What’s Wrong with the World

Our last Sunday with Samuel Johnson, for the time being, though the first to offer an actual excerpt of his own writing, wherein he declares upon the "works of fiction" gaining fashion in his day, the difficulties (and virtues) of which are equally, if not more keenly, felt in our own time, now that the feeding of fantasy to the populace has become an industry. Most important for our puposes, though, is the fact that, however varied his subjects may be, the same force and foundation of character impresses itself upon them all:

...But the fear of not being approved as just copyers of human manners, is not the most important concern that an author of this sort ought to have before him. These books are written chiefly to the young, the ignorant, and the idle, to whom they serve as lectures of conduct, and introduction to life. They are the entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and therefore easily susceptible of impressions; not fixed by priniciples, and therefore easily following the current of fancy; not informed by experience, and consequently open to every false suggestion and partial account.

Professor Bacevich, to whom I referred in a recent entry, is the author of a fine volume detailing the continuities of American foreign policy over the course of the past century. That strategy of openness has been structured around the imperatives of economic growth and expansion, on the assumption that the construction of an integrated global order will ensure not only the economic preeminence of the United States, but her geopolitical preeminence. Thoughtful minds will grasp the element of presumption, even hubris, in this; but the strategy has assumed greater importance in recent decades as American culture has been attenuated by the aftershocks of the cultural revolutions of the Sixties, mass immigration, and what Daniel Bell once termed the cultural contradictions of capitalism. Professor Bacevich explains:

“We are driving them, sir!” [Union General Winfield S.] Hancock called proudly to the staff man. “Tell General Meade we are driving them beautifully.”

Lee was there in the clearing, doing all he could to stiffen what little was left of Hill’s resistance, and so had Longstreet himself been there, momentarily at least, when the blue assault was launched. He came riding up just before sunrise, a mile or two in advance of his column, the head of which had reached Parker’s Store by then, and Hill’s chief of staff crossed the Tapp farmyard to welcome him as he turned off the road. “Ah, General, we have been looking for you since 12 o’clock last night. We expect to be attacked at any moment, and are not in any shape to resist.” Unaccustomed to being reproached by unstrung colonels, however valid their anxiety, Old Peter looked sternly down at him. “My troops are not up,” he said. “I’ve ridden ahead —” At this point the sudden clatter of Hancock’s attack erupted out in the brush, and Longstreet, without waiting to learn more of what had happened, whirled his horse and galloped back to hurry his two divisions forward. So Lee at least knew that the First Corps would soon be up. His problem, after sending his adjutant to order the wagon train prepared for withdrawal, was to hang on till these reinforcements got there, probably within the hour, to shore up Hill’s fast-crumbling line. Presently, though, this began to look like more than he could manage; Wilcox and Heth, overlapped on both flanks, gave ground rapidly before a solid mass of attackers, and skulkers began to drift rearward across the clearing, singly and in groups, some of them turning to fire from time to time to their pursuers, while others seemed only intent on escape. Their number increased, until finally Lee saw a whole brigade in full retreat. Moreover, this was not just any brigade; it was Brigadier General Samuel McGowan’s brigade of South Carolinians, Wilcox’s best and one of the finest in the army.

Recommended reading A) for profit and B) for very lowbrow fun. First, for profit:

Dante's Divine Comedy, John D. Sinclair's translation. I've just completed the last canto of the Paradiso in this edition and was confirmed in the estimate I formed more than twelve years ago that it is a very readable, helpful edition and to be highly recommended for the student new to the Comedia, as I was then and still am.

What does this mean? First, let's consider idaafa. Idaafa is a construction that expresses the possessive relationship between two nouns in Arabic. The other day I likened it to the German genitive, and the more I learn about idaafa, the more I think that this is a very good analogy. It is a very useful way to understand this idea, at least for those who have studied German. For example, das Buch des Vaters is a genitive construction in German. Arabic will have the exact same construction with kitab-u al-waalidi. Like anything in a German genitive construction, the idaafa must take genitive case endings. Tanween, meanwhile, is the concept of doubling the last vowel in a word. To have the nominative indefinite, you double the damma, which is equivalent to our short 'u', but if you have the tanween al-fatha (this phrase is itself idaafa) you double the fatha (equivalent to a short 'a'). This has the effect of making the noun accusative, and you cannot have a random accusative floating around in a genitive construction. At least, that's what I've managed to understand so far. Now admit it--you really wanted to know that.

Elizabeth Goudge is a novelist I wish to recommend without exaggerating in either direction. While her novels vary widely, almost wildly, in literary quality, I have found several of them to be not only enjoyable but also spiritually valuable. They are no longer in print, but I stumbled upon her on the shelves of my local public library and was able to get the rest of her books through interlibrary loan. Of course, now I own my favorites as well as Goudge's autobiography.

Goudge’s three best novels, in my opinion, are The Dean’s Watch, The White Witch, and The Scent of Water.

Here are some of the fascinating, perplexing, gratifying, disturbing or otherwise interesting things that have crossed my inbox or browser of late:

“American Murder Mystery,” a well-written, if occasionally tin-eared essay on some alarming trends in urban and suburban crime. Who knew that Memphis was such a hellhole? Who knew that Florence, South Carolina leads the country in crime rate?

“The Skeptical Inquirer,” a brilliant evisceration of the sand-pounding stupidity of this new faction of chirping halfwits; more than that, it is a fine elucidation of a very old subject.

“China in Africa,” a disquieting report on the ruthless imperialism of China in Africa.

Finally, two essays from the indispensable Claremont Review of Books, the first, “Thoughts and Adventures,” on great Englishman Churchill, who has also been the subject of some considerable contention over at Taki’s Magazine, and the second, “Macbeth and the Moral Universe,” which exhibits Harry Jaffa at his best.

I've recently re-read Sheldon Vanauken's beautiful book, A Severe Mercy. The Wikipedia articles on Vanauken and the book itself are fairly accurate, as far as they go, and linking them moves us past the most general introduction for those who have never heard of the book.

It is said that every man has one good book in him. A Severe Mercy was that book for Vanauken. The writing is often lyrical. The delicately-written prologue draws you into the story with a third-person account of Vanauken's last visit to his family home, which he calls Glenmerle, by that time owned by strangers. He goes there at night like a ghost himself to say farewell not only to the family estate but also to the ghost of his wife, who has recently died.

A Severe Mercy is the story of a great love. You don't have to agree with everything the young lovers think or do. In fact, as it is an autobiographical book written by one of the no-longer-young lovers in hindsight, after his wife's death, he himself doesn't agree with everything they thought or did. But you cannot read the book with a receptive mind and come away a cynic. At every re-reading I am reminded that young love is one of the greatest and most beautiful gifts God has given to mankind.

“Calvin Elliot, who wrote the twentieth century’s most spirited defense of the usury prohibition (albeit in 1902), traces the origin of the neshek to the biting of a serpent. To make his case, he cites the research of a contemporary with the intriguing name Dr. George Bush. Bush argues that the serpent’s bite ‘is often so small as to be scarcely perceptible at first, yet the venom soon spreads and diffuses itself till it reaches the vitals, so the increase of usury, which at first is not perceived, at length grows so much as to devour a man’s substance.’ This whole notion of biting and slicing and infecting will resonate throughout the history of this subject up until the present. Elliot’s take on the subject has had sufficient staying power that his book was reprinted in 2007.”

-- Jack Cashill, Popes and Bankers

...is now online, wherein you can read a fine essay by Lydia's 'dearest husband' (don't worry, she's got only one), Tim McGrew, who describes the spiritual evolution of perhaps the most prominent evolutionist of his time, George John Romanes. Another beautiful reflection comes from sometime W4 commenter Beth Impson, who looks back at a not-quite-forgotten little classic by John Gardner, and in the process reminds us of the first impulse and final purpose that gives (or ought to give) birth to art that is true and lasting. Painter, novelist, poet and screenwriter William Mickelberry takes apart Peter Taylor's "Venus, Folly, Cupid, and Time," and one of Beth's former students, Millie Jones, shows great promise as a poet, proving that very good things can come out of a Christian college.

And then there are the magnificent paintings of Chicago resident Nanci Mertz-King. We offer a pretty fair selection, and one was especially included for the pleasure of Michael Bauman. He'll know it when he sees it.

There's some other good stuff, too. An essay by Andy Nowicki attempts to reconcile a scriptural difficulty with Christian morality, and riveting fiction from Rick Barnett, an excerpt from a forthcoming novel, describes a world in which the government has "gone Darwin".

Enjoy.

[Update]: It's appalling, I know, but I forgot to mention the collective thanks we owe to Todd McKimmey's web genius, without which this fairly worthwhile thing could not get done.

During this period not a trace of class warfare is to be seen. This concord may have been sincere. One sole passion paramount to other passions pervaded all classes: a spirit of resistance to the government as to the common enemy, a spirit of opposition throughout, in small as well as in great affairs, assuming all kinds of shapes, including those which disfigured it.

Some, to resist government, laid stress on what remained of old local privileges. Here a man stood up for some old privilege of his class, there another for some special right of his profession. In his ardor everyone grasped the weapon of argument nearest at hand, even when it was the least suited to him. It almost seemed as if the object of the impending revolution was not to destroy but to restore the old regime. For it is difficult for individuals carried along by great movements to see amongst the causes the real motive by which they themselves are moved. Who would have imagined that the passion which caused the assertion of all these traditional rights was the very one which irresistibly led to their complete abolition?

— Tocqueville, The European Revolution, 1857 (unfinished second volume of The Ancient Regime and the Revolution).

At the same time when the third estate was invited to participate in the assembly of the nation, it was accorded an unlimited facility to express its complaints and declare its requests.

In the cities which were to send deputies to the Estates- General, the entire population was called upon to give its advice about the abuses to be corrected and the demands to be made. Anyone might express his grievance in his own way. The means were as simple as the political procedure was bold. Down to the Estates-General of 1614, in every town, and even in Paris, a large box was placed in the market place to receive the complaints and opinions of anyone, which a committee sitting at the Hotel de Ville was to sift and examine. Out of all these diverse remonstrances a document was drawn up which, under the humble title of “Grievances,” expressed with the greatest liberty and frequently with singularly bitter language the complaints of all and of each.

[. . .]

In 1789 the third estate to be represented in the Estates- General no longer consisted, as in 1614, of the urban bourgeoisie alone but of twenty million peasants scattered over the whole kingdom. Until then these had never taken any interest in public affairs; for them politics was not even the accidental memory of another age: it was, in every respect, a novelty. Thus ancient liberties were being extended to new people with their ancient effects in mind, and the results turned out to be the exact opposite of those of three hundred years ago.

Meanwhile, on a certain day, the church bells of every rural parish of France called the people to the market place. There, for the first time in the history of the monarchy, they were called upon to compose what was still called in the medieval fashion the cahier of grievances of the third estate.

In those countries where political assemblies are elected by universal suffrage, every general election must deeply involve the people unless their freedom of voting is a lie. But here not only a universal vote but a universal deliberation and inquest were to be taken. Every citizen of one of the greatest nations in the world was asked not what he thought of this or that particular problem but what he had to say against every law and every social and political institution of his country. I think that no such spectacle had ever been seen before.

My text today, though I write of one book, is taken from a different book, though the two could scarcely be more different in style and tone. I introduce Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz with the words of Faramir, from The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien:

For myself...I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in Peace: Minas Anor again as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens:...War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Numenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom.

When this blog was in the planning stage, there was a discussion among the charter members as to what its name should be. One suggestion that came up was "The Order of St. Leibowitz"--an allusion to the book by Walter M. Miller.

It would have been an obscure blog name, hard to pronounce and likely to confuse, and it's just as well that we did not choose it. The predecessor blog to this on which several of us had written, Enchiridion Militis, had suffered from a title problem of that sort, and there was no reason to perpetuate it.

But the point behind the suggestion remains a good one. Miller's three-part novel--really, a series of novellas--is all about preserving what can be preserved, even in unlikely places. After a nuclear holocaust, the monks of the new Order of Leibowitz preserve the remnants of man's scientific knowledge, remnants they do not understand themselves but know to be important, in the desert of what used to be Utah. Through the hundreds of years the book covers, during which man drags himself back from the brink of destruction, rediscovers scientific learning and technology, and rebuilds civilization, the abbey remains. At the end there is, of course, another nuclear holocaust, but the Church has obtained a spaceship in which it sends away a group of children led by nuns and a representative of the Order, the last hope of the human race preserved by the Church which has preserved all else throughout human history.

The Latin Mass is a constant thread in the book (published in 1960, before Vatican II), and it provides a symbol of the continuity of the Church no matter what the rest of man may do. Miller even has some fun with the language; the second chapter contains a meditation by a monk, confronted with the mind-boggling phrase "fallout survival shelter," on the difficulties of English and the superiority of Latin.

Canticle is strange, funny, dark, and truly great; there is something ineliminably gritty about it, something even overwhelming. It is not for those who like lighthearted fiction. Pain and deformity are constants. The nuclear disasters have left many strange genetic sports indeed, called "the Pope's children" because the Pope has saved many of their lives by stern injunctions against killing them. Here, too, there is a gleam of Miller's dark humor, as the "Pope's children" are not particularly grateful--indeed, know nothing of the favor done to them--and end the first novella by killing and eating a monk returning through the desert from an audience with the Pope.

At the same time, Canticle is an intensely Christian book and never succumbs to despair. A powerful exchange between a priest and an arrogant da Vinci character in the second novella shows Christianity to be the truest humanism. Thon Taddeo, the great scientist, points out the window at a peasant who has just passed by:

"Look. Can you bring yourself to believe that that brute is the lineal descendant of men who supposedly invented machines that flew, who traveled to the moon...? Can you believe there were such men?...Look at him!" the scholar persisted. "No, but it's too dark now. You can't see the syphilis outbreak on his neck, the way the bridge of his nose is being eaten away. Peresis. But he was undoubtedly a moron to begin with. Illiterate, superstitious, murderous....Look at him, and tell me if you see the progeny of a once-mighty civilization? What do you see?"

"The image of Christ," grated the monsignor, surprised at his own sudden anger. "What did you expect me to see?"

The condition of man under a free government, according to Lincoln, resembled that of man in the Garden of Eden. His freedom was conditional upon denying to himself a forbidden fruit. That fruit was the alluring pleasure of despotism. “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is not democracy,” Lincoln wrote on the eve of the joint debates. A democratic people must abide by certain restraints in order to be a democratic people. The moment they cast these off they cease to be democratic, whether a change takes place in the outward forms of their political life or not. Lincoln said he would not be either slave or master. But what was true of Lincoln’s will was a reflection of the conviction in Lincoln’s mind that “all men are created equal.” People could not be expected long to abstain from the forbidden fruit who did not believe that this abstention was in accordance with a higher principle than their own pleasure. If the pleasures of freedom come into competition with the pleasures of despotism, they cannot survive on the basis of their pleasantness alone. That, we have seen, was Jefferson’s and Lincoln’s explicit judgment and it would be a rash man who would deny that they were correct. Lincoln’s analysis of the problem of popular government in the Lyceum speech had long convinced him that if the choice of free government rested only on the appeal of such government to the passions — i.e., to the pleasure of the people — it would not long endure. The Lyceum speech demonstrated how the highest ambition of the loftiest souls, hitherto believed capable of gratification only in a monarchic order, might be achieved in the perpetuation of a democratic one. It recorded the discovery in the soul of “towering genius” that the highest ambition can be conceived as consummated only in the highest service, that egotism and altruism ultimately coincide in that consciousness of superiority which is superiority in the ability to benefit others. But what is true of the superior individual is also true of the superior nation; and Lincoln argues in the course of his debates with Douglas that the freedom of a free people resides above all in that consciousness of freedom which is also a consciousness of self-imposed restraints. The heart of Lincoln’s case for popular government is the vindication of the people’s cause on the highest grounds which had hitherto been claimed for aristocratic forms. In the consciousness of a strength which is not abused is a consciousness of a greater strength, and therewith a greater pride and a greater pleasure, than can be known by those who do not know how to deny themselves.

[. . .]

The price of American freedom, of all civil liberty, was fidelity to the faith that “all men are created equal.” Constancy to this was as necessary to the preservation of the paradise of American freedom as the obedience of Adam and Eve to God’s single prohibition had been necessary to that other Eden. Both gardens, alas, had their temptations. The existence of Negro slavery and the discovery of vast profits to be made from it led Americans to believe that all men are not created equal, after all, but that some are born to serve and some to be served. But let this conclusion enter, and force and fraud will, in fact, determine who shall serve and who shall be served. The mere existence of slavery, according to Lincoln, was not a fatal transgression, for the American people were not responsible for its introduction. The spirit of the Revolution had placed the institution far along the road toward ultimate extinction; but the spirit of the Revolution had passed, and a new “light” had dawned. In consenting to the extension of slavery the American people had succumbed to serpentine temptation. And now Lincoln, no less than Moses or the prophets, insisted that a time had come when the question had to be answered by every man, “Who is on the Lord’s side?”

— Crisis of the House Divided, Harry V. Jaffa.