What's Wrong with the World

American decline

2010-02-09T16:07:23Z

Discourse on American decline is ubiquitous these days. Paul Krugman conjectures that GOP delay tactics in the Senate have come to resemble Poland’s liberum veto, which paralyzed that nation, leaving it vulnerable to foreign depredation, in the 18th century. Arthur Herman speculates on US susceptibility to Chinese mercantile and electronic raids. My friends Ben Domenech and Francis Cianfrocca talk demographics and economic degringolade in this absorbing podcast. A study of this collection of stark graphs will demonstrate conclusively the precipitous deterioration in the US employment picture.

For some of us, of course, the decline of America was apparent long before this recession hit. It is my view, in fact, that both the recession and much of the reaction to it proffer a vivid illustration of the technocratic mentality which is right at the heart of that decline. For many years — decades, even — Wall Street operated under the debilitating illusion that human life could be successfully captured by formula and modeling of sufficient subtlety. Now we have legislators and publicists partaking of that same illusion in their arguments for a new regulatory regime for finance. It is not that these proposed reforms are all bad — I favor many of them myself — but that behind them stands that same technocratic vision of man, which is a deeply mistaken vision, a vision arising from a decay of philosophy and loss of spiritual grounding.

Catholics and English Literature

2010-02-08T06:17:09Z

As expected, in the comments pertaining to "America's British Culture", the obvious tension between Catholicism and our inherited British culture was noted by several readers. Those comments brought to mind the thoughts of John Senior on the subject, from his indispensable classic titled "The Restoration of Christian Culture" - another book I would like to review here unless some other contributor beats me to it. Dr. Senior writes:

For English-speaking Catholics there is a difficulty which would take a whole treatise to deal with adequately: English literature is substantially Protestant. It is all well and good to quote St. Paul that "whatever is true is from the Holy Ghost" and argue that this literature, whether Protestant, Jewish or Infidel, so long as it is true, is Catholic despite the persuasion of the authors. All well and good provided that literature were abstract science; a matter of two and two are four. But literature by definition is that paradoxical thing, the "concrete universal", imitating men in action in their actual affective and moral and spiritual struggles. And so Catholics have to live with a difficulty. The thousand good books which are the indispensable soil of the understanding of the Catholic Faith and indirectly requisite to the Kingdom of Heaven, are not Catholic but Protestant.
The recognition of this has led some well-meaning Catholic teachers to the recommendation of texts and reading lists of strictly Catholic authors, which can only be done by supplying large amounts of Latin, French, Italian and other foreign authors in translation along with those very few Englishmen who happened to be Catholic and alas, though by no means bad, are all second rate. No matter how you do it, the attempt is hopeless.

First, we are English-speaking people. Our language is English and if we are to learn it, we must absorb its own particular genius. If we are to have English Catholic authors or even readers, they must be schooled in the English language as it is, and not in even the best works of translators, who are not men of genius, no matter how great the works they are translating. Dorothy Sayers, for example, is a fine Christian lady, I am told, and the Italian Catholic Dante is one of only three candidates for the title of greatest poet who ever lived; but Dorothy Sayers' translation of the Divine Comedy is something of a comedy in another sense and not even remotely in a class of excellence with the Puritan Latin Secretary to the arch-heretic and murderer of Catholic Ireland, John Milton, or even with the atheist Irish sympathizer Shelley, whom Miss Sayers imitates in attempting - disastrously - Dante's terza rima. English literature is not an option; it is a fact. And it is Protestant; we are at once blest and stuck with it - blest because it is the finest literature in the world, and stuck because it cannot ever be done again ...

Having stated the facts first as a difficulty, I hasten to add that it is a difficulty we can live with and flourish under. First of all, insofar as the literature is Protestant, it is Biblical and Christian; the existence of God, the Divinity of Christ, the necessity of prayer and obedience to the commandments is its very strong stuff for the most part and there is little anywhere in direct violation of the Catholic Faith, though there is some overt, sometimes crude, sometimes true accusation. Since Protestantism stands in between its Catholic and Jewish antecedents in a link of Hebraic Christianity, at least in its Calvinist tendencies, its popular literature has been both anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish. Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho!, one of the best boys' books, is filled with outrageous lies about the Jesuits; and both Shakespeare and Dickens, with Shylock and Fagin, have exploited and exaggerated the avarice of the Jews. But what Chesterton said of Westward Ho! - "It's a lie, but a healthy one" - could be said of A Merchant of Venice and Oliver Twist. It is the unhealthy pharisaical Catholic and Jew who resent the caricatures of themselves ... The fact is that Jesuits have sometimes been a scandal, despite the glorious company of their saints; and Jews have been conspicuous usurers, pornographers and Communists, despite their large courage in the face of unjust persecution and the smaller number of converted saints. Good Catholics and Jews can laugh and weep at once at the truth in these cartoons, just as a temperate Irishman - if you can find one - would laugh and weep at the stage Irish drunk, or an honest Italian at The Godfather.

The Last Sunrise Over Greek Rome

2010-02-06T15:55:58Z

I see that somewhere along the line, the fine people at Touchstone magazine put my 2007 essay on the Fall of Constantinople online.

A series of omens shook the city in her last days: a lunar eclipse; thick fog for days, a phenomenon unheard of in those lands; an eerie red glow around the dome of Hagia Sophia. Some historians now attribute this glow to the local effects of a massive volcanic eruption in the Pacific Ocean, but pious and mystical Byzantines naturally interpreted it as the withdrawal of the protection of divine providence from the Second Rome.
A Mass was said at Holy Wisdom on Monday, May 28; at last, in this final hour, Catholics and Orthodox joined together in worship of the Risen Lord. Greeks who had sworn oaths never to darken the doors of a church contaminated by Romish heretics heard liturgy next to Italians who had declared the Orthodox more loathsome than the infidel Turk.

[. . .]

It is one thing to recite a great and moving story from history; to remember alone is a worthy endeavor; but it will always be asked what we can take from this history. What relevance has it for us today? Allow me to suggest some principles or lessons.

First, though the Queen of Cities did fall, and though the Holy Orthodox Church was taken into bondage, yet the faith endured. I am not myself Orthodox, but I have dear Orthodox brothers and sisters in Christ. Their church yet stands in dignity and witness. The end of a civilization was not the end of a church. The Orthodox Church has rendered, and still renders to a bewildered world, a stirring witness of suffering and perseverance in the Lord.

None should dare minimize this suffering. None should dare let his theological differences with the Orthodox Church blind him to her agony under the yoke of the Turk. Above, I called the dhimma contract “Jim Crow for infidels.” This was no piece of polemical hyperbole. The similarities are unmistakable, and gather, as it were, around the same points of emphasis.

Both the Jim Crow system in the American South, overthrown relatively peacefully in the Civil Rights era, and the dhimma system, which endures in various locales to this day—and is still, according to some studies, the genuine aspiration of millions upon millions of Muslims—were purposed toward a terrible thing: the degradation and servitude of a people.

[conting reading]

Market turbulence

2010-02-06T01:53:30Z

The harbingers of doom are back in the news: the infamous credit-default swaps. Several nations of southern Europe — most prominently Greece — have seen prices on swaps on their sovereign debt skyrocket, meaning that it is growing increasingly costly to purchase protection against a sovereign default. The credit-default swap market is a very liquid one; whatever may be said against these derivative instruments, they at least have the virtue of sending clear market signals about the debt instruments, which are usually far less liquid, to which they are attached.

These debt fears have roiled markets all week. There are even whispers that the European currency union is threatened. Germany, buoyed by a structurally mercantilist economy and sounder public finances than most Western nations, is playing hardball, wanting no part of a bailout of debtor nations on the EU periphery. Certainly if Italy were dragged into the debt crisis, the euro would be deep, dark trouble.

Now a default on Greek sovereign debt would surely be painful for Greeks and not a few investors, but the real worry is that this is all, as a German strategist puts it, “a dress rehearsal” for what could be in store for the US and UK down the road.

Last week the bond expert Bill Gross released a commentary on sovereign deficits entitled “The Ring of Fire,” in which he examined the rapidly accelerating deficit position of a number of major economies. His language was stark. UK Treasury bonds “are resting on a bed of nitroglycerine.” The coming decade is “likely to be fed by the melting snows of debt deleveraging.”

On Capitol Hill, the AIG debacle continues to dismay and outrage. Treasury Secretary Geithner and former Treasury Secretary Paulson endured some stern questioning from Congress. At issue: why Goldman Sachs and other investment firms should have been made whole, with public capital, on their swap contracts with the ruined insurance company. Could these financiers not been made to absorb a 10% haircut? That Paulson was a former CEO of Goldman does not reinforce his claims of probity. Geithner was formerly the President of the New York Federal Reserve bank, a quasi-private entity whose major shareholders are . . . New York finance firms. There is no want of cause for suspicion in all this.

Meanwhile, it is worth keeping in mind the fact that just this week a number of the Federal Reserve’s extraordinary liquidity support programs — a mass of peculiar acronyms — have officially concluded. There were the emergency measures undertaken in late 2008 to facilitate trading in markets that had frozen solid. Of course, anyone with any sense knows these programs will spring back to life the moment they become necessary again. But the devil is in the details: what exactly would constitute “necessary”? The markets may have been testing this all week.

The uncertainty in the world of finance is palpable. The only certainty is that the interesting times will persist.

American independence, Europe, and home schooling

2010-02-05T16:56:45Z

In a comment to Jeff Culbreath's post below on our British heritage, I said this (slightly edited here):

It seems to me that the freedom that Americans consider so important, in particular the impatience with petty bureaucracy, has been instrumental in the fact that so much that was good in British culture is now preserved in America. I've mentioned before the way that it seems that after WWII the British increasingly accepted tyrannical restrictions on their freedoms as the sort of thing they just had to put up with with a "stiff upper lip" in the service of the common good. Americans with their guns are now ridiculed in Britain as in Europe. The British used to have a staunch sense of what we in America would call 2nd Amendment rights. It's all gone now. And I think they are right to say that there is something distinctive about Americans that resists giving that up. That "something distinctive" has been a good thing and, I think, is bound up with the preservation in America of so much that is good that we have inherited from Britain.

A confirmation of the importance of that American sense of independence comes from this story, which I just learned of today. A German family has been granted asylum in America because they were persecuted in Germany for home schooling. Home schooling is illegal in Germany. The only thing that varies from state to state is how rigorously the insistence on in-school schooling is enforced. Back at the very beginning of W4 I was reporting on the case of Melissa Busekros, a teenager who was taken from her parents against her will because her parents were home schooling her. The HSLDA article linked above has more information about the persecution of German home schoolers.

A couple of thoughts: First, it may seem unfair to start this post with a reference to American independence in contrast to Britain, since the persecution from which the family is fleeing was taking place in Germany. And indeed, as things stand, home schooling is not illegal in Britain (though my impression is that it is already more heavily regulated than in most U.S. states). Moreover, it was no accident that the late, admirable author of America's Thirty Years War connected America and England and opposed Anglo-American concepts of government to the more repressive and totalitarian-trending Franco-Prussian concepts.

But unfortunately, England has been very deliberately connecting itself more and more with continental Europe in its laws. (And the loss of freedom in the area of gun ownership is not some brand-new development.) Home schooling, too, is in danger in England, because of a report issued in 2009 and based (not coincidentally) on a UN treaty, calling for much stronger government intrusion into the lives of home schoolers. (This story says that many home schoolers are considering moving to Scotland to retain their freedom, a fact my Scottish-descended husband appreciated a good deal.)

]]> Another interesting thought occurred to me in connection with the German family granted asylum: On the one hand, I believe that a substantive concept of what is right and good is necessary to freedom. I do not believe that we can have freedom, in the long run, based on a completely empty or solely procedural concept of freedom, because it's quite obvious that "freedom" can't mean freedom to do absolutely anything. So any society has to have some sort of shared notion of what is right and what is wrong. I've discussed this rather obvious point (about which others have written so much more) a bit here.

But it's entirely possible that the judge in the asylum case has no particular sympathy with the worldview (probably Christian) of the family seeking asylum. What he recognizes, rather, is the totalitarianism implicit in the German assumption that the state controls the upbringing of children. Now, it is a very good thing for him to recognize this. And the American independence I talk about above is based on a good, gut-level ability to recognize totalitarianism when one sees it.

But to what extent is this apparently contentless, or at least somewhat contentless, recognition of the totalitarianism of the German government vis a vis home schoolers a counterexample to my other claim about the need for a substantive notion of the good?

It seems to me they can only be reconciled here if we recognize that the judge, probably only at a very deep, implicit level, realizes that home schooling is not a bad thing to do and is a legitimate and can even be an important use of one's responsibility and authority as a parent. Hence, freedom to home school is perfectly fine and rather important, and governments who try to hound down home schoolers qua home schoolers on the assumption that home schoolers qua home schoolers are a danger to the public good are bad governments.

As I say, though, this recognition is probably very much implicit in the judge's reasoning. Nor is it always a bad thing for such recognitions to be implicit. While it may seem naive to hear people talking about "freedom" as if it were a free-floating thing, the one advantage that such naive talk has is this: It means that such people are willing to recognize the freedoms of people with whom they disagree. It means that there is a certain amount of tolerance and flex, so that "freedom" doesn't just become "freedom for those who agree entirely with me," which would be totalitarianism in a different guise.

The truth is, it's very hard to get that perfect balance between tolerance and substantive recognition of goodness, especially in a legal context. I commend the asylum judge for a good decision which will send a well-merited rebuke to Germany.

More on teleology and eliminative materialism

2010-02-05T06:11:52Z

Just because. You know where.

"They would drain the blood from an innocent child...

2010-02-04T22:00:30Z

...and drink it."

And here I thought that I could not be shocked. But I was wrong. Behold the fate of what one might call America's first attempt to export democracy:

(Warning: don't even think about watching this video on a full stomach. But a strong drink or two - or possibly even three - might be in order.)

I mean, what can one say? What hope is there, for the people of Liberia?

A thousand years of Christianity? A hundred years of Islam? Ten years of neo-colonialism?

Suggested wrong answers: liberal democracy; UN intervention...

Hat tip

America's British Culture

2010-02-04T07:32:13Z

The Anglosphere is in trouble. It is all at once the first “world culture” and no culture at all; a culture that assimilates everything and dissolves into nothing; a culture powerful enough to obliterate whatever lies in its path, and a blank slate upon which everyone is invited to leave his own cultural graffiti. All but the most backwards nations (excluding France, so I am told) have made English an honorary second language, while English is simultaneously dessicated and neutered here at home. American-style entertainment is sweeping the globe, but its appeal is severed from anything specifically Anglo-American in form or content. American-style democracy is envied and imitated around the world, while it ruthlessly erodes the traditions and culture of the American people. McDonald’s golden arches are planted on every continent, but they belong to the world and not to us.

]]> All of this is cultural suicide masked as triumph. Certainly the turmoil of the 16th century unleashed many complex forces resulting in the present crisis. The question of what went wrong, when, and how – though it must be addressed - is a topic for another day. Suffice it to say that I am not yet convinced that Protestantism, Whiggery or Englishness must lead inevitably to cultural oblivion (though I’m keeping an open mind). Those of us who want to rebuild are wondering whether there is anything left to save.

The late Russell Kirk was not known for his sunny optimism. Nevertheless, in 1994 he published a program for restoration titled “America’s British Culture”, aimed at persuading beleaguered Americans than their country is not a blank cultural slate after all. Between the ubiquitous lies of official multiculturalism and the unchallenged hegemony of popular anti-culture, it was and remains easy to believe that American culture, if it ever really existed at all, is completely finished. To many traditionalists, there seem only two possible courses of action: drop out entirely and adopt a 100% reactionary posture, or capitulate and run with the neo-conservatives. Kirk could do neither. He argues that America still has an identifiable and redeemable culture, and that this culture is British in form and substance.

If true, the idea is liberating … and sobering. For centuries Americans have taken a peculiar pride in not being British. That may have been part of the problem. But if we are going to save what’s left of our civilization, Kirk argues that we have no choice but to embrace, defend and promulgate that which is uniquely English in American culture.

“America’s British Culture” documents for the non-scholar the overwhelming influence of English literature, law, government, religion, mores, customs, and folkways on American life, from its colonial beginnings to the present generation. In one sense it is a condensed version of his more ambitious and academic work, “The Roots of American Order”. Fortunately for us, this influence is still present, though it grows weaker by the hour and is largely unconscious and unacknowledged.

Kirk is at his polemical best when he attacks the regime of multiculturalism. Several passages are worth quoting in this space:

Today the radical multiculturalists complain, or rather shout, that African, Asian and Latin American cultures have been shamefully neglected in North America’s schools. In that they are correct enough … Sixty years ago, most school pupils were taught a good deal about the people and the past of Bolivia, Morocco, China, India, Egypt, Guatemala, and other lands. They even learnt about Eskimo and Aleut cultures. Nowadays pupils are instructed in the disciplines of home economics, driver education, sex education, and the sterile abstractions of Social Stu. Formerly all pupils studied for several years the principal British and American poets, essayists, novelists, and dramatists – this with the purpose of developing their moral imagination. Nowadays they are assigned the prose of “relevance” and “current awareness” at most schools. Indeed a great deal of alleged “education”, either side of the Ocean Sea, requires medication or surgery …
Multiculturalism is animated by envy and hatred. Some innocent persons have assumed that a multicultural program in schools would consist of discussing the latest number of National Geographic in a classroom. That is not at all what multiculturalists intend. Detesting the achievements of Anglo-American culture, they propose to substitute for real history and real literature – and even for real natural science – an invented myth that all things good came out of Africa and Asia (chiefly Africa).

Intellectually, multiculturalism is puny – and anticultural. Such power as the multiculturalist ideologues possess is derived from political manipulation: that is, claiming to speak for America’s militant “minorities”. These ideologues take advantage of the sentimentality of American liberals, eager to placate such “minorities” by granting them whatever they demand. But what fanatic ideologues demand commonly is bad for the class of persons they claim to represent, as it is bad, too, for everybody else. To deny “minorities” the benefits of America’s established culture would work their ruin …

“Culture, with us, ends in heartache”, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of Americans in 1841. Should the multiculturalists have their way, culture, with us Americans a century and a half later, would end in heartache – and in anarchy. But to this challenge of multiculturalism, presumably the established American culture, with its British roots, still can respond with vigor – a life renewing response. Love of an inherited culture has the power to cast out the envy and hatred of that culture’s adversaries.

Readers should note that Russell Kirk in no way meant to suggest that British culture is suitable only for members of the historic race of the British Isles. He repeatedly notes the success of non-English and non-European immigrants in assimilating, when possessed of the right attitudes and dispositions.

For my part, this book was a life-changer. After reading it I began to notice for the first time the “Britishness” in my own life and the lives of my neighbors. Even the barbarians among us still know how to wait in line patiently, for example. They still unknowingly quote Shakespeare, the King James Version of the Bible, and the Book of Common Prayer in their everyday speech. Most Americans still have a fundamentally British understanding of law and order, of fair-dealing in commerce, and of civility in public life, however diminished by ignorance and neglect.

Having said all of that, I am not as sanguine as Kirk at the prospects for recovery. The book was written sixteen years ago: since that time multiculturalism has only tightened its stranglehold on government, the academy, and the workplace. The reaction against multiculturalism, insofar as it exists, has been weak and unfocused. For the most part it has not been a defense of American traditions and mores, but of political incorrectness for its own sake, of consumerism and materialism, and of the same kinds of “rights” that ignited 1960s radicalism - “free speech” and so forth. Think Michael Savage and the diabolical “music” with which he introduces his radio show.

There was a fly in the ointment of American culture from the beginning that may well prove to be its undoing: religious indifferentism. I have a hard time imagining that any sort of cultural restoration is possible without correcting this flaw. Paradoxically, when there is a sufficient level of religious cohesion, society can afford a high measure of religious tolerance and official indifference … for a time. But religious indifference did not build the culture, and it cannot rebuild the culture. Barring a miracle of mass conversions, the only restoration possible will be small, local restorations, in little pockets here and there, where culture is sustained – and sometimes even changed - by the common and public worship of the Triune God.

What We're Reading--Gilead

2010-02-03T15:49:27Z

I have been re-reading Marilynne Robinson's luminous novel Gilead recently preparatory both to teaching it to my daughter and, hopefully, to writing a review of it for The Christendom Review. I shall not try to write that review here and now. I highly recommend the book. (And I wish publicly to thank W4 reader Jeff Singer for the original recommendation.)

A comment by our reader The Masked Chicken below brought to mind something in Gilead. Here's Masked Chicken:

In cases where there is a demented relative, God is not asking the demented person a question, he is asking the care-giver a question: do you love this person enough to care for them for the rest of their life, regardless of the inconvenience to you? The demented person is a living question of love. Christ was pierced with a sword so that the thoughts of many might be revealed. The demented person is Christ pierced with a sword among us. How we treat them reveals the thought of so many in the modern world.

Here is Robinson, the words coming in the book from her character John Ames:

This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it.

While the two quotations are about different specific circumstances, the overarching point is very much the same.

If you're looking for a book to read this weekend, you could do much worse than to check out Gilead at the library, take up, and read.

On This APA Business, Help Me Out

2010-02-02T18:37:09Z

Presumably, not having attended graduate school, I exist in a shadowland of ignorance on these matters, hence the perplexity which leads to my inquiry. But suppose that I had attended graduate school, and had earned all of the requisite degrees, with a specialization in political philosophy; suppose further that I had sought positions at a number of institutions, and that the one most interested in my application was dominated by Rawlsians in political philosophy (nothing against Rawls or Rawlsians per se; it's just an example); suppose, finally, that I was not a Rawlsian - and whether I agreed with Nozick, Kekes, or Cohen as against Rawls was immaterial. Would it be licit for the institution, upon an interview, to decline my application, expressly on the grounds that they'd prefer their political philosophy program to be preserved as a warren of Rawlsian scholasticism? That I was not, in view of my differences in philosophical convictions, a good fit?

I should say, in closing, that I've some experience with such tensions between faculty and institutional imperatives, as my first faculty adviser was canned for publishing an anthology of feminist philosophy, in contravention of the institution's guidelines for faculty academic publishing.

Any insight that might dispel my perplexity will be welcomed.

The Leiter side of OCD

2010-02-02T17:28:22Z

A philosopher writes:

I hate calling attention to this creepazoid, but Leiter is at it again, and is attempting once again to smear W4.

I think it might be fun if you all decided to simply respond in kind. That is, ask your Atheist friends some questions and see whether Leiter's views fall within the "mainstream" of atheist philosophers. Maybe some questions like the following:

1) Did you think the collapse of the Soviet Union was unfortunate, politically and morally speaking?

2) Do you think that there is a noteworthy moral difference between heteronormative sexual morality and believing that homosexuals should be executed?

3) Do you believe there is a noteworthy moral difference between the Taliban and people who think it should be legal to voluntarily pray in public schools?

4) Do you think it is morally appropriate for a notable professional philosopher to personally attack graduate students and untenured faculty in a highly public and visible forum?

5) Do you think it is misogyny to acknowledge genetic differences between men and women?

6) Do you think it would have been a gross exaggeration to say that George W. Bush is a theocrat and/or a fascist who was planning to "imminently" reinstate the draft or "imminently" bomb Iran?

7) Do you think it would be a gross exaggeration to compare Bill O'Reilly with Joseph Goebbels?

8) Did the clips of Jeremiah Wright's sermons make you more favorably disposed towards Obama?

etc. etc. etc.

Good questions, though we loyal Leiter Reports readers already know the answers. But here’s another one for Big Bri himself: If W4 is so “marginal,” how come you simply can’t shut up about it?

Sounds like a nasty case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The key thing is not to give in to the urges, though if history is any guide we’ll see another lapse within a day or two, followed by occasional spasms over the next few weeks and months. But don’t get discouraged, Brian. You can beat this thing. We’re all pulling for you!

Plotinus on divine simplicity and modernity

2010-02-01T07:51:02Z

I can read your mind. You’ve been thinking “Gee, I wish someone would write a four-part series of blog posts on the neglected ancient Neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus which addresses first his metaphysical and theological significance and then his moral outlook.” Right? I thought so. That’s why I wrote this, this, this, and this and posted them over at my own blog. Just call me Criswell.

The Badge of Christian Warfare

2010-02-01T01:58:11Z

Today is Septuagesima Sunday, which of course means that Lent is right around the corner. As this blog is dedicated to "the defense of what remains of Christendom", we might do well to reflect on the words of Pope Benedict XIV and Dom Gueranger as we prepare for the battle:

“The observance of Lent is the very badge of Christian warfare. By it we prove ourselves not to be enemies of Christ. By it we avert the scourges of divine justice. By it we gain strength against the princes of darkness, for it shields us with heavenly help. Should men grow remiss in their observance of Lent, it would be a detriment to God’s glory, a disgrace to the Catholic religion, and a danger to Christian souls. Neither can it be doubted that such negligence would become the source of misery to the world, of public calamity, and of private woe.” – Pope Benedict XIV

“It is sad and humiliating to note that as laxities were introduced by the hierarchy and local churches into the laws of fasting and practices of severe penance, the members of the Church have suffered immeasurable spiritual loss – a loss of at least part of the rigor of those sacred times set apart to cleanse their bodies and souls of imperfections and the corrupting spirit of the world. In our modern times, the spread of permissiveness, liberalism, deterioration of morality and the general practices of purity, have led to a spirit of relaxation and the loss of a general effort, on the part of the faithful, to strive for a life of holiness and of union with God through the practices of self-denial, mortification, piety and renouncement of the spirit of the world – a spirit which is opposed to the spirit of a true Christian life and the very possibility of eternal salvation.” - Dom Prosper Gueranger

Kerstein on Howard Zinn

2010-01-29T11:55:52Z

Polemical literature has long has reserved a certain tolerance for the ruthlessly critical obituary. The dictum against speaking ill of the dead is not absolute. There is always someone, somewhere who feels very strongly that death should provide no protections against the perfidies committed by so-and-so in life. In other words, the promotion of civility is a very fine thing; but a finer thing still is the promotion of truth, even of the stern and ungenerous sort.

Benjamin Kerstein has penned a memorable entry into this tradition here. His target is the late Howard Zinn, and if I may say so, few writers have deserved it more. My favorite part is when Kerstein notes a certain irony in the commercial success of Zinn’s most famous work:

[An obituary by the Associated Press] pronounces that Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States “was, fittingly, a people’s best-seller, attracting a wide audience through word of mouth and reaching 1 million sales in 2003.” In fact, as the article goes on to state, “his book was taught in high schools and colleges throughout the country” meaning, for those who can put two and two together, that the book became a bestseller largely because a generation of professors forced their students to buy it — a fitting metaphor for Zinn’s view of “the people.”

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

"... and women rule over them."

2010-01-29T02:41:33Z

After a three hour drive, I am sitting at a desk on the eighth floor of a hotel in San Jose. The valet has my keys: I don't like going about without my keys. The water tastes funny. The view from the window is nice, overlooking the eastern half of the Santa Clara Valley. Everything around here looks like a million dollars. Tomorrow, I hit the pavement in search of dentists. There are 561 dentists within a five-mile radius of the hotel. That's some population density for you.

Back home, there are only three dentists in the nearest town which boasts a population of 7,000 souls. The entire county is approximately the size of Rhode Island, but with a population of only 28,000. The water from our well tastes great. The view is a postcard of purple mountains and green pastures. We don't lock the doors when we leave home. The road we live on gets very little traffic: several hours might pass before you see a moving vehicle. My place of business has no alarm or security system. A little graffiti competition is a crime wave.

The county fits many stereotypes of rural areas. A recent report stated that 46% of housing in our small town is "substandard". Many folks can't afford to maintain their homes by the standards of whomever decides such things. Unemployment is high, there is a dysfunctional underclass with drug and alcohol problems, education levels are low, and many young people leave the county permanently for better opportunities elsewhere.

Settled by Scotch-Irish cattlemen, Portuguese dairymen, Italian olive growers, and now Mexican farm workers and managers, the region has always been a bastion of patriarchy. But alas, radical feminism has finally reached us. It seems that our all-male city council, on the advice of an all-male selection committee made up of law enforcement professionals, just hired a female police chief from outside the county - the first female chief the department has ever had. This, on the heels of the department hiring a female officer. The paper is making much of this "historic first" for our community. I view this as nothing short of a catastrophe.

I doubt that my neighbors are worked up much about it. The county is staunchly Republican. Most of them would make Sarah Palin the Commander-in-Chief if they had their way. But it is highly doubtful that a woman who seeks to be the chief of police is anything but a radical feminist. This isn't just any job: the essence of police work is violence and coercion. The employment of violence and coercion by women - in a way that is habitual or defining for them - turns them into something beastly. A female police chief is uniquely perverse because those whom she will be leading (police officers) and those whom she will be coercing (criminals) are predominantly male. Her position is one of wielding power and authority specifically over men. Tell me, is it healthy for any woman to aspire to this? Does it not indicate some deep spiritual and psychological problems?

Certain kinds of work, too, require male cohesiveness to be effective. This is especially true of physically or mentally intense work in which the stakes are very high. The presence of a woman changes the whole dynamic. The psychological and sexual tensions of a mixed group are entirely counterproductive in such circumstances.

Men also respond much, much better to male authority. As do women, for that matter. Even those who give lip service to feminism bristle under female authority when it is actually exercised. And because it is so unnatural, women in authority often feel like they have something to prove, thus distorting their judgments. A chief of police needs the respect of his officers and the men of the community. A female chief - despite the “gender neutral” attitudes most men will express when asked – just isn’t going to get it.