Lady Baltimore.

Baltimore is a city that went crazy for civic monuments, and you find them in all sorts of places. When you find one of these old monuments in a neighborhood that’s going to seed, the effect can be almost overwhelmingly symbolic, concentrating all of the history, squalor, and hope of Baltimore into a big carved stone.

For a while, I thought that Baltimore’s Washington Monument did this best. Last fall, a van careened into the iron fence surrounding the monument, and now this grand monument in a historic neighborhood has fifteen feet of unsightly chain-link fence covering the gap. (It’s possible that this will get fixed soon.)

But walking to work this morning, I wandered by a Lady Baltimore statue, and I think this one really gets it. The Monument City blog describes it:

The Lady Baltimore loosely holds a sledgehammer in her right hand, while a shield, with the Battle Monument on it’s front, rests to her left. An anchor, gear, anvil and steam engine are represented around the base of the sculpture. Situated in a small park at the foot of Druid Hill, the statue sits inside the well-maintained Mount Royal Terrace Park. A plaque adorns the front of the structure, listing the Commissioner and Engineer of the Saint Paul Street bridge.

A few things:

• So there’s symbols for the major industries: shipping, health, manufacturing, etc.
• The statue’s nose is broken off.
• The plaque has been removed. Presumably, it was stolen and sold for scrap.
• The nearby houses are beautiful, but they’re starting to fall apart .
• The park is gorgeous—the roses are in bloom—but the noise of the nearby interstate highway is constant. In this park, you can feel viscerally the problems of city expressways.
• At one point, a nearby hillside must have had a view down the valley toward the Jones Falls River, but, as I just mentioned, I-83 is in the way now.

As I described this scenario to some colleagues, a lifelong Baltimore resident told me I was totally wrong about this monument’s adequacy as a symbol of Baltimore. He argued that the appropriate symbol is actually Ravens Stadium, which represents power and year-to-year dominance. I leave it to the reader to judge.

Busy week.

I had a pretty busy week, but all I really want to say is that Prokofiev's Sonata in A Major, No. 6 is unbelievably impressive when you're sitting ten feet away from the piano.

Stress solution.

Few things can alleviate the stress of the end of a busy semester like singing your throat out to Vee Vee on the back roads of the Piedmont.

Too cold to post.

People who live north of me can and should laugh at this, but it's too cold for me to post anything long today.

This is sad, because I wanted to write about MacIntyre, and about Socrates, and about Kierkegaard… and I needed a warm place to sit and get some thoughts down. But I'm wandering around and can't find an open building. It's only 40 degrees out, but my fingers still get cold as I type. So I'm going to sign off, go home, write some stuff, and post it tomorrow.

Happy New Year.

(What an awful first post of 2009.)

P.S. I welcomed in the New Year by watching Spirited Away, which was as wonderful as always. What did you do?

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.

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.)

“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.

Tonight: The Physics of Meaning / Butterflies.

Do I have any Triangle* readers? The Physics of Meaning are playing at Duke Coffeehouse, along with Butterflies. This will be good music.

(As far as I'm concerned, the goodness of music in North Carolina is sufficient proof that there lives the dearest freshness deep down things. On the other hand, the difficulty that TPoM has had in getting someone to release their album proves that we labor under the dominion of principalities and powers.)

Here's a Physics of Meaning video:



*If you're not “in the know,” I should explain that the vertices of said triangle are Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.

Bullet points.

What is going on:

• I am all tied up with math homework today. Posting resumes after tomorrow's midterm and the walk through the autumn forest that I've been meaning to take.
• The end of election season makes it harder to find a focus for these entries. For the past year or so, questions about government, philosophy, religion, and culture just hung there like delicious apples. But now the harvest has come, and I'm out in the woods searching for berries and (if I'm lucky) truffles.
• I'll be guest-blogging at John Schwenkler's Upturned Earth, starting on Wednesday. Should be fun, as I already like the other co-guest-bloggers.
• John Derbyshire's Prime Obsession is the best book-about-math-for-people-who-are-not-mathematicians that I've ever read.
• You guys should see the leaves down here. Really.

OK, that's it. Back to math.

Music redeems election season.

I'm typing this while enjoying this lineup, outdoors on a beautiful morning, for free. I love Chapel Hill's music supporters, and it's neat to see them so excited for music and politics. (I remember how crushed and depressed people around here were after the 2004 election. I think it's a good thing that Obama has energized people who thought they would never escape cynicism again.)

Libertarians and me.

I. The conversation I've been listening to.

The conversation that started with Nicola's essay and Freddie's astute response has wandered off in some fascinating directions. Now, in his post, Freddie drew on Rod Dreher's review of Mad Men, and now Mr. Dreher has posted his own contribution: “Does conservatism require God?” Dreher does a great job of summing up the parts of Freddie's essay that he needs in order to move the conversation forward, so I won't try to do it myself. Dreher eventually gets here:

“Anyway, the political problem for conservatives like me is that we live in a pluralist democracy where there is and cannot be more than superficial agreement on moral values. How do we integrate ourselves into the pluralist framework? It has been fairly easy for as long as this country has existed, because Christian morals, broadly speaking, have held sway in the public square. But that's rapidly changing, and conservative/traditionalist Christians are now and going to be a diminishing minority in this country. John Schwenkler, I believe, has suggested that libertarianism is the best hope for traditionalists, insofar as it is compatible with the American framework, and allows trads of all sorts a relative amount of space in which to live out their convictions in community.

“Bottom line, though: the Benedict Option is looking to be the only viable solution to a truly conservative/traditionalist social order. If that can only exist in America within a libertarian meta-order, then perhaps we should explore the possibilities of a new fusionism.”

Which is a very nice summary of where the whole Alasdair MacIntyre track seems to take us.

But that's not even the end of it! Will Wilson jumps back in to distinguish kinds of federalism and libertarianism:

“Don’t get me wrong, a new fusionism of neo-Benedictines and libertarians could acheive a great deal in the short term. I merely wish to caution us against the idea that they are philosophically compatible in the long run given the vast difference between their conception of the relationship between the individual and the state. On my reading, neo-Benedictines hold that individuals should regard themselves primarily as members of political communities, properly understood, even if the communities themselves should not regard their members primarily as subjects of political communities. A ‘hard’ libertarian cannot and will not accept that proposition.” [emphasis added]

And though I don't have much to say about it, I can't neglect John Schwenkler's entry in this stage of the discussion, where things get a little bit more specific. (Incidentally, Schwenkler adds an argument that everything is political, from family to food. If this means that liberals are right about the proper scope of politics and conservatives are right about the scale, could this make Schwenkler a small-government liberal? After all, we have so many big-government conservatives…)

II. The liberal and the libertarian.

I'm registered to vote in the Fourth Congressional District of North Carolina. This year, first-time contender B.J. Lawson is running on the Republican ticket against 20-year incumbant Democrat David Price. Now, Price is clearly an Old Pro, and as an elitist, I am predisposed to like him. Also, he's a Carolina grad. Dr. Lawson is clearly very sharp as well—he has experience in engineering, medicine, and entreprenuership. (Unfortunately, Lawson went to school “down the road” from UNC, if you know what I mean.)

For some context, read the Independent Weekly's story on Lawson. Lawson is running on something like the Ron Paul model; in fact, he has Ron Paul's endorsement. And he's raised almost half a million dollars for his effort.

I watched Lawson and Price debate at UNC last Tuesday (video here). It was not a situation where winning and losing on points really mattered (it was, after all, a campaign debate). Most of the people in the room seemed to be supporters of one campaign or the other. What was immediately clear was that Price is in the mainstream of contemporary American politics, and Lawson is not. But it's the mainstream that Lawson is really running against.

So I'm sitting there in the audience, not really persuaded one way or the other. Price seems thoughtful, competent, and well-positioned to provide the Fourth District with a voice in Congress. He makes a pragmatic case to the liberals and progressives of Orange County: if the Democratic Party is going to change things next year, they need Democrats in Congress.

Lawson runs against the system. He attacks Price for voting for the Patriot Act, for voting for versions of the bailout plan, for voting for compromise budgets. Price tries to make Lawson's charges seem outlandish: compromise is what legislators have to do (he doesn't say this, but it seems to be behind his words). That's government. And I think this is a reasonable case.

So what does Lawson want to do, besides vote “no” on just about everything?

From Lawson's website:

1. The Read the Bills Act: Congress should read legislation before it votes on it.
2. The One Subject at a Time Act: Congress should limit legislation to one subject per bill.
3. The Write the Laws Act: Congress should write laws and be accountable for their results, and not delegate rulemaking authority to unelected bureaucrats and corporate lobbyists.
4. The Enumerated Powers Act: All legislation must specify the Constitutional authority upon which it is based.

Windmills, I think to myself. Why on earth would the average legislator want to make his own job that much harder?

It's certainly inspiring when Lawson asks us to take back the government from the corporations, or to build a sustainable community here in the Fourth District. But it's hard to see how we can get there. Meanwhile, the pragmatic case sounds all right.

III. The stories I want to hear.

I want to hear the story of other movements in other parts of the country. I want to hear that if we start something here in North Carolina, it could happen elsewhere too. I want to hear that Lawson is not a Quixote of liberty.

I also want to hear the story of how we got to where we are. Sure: let's consider the ideals of the founders. But let's also be honest about their flaws, and about the things that made it necessary for the Federal government to expand.

First and foremost: let's not mince words about how badly the South ruined federalism for everyone else. When you have a whole territory that not only oppresses an entire class of human beings, but builds its economy on that oppression, what do you do? Especially when that territory seems to have the Constitutional on its side, first with nullification and later with secession? You change the Union, through violence. When liberty is abused that badly, it has to be taken away, or significantly changed at the very least. A story about getting back to the Constitution needs to revisit the Civil War.

Second: we have to talk about where corporations come from. There seems to be an enormous tension between Lawson's free-market ideals and anti-corporation rhetoric. Is it not the case that business grew before government did? In a perfectly libertarian society, what would prevent powerful businesses from gaming the system again? Am I wrong in thinking that it was not Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who considered the problems of enormously powerful businesses, but Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson? A story about getting back to the Constitution needs to wind its way through the Gilded Age.

IV. Don't get me wrong; I do like some parts of the story.

On the other hand, I would love to have libertarians in Congress so that they could ask the really tough questions about militarism and debt.

(One time, I tried to make up political bumper stickers I might actually put on my car. I can remember two of them. The first was “Be Careful!” which is not such a great political bumper sticker because most people would think it is about being careful while driving, not while creating legislation. The second was “Thanks for All the Debt, Boomers.” Not that I expect my generation to do much better.)

V. And back to theory…

I am finding myself in a position where I love the idea of what Rod Dreher is advocating, which I take to be a scaled-back, libertarian framework within which all sorts of communities can function. But it should be clear by now that I am not fully convinced by what I see in practice, i.e., in the sorts of libertarians who are actually running for office. And I have written this post, not because I don't think that libertarians (or strong federalists) don't have answers to these questions, but because I don't yet know what these answers are. Many of the libertarians I have known have been more concerned with the New Deal and the Great Society than with the Civil War and the Gilded Age.

Those of us who are attracted to theory are tempted to construct our cities in speech and measure reality against them. This isn't a bad thing: it can be a way to appeal to a standard of justice beyond the structures of the present moment. But, as Burke said, reality refracts the light of theory…

If this line of thinking seems too oblique and too far from the issues for the last few weeks of election season, well, it probably is. But outsider politicians and their supporters will have to address these issues at some point: why not now?

I guess that's enough for now. More later, perhaps.

Autumn in Chapel Hill

The leaves are just now starting to turn, and the weather is pretty much perfect. Thin clouds are smeared across the sky. Have I ever told you how much I like oak trees? Willow oaks are still my favorite. I'm going to drive back to Charlotte on Thursday, and I will take back roads, and leave the windows down.

It might just be that I perceive things differently now, or that I spend less time around hipsters, but Chapel Hill seems far frattier to me than it did when I lived here before.