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In good company

"In 1952, [director Elia] Kazan cooperated with a congressional committee that was investigating Soviet attempts to infiltrate the film industry, with the purpose of shaping the values of Americans by manipulating what they took into their minds through their entertainment. Kazan 'named names,' exposing the communists he knew in Hollywood.

"In return ... Kazan was vilified by his peers. To this day, despite new evidence from the former Soviet Union that proves the direct involvement of Soviet agents in attempting to take over America's means of cultural production, Hollywood ... hails the 'blacklisted' communists exposed by Kazan and others. (Another important player in the affair was the head of the actors union who battled Soviet attempts to take over his organization: a young star named Ronald Reagan.)"

--Gene Edward Veith, writing on "Proud defender of the American 'waterfront,'" in the Oct. 11 issue of World

Gospel of hate

"Of the Four Gospels, the Gospel of John is the closest to being hate literature. Granted, it contains some lovely writing, but its basic narrative -- and a very strong narrative it is -- shows the mainline Pharisees and 'the Jews' ... as being responsible for the death of Jesus. The Romans get off lightly and the Jews take almost all the blame.

"Historically, this led to the lunatic charge of deicide (god-killing) against the Jews and their descendants: lunatic because the Christian scheme of things requires that Jesus's blood be shed to complete God's plan for the salvation of true believers, and slagging a rival religious group for its implementation of God's will is simply schizophrenic discourse.

"Nevertheless, the charge of deicide against the Jews, when magnified by the power of the Roman Empire and later by various Christian national states, cost the lives of tens of thousands -- probably hundreds of thousands -- of Jews. Killing the Christ-killers is one of the products of the Gospel of John.