At least these papers definitely provide an alternative take on happenings in the public sphere, both national and international. For instance, the dilemma the Nederlands Dagblad finds itself in with its coverage of the “Pray at the Pump” movement in America (Supplicants see lower gas prices as answered prayers) is particularly delicious. At bottom, you realize that they must be sympathetic to folks like Rock Twyman, discussed in the article, who is so confident in the power of mass public prayer that he began “Pray at the Pump” last April to get Christians to assemble at gas stations all over the U.S. of A. to join hands and pray aloud for lower prices. And what do you know: gas prices have recently headed downwards. “There is no one else for us to turn to than God,” Twyman is glad to tell journalists. That flaming secularist, Jay Leno (not called such in this article: that’s my own ironic characterization) had the gall to pick out Twyman’s movement as the butt of jokes, but not only has the latter been proved right, he also has shown himself willing to include Leno in his prayers at his home-base Shell station in Northwest Washington, DC.

On the other hand: Perhaps the very idea of praying to lower prices is absurd on its face, regardless of whether subsequent developments seem to justify it or not. Indeed, whoever is the Nederlands Dagblad writer here (the attribution is only to the paper’s “church editor”), s/he is willing to raise some pointed questions. Perhaps some people pray the opposite way, i.e. for higher gas prices, for the sake of the environment: which way would God rule on this one? And if you want to pray, aren’t there rather more-deserving causes to pray for, like for the hungry, the war refugees, etc.?

Then sometimes these Dutch evangelical publications really amaze with the sensitivity of their antennae to obscure doings by their American counterparts. How about the medical journal Archives of Surgery, for example? Ordinarily this sort of journal publishes articles with sexy titles like Evaluating the Degree of Difficulty of Laparoscopic Colorectal Surgery, but the Reformatorisch Dagblad somehow recently picked up something in its pages rather out of the ordinary (Americans trust God more than the doctor). This has to do with the recently publication in Archives of Surgery of an article, Trauma Death, that reveals that 57.4% of people (and even 19.5% of medical professionals) “believe that divine intervention could save a person when physicians believe treatment is futile.” Again, it probably took an explictly Christian newspaper like this one to be looking for news like this in the first place, but it’s also true that it’s this sort of publication where you can usually detect between the lines something of an approving attitude towards attitudes and behaviors that many others (certainly most Europeans) would find rather bewildering.

UPDATE:Whoops, here’s another one – that is, a Christian-oriented national newspaper – but it’s Danish: Kristeligt Dagblad, or “Christian Daily.” Let’s see if I can remind myself to check whether it, too, goes off-line on the Sabbath. Anyway, I’ve got it covered for you.

                          

A rough-and-ready approach to comparing those Olympics of yesterday with those of today is to treat the ways they are different and the ways that they are the same. Of course, the ways they are different predominate, but those differences are quite interesting. The most striking is the almost complete lack of support – indeed, the hostility – the 1928 Olympics received from the host-nation government. That partly was tied to one innovation which these Olympics were scheduled to (and which they did) introduce, namely participation for the first time of woman athletes, if only in the track-and-field and the gymnastics events. Unfortunately, the Netherlands at the time was quite a bit more of a Christian conservative – nay, even prudish – nation, governed by a right-wing coalition of the Protestant and Catholic religious parties. Right off the bat, the organizing committee had to promise that absolutely no Olympic activities would take place on Sunday, to desecrate the Sabbath day. But that was hardly enough of a concession to satisfy the religious critics, such as the spokesman for the Protestant party, the ARP (the “Anti-Revolutionary Party”) who maintained that the Games were fundamentally “of a heathenish character” and should not be allowed to put female athletes on display “in short skirts, thin clothing, and bobbed hair.” Other factions from the ARP (the party of the then-Minister of Finance Hendrik Colijn) expressed sincere alarm that, with all the foreigners they would attract, the Games would only increase the immorality that was already rife in Amsterdam. (Of course, that battle has long since been given up as lost.)

That Much Money – For Sports?

When it came right down to it, concluded many Dutch political figures, including those from the rather less-excitable Catholic party RKSP which wasn’t so worried about what might happen to the city’s morals, the one-million-guilder subsidy that Colijn proposed to pay to the Games (spread over four years) was simply too much money to go for mere sport, at a time when economic conditions in the Netherlands had already begun to worsen and such things as education and housing needed the money more. In the end, the proposal for that subsidy was voted down in the parliament; and a previous undertaking to set up a lottery to raise the funds the local Olympic committee needed to run the games had already been firmly shot down from the Finance Minister, who wanted no competition to the already-existing State Lottery that brought the government 650,000 guilders yearly in revenue.

So the Amsterdam Olympic Committee received no money from the state: none at all. As we have seen, it faced the hostility or at least the indifference of much of the Dutch population (including the Queen herself, Wilhelmina – she wasn’t very enthusiastic about sports). At the same time, in its first few years of existence it was staffed exclusively by volunteers (definitely a difference from the way things are run today) and could not even find a new chairman for a quite a while after the old one, Baron Frits van Tuyll van Serooskerken, suddenly died in 1924. All the while, the Committee faced sniping from other cities (Rome, Los Angeles) lobbying the International Olympic Committe to try to take the 1928 Games away from that “small city” Amsterdam, that clearly was having such a hard time.

Still, this Committee did it, they succeeded in bringing the 1928 summer games to Amsterdam and in staging them there successfully. How did they get their money? you ask. They begged for it from the public, from both within and outside the Netherlands. Indeed, they cleverly used the prospect of having to go outside the country for money (which they did anyway) to get more money from people inside the country: they appealed to “the whole [Dutch] people” to contribute to keep the country from “degrading to the class of international money-cadgers [klaploopers].” And they succeeded in raising 1.5 million guilders within the space of two weeks! It sounds unbelievable, but that’s what Paauw and Visser say in their book is what happened. (One interesting note: the newspaper Het Volk, reacting to the parliament’s rejection of the subsidy for the Olympics, claimed that by that action the Dutch had shown themselves to be “the Chinese of Europe” ; Chinese were at the time reputed to be rather skin-flint. Rather ironic in the light of 2008, eh?)

A Success After All

Yes, not only did the Amsterdam 1928 organizers raise enough funds, but they staged a very good iteration of the Summer Olympic Games – so much so, that many observers agreed that the 1928 Games were “a model for the future” – in fact, that was the precise phrase used by the chairman of the US Olympic Committee (which would run the next Summer Olympics, scheduled for 1932, in Los Angeles – and which had tried to steal the 1928 Summer Olympics), one General Douglas MacArthur.

The Amsterdam Olympic Stadium still stands there today, with its distinctive Olympic tower and the five rings, in the south part of town down towards the ring-highway/beltway, although these days it is too small to be of much use for most athletic or other public events. (There’s a nightclub now built in one of the sections along the side that people say is pretty good, by the way – but it is too far away and too isolated from anything else to be worth a visit for me, though.) More significantly, those Olympics pioneered several key aspects of the Summer Olympic Games that are still in use today. There’s the participation of women, of course, but it was in 1928 in Amsterdam that the competing teams paraded for the first time before the adoring assembled crowds at the opening ceremony, with the Greek contingent coming first of course.

And the Olympic flame – did you follow along earlier this year (like I did) as the Olympic flame made its way through Europe and other parts of the world, braving protesters and outright assailants behind its phalanx of identically-dressed, grim-faced, identically-Chinese bodyguards? Well, you can thank the Amsterdam Olympics for that – that’s when that somewhat quaint Olympic customer was introduced. You might even be relieved to hear further that the current Dutch Crown Prince, Willem Alexander (a member of the International Olympic Committee) has recently spoken out against this “wandering Olympic flame” custom, advocating instead that it appear in public only in Greece, for the lighting at Mount Olympus, and then in that year’s host-country.

                          

It’s not alone, though: the Reformatorisch Dagblad, or “Reformed Daily,” is similar, although that website does stay open on Sundays. People should not confuse the allegedly “anything goes” atmosphere of cosmopolitan cities like Amsterdam (see this weblog’s recent coverage of the famous yearly Gay Pride parade there, for example) with Dutch culture as a whole, which in fact features some enclaves which can easily hold their own in the Christian piety department with any of the American Amish communities.

The Nederlands Dagblad reports today, as the 2008 Olympic Games open in Beijing, that the Chinese church leader Zhang Mingxuan was recently arrested by the authorities in his hometown in the province of Henan, along with his wife and another associate, and brought to an office of the “security services” in that province’s capital, Zhengzhou. This follows Zhang’s being driven out of his Beijing by the authorities at the beginning of last month, and then out of the city itself two weeks ago.

The Stichting De Ondergrondse Kerk (a Dutch name, of course: “Foundation of the Underground Church”) has issued a call to make these opening days of the Olympic Games days of prayer on behalf of the persecuted Christians in China.

                          

It also enjoys a rather high level of public support. That was perhaps the main point of the article from Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza that I covered here on Tuesday, which noted that, for the first time, a national cabinet minister will be officially present in the parade (namely Ronald Plasterk, of Education, Culture, and Science) as well as an official boat from the police. But it turns out that Gazeta didn’t know the half of it (and probably did not want to know the half of it, in any case): this whole new politician phenomenon has mushroomed so rapidly that not only have plenty other national Dutch lawmakers scrambled to find a place for themselves for today on a Gay Pride boat, but questioning eyebrows are even being raised in the direction of politicians who will not be present.

So, at least, reports Yvonne Doorduyn of De Volkskrant (Absent Politicians Given a Problem By Gay Pride). “Today everyone is practically required to be homo-friendly” she declares in her first paragraph, and among the additional politicians slated to be on-hand to demonstrate that quality personally (besides Job Cohen, Amsterdam’s mayor, who is always there and whom I mentioned on Tuesday) are the Minister of Internal Affairs (i.e. cabinet member in charge of the police, Guusje ter Horst – a woman, by the way) and two staatssecretarissen, i.e. cabinet secretaries or the top civil service functionaries in a cabinet department. What is more, a number of Dutch political parties will be there on the water on their own sponsored boats, namely GroenLinks (i.e. the Green Party), D66, and the party (“Proud of the Netherlands”) only recently-formed as the personal vehicle for the right-wing, anti-immigrant (female) politician Rita Verdonk. It would therefore be no surprise to see Rita herself there on her “Proud of the Netherlands” boat, waving to the crowds on either bank.

So what about the other parties – what about the VVD (the leading non-extremist right-wing business-friendly party), for example? For that matter, what about Dutch premier Jan Peter Balkenende himself, or his vice-premier André Rouvoet, of the Christian party, the ChristenUnie, both of whom were specifically invited, after all, by Minister Plasterk? Frankly, of all of those one would expect at least Rouvoet to reply with some self-distancing remarks about homosexuality, given the stance and policy positions of his Christianist party. But nothing of the sort – as Doorduyn reports (in a section labeled “obstructed”) all these reluctantly reported that their schedules simply would not allow it – it’s vacation time, after all, so it’s hard to fit things like that in. Again, though, the truly remarkable thing here is how, from something that national politicians were attending this year for the first time, the Gay Pride parade has so quickly metamorphosed into something where the attendance of politicians – extending up to the highest levels of government (although not to the Royal Family – yet?!?) – has become expected.

“Thank God I’m Gay”

Anyway, all of those nice politicians whose schedules did allow it will be along for the ride as today’s Gay Pride parade pushes off from the North/West end of the Prinsengracht, floating along with other boats displaying banners with such messages (as Doorduyn records) as “Simply Gay,” “I Do Believe I’m Gay,” and “Thank God I’m Gay” (these all written in English). Meanwhile, elsewhere in town the city zoo is offering for the weekend special Gay Pride tours focusing on homosexual behavior by animals. (Dear reader, I kid thee not – although, interestingly, there’s no mention of these tours on the zoo’s website, neither its English nor its Dutch version.) It’s certainly somewhat of a different cultural we have here in Amsterdam, is it not?, if nothing else.

By the way, this year’s parade also records a “first” in that it includes boats representing commercial companies. You’ll probably agree that that is something rather less surprising to see come along. But it raises the question: Now that it seems everyone with something to sell to the public, whether it be for votes or for money, is clamoring to get involved in the Gay Pride parade, how long will it take before purists start to pine for those lost times of innocence – of pure unencumbered floating, costumed, dancing, codpiece-flaunting, buttocks-exhibiting homosexual innocence – before all the hucksters of one stripe or another started crowding in?

                          

Belgium’s excellent De Standaard has already gotten a jump today on what that paper promises will be its own extensive coverage of the convention throughout next week, with a preview-article by Evita Neefs that I found quite impressively enlightening (A Miss, a Democrat, and Some Blacks in Madison Square Garden).

In a obviously generic way, that title sums up the speakers the public will be presented with at this convention, i.e. a diverse array designed to breathe life back into the President’s self-description as a “compassionate conservative” as well as to bolster the image of the Republican Party as a “big tent,” with room inside for very many. (That “Democrat,” by the way, will be Zell Miller, apostate U.S. Senator from Georgia. The “Miss” is Miss America 2003.) Yet Neefs takes as her point-of-departure the thesis that that is not at all the constituency upon which George W. Bush has relied in the past to be elected president (or at to least get enough votes to be able to take it to the Supreme Court – but let’s not get into that again), and upon which he is mainly relying to be elected come next November. Rather, that constituency is the “New Right,” or mainly conservative, evangelical Christians, who among other things can be identified by their view that writing a prohibition of same-sex marriage into the American Republic’s founding document is a perfectly proper and desirable thing to do.

THE RISE OF THE “NEW RIGHT”

Neefs offers an abbreviated but illuminating history of that New Right movement, tracing it back to the Republican Party’s nomination of Barry Goldwater for president back in 1964 and Goldwater’s strategy of orienting his campaign towards what he assumed was a “hidden conservative majority” in America that was waiting for just the sort of true conservative candidacy that he offered (among his slogans: “A Choice, Not an Echo”) to support. Goldwater lost that election on a massive scale; nonetheless, this “hidden majority” strategy was not totally discredited, but instead lay dormant for a couple of decades until a Republican presidential candidate came along that was able to find that “hidden majority” and draw it into politics: Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s ascendence to the presidency also marked the coming-of-age of this “New Right” political movement that henceforth would provide the core of the Republicans’ constituency. As Neefs describes it, it was constructed along the twin poles of 1) Evangelical Christians, exponents of so-called “family values,” who were propelled into politics by their aversion to what they saw as American society’s drift into immorality during the 1960s, and 2) White Southerners, who were attracted into what once had been the “Party of Lincoln” after a Democratic president (Lyndon B. Johnson) enfranchised black citizens a bit too much for their tastes with the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act.

Neefs terms George W. Bush “Ronald Reagan’s heir” for riding this same “New Right” coalition into power. But the “compassionate conservative” label which Bush will be trying to resurrect at the convention must be understood as denoting a quite different electoral approach than “hidden majority.” In the latter case, you’ve found (or at least you go searching for) your fellow “true-believers” out there, and you rest assured that if you can connect with them and get them to the polls, that’s all you need to win; in the former, you don’t think you can afford to take the chance of relying only on their support, and instead try to broaden your electoral appeal as widely as possible.

PITCHING THE “BIG TENT”

It’s that latter strategy which, according to Neefs, will define what next week’s RNC will be all about – showcasing the Republican Party as that “big tent” rather than some “church” of only “true believers.” (She mentions in particular the “Log Cabin Republicans” group of homosexual advocates, who are notably pleased at the convention’s speakers line-up. Personally, after Bush joined Congressional Republican leaders only recently to push that constitutional amendment forbidding same-sex marriage, I fail to understand how such a group can continue to exist within the Republican Party – isn’t that sort of like having a “pork lover’s caucus” within the Muslim Brotherhood?) Unfortunately, many of those New Right “true believers” have gotten angry about this intention to sideline them in New York. They’re also angry at the Bush/Cheney strategy of drawing up the party platform early, and so presenting it to the convention as a fait accompli, with no room for discussion. (See ParaPundit for how campaign officials worked in this way to incorporate several rather non-conservative elements into that party platform, concerning immigration and other subjects as well.) Neefs quotes leading conservative Paul Weyrich’s recent remarks to the New York Times: “If it bothers the president to be seen with conservatives at the convention, it could also bother conservatives to be seen with the president on election day.” Bush officials are apparently so alarmed at this anger that they issued a second speakers list for the convention, including rather more of the red-meat New Right figures that these conservatives will want to listen to. But it seems that none of these will be scheduled to speak when there is live television coverage of the proceedings.

Could the unthinkable really happen? Could that New Right get so annoyed as to repudiate George W. Bush politically? Neefs points out that that is possible – at least in the form of many of those conservative voters not bothering to show up at the polls next November 2. She claims that many are mad at the President already because they believe he acted half-heartedly in pushing that constitutional amendment, that if he had tried harder it would have been passed by Congress (only to be sent to the individual states for ratification, of course). On the other hand, these voters have little other choice than Bush/Cheney, and so also “compassionate conservatism” – if that turns out to actually mean anything this time around.