Zealots

WASHINGTON -- I refuse to make this one of Those Stories. You know the type. Those moist, somehow facile, stories about absolute good wrested from the heart of incomprehensible evil. Those heartwarming stories that speak of brotherhood, that make you hopeful, that point toward God, abiding. Nothing wrong with those stories. I just don't want this to be one of them. And that will be difficult because the facts certainly bend themselves in that direction. Recently, Jonathan Jesner, a 19-year-old Jewish kid from Scotland, was critically injured on a bus in Tel Aviv by a Palestinian suicide bomber.

Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography, by Dominic Streatfeild. St. Martin's Press. 498 pages. $27.95. It has been said that there is no greater sensation on earth than a cocaine high. In very short order, a snort of the glimmering white powder produces an overwhelming feeling of well-being, mental clarity and boundless energy -- not to mention a sort of post-orgasmic glow in the solar plexus. Smoking it only intensifies the feeling. Injecting it, well, that defies description. Given a limitless supply of the stuff in their water, laboratory animals will abandon food, sleep, sex, grooming and all other drugs, dosing themselves until they literally die of exhaustion.

In 1991, Mary Ann Glendon, the Learned Hand Professor of Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School, wrote a discerning book, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (The Free Press, 218 pages, $22.95) in which she noted that contemporary American discourse over such issues as property, sexual activity, abortion, social welfare and the like was deteriorating into sound bites, slogans and the strident language of "my rights." In this process our opinions were becoming hyperpolarized, exaggeratedly absolute, coarsely self-centered and remarkably silent about personal, civic and collective responsibilities.

WHAT LEGAL consequence befalls John Walker Lindh will properly be decided in a federal courthouse. But how the nation comes to terms with this puzzling young man is a more complex matter. He's a 20-year-old, middle-class kid who seems more confused than malevolent, more daffy than threatening. The accent he feigned when he was captured and the silly bravado he has exhibited since betray an immaturity that is eerily common among this country's young adults. And yet Mr. Lindh took up with a very dangerous enemy, and involved himself in a violent religious movement that took a staggering number of American lives.

"Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future" by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (Tarcher / Putnam, 360 pages, $24.95). Commercial interest groups and companies, and the public relations people who work for them, have virtually destroyed the ostensible objectivity of non-profits, university authorities, influential charities and much of the news media, according to this angry and often well-documented tract. Drug companies buy approvals from prestigious good-works organizations; physicians writing letters to medical journals have been well paid by tobacco interests.

Carroll County Republicans overwhelmingly supported their party's central committee last night in going ahead with the raffle of a 9 mm pistol for $5 a ticket as a fund-raiser.The nine-member committee heard public comment for about 30 minutes before meeting behind closed doors. The meeting in Westminster was attended by about 40 people, most of whom favored the gun raffle.During the closed portion of the meeting, Betty L. Smith, committee vice chairwoman, presented a motion to reconsider last month's vote to hold the handgun raffle.

IT TAKES neither genie nor wise man to be wary of coming attractions this January.In this new year, may sane and sensible minds in the Senate accede to the urging -- no, the demands -- of the American people who desperately desire a quick end to the national nightmare called impeachment. Otherwise, it is going to be a long, cold winter and national discontent may reach the boiling point.The first major event of January, the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton impacts the month's second important congressional attraction -- President Clinton's State of the Union Address.

IT TAKES neither genie nor wise man to be wary of coming attractions this January.In this new year, may sane and sensible minds in the Senate accede to the urging -- no, the demands -- of the American people who desperately desire a quick end to the national nightmare called impeachment. Otherwise, it is going to be a long, cold winter and national discontent may reach the boiling point.The first major event of January, the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton impacts the month's second important congressional attraction -- President Clinton's State of the Union Address.

Carrying out President Bill Clinton's promise of dire punishment of the bombers of U.S. embassies in Africa once again raises the old ghost of the CIA's war against the Soviets in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. It also involves major trouble for old allies in that war.The chief suspect thus far in the assaults on the two embassies is the Saudi construction tycoon Osama bin Laden, 45, who was described in the early 1990s as a mastermind of international terrorism by the U.S. State Department and other Western agencies.

CounterpointRecently, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott sparked a controversy when he compared homosexuality to alcoholism, sex addiction and kleptomania. Richard L. Tafel, the head of a Republican gay rights group, criticized Lott in a Perspective article last week. Here's another view.Given the state of current discourse, in which honest observations that conflict with the Zeitgeist are zealously punished, I begin my column with this caveat: I harbor no hatred against homosexuals, am offended by anti-gay discrimination, in no way condone violence against them and really couldn't care less what sexual behavior adults engage in.I thought of this admittedly wimpy approach after following what Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott had to go through recently for making some seemingly innocuous comments about homosexuality on a TV talk show.