The American Spectator

TAS Live

Special Deliverance

By Ben Stein on 1.20.05 @ 12:03AM

(Page 2 of 2)

In the car on the way back, I slept, saying thanks to God over and over and over again.

But how I miss my son. He has the most beautiful blue green eyes, like a cherub. A mighty football playing monster teenage-sullen cherub.

Suddenly, I awakened and could see from the freeway the towers and spires of Yale in beloved New Haven. What a shiver went through me. You can hardly imagine the times I had at Yale. First terrible as a result of being poisoned by the Yale clinic when I had slight anxiety. (They gave me mellaril, which is a potent anti-psychotic, which left me literally paralyzed. As soon as I stopped taking the meds, I was fine, which is a premonitory story indeed.) Then great when I came back and became friends with Duncan Kennedy and Mopsy and Dick Balzer and John Keker and Bob and Susan Calhoun and Henry Hansmann and Alan Bentley and lots of others. Oh, Bob Spearman, great guy, too, and Jonathan Rosen. And next thing I knew, I was happy, happy, happy. Smoking and drinking until late at night. Playing bridge while stoned. Watching the snow fall on the New Haven Green. Leading the demonstrations against the war (always praying for the troops, though, and never calling them criminals and, of course, voting for Richard Nixon), snake dancing for the Black Panthers. And always, wifey, world's most beautiful girl, Alexandra Denman, saint of saints, angel in hotpants, too beautiful to be believed. And the endlessly kind, forgiving Yale Law School, nourishing mother indeed.

I felt ecstatic and thought of calling my dear pal, Nan Adams, but then I realized I would be waking her up. And then I suddenly felt so desperately old. So, so old. Those times at Yale were thirty-five years ago.

Now I am almost sixty. Time flies and it scares me. I like living. I don't want to die. I like being in good health. I don't want to be sick and have wires and tubes and scalpels in me. I like having enough money. I don't want to be old and poor.

I sat in my car with Mr. Bah at the wheel, shivering in fear. And then it struck me: I SPEND TOO DARNED MUCH OF MY LIFE IN FEAR. I always have. You cannot imagine how much of my life I have thrown away by being a slave to fear. I don't want to do it anymore. The spires of Yale receded and I thought hopeful thoughts:

Now I have tools. Tools to save my life. I closed my eyes and prayed to God to take away my fear and then to put Himself into my heart, and do you know what? He did.

I prayed to God to listen to my gratitude list: waking up in America; having a great wife and son; having work I love, having great friends and God's special gifts: Dogs and Cats.

I fell back asleep and awakened at the Essex House door. Mr. Bah had learned and had been guided by a Divine Hand. In any event, I was home.

Tuesday Night
Thank you, God. The man who said that the paralyzed could walk if a Democrat were in the White House will not be Vice President. The man who mocked Iyad Allawi, Premier of Iraq, who risks his life every day to bring about a decent society, will not be President. The party that believes that it's perfectly cool to take a living baby from its mother's body and then pierce its skull with scissors and kill it while it screams will not be in charge of the Executive Branch (as they are of the media). Thank you, God.

Everyone's saying it's because Bush and Rove mobilized values voters. I think it's that and something else that I see wherever I speak all over America. This nation is in the midst of a great religious revival. This nation is turning its life and its will over to God. I see it in Amarillo at West Texas A & M. I see it in Dallas at a meeting of owners of Sonic restaurants. I see it in Beverly Hills at meetings of self-help groups. I see it in Brooklyn in the person of a young man who voted GOP for the first time because he could not pull the lever for a man who backs partial birth abortion. I see it in New York in the faces of men and women at the GOP convention who turned the coldest streets in America into havens of peace and love and friendship all the way up and downtown despite the hatred hurled at them. (This is literally true: New York during the convention, with GOP families in the streets, was the happiest place it has ever been, as far as I could see. The GOP literally piped light into the darkest corners.)

This country is in the midst of a religious revival. George W. Bush is not taking advantage of it. He is part of it. So is Karl Rove. The voters saw the Bush team, the Bush family, the Cheneys, and saw faith in action. And so we were delivered. I watched the results in bed in Beverly Hills with the dogs and a camera crew from Jimmy Kimmel watching me and filming me and I went to bed happy. CNN is trying to pretend it can't happen, but it has happened. Dan Rather is spinning weird homilies to divert us from the inevitable. But it has happened.

In a way, I feel sorry for Bush. He has a hell of a row to hoe. And here is his main challenge: to be as worthy of praise as the men and women who are fighting for us in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be as brave as they are, as selfless as they are, as ingenious as they are. They are the real stars, not Bush or Cheney or Arnold, and we owe everything to them.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Abortion, Constitution, Law, Iraq, Africa