point in their lives. In 1991, 14.6 percent of people who had ever been married admitted having at least one affair while married; in 2002, 17.7 percent said they had extramarital sex. These figures are much higher than the one-year numbers because they include married people as well as those who are separated and divorced, perhaps as a result of one of these affairs. Men (4.3 percent in the last year and 21.8% percent ever) were more likely than women (1.9 percent 14.7% respectively) to admit extramarital activity.”

In other words, according to the best available (though admittedly imperfect) numbers, only 14.7 percent of women who were ever married have been unfaithful. Since more than 25% of all marriages end in divorce, and since the unfaithful wives would undoubtedly be overrepresented among those who did divorce, one can assume that much less than 14.7% of still married females have been unfaithful.

Randy in Indianapolis may choose not to believe these numbers but it’s entirely possible that he either runs with an unusually risqué crowd, or else somehow brings out the worst in the women with whom he comes in contact.

In addition to all the debate over the substance of the President’s new plans for Iraq our politicians and pundits have been fighting a bitter war over the right word to describe the latest policy.

Before the speech from the White House library last week, most media outlets characterized the addition of 21,500 troops as a “surge” in force levels – even though the President himself never employed that word. On the left, many Bush bashers objected to that term, suggesting that a troop “surge” implied a temporary enhancement in personnel while the new build-up would likely last for several years, at least.

Most critics of administration policy clearly preferred the word “escalation,” with its unmistakably ominous echoes of Vietnam. Largely unused for thirty years, the designation remains unbreakably linked to the tragic American experience in Southeast Asia – as does the term “quagmire,” another special verbal favorite of outspoken opponents of the Iraq war.

Actually, “escalation” implies a gradual, steady, inexorable increase in force levels and intensification of conflict ---with imagery depicting the violence rising with the unstoppable rhythm of an out-of-control escalator. That designation certainly fit the situation in Vietnam—where President Johnson boosted troop levels from below 20,000 in 1963 to above 500,000 by 1967, and President Nixon expanded the war into Cambodia and Laos.

The New Webster’s Dictionary defines the verb “to escalate” as “to increase gradually but steadily” – hardly a suitable description of the new Bush policy in Iraq. Clearly, his increase in troop levels will be nearly immediate, rather than gradual or incremental, and his critics and supporters seem to agree that it constitutes a one-time, last chance adjustment, not a small stage in a long-term policy of massive, ongoing military increases. Moreover, to use the word “escalation” is to preemptively decide that the new policy can’t possibly achieve its own announced goals which involve a reduction, not an expansion (or escalation) of violence in Iraq.

The dictionary definition for “surge” (“the heaving of waves; a sudden access of interest”) comes much closer to matching the announced Bush policy. Despite concerns of war critics that the word suggests only a temporary troop boost, the Los Angeles Times (no fan of Bush or his record in Iraq) acknowledges that “surge” has a long-standing military usage in reference to a quick boost of forces and does not necessarily suggest that the increase will be short-lived.

The battle of words may play a surprisingly significant role in shaping public perceptions of the progress (or lack of progress) in the war. Already, we can see the importance of the prior conflict over the term “civil war”: when Bush and his allies argue that a quick US withdrawal will lead to all-out civil war, their political opponents insist that we’re already in the midst of such a civil war – after all, they’ve been saying so for months. The premature employment of the term helps obliterate all distinctions between random if bloody acts of tit-for-tat sectarian violence and a vastly more destructive fight-to-the-death between organized armies of Shia and Sunni (a very real possibility following any abrupt US departure).

By the same token, “escalation” is by no means a neutral word in this context and its deployment to describe the limited, one-time-only troop increase by President Bush betrays an unmistakable bias regarding Iraq policy.

To avoid any such word games, we should shun the use of “escalation” and, since it makes many liberals uncomfortable, discard the term “surge” as well. After all, the President hasn’t employed either word.

The right phrase, the impartial wording, would be to describe the new policy as a “troop buildup” or a “force enhancement” or a “personnel boost.” These phrases carry no connotation suggesting that the troops will return home quickly, nor do they imply that the present increase in manpower is just part of an ongoing, inexorable process.

In other words, we’ll avoid confusion and spin and bias and manage to achieve far greater clarity if we somehow can prevent a pointless verbal escalation over the surge.

It’s the second weekend of a new year and a perfect opportunity to try something new – like priceless music at a cost of $5.99 per CD.

There’s a fresh, supremely exciting series of Beethoven releases at shockingly low cost that gives the chance for a great gift for yourself --or anyone else.

If you know little or nothing about classical music, these three discs will open windows and bring unexpected energy and joy.

If you’re moderately familiar with the great composers, you’ll discover obscure, unheralded, but magnificent pieces that no listener should live without.

And if you’re already a devoted music lover, familiar with thrilling works like “The Consecration of the House Overture” or the choral gem “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage,” you’ll get knock-your-socks off, electrifying new performances that make the music come alive as never before, with every note sounding gorgeous, resonant, and glorious.

If nothing else, these CD’s will expose one of the arts world’s best-kept secrets: for the last ten years, a venerable if little-known orchestra in a cozy, out of the way corner of Europe has been making some of the best music on the planet. The Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich is usually overshadowed by more celebrated, glamorous bands in other parts of the German-speaking world – particularly the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, und so weiter (etc.).

The Tonhalle, however, works now with two huge advantages: first, it performs (and now records) in an 1895 concert hall (the Tonhalle, naturally) that counts as one of the acoustic miracles of all time. The sound (as perfectly captured by the digital engineers from Arte Nova Classics in these 2005-2006 releases) is breathtaking: plummy, rich, with a slight but notable reverberant echo, and unparalleled detail (particularly for woodwinds, so important in Beethoven).

The second edge that the Swiss orchestra displays involves its music director, the dynamic David Zinman, who came to Zurich in 1995 after single-handedly building the Baltimore Symphony into a world class band. His work with the Tonhalle is even better—with the musicians providing the kind of loving lyricism, precise detail, and edge-of-your-seat responsiveness that spells the difference between an adequate, placid run-through and an explosive, imaginative work of re-creation.

Take, for instance, the insistent kettle-drum strokes that mark the end of the introduction to the “Fidelio” overture. Not only do the peerless Tonhalle acoustics make the tympani sound down-right menacing and otherworldly, but the tympanist himself seems to rip at his instrument with all the fury and abandon of a rock guitarist smashing his stratoblaster. This is, in other words, incendiary music making that will reach anyone, no matter how jaded or ill-informed about classical music.

Consider, for instance, the recording of the Beethoven Triple Concerto (for Piano, Violin, Cello and Orchestra) paired with his Septet for four string instruments joined by Clarinet, French Horn and Bassoon. The Triple Concerto features three of the music world’s most exciting young soloists (violinist Gil Shaham, Pianist Yefim Bronfman, and cellist Truls Mork) in a piece that allows Beethoven to sing in his sunniest, most lyrical voice, with a last movement that’s an explosion of danceable joy. The Septet (one of his most popular pieces in his lifetime, but now largely forgotten) is even more relaxed—summery, unbuttoned, outdoorsy music that provides elegant background for anything. The disc (Arte Nova Classics, ANO 640150) provides more than 74 minutes of beautiful music and goes for $5.99 (or, sometimes $6.99) at most Borders or Barnes and Noble stores across the country.

Then there’s another 2006 release that combines the famous, heroic, “Emperor” Concerto (with pianist Bronfman again) with two irresistible pieces for chorus and orchestra: the Choral Fantasy (which brings the pianist back on stage for good measure) which sounds like an ecstatic practice-round for the “Ode to Joy” of the Ninth Symphony, and “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage,” almost altogether unknown, but delivering seven minutes of loveliness and heart-stopping inspiration. Based on a poem by Goethe, “Calm Sea” begins with the chorus in hushed, reverent tones, singing of a placid, endless ocean with the travelers praying for wind. When the breezes gradually kick in the music turns celebratory, grateful, and rhapsodic as the ship flies forward toward its destination with unstoppable, propulsive pleasure. (Arte Nova Classics 825850).

Finally, there’s a stunning two disc set (with 88 minutes of incomparable music making) that I just picked up on Thursday night for the altogether absurd (non-sale!) price of $10.99 – or less than $5.50 per disc. (Arte Nova Classics ANO 578310) Zinman and Tonhalle Orchestra perform all 11 of Beethoven’s Overtures, little gems ranging in length from five minutes to twelve minutes. The set not only includes relatively well known works like “Coriolan” and the three “Leonora” Overtures, but also rarities like “The Ruins of Athens,” the “Name Day Overture” and the sublime, deeply moving “The Consecration of the House Overture,” Opus 124, which was one of the last great pieces Beethoven wrote before his death in 1827, and was the last piece he published before his final orchestral work, the epic Ninth Symphony. The overture (called “Die Weihe des Hauses” in German, and written for the solemn dedication of a new Vienna theatre) glows with holiness – there is no other word. The music expresses stately celebration, muscular joy at our God-like creative ability and, most memorably, awe and gratitude at the richness of life and art. The performance by Zinman and his Tonhalle gang achieves a transcendent radiance that is rightly described as unforgettable. The resplendent, burnished sonic aura of the old Swiss concert hall makes all the overture recordings vivid, detailed, rich and warming – a demonstration quality set of discs for any sound system that comes about as close to you can as sitting there a few rows away from the orchestra.

Does my enthusiasm seem over the top here?

If so, I dare you to try one or all of these three musical gems, and then tell me if I’m wrong.

It’s winter time, obviously – snow was falling again today in Seattle – and these fresh discoveries can only warm your season as they have mine. I simply can’t resist making the attempt to share the pleasure.