Unfortunately, EM proved fairly short-lived - partly, I think, because I was a pretty vocal fan of Steve Sailer and other proponents of "human bio-diversity," while Josh wanted nothing to do with such people.

Fortunately, out of the ashes of EM, What's Wrong With the World arose. Under the aegis of Paul Cella, Zippy Catholic, William Luse, Jeff Martin, Daniel Larison, and Lydia McGrew (i.e., by my count, three Roman Catholics, two Eastern Orthodox, and one high-church Anglican) WWWW was, from the beginning, a much more explicitly Christian site than was EM. So it was purely out of kindness, and for old times' sake, that I - well known to be gay and religiously agnostic - was invited to sign on.

I remain as undyingly grateful to Paul & Zippy &c for putting up with me as I was to Josh Trevino for asking me around in the first place, way back when. But, for the record, and just so there's no misunderstanding: I'm still gay, and I'm still agnostic - and I'm still way into "human bio-diversity."

Moreover: just because I love, from my very depths, the Euro-Christian tradition that led to, e.g., Chartres and the Isenheim Altarpiece and Parsifal and The Lord of the Rings doesn't mean that I can't be horrified, from the very same depths, by what seems to me to be the trajectory of Christianity today. And that's where I join forces with my friend Matthew Roberts.

My friend Matthew Roberts forwards me an interesting message, and an interesting video. Here's the video:

"Christianity does not exist in a vacuum. It absorbs and adopts indigenous traditions wherever it spreads. In Europe, during the latter part of the Roman Empire, a distinctly European form of Christianity took hold. Melding European paganism and Christianity, Europe gave birth to syncretized holidays like Christmas and Easter. Yet, there is no reason why Christianity should or must be European. Christianity, growing in non-Western areas, will adopt and absorb other, non-Western, traditions. As Philip Jenkins has pointed out, as Christianity spreads throughout the Third World, most of its adherents soon will not only be non-Western, but probably anti-Western...

"...Discarding unnecessary European baggage, Mexico gives birth to a new, non-Western variety of Christianity. As the narrator in part I of the documentary states, 'the white way is not the only way to salvation.' Here he gives us Christianity 'Mexican style,' as 'Christianity has never been just the white man’s religion.'"

HT, Conservative Heritage Times.

The musicians seemed oblivious to the surprise late-summer downpour, which was plenty noisy, though I can’t say whether any of the old buildings had a tin roof. As the mules splashed in the mud just fifteen feet away from my chair, gnawing at the wood fence, a seven year old girl in a homemade dress called out “Swallowtail Jig” and started in with her fiddle. So much for listening to the rain. The older musicians quickly jumped in and the rousing Irish jig began to attract a crowd. Ear-to-ear smiles, clapping, and delight all around.

Now a pretty young lady from the crowd begins to dance, all by herself, moving with astonishing grace and poise, though perhaps just a little too … freely. Some of us aren’t sure whether she is to be trusted, but I for one am captivated by her skill and decide, for the moment, not to give it another thought. A few songs later comes another stranger from the crowd, a matronly woman from Guadalajara in a colorful Mexican costume. She asks the lead guitarist to accompany her while she sings a few lovely ballads in Spanish. One can tell that, back in the day, she had a voice worthy of Lola Beltran. Hey, maybe she is Lola Beltran! In honor of this stranger’s Mexican roots, the group launches into “Jesse’s Polka” and thereafter returns to its familiar hoedowns, waltzes, and other favorites.

So, what does this have to do with anything? I don’t know. It all put me in the mood of John O’Keefe’s outrageously pollyannish jingle:

A glass is good
And a lass is good
And a pipe to smoke in cold weather;
The world is good
And people are good
And we’re all good fellows together.

It’s easy to forget how much humanity is left when stripped of its crude ideologies. Indeed, there is an inverse relationship between the prospering of humanity and the burden of ideology, which is modernity's substitute for God. I think I share with my fellow contributors – and with most of this site’s devoted readers – a desire to make the world as safe for humanity, and as free from ideology, as is possible this side of the beatific vision.

"'Well, the lady appeared in the castle...and confirmed the story. She said that there was a magic which would make her die for love, unless my brother was good to her. Bors now realized that he must either commit mortal sin and save the lady, or refuse to commit it and let her die. He told me afterwards that he remembered some bits out of the penny catechism, and a sermon which was once given when there was a mission at Camelot. He decided that he was not responsible for the lady's actions, while he was responsible for his own. So he refused the lady.'

"Guenever giggled...

"'I can tell you my brother was in a quandary. The poor things were so frightened and so pretty, and he only had to stop being obstinate to save their lives.'

"'What did he do?'

"'He let them jump.'

"'Shame!' cried the Queen..."

"'I suppose the moral is,' said Arthur, 'that you must not commit mortal sin, even if twelve lives depend upon it. Dogmatically speaking, I believe that is sound.'

"'I don't know what the dogma is, but I know it nearly turned my brother's hair grey...'"

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Regards,

Todd

An imagination rightly trained on fairy tales understands that monsters are just bad and are to be regarded and treated as such--preferably, avoided, or perhaps fought, if one is a hero.

Here is an absolutely wonderful (and very funny) video clip of Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll talking about occultic preteen literature. More remarks below the fold.

Driscoll's rightly contemptuous reaction to "they practice chastity" skewers what I might call the checklist method of Christian literary and movie review. "Is there premarital sex?" "Is there swearing?" and so forth. Shall we list it as a "pro" of the Twilight series if smoking is not presented positively? Talk about missing the forest for the trees! It is terrifying that Christians should be so clueless, so foolish, so tone-deaf that they can talk with a straight face about a girl's "practicing chastity" because she waits to have sexual intercourse with a vampire until after they are "married" (whatever it means, metaphysically, to "marry" a vampire). The monster instinct has been totally extinguished in such people, and they are literally incapable of seeing the big picture. She marries a monster. Moreover (I understand--I've not read the books and have no intention of doing so), later in the books she becomes a monster, losing her soul in the process. That's the story. That's the big picture. To echo Driscoll, there is nothing remotely good about this on any level. (I could add here a few remarks about the fact that such books are not going to encourage chastity in girls who read them.)

Why are people, including Christians, so clueless? I want to suggest that one factor in killing the monster instinct is the holy commandment of modern liberalism, "Thou shalt not discriminate." Driscoll humorously alludes to this when he imagines his audience chiding him, "Don't be a hater." The audience laughs, but there may be more to it than a joke. Why don't more people say, "This girl is marrying a monster and becomes a monster. He struggles with the temptation to kill her and drink her blood, but she marries him. This is totally unhealthy literature"? Could it be in part because of the idea that we must not think ill of anyone presented to us as a talking being, no matter how dangerous? There have been plenty of satires of such thinking--fairy tales rewritten with sympathy for the villains and even a review I recall at NRO of the LOTR movies that talked about how liberals would want us to sympathize with the orcs. But is it really just satire? I think perhaps we are being taught a frighteningly false compassion according to which there are no dangerous people, no dangerous individuals, no wolves, whom we, like Riding Hood, should have nothing to do with. Everyone is to be pitied or thought well of. To do otherwise is to "be a hater."

It also occurs to me that the foolishness on this topic may arise in part from a loss of the old-fashioned idea that one can be seriously harmed, led down the path to ruin and total heartbreak, if not damnation, by marrying the wrong person. I wonder if Christian parents are so worried about premarital sex that they no longer worry enough about their daughter's marrying a godly man, a good man, a kind man, an honorable man. No doubt any parent worries about the latter to some extent, but I wonder if there are too many parents who, confronted by a bad boyfriend, would encourage a marriage in order to avoid or put a stop to premarital sex rather than strongly urging the daughter to break off the relationship altogether. It used to be understood that a man who married a bad woman or a woman who married a bad man was risking ruining many lives--the lives of both spouses not to mention any children of the marriage. Celibacy was a real option, and both single women and single men had occasion to "thank God fasting" for having avoided the fate of their contemporaries who married, in the quaint old phrase, "outside of God's will."

Finally, and relatedly, Christians need to get over the pagan notion that amor vincit omnia. Sentimentalism is going to kill us. If your daughter loves a dangerous man with twisted and violent impulses, the fact that she loves him is a bad thing, a dangerous thing, not a good thing. Even, for that matter, the fact that he loves her (to the extent that he is capable of love) is a bad and a dangerous thing. Romantic love is not a panacea or a disinfectant. Discriminate against him. Try your darndest to break off the relationship.

But better still, if you have a young daughter, start when she is little: Teach her not to talk to wolves.

Listen – the intention of that video was to show the hilarity to which people will fame-whore themselves. It was playing with the idea that I knew my style was something that people really were admiring. So I thought, Well, what’s the most ridiculous thing that we could immortalize? Something not fashion at all and make it fashion. And I was [looking at] a lot of Helmut Newton books and photographs, and there were all these disabled women who looked fabulous. So I thought watching the celebrity fall apart is so fascinating to everybody, why don’t I just fall apart for seven minutes and see what happens. The hilarity of the wheelchair being covered in diamonds…

Thus spake Lady Gaga, in the profile on her in this month’s Vanity Fair, a rag I admit to reading religiously. (Hey, it’s perfumed-up real pretty, which makes it perfect to wrap fish in.) You thought public morals and good taste were all she’d taken a chainsaw to – as you can see, she’s done a real number on the English language as well.

When I look into the crowd [at my shows], I feel like I’m looking into tiny little disco-ball mirrors and I’m looking into myself. And when I wake up in the morning, that’s what makes my heart tick.

As always with these weirdos, “It’s all about me!” But with “the Gaga,” it’s all about you too, dear fans:

It’s about loving who you are. I don’t want people to love me; I want them to love themselves. I have a relentless pursuit in me to give everything in me to my fans to make them feel good about themselves.

The proof is in the pudding, for Lady Gaga recalls the young lives she’s transformed, as evidenced by the sob stories she’s received from myriad teenage losers and misfits who have found hope in her music and an example in her life and work. And hers is, it seems, a faith-based philanthropy. She “currently ‘works with’ ‘spiritual guides’” and “used to pray every night that God would make me crazy”:

Listen, I prayed for a lunacy, and he gave it to me. It’s a bit of a sick thing when a 17-year-old says in her nightly prayers that I would rather die young and a legend than be married with children and die an old lady in my bed.

Not quite Solomon’s prayer for wisdom, or Christ’s “Thy will, not mine, be done,” but let it not be said that the former Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta remembered absolutely nothing from the nuns who taught her. Indeed, despite her slutty public persona, she is “quite celibate now.” Quite. Because “I don’t really have sex. Well, sometimes.” But only sometimes, you see, because:

I also think I’m afraid of depleting my energy. I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.

You heard it here first, folks.

So, we have a “spiritually”-guided “icon” who sacrifices herself for her work and her followers, who in turn identify with her and find salvation in her work. In short, pop music fandom as atavistic religious cult, where the content of the religion is pure narcissism. Somewhere, Roger Scruton is saying “I told you so.”

What’s most amazing about “the Lady Gaga phenomenon” is that anyone thinks it is a phenomenon at all. It’s essentially the same shtick we’ve seen from David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Madonna, and a thousand others. New freak show, same as the old freak show. While in Prague recently I was flipping through the channels on the hotel TV and came upon her video “Alejandro.” Don’t watch this one with the kids. In fact, don’t watch it. But not because there’s any new depravity there. It’s just the same old depravity, perhaps even more tiresome than titillating given that we’re somehow expected to find it really envelope-pushing. Weird fascist aesthetic? Bowie’s Thin White Duke and Pink Floyd’s The Wall have been there and done that. Blasphemy? Madonna and Marilyn Manson beat her to it long ago. Virtual pornography? Since when have you not been able find that on MTV – or cable TV in general, or even just plain old TV?

Perhaps the one thing truly novel about the ex-Miss Germanotta is her choice of stage name. Not the goofiness of it, of course, but its “truth in advertising” quality. None of the absurd pretentiousness of the Bowie and Floyd albums I wasted so many hours of my adolescence on, but a proud expression of the truly infantile self-absorption of the pop icon. “Gaga” indeed.

(cross-posted)

Have you noticed that our politicians, even the most corrupt, are never charged with nepotism anymore? Nepotism requires family, and we don't have families. I never understood the horror that some people have for political nepotism. In the old world it was called aristocracy. Of all forms of corruption in a democratic republic, nepotism is the most human and understandable. Aren't we supposed to prefer our relatives? To the extent that we still have dynastic families like the Kennedys and the Bushes, I view that as a good thing. It's really a shame that George Washington didn't have fifteen children.

Anthony Esolen grew up in a town of 5,000 with twenty of his cousins. Twenty. That means, of course, that he had aunts and uncles in the town as well. He writes that "kinship is the foundation of community life", and that cousins, in particular, "provide you that straight passport into a community".

Extended family is the reason Americans survived the last Great Depression; the absence of extended family is the reason we won't survive the next one. The close proximity of many relatives - relatives who, more or less, share the same religious faith and code of morality - is the best form of social insurance there is. When hard times come, as they come to all eventually, there's a cousin with a spare room, a cousin who can loan you the rent money, an uncle who owns a business and needs a clerk, an aunt who can move in while you recover from surgery, etc., and they all live close enough to be of help in an emergency. Furthermore every family has its eccentrics, people who just don't "fit in" and conform very well to social expectations, for whatever reasons. Nowadays such people are a heavy burden, but in healthier times they could be assimilated into the extended family. The "crazy uncle" perhaps couldn't hold down a job, but maybe he could entertain the children and do odd chores for the family: there was no reason he needed to be destitute.

There are some on the political "right" in America who reserve their greatest wrath for the "welfare state" and its clients. I'd like to know how many children these pundits are having. What are they doing to restore the extended family?