Ben Stein's Diary
Stein, Ben
brave firemen and firewomen. I went out to dinner at Morton's because I was not allowed by the Highway Patrol out to the house in Malibu anyway, but I could not concentrate. Barbara Walters was...
...How would I ever rebuild such a great, fabulous house...
...Where is PAW's boss, the personally charming Ralph Neas...
...Is this possibly a coincidence...
...She simply would not be still...
...Of course everyone wants to depend less on Saudi oil...
...I would rather have Tommy in one in a crash than have him in a Morris Minor too...
...by winds so loud and powerful they sounded like a freight train running down the middle of our street...
...All that stands between our little house and the fire is God's grace and themiracle...
...Blown out of my mind...
...It was time to awaken Tommy and get him to the airport...
...Brigid especially had her head down and walked from room to room like a zombie...
...This drastically complicates our ability to concentrate forces against Saddam...
...Or as showing your' immaculate self-righteousness by exposing innocents to sudden death on the 405 San Diego Freeway...
...Well, of course, possibly it is...
...Pyongyang defies UN agreements about restricting nuclear technology, brings forbidden weapons into the DMZ, threatens nuclear attack against the United States and our allies in the region...
...It goes from the high priests of the Hebrew temple—who showed their piety by their asceticism, and showed they were better than other people by refusing to eat rich foods or certain meats or to display worldly wealth—to the very similar Parsees (spellings vary) in the Far East, to Aztec priests in the then-unknown Western hemisphere...
...That link is already established...
...But here is what I think...
...If so, are they so ignorant of statistics, mechanics, and physics that they do not know that small cars are dramatically less safe in collisions than big ones...
...It was a bitter moment...
...Not a good way to feel...
...For more than a decade, since the Gulf War, the U.S...
...The forces of terror and violence are still strong on the ground out in the murky fields of reality...
...We are already at war with some of these—namely Islamic extremism—and war against all of them simultaneously is a possibility...
...They amaze me with their singing and modeling and joke-telling talent...
...The only thing we cannot afford is to fail to defend ourselves...
...We are an island—a large and rich island to be sure, but an island, in a sea of angry, armed, and dangerous nations, peoples, and movements...
...I would be devastated...
...He changed, interestingly, after an accident on the freeway to Damascus...
...This is where we have strict emission laws for factories and utilities...
...We neglected it terribly in the Clinton years...
...but wow, I am worried...
...I love that house in Malibu...
...Anti-SUV thought—and claiming that to be anti-SUV is a religious tenet, obedience to which shows saintliness—is as perfect an example of Pharisaical thinking as I can imagine...
...And if it isn't, why isn't PAW all over the campaign...
...Shouldn't they really be going after people who burn totally unscrubbed coal, i.e., Chinese and Indians, instead of the housewife with her catalytic converter and state-of-the art anti-pollution equipment on her Pontiac Aztec...
...How will I ever sleep tonight...
...By the way, Paul, the great epistle writer, started as a Pharisee...
...Are the Pharisees, by the way, going after the hippies with their wood-burning furnaces, who produce microparticles that are deadly for lungs...
...If North Korea and Iraq can work together—just a hunch at this point—then so can all of our enemies, and we need to be strong enough to deal with them all...
...If this is true, it tells us something we need to pay attention to: contrary to the pipe dreams we had in the Clinton years, the world is not yet in a golden age...
...That was a pretty good show and deserved to stay on...
...Now is the time to rebuild our strength, and it is not a moment too soon...
...Let's hope so...
...History has a knack for delivering the worst possibilities...
...In one very famous story, Jesus tells that a publican (loosely, a bartender—tee hee, not really . . . a tax collector . .) is more likely to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven than is a Pharisee...
...But what can I do...
...Then I went back to sleep until about 11:00 in the morning—really the only sleep I got that night...
...This is where we have strict air pollution standards for cars and trucks...
...True, SUVs have too high a center of gravity and can easily turn over, but I would rather be in one than in a Morris Minor in a crash...
...What is this group doing about the polluters in India and Pakistan and China, who have produced the noxious "brown cloud" that occupies much of Asia and whose effluence reaches and destroys American forests and lungs as pollution and acid rain...
...Then, off to the Hollywood Center studios, where we used to make Win Ben Stein's Money, for a long rehearsal for the new CBS version of Star Search...
...war plans...
...Anyway, now it and its seven Emmys arein the past, but like all past, they are also prologue...
...We can afford it...
...To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field...
...We should have enough military so that we could fight in Korea without having to go nuclear right away...
...Anything is possible...
...But I am also jittery and scared...
...TUESDAY MONDAY Beverly Hills Now this has really been some amazing day...
...Isn't this campaign an infringement on the rights of Americans not to have political and economic decisions motivated by Scripture or religious compulsion...
...Let's be fair about this: Of course everyone wants clean air...
...Just what do they think would happen to their own holy selves if they were in a small car that (perhaps while the driver is going into a trance of communion with the Almighty while on the Hollywood Freeway) collides with a cement abutment...
...But it gets worse...
...The Pharisaical tradition is ancient and worldwide...
...We have far fewer armed forces personnel, ships, and aircraft than we did eleven years ago...
...And also by the way, what if you just have a lot of kids and need a big car...
...During World War II we spent close to half of our GDP on defense...
...North Korea is chronically short of money because of its insane economic policies and the costs of maintaining an army of over one million in a small country...
...They are both Axis of Evil states...
...Or is that also a religiously evil act in today's anti-child Pharisaical class...
...What is holy about sacrificing your kids' safety for an immeasurably tiny benefit in air quality in Bombay or Kunming...
...Still, in a very real sense, I never deserved it in the first place...
...It is a small house, but there are those who love it...
...First I felt as if I would vomit, and then this thought came to me...
...We should have enough active-duty military to fight in Iraq without having to use reserves who might be needed elsewhere...
...North Korea has been a major supplier of forbidden missile technology and presumably Scud missiles themselves to terrorist states like Iran and Iraq...
...What is stunning is how talented the amateurs trying out for our show are...
...A lot of fire, and forty-mile-an-hour winds, and it is terrifying...
...Now is the time to move up the scale again...
...Boris Pasternak, a better poet than he is given credit for by some, summed it up well, without any help from me: "I am alone: all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy...
...Way, way too close...
...And I feel as if I am losing my mind...
...The dogs were terrified...
...I had a full day planned so I just lugged his super-heavy bag to the car and had my wife take him to the airport...
...That was too close...
...As a nation, we have allowed our strength to ebb, under the delusion that the world was a much safer place than it is...
...Is it not an unethical act to sacrifice your kids' safety on the altar of, well, politically correct self-righteousness...
...It is the perfect house and I love it more than anywhere else I have ever lived...
...I was terrified...
...This is hot enough, in a world as dangerous as the one we face...
...Amazingly loud, scary winds...
...I do not want to lose it and its valuable rooms full of mementos of my parents and of Richard Nixon...
...I went off to the bank and deposited the check I received as final payment for Win Ben Stein's Money, which will only have seven seasons and then will be gone or else in reruns...
...attentions...
...FRIDAY Asimple but frightening conjecture has been running through my little febrile brain: What if Iraq and North Korea are working together...
...THURSDAY S ome humble thoughts prompted by a story in the New York Times about how religious psychos—Jews and Gentiles both—are protesting the use of SUVs as anti-God...
...Defense is our greatest priority...
...I went to my dressing room, switched on the TV, and wham, there are pictures of my neighborhood in Malibu—and there is fire all around it...
...I am happy to say that he got up quite cheerfully—another example of the miracle work that Cardigan Mountain School, that fount of miracles, has done with him...
...This tells me that we have to finally wake up and start rebuilding our defense capacity in a big way...
...This is yet another miraculous and unearned gift from God...
...North Korea springs into action against the United States and the United Nations...
...We are now spending roughly 3 percent of our national income on defense...
...True, it was an immense strain, but it was also an immense pleasure and helped in a massive way to pay my bills...
...I do have one great neighbor, Ron Hayes, also a former TV star, and he keeps me posted, but I am really, really scared...
...I called Ron Hayes at about 1:00 in the morning...
...I am so happy...
...And to think that this group is claiming the authority of its ancient enemy, Christ, to preach its self-righteous ways is head-spinning, nausea-inducing stuff...
...And when is Carter giving back that totally phony Nobel Prize he won for pacifying North Korea...
...Nations do not pass from the scene because they have too much defense, and if we have to err, let us err on that side...
...Iraq is immensely rich from oil...
...Is it not a wholesome act to provide as much protection as possible for one's family as they go through their day...
...The TV says there are hundreds of fire trucks—God bless every man and woman on each one of them—and they are fighting like tigers...
...And of course we all want freedom of speech...
...Some are far better than others, but they are really all damned good...
...This is a terribly rich nation...
...The common denominator, continued to this very day, is that a class of persons seeks to show that they aremorally superior to others, by dressing modestly, eating abstemiously, and displaying a general hair-shirt kind of self-denial...
...The police will not let anyone go out there...
...Let's start with the obvious...
...At the height of the Cold War we spent close to 10 percent, year in and year out...
...But Pharisaical simple-mindedness and self-righteousness only get you so far, and the most blatant kind of Bible thumping to prove one's holiness is insulting to the kind of people who consider real facts, real physics, real science, real children, and real lives...
...Barbara Walters was there and she and I talked cheerily, but I still could not concentrate...
...This group was particularly loathed by Jesus Christ, whose contempt and rage at the Pharisees and all like them shines through the Gospels, especially Luke...
...Like a tornado...
...On the TV news, there were stories about fires in Malibu...
...Indeed, through the Gospels, the very word "Pharisee" has come to mean a "self-righteous hypocrite," in the words of the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Jesus...
...Is it because one group of Pharisees likes to give another some professional courtesy...
...That roars through my brain like those winds from last Sunday night...
...North Korea and Iraq are already closely linked militarily...
...We no longer face the might of the Soviet Union, but we do face an immensely powerful and still-militant China with clear designs on Taiwan, oft-stated and extremely problematic to deal with...
...I was awakened at about 1:30 A.M...
...Her movement kept me up until about 5:00 A.M., when my alarm clock went off...
...Now, let's grit our teeth and pay for the defense we need . . . starting with decent pay for our armed forces...
...Just as American plans to invade Iraq were hitting high gear, scraping together armed forces, active and reserves, to make a powerful fighting force to take Baghdad, what should happen...
...And by the way, why are these ads about large cars and air quality appearing in magazines and newspapers in the United States...
...Now, as Ron tells it, the fire is just a few feet away...
...And also by the way, where is my dear and devoted pal, Norman Lear, and his People for the American Way on this...
...We find enemies in North Korea, in the Middle East in many places, in Islamist extremism all over the world, and in terrorist movements in Central and South America...
...Just what do they think happens to one's children in a tiny little Toyota when it collides with a bus, compared with what happens when your kids are in a Cadillac Escalade SUV...
...Arsenio was great, and I'm sure that the other two celebrity judges, who did not appear for today's run-through, will be great too...
...The host is a very funny Arsenio Hall...
...It is well within the realm of possibility that Iraq, feeling vulnerable, simply paid North Korea to stir the pot in the Far East, so that Iraq might win some sort of respite from U.S...
...If there is-even a slightly good chance that the Communist North will attack South Korea or use nuclear weapons even in a test, the United States will have to split up our already too-thin forces between Iraq and faraway Korea...
...In my little simple mind, I know this has to affect U.S...
...Are the anti-big-car people telling us that we should all have small cars...
...I can recognize the houses and I surely can recognize what flame is...
...I mean, it was just a totally unearned gift from God from day one...
...I play a celebrity judge, along with Naomi Judd (whom I love) and a woman I do not yet know named Cathy Liefer...
...How is this different from a conservative saying the Bible compels a balanced budget...
...The preservation of our nation is a far greater imperative than tax cuts or more consumer spending...
...Or is this Pharisaical professional courtesy...
...He told me that the winds had shifted and the fire had burned right down to the road across from our house but had then moved west instead of south, and our home was spared...
...But the announcers did not say where they were, so I did not pay especially close attention...
...armed forces have been steadily allowed to wither...
...Defense is the number-one priority of Americans, the number-one requirement to preserve the nation...
...Then, crisis...
...When I got home, all I could do was pray: Please God, spare my little but glorious house...
Vol. 36 • January 2003 • No. 1
