Noah Berlatsky has written a fine article on C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy for Culture11. It's been quite a while since I've read them, but I've always thought Perelandra was Lewis's best work of fiction. Out of the Silent Planet seemed cold to me, and That Hideous Strength was too much a shift in tone for me to handle.
“The future does not create the sci-fi writer; rather it is the sci-fi writer who creates, in his or her own image, the future.
“Lewis created The Space Trilogy too, of course. But it’s not a romantic or agonistic creation; it’s an imaginative extension of truths which, for Lewis, apply to man, but don’t originate with him. The future doesn’t have to be about us; we don’t have to be there to make it matter. Science fiction is just a dream, after all; the twisted gothic face it sees in time’s mirror is just a phantom. […] Lewis waves his hand, and the whole genre dissolves, leaving instead the universe.”
Yet another signal that appreciation of Lewis is shifting away from his apologetics and towards his hope of revitalizing the Christian imagination, which is where the best stuff is. Although I'm not sure it's the genre that's disappearing when Lewis waves his hand: the greatest thing about science fiction is its imaginative malleability, its ability to play out all kinds of human beliefs on a mythological level.
31 December 2008
Religious, not spiritual.
Finished Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins yesterday, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The Percy chapters in Peter Augustine Lawler's Postmodernism Rightly Understood made sense of everything, so I didn't feel slightly lost like I did with The Last Gentleman.
Down to business: this short passage gets at something I've been thinking about for a while now. Sometimes you will ask someone whether she is religious, and she will say, “I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual.” Which is fine, and probably true for many people these days. But I'm more the other way around: religious, not spiritual, for reasons something like these (in the context of taking communion in some small church miles away from the major road):
“What she didn't understand, she being spiritual and seeing religion as spirit, was that it took religion to save me from the spirit world, from orbiting the earth like Lucifer and the angels, that it took nothing less than touching the thread off the misty interstates and eating Christ himself to make me mortal man again and let me inhabit my own flesh and love her in the morning.”
Religion protects me from the kind of spirituality that my brain would process into abstract nothingness. The history and weight of the Presbyterian church and, more broadly and better, the Church universal—this is an anchor to people and places that keeps people like me from floating off into abstraction.
Down to business: this short passage gets at something I've been thinking about for a while now. Sometimes you will ask someone whether she is religious, and she will say, “I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual.” Which is fine, and probably true for many people these days. But I'm more the other way around: religious, not spiritual, for reasons something like these (in the context of taking communion in some small church miles away from the major road):
“What she didn't understand, she being spiritual and seeing religion as spirit, was that it took religion to save me from the spirit world, from orbiting the earth like Lucifer and the angels, that it took nothing less than touching the thread off the misty interstates and eating Christ himself to make me mortal man again and let me inhabit my own flesh and love her in the morning.”
Religion protects me from the kind of spirituality that my brain would process into abstract nothingness. The history and weight of the Presbyterian church and, more broadly and better, the Church universal—this is an anchor to people and places that keeps people like me from floating off into abstraction.
27 December 2008
Why I am bad at blogging.
Slate's got a short guide to blogging, with tips from the experts, that lets me know pretty much what I am doing wrong here.
Here's the headings, and my thoughts:
Set a schedule. Blog often. - I've been aiming for a monthly average of a post a day since June, with one or two longer (i.e. sort of substantial) bits each week. Since I can get compulsive about this kind of thing, this can mean frivolous posts at the end of the month. But I'll try to resist, and just go short if I have to, like I did in August.
Don't worry if your posts suck a little. - I assume that they do. I can't sustain rants. I try to err on the side of brevity, hoping that I can clear things up in the comments if I need to. Some folks can churn out the big rants, but I don't have that skill. I get tired after a few hundred words.
Write casually but clearly. - Been working on this. I've found two clear benefits from trying to keep this blog going. One is that it seems to have helped my writing, but I'm not the best judge of that. The other is that I've new got a searchable list of articles and quotes that I found interesting during the past year.
Add something new. - Ah, here's the big trouble. I just can't maintain my interest in the news cycle. I'm hoping that in the next year I can point to interesting North Carolina happenings that may be new to the rest of the world. But I lack that stock of opinions that the best bloggers draw on; I'm undecided on too many big issues. I've got two or three things that I've resolved never to write about here, and there's a number of others where I just don't have anything to say. Sorry about that.
Join the bloggy conversation. And link! - I am not a very good commenter. I like to ask questions, but my normal reaction to things I disagree with is not, “here's twenty reasons why you're wrong,” but rather, “hmm, that's interesting.” But linking—that's fun to do.
Don't expect instant fame. - I sure don't. The best I can hope for is to find a few interesting people who like things that I like. I've really enjoyed following J.L. Wall's musings on Walker Percy and on religion, and Josh/Moff is fantastic on science fiction and on McLuhan. I'm also glad that Helen's starting things back up on her old blog.
Anyway, to those who read me, thanks for reading. To those I read, thanks for doing a good job, even if you don't read me back, and thereby miss out on seeing my gratitude.
Here's the headings, and my thoughts:
Set a schedule. Blog often. - I've been aiming for a monthly average of a post a day since June, with one or two longer (i.e. sort of substantial) bits each week. Since I can get compulsive about this kind of thing, this can mean frivolous posts at the end of the month. But I'll try to resist, and just go short if I have to, like I did in August.
Don't worry if your posts suck a little. - I assume that they do. I can't sustain rants. I try to err on the side of brevity, hoping that I can clear things up in the comments if I need to. Some folks can churn out the big rants, but I don't have that skill. I get tired after a few hundred words.
Write casually but clearly. - Been working on this. I've found two clear benefits from trying to keep this blog going. One is that it seems to have helped my writing, but I'm not the best judge of that. The other is that I've new got a searchable list of articles and quotes that I found interesting during the past year.
Add something new. - Ah, here's the big trouble. I just can't maintain my interest in the news cycle. I'm hoping that in the next year I can point to interesting North Carolina happenings that may be new to the rest of the world. But I lack that stock of opinions that the best bloggers draw on; I'm undecided on too many big issues. I've got two or three things that I've resolved never to write about here, and there's a number of others where I just don't have anything to say. Sorry about that.
Join the bloggy conversation. And link! - I am not a very good commenter. I like to ask questions, but my normal reaction to things I disagree with is not, “here's twenty reasons why you're wrong,” but rather, “hmm, that's interesting.” But linking—that's fun to do.
Don't expect instant fame. - I sure don't. The best I can hope for is to find a few interesting people who like things that I like. I've really enjoyed following J.L. Wall's musings on Walker Percy and on religion, and Josh/Moff is fantastic on science fiction and on McLuhan. I'm also glad that Helen's starting things back up on her old blog.
Anyway, to those who read me, thanks for reading. To those I read, thanks for doing a good job, even if you don't read me back, and thereby miss out on seeing my gratitude.
26 December 2008
Charlotte, hot dogs, and baseball.
The next time you're hanging out in Uptown Charlotte, you should get a hot dog with chili and cheese at Green's Lunch on Fourth and Poplar. It's been there for decades. Enjoy it while you can: if the city has its way, there will be a baseball stadium there soon.
Why can't the city have its way? An attorney named Jerry Reese is filing lawsuits to block the development. And here's where it's funny: he's not blocking it because he thinks the city shouldn't be pursuing this kind of project with taxpayer money—after all, the Panthers managed to build their stadium with private funds—but because he thinks a triple-A team is too small time. He wants major leagues or bust. Apparently the legal wrangling can't be over before next summer.
I have zero interest in baseball, and I'd love to see Green's stick around for another seven decades. While I'm sorry that so much tax money is going to fighting these court battles, I'm glad that I'll get to keep meeting my dad for lunch at Green's on the next few trips home.
Charlotte's a funny town.
Why can't the city have its way? An attorney named Jerry Reese is filing lawsuits to block the development. And here's where it's funny: he's not blocking it because he thinks the city shouldn't be pursuing this kind of project with taxpayer money—after all, the Panthers managed to build their stadium with private funds—but because he thinks a triple-A team is too small time. He wants major leagues or bust. Apparently the legal wrangling can't be over before next summer.
I have zero interest in baseball, and I'd love to see Green's stick around for another seven decades. While I'm sorry that so much tax money is going to fighting these court battles, I'm glad that I'll get to keep meeting my dad for lunch at Green's on the next few trips home.
Charlotte's a funny town.
24 December 2008
Merry Christmas to all.
Merry Christmas!
I'll try to get things rolling again here before the end of December. But it's felt good to take things easy.
(It's far too warm for the season down here in the Piedmont of North Carolina.)
(May I recommend this article about the decline of Detroit, as well as this photoblog? Although you should probably wait if you don't want to be sad on Christmas.)
I'll try to get things rolling again here before the end of December. But it's felt good to take things easy.
(It's far too warm for the season down here in the Piedmont of North Carolina.)
(May I recommend this article about the decline of Detroit, as well as this photoblog? Although you should probably wait if you don't want to be sad on Christmas.)
18 December 2008
Misunderstood sentimentalists? Nah.
Maybe, just maybe, Joe Carter is correct that Frank Capra gets less attention than he deserves because of the sentimentality in his films. I've seen that critique of his work. But it seems to me that Capra's legacy is in fine condition these days, as It's a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington are firmly embedded in American pop culture, and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and It Happened One Night are hardly forgotten. I saw these films long before I chased down anything by Howard Hawks, John Huston, or Billy Wilder.
To suggest that Ayn Rand is a misunderstood “master of sentimentality” is weirder. Yes, she hoped to evoke a passionate emotional response from her audience rather than some ironic appreciation of her wordplay. I suppose that's the sentimentality. But it's what she wants us to respond to that puts off so many people, and that she's so direct in telling us how to respond to it. Carter admits in the comments that he never made it through Atlas Shrugged. Well, I did, and John Galt's twenty-something-page lecture is not the work of a master novelist.
I say this as a great admirer of Tolkien, who wrote a masterful, world-unto-itself heroic epic that contains its share of sentimental moments, and some lecturing on the part of its heroes, but doesn't kick the reader in the face with ham-handed philosophy like Rand does. I dare say a great portion of Tolkien's fan-base would have no sympathy with his strictly conservative Catholicism. Can you count many anti-libertarians/anti-Objectivists among Rand's admirers? And if Dickens was a sentimentalist, at least the man could write spellbinding prose. You can't read Atlas Shrugged for its literary merit because it doesn't have any.
Carter criticizes Rand in the rest of the post, and I'm not going to argue with him there.
For laffs, check out McSweeney's up-to-date rendition of Atlas Shrugged, which gets the theory a bit wrong but the weirdness of Dagney Taggart right. (Via Freddie.)
To suggest that Ayn Rand is a misunderstood “master of sentimentality” is weirder. Yes, she hoped to evoke a passionate emotional response from her audience rather than some ironic appreciation of her wordplay. I suppose that's the sentimentality. But it's what she wants us to respond to that puts off so many people, and that she's so direct in telling us how to respond to it. Carter admits in the comments that he never made it through Atlas Shrugged. Well, I did, and John Galt's twenty-something-page lecture is not the work of a master novelist.
I say this as a great admirer of Tolkien, who wrote a masterful, world-unto-itself heroic epic that contains its share of sentimental moments, and some lecturing on the part of its heroes, but doesn't kick the reader in the face with ham-handed philosophy like Rand does. I dare say a great portion of Tolkien's fan-base would have no sympathy with his strictly conservative Catholicism. Can you count many anti-libertarians/anti-Objectivists among Rand's admirers? And if Dickens was a sentimentalist, at least the man could write spellbinding prose. You can't read Atlas Shrugged for its literary merit because it doesn't have any.
Carter criticizes Rand in the rest of the post, and I'm not going to argue with him there.
For laffs, check out McSweeney's up-to-date rendition of Atlas Shrugged, which gets the theory a bit wrong but the weirdness of Dagney Taggart right. (Via Freddie.)
“Piety! Hope! Generosity! WOW!!”
It's gray and misty outside, and the campus trees—pines aside—are knobby and naked. It's the kind of day where you don't want to walk through the woods by yourself at dusk because you will almost certainly be eaten by werewolves.
~~~~~
I'm out of the thick part of Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, which is great because I'm mowing through the rest. The section on Hutcheson really slowed me down; I set the book aside for at least a month on account of it. But then I read everything on Hume yesterday, which got really interesting. And now I'm in the section on liberalism and tradition, so MacIntyre's delivering the goods again:
“The evidence for the failures of Kant's heirs in these constructive enterprises [i.e. morality for tradition-free individuals—wrb] is contained in the reviews of the books expounding them in the professional philosophical journals. The book review pages of these journals are the graveyards of constructive academic philosophy, and any doubts as to whether rational consensus might be not after all be achievable in modern academic moral philosophy can be put to rest by reading them through regularly.”
~~~~~
I don't comment much on JL Wall's blog Phaidimoi Logoi, but I love reading it. Like many book lovers—myself included—he's working through his suspicion of this new-fangled “Kindle” reading machine. One of his objection is that you can't write in the margins:
“The biggest impediment — let’s set aside all aesthetic for a moment — has to be the inability to scribble something in the margins. I can’t imagine reading much of anything without jotting down beside a passage, ‘cf. such-and-such’ — whatever it happens to remind me of. Or not having a blank page at the start of ‘The Waste Land’ on which to hastily put down a verse from Leonard Cohen’s ‘Take This Waltz’ because both talk about hyacinths. My marginalia in Absalom, Absalom! has become almost organically integrated to my reading of the book. Faulkner in particular makes me feel compelled to enter into some sort of margin-conversation with the text and its author. Not having a pencil in hand is what makes reading on the screen so distinct from reading on the page for me.”
Which is a good point. I probably should do more writing in the novels I read. Or at least the ones I own. I read a lot of library books when I was younger, so sometimes it's hard for me to bring myself to mar the page. University libraries are a constant reminder that not everyone feels the same way. For example, a previous reader of one of UNC's copies of Jeffrey Stout's Democracy and Tradition was evidently enthusiastic about the introduction:
This reader's inclination to circle key words and names two or three times makes the text quite hard to read in places. And I bet this isn't even too bad an example of an over-active writer. So my question is this: what's the proper protocol for writing in the margins of university library books? I'm thinking that if you want to do more than lightly underline and make notes in pencil, you should copy the pages you need.
~~~~~
Please read Mark Thompson's Culture11 piece on how CPSIA will ruin small-scale toy manufacturers. It's a really well-done bit of reporting and explanation.
~~~~~
I'm out of the thick part of Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, which is great because I'm mowing through the rest. The section on Hutcheson really slowed me down; I set the book aside for at least a month on account of it. But then I read everything on Hume yesterday, which got really interesting. And now I'm in the section on liberalism and tradition, so MacIntyre's delivering the goods again:
“The evidence for the failures of Kant's heirs in these constructive enterprises [i.e. morality for tradition-free individuals—wrb] is contained in the reviews of the books expounding them in the professional philosophical journals. The book review pages of these journals are the graveyards of constructive academic philosophy, and any doubts as to whether rational consensus might be not after all be achievable in modern academic moral philosophy can be put to rest by reading them through regularly.”
~~~~~
I don't comment much on JL Wall's blog Phaidimoi Logoi, but I love reading it. Like many book lovers—myself included—he's working through his suspicion of this new-fangled “Kindle” reading machine. One of his objection is that you can't write in the margins:
“The biggest impediment — let’s set aside all aesthetic for a moment — has to be the inability to scribble something in the margins. I can’t imagine reading much of anything without jotting down beside a passage, ‘cf. such-and-such’ — whatever it happens to remind me of. Or not having a blank page at the start of ‘The Waste Land’ on which to hastily put down a verse from Leonard Cohen’s ‘Take This Waltz’ because both talk about hyacinths. My marginalia in Absalom, Absalom! has become almost organically integrated to my reading of the book. Faulkner in particular makes me feel compelled to enter into some sort of margin-conversation with the text and its author. Not having a pencil in hand is what makes reading on the screen so distinct from reading on the page for me.”
Which is a good point. I probably should do more writing in the novels I read. Or at least the ones I own. I read a lot of library books when I was younger, so sometimes it's hard for me to bring myself to mar the page. University libraries are a constant reminder that not everyone feels the same way. For example, a previous reader of one of UNC's copies of Jeffrey Stout's Democracy and Tradition was evidently enthusiastic about the introduction:
This reader's inclination to circle key words and names two or three times makes the text quite hard to read in places. And I bet this isn't even too bad an example of an over-active writer. So my question is this: what's the proper protocol for writing in the margins of university library books? I'm thinking that if you want to do more than lightly underline and make notes in pencil, you should copy the pages you need.
~~~~~
Please read Mark Thompson's Culture11 piece on how CPSIA will ruin small-scale toy manufacturers. It's a really well-done bit of reporting and explanation.
17 December 2008
Bad baby names.
So a Holocaust denier named one of his children Adolf Hitler. And now he's mad that a store won't personalize his kid's birthday cake. It really makes you wonder. I hope you won't blame me for concluding that this is banally evil first, then stupid.
(Via Galley Slaves, where Jonathan points out that if you were trying to come up with a unique name, don't use this one.)
(Via Galley Slaves, where Jonathan points out that if you were trying to come up with a unique name, don't use this one.)
More Socrates at the Gadfly.
At the Gadfly, Brendan keeps going with the anti-Socratism (and then brings in Aldous Huxley):
“Particularly against the backdrop of the Euthyphro, we cannot doubt that he indeed called much of the religious traditions of Athens into question. Considering how interwoven such traditions were into the fabric of everyday life, it’s not unreasonable to think that the hemlock was simply self-defense. Such an evaluation is no defense of Athenian culture; it merely highlights the fact that, for Socrates, there seems to be no such thing as culture, nothing sacred to preserve: Truth is all.”
Socrates was no conservative!
(Comments off for this post; feel free to discuss through the link.)
“Particularly against the backdrop of the Euthyphro, we cannot doubt that he indeed called much of the religious traditions of Athens into question. Considering how interwoven such traditions were into the fabric of everyday life, it’s not unreasonable to think that the hemlock was simply self-defense. Such an evaluation is no defense of Athenian culture; it merely highlights the fact that, for Socrates, there seems to be no such thing as culture, nothing sacred to preserve: Truth is all.”
Socrates was no conservative!
(Comments off for this post; feel free to discuss through the link.)
16 December 2008
Anti-Socratism: I don't quite have it yet.
I've tried once again to pin down my anti-Socratism over at The Gadfly. I've got a little bit more up my sleeve, but pursuing this track is always a little bit frustrating because I have this persistent feeling that the argument I want to make is just out of reach.
I picked up Peter Lawler's Postmodernism Rightly Understood from the UNC library, and it exacerbates this frustration, because I think I could easily lay out the argument I want to make if only I knew as much as Dr. Lawler. But, of course, I have to read books like this if I'm every going to get there.
(Also: I think I now understand completely what the “postmodern” in “postmodern conservative” means, even though I'm not going to use the word that way if I can help it.)
I picked up Peter Lawler's Postmodernism Rightly Understood from the UNC library, and it exacerbates this frustration, because I think I could easily lay out the argument I want to make if only I knew as much as Dr. Lawler. But, of course, I have to read books like this if I'm every going to get there.
(Also: I think I now understand completely what the “postmodern” in “postmodern conservative” means, even though I'm not going to use the word that way if I can help it.)
14 December 2008
Songs I have loved in 2008.
Just for fun, here's the tracklist for a mix CD I made and called “Songs I have loved in 2008.” Only a few of the songs (2, 4, 5, 8, and 13) are actually from 2008; it wasn't a big CD-buying year.
1. Wilco - Hotel Arizona
2. Lambchop - Slipped, Dissolved, and Loosed
3. The Flaming Lips - Waitin' for a Superman (Remix)
4. Anathallo - Red Plastic Globe
5. The Mountin Goats - Gojam Province 1968
6. Bonnie Prince Billy - Raining in Darling
7. Emmylou Harris - Pancho and Lefty
8. Megafaun - Lazy Suicide
9. Pearl Jam - Smile
10. Archers of Loaf - Underdogs of Nipomo
11. Guided by Voices - Learning to Hunt
12. Bruce Springsteen - Human Touch
13. The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers - Christmas Card to a Hooker in Minneapolis
1. Wilco - Hotel Arizona
2. Lambchop - Slipped, Dissolved, and Loosed
3. The Flaming Lips - Waitin' for a Superman (Remix)
4. Anathallo - Red Plastic Globe
5. The Mountin Goats - Gojam Province 1968
6. Bonnie Prince Billy - Raining in Darling
7. Emmylou Harris - Pancho and Lefty
8. Megafaun - Lazy Suicide
9. Pearl Jam - Smile
10. Archers of Loaf - Underdogs of Nipomo
11. Guided by Voices - Learning to Hunt
12. Bruce Springsteen - Human Touch
13. The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers - Christmas Card to a Hooker in Minneapolis
13 December 2008
Because kidney stores would remind us of death.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown concludes a long post on prostitution, sex, and money by wondering about why people remain so fixated on altruistic transactions:
“Wanna donate a kidney? Yes, please! But sell it? You are desecrating the holy arrangement that is kidney sharing! Or something. For a country that proclaims to love capitalism so much, we sure have a lot of funny and rigid ideas about what money can and cannot be exchange for.”
I think I can explain why so many people are averse to these ideas about transactions related to body parts or sex (i.e. mortality and reproduction, birth and death).
First, it’s probably better to say that we have a lot of funny and rigid ideas about what should not be brought into the marketplace, where value is assigned only as a function of utility.
Is it so strange to believe that turning kidneys into commodities puts us on the path to seeing our own bodies only as chunks of meat and blood and bone? Or that pricing sex edges out the mystical (or, if you like, deeply psychological) quality of the strange animal impulse that does so much to order our very identities? And that such views are very unsettling to many people?
In this, as in so many other things, tearing off the mask mars the face of what lies beneath.
“Wanna donate a kidney? Yes, please! But sell it? You are desecrating the holy arrangement that is kidney sharing! Or something. For a country that proclaims to love capitalism so much, we sure have a lot of funny and rigid ideas about what money can and cannot be exchange for.”
I think I can explain why so many people are averse to these ideas about transactions related to body parts or sex (i.e. mortality and reproduction, birth and death).
First, it’s probably better to say that we have a lot of funny and rigid ideas about what should not be brought into the marketplace, where value is assigned only as a function of utility.
Is it so strange to believe that turning kidneys into commodities puts us on the path to seeing our own bodies only as chunks of meat and blood and bone? Or that pricing sex edges out the mystical (or, if you like, deeply psychological) quality of the strange animal impulse that does so much to order our very identities? And that such views are very unsettling to many people?
In this, as in so many other things, tearing off the mask mars the face of what lies beneath.
12 December 2008
Madness!
Kim Fabricius's post on William Blake is worth clicking through to, if only for the image of a good Blake painting, but what really got me thinking was this paragraph:
“Chesterton declared: ‘Critics say his [Blake’s] visions were false because he was mad. I say he was mad because his visions were true.’ Absolutely! ‘Mad’ in the way St. John the Divine was mad… ‘Mad’ in a way that neither the legalism of conservative Christians, nor the reasonableness of the liberals, can comprehend. Such is the impoverishment of the contemporary Christian imagination for which the Bible is either an inerrant rulebook or a religious resource book, but not, as it was for Blake, an inspired and inspiring narrative for re-configuring the world.”
A semester of math and logic that ends with an effort to guest-write for a blog with really smart readers will make one into a reasonable person indeed. I look at my recent writing and it's all I see. Sure, I took a class on critical theory, but the professor was a pragmatist, so I kept my distance…
Reasonableness—what a virtue! The reasonable personality, the one that always discusses, that looks at things from all angles, that never lets things get out of hand, that declines to speak of what it doesn't know, that plans for every contingency… But there are few figures more pitiable (or comic, depending on the context) than the reasonable man treading beyond his depth: the professor in the haunted house, the psychoanalyst who has been left by his wife, the man who thinks he is going to shoot Liberty Valence. Here, reasonableness is profoundly, utterly irrational.
Madness—vision—imagination—this is how you respond to the full splendor and terror of the world!
“Chesterton declared: ‘Critics say his [Blake’s] visions were false because he was mad. I say he was mad because his visions were true.’ Absolutely! ‘Mad’ in the way St. John the Divine was mad… ‘Mad’ in a way that neither the legalism of conservative Christians, nor the reasonableness of the liberals, can comprehend. Such is the impoverishment of the contemporary Christian imagination for which the Bible is either an inerrant rulebook or a religious resource book, but not, as it was for Blake, an inspired and inspiring narrative for re-configuring the world.”
A semester of math and logic that ends with an effort to guest-write for a blog with really smart readers will make one into a reasonable person indeed. I look at my recent writing and it's all I see. Sure, I took a class on critical theory, but the professor was a pragmatist, so I kept my distance…
Reasonableness—what a virtue! The reasonable personality, the one that always discusses, that looks at things from all angles, that never lets things get out of hand, that declines to speak of what it doesn't know, that plans for every contingency… But there are few figures more pitiable (or comic, depending on the context) than the reasonable man treading beyond his depth: the professor in the haunted house, the psychoanalyst who has been left by his wife, the man who thinks he is going to shoot Liberty Valence. Here, reasonableness is profoundly, utterly irrational.
Madness—vision—imagination—this is how you respond to the full splendor and terror of the world!
Avery Cardinal Dulles, R.I.P.
Avery Cardinal Dulles died today. I saw him once, across the room, at a lecture in New York, and that's the closest I ever came to him, but his essays are marvels of careful thinking and generous intellectual engagement. There's a big list of them over at First Things, where I'm sure we'll be finding out about how Cardinal Dulles chose to live his life.
I highly recommend his essay “Saving Ecumenism from Itself,” from 2007.
I highly recommend his essay “Saving Ecumenism from Itself,” from 2007.
How is he so good at this?
Sometimes Alan Jacobs is such a good writer that it almost makes me angry. This happens when I've tried to say something, and then he comes along and says it the right way. For example, my convoluted mess on Christianity, secularism, and public reason is supposed to mean the same thing as this single paragraph from The American Scene:
“If your primary concern is to influence public policy, then of course you should use the arguments that are most likely to persuade people whose support you need, which may mean keeping some of your own distinctive convictions in the background. But some Christians believe that something is more important that influencing public policy, and that is bearing public witness to Christian faith and practice. And if that’s your primary goal, then coming up with ‘adequate secular reasons’ for your beliefs is pretty much the last thing you’ll want to do. But then of course you shouldn’t complain if people find your arguments puzzling or even repulsive.”
I mean, that's pretty much it. All you can add is that the Republican Party is an organization hoping to persuade in a secular environment, and therefore should (and almost always does) take the first path.
EDIT: Looking over my other post, I did have some stuff in there about political honesty, so maybe my words weren't a complete waste.
“If your primary concern is to influence public policy, then of course you should use the arguments that are most likely to persuade people whose support you need, which may mean keeping some of your own distinctive convictions in the background. But some Christians believe that something is more important that influencing public policy, and that is bearing public witness to Christian faith and practice. And if that’s your primary goal, then coming up with ‘adequate secular reasons’ for your beliefs is pretty much the last thing you’ll want to do. But then of course you shouldn’t complain if people find your arguments puzzling or even repulsive.”
I mean, that's pretty much it. All you can add is that the Republican Party is an organization hoping to persuade in a secular environment, and therefore should (and almost always does) take the first path.
EDIT: Looking over my other post, I did have some stuff in there about political honesty, so maybe my words weren't a complete waste.
11 December 2008
Oh, what the harry. Let's do some democracy.
John Schwenkler, Mark from Publius Endures, and Scott Payne are trying to spread the word about CPSIA (Consumer Protection Safety Improvement Act). Basically, we've got a situation where the law that Congress wrote to try to make sure imported toys aren't toxic and deadly will probably force pretty much all small-scale toymakers out of business. Since I see independent toymakers as counterparts to independent record labels (which I love), I'm in on this one. For starters, here's the links:
It really looks to me like the law needs a big exemption, or at least a different set of standards, for small toymakers. (And I think this all applies to clothing manufacturers too!) This is, in fact, what the Handmade Toy Alliance is proposing.
One danger of getting involved in something like this is that I've only been able to read advocacy websites. If you can show me that small toymakers and clothing manufacturers present a real danger to children, I'll think twice. And if you can show me that the costs imposed on these smaller businesses will be equal to or less than those that the big groups get stuck with, I'll think twice. But, from everything I've read, it looks pretty clear this legislation is going to turn a bunch of innocent artisans into either unemployed persons or criminals.
I'm going to come back to this again after I've had a chance to look into it some more.
I've got some letters to write this weekend.
- Got to give Robert Stacy McCain credit for writing about it last week. (And again today.)
- John Schwenkler summarizes: “The bill, which passed both chambers of Congress earlier this year with almost no opposition from anyone not named Ron Paul, requires that all toys be submitted to third-party testing and certification, and that toy makers permanently label each toy with a date and batch number to ensure easy enforcement… In any case, even if such smaller producers do manage to remain in business there can be no real doubt that such regulations would raise the cost of their products lead naturally to securing an even greater market share for those toy manufacturers that operate at a larger scale and can spread the cost of testing out over the huge volumes of toys that they make.”
- Mark sounds the call: “Fortunately, there is time to at the very least pass some form of remedial legislation or seek the scaling back of the proposed regulations. For that reason, and because this issue unites the common interests of principled liberals, conservatives, and libertarians, I can't think of many issues better suited for an non-partisan, non-ideological activist campaign.”
- The Handmade Toy Alliance believes the consequences for their business will be dire.
- Tons of information here and here.
It really looks to me like the law needs a big exemption, or at least a different set of standards, for small toymakers. (And I think this all applies to clothing manufacturers too!) This is, in fact, what the Handmade Toy Alliance is proposing.
One danger of getting involved in something like this is that I've only been able to read advocacy websites. If you can show me that small toymakers and clothing manufacturers present a real danger to children, I'll think twice. And if you can show me that the costs imposed on these smaller businesses will be equal to or less than those that the big groups get stuck with, I'll think twice. But, from everything I've read, it looks pretty clear this legislation is going to turn a bunch of innocent artisans into either unemployed persons or criminals.
I'm going to come back to this again after I've had a chance to look into it some more.
I've got some letters to write this weekend.
10 December 2008
Advent in space.
And I probably ought to share The Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2008, since I've been enjoying it so much. A new space picture every day. You know, the Hubble project might be the neatest thing that human beings have ever done. Thanks, science!
(I found the link on A Thinking Reed.)
(I found the link on A Thinking Reed.)
The gadfly.
Some of my buddies up in New York City have started a magazine called “The Gadfly.” They're students at The King's College—where I myself spent two years—so some of the material on the website has to do with the internal politics of a small startup evangelical Christian college in Manhattan, but there should be some good stuff coming for general audiences in the theology, philosophy, politics, and economics categories. I should mention here that I will be contributing from a distance.
Try my friend John's article “Free Market Theology”:
Perfect freedom is not the exercise of choice, but the service of a holy God. For thousands of years such an assertion would be uncontroversial for Christians. Today, however, American evangelicalism has developed a hybrid strand of Christian political thought.
Evangelicals have bred a pseudo-theology revolving around the concept of “culture wars.” They seek to wed God to the state and intertwine the beauty of grace with the bureaucracy of the nation state. Certain political positions become an assumed part of orthodoxy. It seems as if these Christians think that belief in the market was adopted into Nicene dogma. Consequently, the language used to describe the market increasingly is applied to the divine.
[…]
The market is an efficient way of allocating resources, but it is not an ethic. When we act as if morality and the market are interchangeable, we force ourselves into blind, sophistical defenses of pure exploitation. Christians may harness the power of the market to benefit society, but followers of Jesus must not allow the scales we use in the market place to weigh justice.
Also, for some reason, there's an array of fine shirts and sweatshirts. (Not my doing.)
Try my friend John's article “Free Market Theology”:
Perfect freedom is not the exercise of choice, but the service of a holy God. For thousands of years such an assertion would be uncontroversial for Christians. Today, however, American evangelicalism has developed a hybrid strand of Christian political thought.
Evangelicals have bred a pseudo-theology revolving around the concept of “culture wars.” They seek to wed God to the state and intertwine the beauty of grace with the bureaucracy of the nation state. Certain political positions become an assumed part of orthodoxy. It seems as if these Christians think that belief in the market was adopted into Nicene dogma. Consequently, the language used to describe the market increasingly is applied to the divine.
[…]
The market is an efficient way of allocating resources, but it is not an ethic. When we act as if morality and the market are interchangeable, we force ourselves into blind, sophistical defenses of pure exploitation. Christians may harness the power of the market to benefit society, but followers of Jesus must not allow the scales we use in the market place to weigh justice.
Also, for some reason, there's an array of fine shirts and sweatshirts. (Not my doing.)
Robertson Davies has been there before us.
I had to let go of a post that I typed comparing Helen Rittlemeyer to Robertson Davies when I looked up some books of interviews with Davies and found that he considers himself a disciple of Jung. I had thought of him as a heterodox Christian with Jungian influences, but it turns out that he saw himself as the real Jungian deal, and not much of a doctrinal Christian at all. So the comparison I had in mind fell apart. But I don't want to just let the quotes go away. These two are from The Lyre of Orpheus, the third book in the Cornish Trilogy. (I'm telling myself that when I re-read all of Davies, I'm going to make a quote book and organize it by topic.)
The first passage reminded me of Helen's “politics of manners.” It's a scene where Anglican scholar-priest Simon Darcourt is comforting his friend Arthur, who suspects that his wife has cheated on him:
“The cuckoo in the nest is often the best friend. Powell loves you, as a friend may very well love you. I love you, Arthur, though I don't make a song and dance about it.”
“That kind of love. You have to because you're a priest. Like God, it's your métier.”
“You don't know anything about priests. I know we are supposed to love mankind indiscriminately, but I don't. That's why I gave up practical priesthood and became a professor. My faith charges me to love my neighbor but I can't and won't fake it, in the greasy way professional lovers-of-mankind do—the professionally charitable, the newspaper sob-sisters, the politicians. I'm not Christ, Arthur, and I can't love like Him, so I settle for courtesy, consideration, decent manners, and whatever I can do for the people I really do love. And you are one of those. I can't help you by weeping with you, though I respect your tears. The best I can do is bring a clear head and an open eye to your trouble.”
The second one reminded me of the way Helen compares her traditionalism to theatrical illusion. Davies does not give us precisely the same idea, but there's a slight connection. This is from a scene where Darcourt is speaking to the Maria, the wife that may have cheated:
“Arthur said that it had always troubled him in the old plays when somebody puts on a cloak and hat and is accepted by the others as somebody he isn't. Disguise is impossible, he said. You recognize people by their walk, the way they hold their heads, by a thousand things that we aren't aware of. How do you disguise your back, he said; none of us can see our backs, but everybody else does, and when you see somebody from the back you may know them much more readily than if you see them face to face. Do you remember what Powell said?”
“Something about people wishing to be deceived?”
“Yes. That you will the deception, just as you will your own deception when you watch a conjuror. He said that he had once taken part in a show put on in an asylum for the insane, where a very clever conjuror worked like a dog, and didn't get any applause whatever. Why? Because the insane were not his partners in his deceits. For them a rabbit might just as well come out of an empty hat as not. But the sane, the doctors and nurses, who were living and watching in the same world of assumptions as the conjuror, were delighted. And it was just the same with disguise. On the stage, people accepted somebody in a very transparent disguise because the real deception was brought about by their own will. Show Lancelot and Guenevere a witch, and they accept her as a witch because their situation makes a witch much more acceptable than Morgan Le Fay in a ragged cloak.”
“Yes, I remember. I thought it was a rather thin argument at the time.”
“But don't you remember what he said afterward? We are deceived because we will our own deception. It is somehow necessary to us. It is an aspect of fate.”
“I think I remember. Powell does talk a lot of fascinating Celtic moonshine, doesn't he?”
The first passage reminded me of Helen's “politics of manners.” It's a scene where Anglican scholar-priest Simon Darcourt is comforting his friend Arthur, who suspects that his wife has cheated on him:
“The cuckoo in the nest is often the best friend. Powell loves you, as a friend may very well love you. I love you, Arthur, though I don't make a song and dance about it.”
“That kind of love. You have to because you're a priest. Like God, it's your métier.”
“You don't know anything about priests. I know we are supposed to love mankind indiscriminately, but I don't. That's why I gave up practical priesthood and became a professor. My faith charges me to love my neighbor but I can't and won't fake it, in the greasy way professional lovers-of-mankind do—the professionally charitable, the newspaper sob-sisters, the politicians. I'm not Christ, Arthur, and I can't love like Him, so I settle for courtesy, consideration, decent manners, and whatever I can do for the people I really do love. And you are one of those. I can't help you by weeping with you, though I respect your tears. The best I can do is bring a clear head and an open eye to your trouble.”
The second one reminded me of the way Helen compares her traditionalism to theatrical illusion. Davies does not give us precisely the same idea, but there's a slight connection. This is from a scene where Darcourt is speaking to the Maria, the wife that may have cheated:
“Arthur said that it had always troubled him in the old plays when somebody puts on a cloak and hat and is accepted by the others as somebody he isn't. Disguise is impossible, he said. You recognize people by their walk, the way they hold their heads, by a thousand things that we aren't aware of. How do you disguise your back, he said; none of us can see our backs, but everybody else does, and when you see somebody from the back you may know them much more readily than if you see them face to face. Do you remember what Powell said?”
“Something about people wishing to be deceived?”
“Yes. That you will the deception, just as you will your own deception when you watch a conjuror. He said that he had once taken part in a show put on in an asylum for the insane, where a very clever conjuror worked like a dog, and didn't get any applause whatever. Why? Because the insane were not his partners in his deceits. For them a rabbit might just as well come out of an empty hat as not. But the sane, the doctors and nurses, who were living and watching in the same world of assumptions as the conjuror, were delighted. And it was just the same with disguise. On the stage, people accepted somebody in a very transparent disguise because the real deception was brought about by their own will. Show Lancelot and Guenevere a witch, and they accept her as a witch because their situation makes a witch much more acceptable than Morgan Le Fay in a ragged cloak.”
“Yes, I remember. I thought it was a rather thin argument at the time.”
“But don't you remember what he said afterward? We are deceived because we will our own deception. It is somehow necessary to us. It is an aspect of fate.”
“I think I remember. Powell does talk a lot of fascinating Celtic moonshine, doesn't he?”
09 December 2008
Why I like Canada so much.
This might be crazy, but I think I like the mythic concept of Canada because, insofar as it resists Yankee imperialism, it's like an angelic reversal of the Confederacy. In terms of history, this is hogwash, but maybe it fits conceptually, somehow.
Canadian politics: now I get it.
Between me being busy with the end of the semester and the American media not caring, I haven't been able to keep up the shallow familiarity with Canadian politics that I'd like to have. However, Dr. Boli comes to my rescue yet again:
“Canada is a constitutional monarchy. The real power rests with the Queen of Canada, who at any moment could squash her government like a bug…
“To understand why the Queen is so inactive in the daily affairs of her government, we need only recall that the Queen of Canada is also the Queen of fifteen other realms around the world. Canada does not have her undivided attention. While the Canadians are having their adorable little parliamentary crisis, Her Majesty’s other subjects have equally pressing demands on her time. Her British subjects expect her to review a number of local cheeses over the next few days. Her Australian subjects are once again threatening to pitch her over the rail and declare a republic. The Church of Scotland wants her, as head of the Kirk, to declare Anglicanism a satanic heresy. Her subjects in Tuvalu are opening their nation’s first strip mall and wonder whether she can spare a second cousin once removed for this auspicious occasion. Her subjects in Belize have sent her an electronic musical Christmas card and want to know how she liked it.
“The Queen, in other words, leads a busy life, and she has little time for squashing governments.”
It all makes so much more sense now. (Follow the link; there's more.)
“Canada is a constitutional monarchy. The real power rests with the Queen of Canada, who at any moment could squash her government like a bug…
“To understand why the Queen is so inactive in the daily affairs of her government, we need only recall that the Queen of Canada is also the Queen of fifteen other realms around the world. Canada does not have her undivided attention. While the Canadians are having their adorable little parliamentary crisis, Her Majesty’s other subjects have equally pressing demands on her time. Her British subjects expect her to review a number of local cheeses over the next few days. Her Australian subjects are once again threatening to pitch her over the rail and declare a republic. The Church of Scotland wants her, as head of the Kirk, to declare Anglicanism a satanic heresy. Her subjects in Tuvalu are opening their nation’s first strip mall and wonder whether she can spare a second cousin once removed for this auspicious occasion. Her subjects in Belize have sent her an electronic musical Christmas card and want to know how she liked it.
“The Queen, in other words, leads a busy life, and she has little time for squashing governments.”
It all makes so much more sense now. (Follow the link; there's more.)
08 December 2008
Are there selkies?
Having read Alice Thomas Ellis's The Inn at the Edge of the World over the weekend, I'm going to say that Sally Thomas's recommendations seem to be good ones. How to describe the book? It's about people who are variously depressed or lost in the world, and how they interact when they try to avoid Christmas at an inn in far north Scotland, and it's a ghost story. If you're quick, you can read it in an evening.
Even my dad's a pomocon now.
James Poulos posts someone else's description of “postmodern conservative,” but it's the kind of definition that makes a whole group of premodern Christian theologians into pomocons, so I'm inclined to think it's not quite narrow enough. And the chart accompanying the original source seems a little bit, umm, reductive?
07 December 2008
Christian SF.
Aside from a few Gene Wolfe stories, I can't think of much good science fiction (or “speculative fiction,” as the cool uncool kids say) that is about religion in a devotional sense. But I bet I could find more of it, if I just knew where to look.
My mind isn't totally made up about two stories at Third Order Magazine, except to say that both of them seem like they'll be haunting me for a while. Eve Tushnet's “Love” is set in a universe where people have been infected with a disease that becomes contagious only when they do something self-sacrificing. Tushnet has as much insight into different kinds and qualities of love as any living writer I can think of, and so I'm inclined to think of this story as a keeper. Also interesting is “A Believer's Guide to Azagarth,” which imagines interplanetary missionaries to a shapeshifting species that may or may not have souls. It started off medium, got intensely weird, and ended in spiritual revelation.
I guess what's weird to me about these stories, on first read, is that I'm used to SF that is more interested in social dynamics than personal spiritual musings.
Anybody have any thoughts on these stories?
My mind isn't totally made up about two stories at Third Order Magazine, except to say that both of them seem like they'll be haunting me for a while. Eve Tushnet's “Love” is set in a universe where people have been infected with a disease that becomes contagious only when they do something self-sacrificing. Tushnet has as much insight into different kinds and qualities of love as any living writer I can think of, and so I'm inclined to think of this story as a keeper. Also interesting is “A Believer's Guide to Azagarth,” which imagines interplanetary missionaries to a shapeshifting species that may or may not have souls. It started off medium, got intensely weird, and ended in spiritual revelation.
I guess what's weird to me about these stories, on first read, is that I'm used to SF that is more interested in social dynamics than personal spiritual musings.
Anybody have any thoughts on these stories?
05 December 2008
A further note on secularism and politics.
I guess her anti-Palinism wasn't enough: Kathleen Parker is still trying her best to get kicked out of the conservative club:
“How about social conservatives make their arguments without bringing God into it? By all means, let faith inform one's values, but let reason inform one's public arguments.
“That was and remains my point. It isn't so much God causing the GOP problems; it's his fan club.
“How about social conservatives make their arguments without bringing God into it? By all means, let faith inform one's values, but let reason inform one's public arguments.
“That was and remains my point. It isn't so much God causing the GOP problems; it's his fan club.
“The broad perception among centrists, moderates, conservative Democrats, renegade Republicans, etc., is that the GOP is the party of white Christians to the exclusion of others, some of whom might also be social conservatives.
“One can believe this or not. But as the gazillions who have written me to say either that ‘God Is Here To Stay’ or that ‘Conservatives Won't Be Silenced’ ought best to know: Just because you don't believe something doesn't make it untrue.”
So here's the first problem with Parker's argument: it invites mostly the responses of the “gazillions” of people who are angered by it, which convinces her even further that this wing needs to go, so she writes another diatribe, gets more responses, and the calm and collected continue to sit things out. Again, the ugly cycle.
The second problem is that she doesn't distinguish between different types of invocations of religion. This is, for me, the problem that kills her essay.
Here's a reason that it's actually good for Christians to make their religious motivations explicit: the history of Christian theology is open to the world. If I hold that some religious premise P implies some political conclusion Q, then you can hit the books in hopes of finding an argument either that my premise P is theologically wrong or that it does not in fact lead to Q. If you're a secularist against the death penalty, I imagine you could actually convince a fair number of your Christian friends to agree with you if you can invoke the right theologians.
On the other hand, if I know that you do not accept my religious premise P, then it would be a waste of time to try to convince you of the conclusion Q for that reason; in order to persuade you, I should try to find a secular argument that you will accept. This is just how arguing works.
Now, in a climate where people are hostile to my religious premises, I can't just go flinging them about and expect to find wide agreement. In such a situation, I should do what I can to find supplementary arguments that will be persuasive. But “leaving God out of it” and pretending like these supplementary arguments are the only ones that matter to me just makes things unnecessarily complex. In fact, it makes public discourse into a liar's game.
(Via Larison, whose discussion of the matter is worth reading.)
04 December 2008
Get yr Xmas indie.
It's Hard to Find a Friend has another Christmas compilation this year, this time including Anathallo, Karl Blau, and Pattern is Movement. Cheap and for charity: what are you waiting for? Highlight so far: The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers reply to Tom Waits's “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” with “Christmas Card to a Hooker in Minneapolis.” Great stuff!
The secular right.
So there's a hot new blog out there called “Secular Right.” Here's their mission statement:
“We believe that conservative principles and policies need not be grounded in a specific set of supernatural claims. Rather, conservatism serves the ends of ‘Human Flourishing,’ what the Greeks termed Eudaimonia. Secular conservatism takes the empirical world for what it is, and accepts that the making of it the best that it can be is only possible through our faculties of reason.”
Daniel Larison's take:
“If the point is to say that non-believers and secular people can be conservatives, too, that seems to be something in no need of demonstration or argument. . . . If the point of the project is to say that modern conservatism has become too religious, or too wedded to Christianity, and therefore a specifically secular conservative resistance to this trend is necessary, I will have to laugh, because here our secular friends will have then embraced a popular myth that does not have much in the way of evidence to support it. If it is simply to argue for inclusion among other conservatives, I haven’t seen many efforts to cast them or keep them out.”
There's some good stuff in the comments of Larison's post, and in the comments section of the SR post that links to it. (There's also some dreck from people who are too convinced that they know the deep essence of what it means to be conservative.) But let's take Larison's guesses about the purpose of the SR blog one at a time:
1.) “Non-believers and secular people can be conservatives too.”
Larison's absolutely right: this should be obvious. Conservatism as a political movement is fundamentally about a set of policy goals. SR contributor Heather Mac Donald, in particular, has made her career by being very, very good at constructing social-science based arguments for conservative policies. Take vouchers, for example. You can want them because you think they'll get kids into Christian schools and thereby save their little souls, but you can also want them because you think the empirical evidence shows that more choice leads to better education. (Or you can go the other way. Doesn't matter to me.)
What about conservatism as a political philosophy? This one's harder, because conservatism isn't a single political philosophy; it's a bunch of variations on a theme—but the theme only exists in its variations! And, yes, I do think you can easily transpose deep skepticism about human potential, disdain for faddish multiculturalism, opposition to big government, original-intent constitutional interpretation, etc., into a non-religious key. It's not even hard to find examples of this. Just look at the SR contributors' pen names. Strike that; look at the contributors themselves. Derbyshire, Mac Donald, and Olson have conservative bona fides I couldn't dream of. (And Razib's on his way to the top.)
2.) “Modern conservatism has become too religious, or too wedded to Christianity, and therefore a specifically secular conservative resistance to this trend is necessary.”
Now we have to look at landscape of American conservatism. John Derbyshire is firmly embedded at National Review, and Heather Mac Donald and Walter Olson seem to get plenty of space in City Journal. So there's plenty of space for secularists at the top, where the policies are put together.
On the other hand, John Derbyshire gives away the game by mentioning Damon Linker's book on “theo-conservatism,” which is basically supposed to be Catholic neo-conservatism à la First Things. So that's the faction that SR is jostling against. It's not the movement as a whole that they want to resist, but rather a particular faction that they want to counter-balance. And if there really is going to be soul-searching in the conservative movement, this faction at least deserves a blog, since most other factions have their own journals and glossy magazines.
3.) “To argue for inclusion among other conservatives.”
Maybe if you're good enough to write for City Journal, nobody's going to kick you out, but I imagine it's kind of tough to be a secular conservative in certain parts of the country (just as it's tough to be a certain kind of religious conservative in others). Think of how much attention the stupid “Holiday Wars” seem to get every year, and how frustrating it would be to be seen as on the same team as Christmas Warriors if you're not even religious. I mean, I'm a Christian, and these controversies drive me crazy when I pay attention to them.
I imagine that SR is going to have a faithful contingent of readers that are just glad to find a place where they can read smart secular conservatives who are not primarily libertarians. So maybe a function of the blog is to provide secular conservatives in less secular regions with a haven. Maybe this isn't a huge group of people, but, hey! It's the Internet! And they certainly get more comments than I do…
EDIT: But are they right? What does WILLIAM think about non-religiosity? Just wait for the big Hitchens report that I want to write after exams are done…
“We believe that conservative principles and policies need not be grounded in a specific set of supernatural claims. Rather, conservatism serves the ends of ‘Human Flourishing,’ what the Greeks termed Eudaimonia. Secular conservatism takes the empirical world for what it is, and accepts that the making of it the best that it can be is only possible through our faculties of reason.”
Daniel Larison's take:
“If the point is to say that non-believers and secular people can be conservatives, too, that seems to be something in no need of demonstration or argument. . . . If the point of the project is to say that modern conservatism has become too religious, or too wedded to Christianity, and therefore a specifically secular conservative resistance to this trend is necessary, I will have to laugh, because here our secular friends will have then embraced a popular myth that does not have much in the way of evidence to support it. If it is simply to argue for inclusion among other conservatives, I haven’t seen many efforts to cast them or keep them out.”
There's some good stuff in the comments of Larison's post, and in the comments section of the SR post that links to it. (There's also some dreck from people who are too convinced that they know the deep essence of what it means to be conservative.) But let's take Larison's guesses about the purpose of the SR blog one at a time:
1.) “Non-believers and secular people can be conservatives too.”
Larison's absolutely right: this should be obvious. Conservatism as a political movement is fundamentally about a set of policy goals. SR contributor Heather Mac Donald, in particular, has made her career by being very, very good at constructing social-science based arguments for conservative policies. Take vouchers, for example. You can want them because you think they'll get kids into Christian schools and thereby save their little souls, but you can also want them because you think the empirical evidence shows that more choice leads to better education. (Or you can go the other way. Doesn't matter to me.)
What about conservatism as a political philosophy? This one's harder, because conservatism isn't a single political philosophy; it's a bunch of variations on a theme—but the theme only exists in its variations! And, yes, I do think you can easily transpose deep skepticism about human potential, disdain for faddish multiculturalism, opposition to big government, original-intent constitutional interpretation, etc., into a non-religious key. It's not even hard to find examples of this. Just look at the SR contributors' pen names. Strike that; look at the contributors themselves. Derbyshire, Mac Donald, and Olson have conservative bona fides I couldn't dream of. (And Razib's on his way to the top.)
2.) “Modern conservatism has become too religious, or too wedded to Christianity, and therefore a specifically secular conservative resistance to this trend is necessary.”
Now we have to look at landscape of American conservatism. John Derbyshire is firmly embedded at National Review, and Heather Mac Donald and Walter Olson seem to get plenty of space in City Journal. So there's plenty of space for secularists at the top, where the policies are put together.
On the other hand, John Derbyshire gives away the game by mentioning Damon Linker's book on “theo-conservatism,” which is basically supposed to be Catholic neo-conservatism à la First Things. So that's the faction that SR is jostling against. It's not the movement as a whole that they want to resist, but rather a particular faction that they want to counter-balance. And if there really is going to be soul-searching in the conservative movement, this faction at least deserves a blog, since most other factions have their own journals and glossy magazines.
3.) “To argue for inclusion among other conservatives.”
Maybe if you're good enough to write for City Journal, nobody's going to kick you out, but I imagine it's kind of tough to be a secular conservative in certain parts of the country (just as it's tough to be a certain kind of religious conservative in others). Think of how much attention the stupid “Holiday Wars” seem to get every year, and how frustrating it would be to be seen as on the same team as Christmas Warriors if you're not even religious. I mean, I'm a Christian, and these controversies drive me crazy when I pay attention to them.
I imagine that SR is going to have a faithful contingent of readers that are just glad to find a place where they can read smart secular conservatives who are not primarily libertarians. So maybe a function of the blog is to provide secular conservatives in less secular regions with a haven. Maybe this isn't a huge group of people, but, hey! It's the Internet! And they certainly get more comments than I do…
EDIT: But are they right? What does WILLIAM think about non-religiosity? Just wait for the big Hitchens report that I want to write after exams are done…
02 December 2008
A dream of life.
I let myself fall into Synecdoche, New York. Maybe nine other people in the theater and nothing to worry about for tomorrow: that's a good combination for getting absorbed. The film is certainly more ambitious than any “big” movie I've seen in a while; at this scale, success and flawlessness are a little bit beside the point. In a month, I'm sure I'll have an opinion; in fact, it will probably be a very strong opinion in one direction or the other. Right now, I'm just enjoying the way that lights and people look so different—and never the same again—after you find your way out of the depths of a film.
(I remember when I saw The Silence Before Bach in Greenwich Village, and while Bach's music was still in my bones I came outside and found that snowflakes were spinning to the Cello Suites.)
(I remember when I saw The Silence Before Bach in Greenwich Village, and while Bach's music was still in my bones I came outside and found that snowflakes were spinning to the Cello Suites.)
Modern conservatism and instability.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was trying to avoid talking about The Future of Conservatism. Scott Payne called me out on it. But now I’ve finally found an article that has what looks like a good angle on the whole thing.
R.R. Reno posted an article called “The Challenge Facing Conservatism” at First Things yesterday, in which he flips around all the labels in a really good way. Modern American conservatism, in Reno’s reading, is anything but a Burkean defense of some big-business status quo. Deregulation has been radically destabilizing. There are opportunities to get fantastically rich; it’s just as easy to lose everything. In foreign policy, too, we’ve seen an idealism that doesn’t hesitate to “destabilize” (or rather, destroy) an entire region in hopes of building something new and better.
The result of this instability is an anxious feeling of vulnerability. Reno argues that Obama won because he addressed this kind of worry: “Obama’s election signals a collective American desire for stability.” Conservatives since Reagan have been enamored of creative destruction, but “freedom to fail” scares even the successful. Thus:
“So, conservatives need to face this singular political fact squarely: The people who have benefited the most from free-market policies were the ones who led the charge against the Republican party. And if my analysis is correct, they did so because of a deeply felt insecurity—an insecurity that we can trace back to our collective experience with something conservatives fought to achieve: a raucously creative, productive, and invariably unpredictable economic system.
[…]
“Voters are reading the ideological situation accurately. And they are pushing back against the instabilities that arise from conservative economic philosophy and foreign policy.”
This explains, I think, what is going on with most Obamacons, and with the so-called centrism that drives the further-left segments of the Democratic Party absolutely crazy. And it implies that the liberal (“classical liberal”) strain of American conservatism has been much more effective than the traditionalist one. John McCain campaigned as an outsider (I refuse to use that M-word here), after all, trying to convince people that he would shake things up in Washington, to break up the old system. Obama’s promises of change, on the other hand, were not fundamentally about any sort of socialist utopia: they were about a turning away from the politics of destabilization.
If deregulation is meant to unleash latent energy in an economy, re-regulation clamps down on it. If the voters start to see the economy as a runaway train, it’s only natural for them to support the person who promises to hit the brakes. In this analogy, conservatives who pushed for further free-market reforms sound like they’re arguing that a runaway train just gets you to your destination faster. (Unless it crashes…)
I hope it’s clear that I see the problem of stability and dynamism as one of balance, of figuring out where to set limits. And here Reno asserts that it is most important for conservatism to set its sights on creating cultural stability through “a convincing public philosophy of cultural authority.” (I’m surprised that James Poulos hasn’t commented on this part yet.) One could see this as just another attempt to get some attention for the social conservative agenda, but I’m inclined to take it as a philosophical point. If we don’t attend to our culture, we won’t be able to handle instability that would be otherwise salutary. And I don’t mean attending to culture through government; I mean working through cultural institutions.
That’s the part of conservatism I’m most interested in. So many of my most talented peers are confused, rootless, and often depressed. Extra instability doesn’t help: it just makes the future look bleaker. I hate to have to come back to MacIntyre again, but Stanley Hauerwas draws on him to make this point in his inimitable (i.e. hyperbolic) style:
“Alasdair MacIntyre, a philosopher, has suggested that one of the worst things our society does to the young is to tell them they ought to be happy. MacIntyre thinks if you are happy, particularly when you are young, you are probably deeply self-deceived. Your appropriate stance is to be miserable. What a terrible time to be young. Shorn of any clear account for what it means to grow up, you are forced to make up your own lives. But you know that any life you make up is not a life you will want to live.”
This is what is at stake in questions of cultural authority. And I’m by no means convinced that conservatives have the best side of the argument. But I think conservatives have to recognize that in the absence of a public philosophy of cultural authority, an obsession with tax cuts and aggressive foreign policy is going to keep losing. The trick is that cultural authority can’t be primarily created through politics.
I have to add: Reno only talks about what instability does to economic winners. I hope that he writes about the other side sometime soon. Even if you can make the argument that the material standard of living has been rising, the less tangible consequences of economic inequality can be crushing.
So that's my “The Future of Conservatism” post. You can see why I was so reluctant to write it…
R.R. Reno posted an article called “The Challenge Facing Conservatism” at First Things yesterday, in which he flips around all the labels in a really good way. Modern American conservatism, in Reno’s reading, is anything but a Burkean defense of some big-business status quo. Deregulation has been radically destabilizing. There are opportunities to get fantastically rich; it’s just as easy to lose everything. In foreign policy, too, we’ve seen an idealism that doesn’t hesitate to “destabilize” (or rather, destroy) an entire region in hopes of building something new and better.
The result of this instability is an anxious feeling of vulnerability. Reno argues that Obama won because he addressed this kind of worry: “Obama’s election signals a collective American desire for stability.” Conservatives since Reagan have been enamored of creative destruction, but “freedom to fail” scares even the successful. Thus:
“So, conservatives need to face this singular political fact squarely: The people who have benefited the most from free-market policies were the ones who led the charge against the Republican party. And if my analysis is correct, they did so because of a deeply felt insecurity—an insecurity that we can trace back to our collective experience with something conservatives fought to achieve: a raucously creative, productive, and invariably unpredictable economic system.
[…]
“Voters are reading the ideological situation accurately. And they are pushing back against the instabilities that arise from conservative economic philosophy and foreign policy.”
This explains, I think, what is going on with most Obamacons, and with the so-called centrism that drives the further-left segments of the Democratic Party absolutely crazy. And it implies that the liberal (“classical liberal”) strain of American conservatism has been much more effective than the traditionalist one. John McCain campaigned as an outsider (I refuse to use that M-word here), after all, trying to convince people that he would shake things up in Washington, to break up the old system. Obama’s promises of change, on the other hand, were not fundamentally about any sort of socialist utopia: they were about a turning away from the politics of destabilization.
If deregulation is meant to unleash latent energy in an economy, re-regulation clamps down on it. If the voters start to see the economy as a runaway train, it’s only natural for them to support the person who promises to hit the brakes. In this analogy, conservatives who pushed for further free-market reforms sound like they’re arguing that a runaway train just gets you to your destination faster. (Unless it crashes…)
I hope it’s clear that I see the problem of stability and dynamism as one of balance, of figuring out where to set limits. And here Reno asserts that it is most important for conservatism to set its sights on creating cultural stability through “a convincing public philosophy of cultural authority.” (I’m surprised that James Poulos hasn’t commented on this part yet.) One could see this as just another attempt to get some attention for the social conservative agenda, but I’m inclined to take it as a philosophical point. If we don’t attend to our culture, we won’t be able to handle instability that would be otherwise salutary. And I don’t mean attending to culture through government; I mean working through cultural institutions.
That’s the part of conservatism I’m most interested in. So many of my most talented peers are confused, rootless, and often depressed. Extra instability doesn’t help: it just makes the future look bleaker. I hate to have to come back to MacIntyre again, but Stanley Hauerwas draws on him to make this point in his inimitable (i.e. hyperbolic) style:
“Alasdair MacIntyre, a philosopher, has suggested that one of the worst things our society does to the young is to tell them they ought to be happy. MacIntyre thinks if you are happy, particularly when you are young, you are probably deeply self-deceived. Your appropriate stance is to be miserable. What a terrible time to be young. Shorn of any clear account for what it means to grow up, you are forced to make up your own lives. But you know that any life you make up is not a life you will want to live.”
This is what is at stake in questions of cultural authority. And I’m by no means convinced that conservatives have the best side of the argument. But I think conservatives have to recognize that in the absence of a public philosophy of cultural authority, an obsession with tax cuts and aggressive foreign policy is going to keep losing. The trick is that cultural authority can’t be primarily created through politics.
I have to add: Reno only talks about what instability does to economic winners. I hope that he writes about the other side sometime soon. Even if you can make the argument that the material standard of living has been rising, the less tangible consequences of economic inequality can be crushing.
So that's my “The Future of Conservatism” post. You can see why I was so reluctant to write it…
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