Parts I and II are posted, over at The Woodshed. You’ll want to be up to speed in the conversation between myself and Dan Allison by the time Part III goes live, in the soon future. So check out what’s posted now, and stay tuned for the finale.

Obama said directly in debate #2 that Health Care is a Right. His words were clear. He thinks Health Care is a Right, unambiguously. But let’s think about this. What could that mean? What does it mean, in America, to have a Right? For the answer, one must consult the controlling documents of American Rights: the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

Let’s take the latter first. Does anything like a “Health Care Right” appear anywhere in the Constitution? I would challange anyone to make a case that such a right appears anywhere. Not in the Preamble, not in the Articles, and not in any of the Amendments (which include the Bill of Rights). Unless Obama is prepared to advocate the amending of the Constitution, as it stands, there is no Right for Health Care anywhere in that document. Or, put another way, the U.S. Constitution does not support Obama’s statement.

Now, what about the Declaration of Independence?  Well, there is no expressly stated Health Care Right in that document. But what the document does do is establish the basis for how we think about “Rights”. It happens in the 2nd paragraph:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, . . .

Translated: We Americans believe Rights come from God, and the role of government is to protect those Rights.

Let me put this another way: contrary to common perception, the government does not create new Rights. Instead, the government is to serve as protector, as steward, as guardian, as conservator, of Rights that only — only — come from God. Note, too, the language of the Bill of Rights: it is not, “Government establishes a Right of free expression,” but rather, “Government shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech”. The wording is crucial: it is written in the negative, rather than the positive. That means government does not establish the Right, but instead establishes precedence for not removing the Right. The difference between the two is subtle, but profound.

That, my friends, is the deal if you are an American. The only Rights we have come from God, and the purpose of government is to protect those Rights. Absent some popular revolt that determines that the Declaration of Independence is not a controlling document for the operations of the United States, that will continue to be the deal if you are an American, forever.

Thus we conclude: the Declaration of Independence does not support Obama’s statement.

What then is this statement, if it is unsupported by the controlling documents of this country? It is not a statement of Truth (for if it were, the documents would support it).

The only other option is that it is a statement of Opinion. Further, an incorrect Opinion, based upon the reasoning above.

Now, tell me, if something was indeed a Right, would it of Truth or Opinion? I mean, if we are to regard Rights in America as something sacred, deserving of protection by the government, would it not be something more than Opinion? Look at the other things we regard as Rights: free speech, practice of religion. Are these supported by mere Opinions? Hardly.

And, now think of this: are we to suppose the Health Care is a God-given Right? That, somehow in the annals of human history, we have missed the truth that God intends people to have Health Care, like they have the Right of Free Speech?

Um, I don’t know you about, but that strikes me as bizarre. For if God intended Health Care as a Right, the human body would not be the imperfect machine that it is. Just think of the strange logic here: God, the necessary being at the root of all life, creates humans as beings prone to sickness, maladies, and in all cases, our fate is death, yet at the same time, Health Care is a God-given Right? How would that make any sense, at all?

So, not supported by the Constitution; not supported by the Declaration; not God-given. How again, Mr. Obama, is Health Care a Right?

Me have strange feeling that Obama just made it up to get the votes of people who don’t understand American principles and dig idiot compassion as a quasi-religion. But then again, me crazy.

Update: McCain’s answer in debate #2 was that Health Care is, not a Right, but a Responsibility. I agree, for reasons I’ll go into in a future post.

Update 2: Here’s Stefan Beck making many of the same arguments I make above against Obama, and in fewer words. Key moment:

Here, for reference, is The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy on the first ten amendments to the Constitution, in full: “Among other provisions, they protect the freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, and the press (see First Amendment); restrict governmental rights of search and seizure; and list several rights of persons accused of crimes (see Fifth Amendment).”

What the rights enshrined in these amendments have in common is that they pertain to things that cannot be taken away: speech, press, assembly, arms, protection from quartering of troops, protection from search and seizure, due process, fair trial, protection from cruel and unusual punishment, and states’ rights. Freedom of the press and the right to bear arms, for example, do not entitle you to free printing presses or guns.

Health care is provided by doctors. No one can be forced to practice medicine. No one, having learned to practice medicine, can be forced to treat you. ER physicians are required to treat all comers only in the sense that they can lose their jobs if they don’t. I’ve never heard it convincingly argued that one can have a “right” to a commodity produced by someone else. (Does one, by extension, have a standing “right” to treatments not yet developed?)

Just a couple two pictures, taken at the beginning of September from our all-heirloom backyard garden. Various of our tomatoes, as well as our popping corn, green beens, black beans, and speckled cranberry beans. Photo taken by Hannah.

A good quote from Nicola Karras (hat tip, Politics of Scrabble):

The fundamental political problem, I’ve concluded, is in how we think about the state. If we look to it as arbiter of legitimacy, safety, or morality, we have already neglected the sources of real meaning in our lives. State intervention is dangerous not because it’s “coercion” (I don’t mind coercion), but because of its inhumanity. The more we depend on government, the less connection we have with one another.

Fundamental indeed: the Libertarian hinges one way, the Progressive the other, which is why, as I’ve said, political matters boil down to these opposing poles. And the blessing of America is that get to make this choice, in the first place. In the case of Liberty, the medium is the message.

And how true it is: that by looking to centralized government for validation, we neglect the sources of real meaning in our lives — our family, friends, neighborhood, civic associations, and town, primarily. Centralized government is, at root, a largely abstract entity, built upon a bureaucracy. But for some people, it is the gold stamp.

Is it really a coincidence that, over the last 100 years, the rise of centralized government in America coincides with the loss of civic engagement, of knowing well your neighbors, of the so-called “hunkering down” phenomena?

It would probably surprise some of my readers to hear that, in fact, I don’t consider myself a Republican. Longtime, intelligent readers of my blog would probably know why I don’t consider myself a Republican (or, for that matter, a Democrat). But for others, let me just remind you of a couple things. Call them my ideals, if you like. (This post is a response to various emails I’ve received over the last year.)

1) I do consider my views to be, most generally, in Conservative land, and most specifically, Libertarian (and most accurately: Classical Liberal). If you in 30 words or less cannot define Libertarianism accurately, then you have no business coming to a conclusion about my views or ideals. You also might be interested to know that I don’t consider my temperament to be Conservative much at all. (And 99% of my friends are Liberals and Democrats.)

2) In the past election (2006) my votes were half for Democrat candidates, half for Republican candidates. It is called having an open mind and judging a politician holistically, and not by lemming-like party affiliation. If you did not know my voting record (which I have written about on several occasions), then you have no business coming to a conclusion about my view or ideals.

3) One does not vote for policy views, directly. One votes for people, who of course have policy views, but also have a general outlook on, in this case, America and American ideals found most resonantly in the Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers, and the Constitution. Part of the equation for who I vote for includes the subtle echoes (or lack thereof) with those documents with what a candidate says or implies. If you don’t understand those documents, and the ideas evoked therein, you have no business coming to a conclusion about my views or ideals.

4) The main poles of American politics are, on one end, Libertarianism, and on the other, Progressivism. If you don’t understand those terms thoroughly (and I’ve tried on this blog to discuss both), you have no business coming to a conclusion about my views or ideals.

5) While these two poles tend to overlap more with one of the two major political parties in this country, that overlap is far from absolute. For further evidence, see #2.

6) While our MSM, and the psychpaths that love them, tend to think otherwise, I personally think that National Politics are the least significant level of government in this country, after, in order: 1) the individual, 2) the family, 3) the neighborhood, 4) the town/municipality, 5) the county, and 6) the state. If you think the presidency is not last, but rather first, you frankly do not understand the “America” of America and are in no position to judge my views or my ideals.

7) Hence, I am philosophically a Libertarian, and in practice (i.e., how I vote), an Independent.

And, once again, the two policy reasons I’m voting for McCain/Palin (and, yes, I have heard her speak and I like the way she talks, thank you), are their proposed reforms of Medicine and Agriculture. It is a pity they don’t have much in the way of Education reform proposed (the third and final of the human disciplines that cooperate with Nature). But two out of three isn’t bad, especially since Obama/Biden are 0-3 on those issues, from my perspective. And if you don’t understand why the Nature-cooperating disciplines are more important than all other disciplines (or at least the arguments in favor of that conclusion) then you have no business coming to a conclusion about my views or ideals.

9) The personal is not political; big government never helps children or the arts in the long run; and it really isn’t my fault that progressivism is built on idiot-compassion.

p.s. Please excuse the rant. I rarely do one — once every other blue moon, I would estimate — but I guess it was time. A man can take only so many moments of narrow-minded labeling.

Beyond what I’ve said before, which I stand by, Obama is offensive because, in a simple phrase, he fears choice. He wants the government to make the fundamental choices for Americans when it comes to medical insurance. That, in and of itself, is fundamentally anti-American. Our ancestors fought a war against this kind of top-down tyranny.

And the thing is, Obama doesn’t even show understanding of the actual problem. The current system is the problem (we all agree), but Obama blames insurances companies when in fact blame is better put towards the various state governments that, top-down again, impose costs on people. Meaning: currently, individuals don’t have the full panoply of choices available to them.We are already forced to pay for things we don’t need or will never use: Obama will sustain rather than reform thatt. All because, one is compelled to conclude, Obama doesn’t want regular people to have choices that aren’t decided for them by bureaucrats in Washington.

Michael Cannon, writing in the New York Post, elaborates:

[In the] presidential debate, . . . Barack Obama told me how dangerous it would be to let me buy only the health-insurance features that I need.

Yet the fact that we can’t do that is a big reason why an estimated 46 million Americans lack health coverage.

For example, thanks to lobbying by chiropractors and the like, the average state requires you to buy 38 “mandated benefits,” like it or not.

A bigger problem are regulations that require you to pay higher premiums so that others can wait until they are sick to purchase insurance. Those “community rating” laws generally tax the young to subsidize the old - who have more money to begin with.

New York, New Jersey and other 19 states impose such laws. University of Pennsylvania economist Mark Pauly finds that they drive healthy people from the market, increase the number of uninsured - and do little to boost coverage for the sick.

Overall, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that state regulations boost premium costs an average of 15 percent.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to choose the features of your health policy, just like your auto insurance?

On my god, What A Thought.

Cannon continues by shining light on the straight-up lie Obama told in the 2nd debate (that medical insurers would behave like credit card companies):

But Obama sees choice as dangerous. He fears that “where there are no requirements for you to get cancer screenings,” no insurers would offer such coverage. The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn echoes, “Less cancer screening under McCain’s plan? Actually, yes.”

Nonsense. California doesn’t mandate colon-cancer screening, yet Kaiser Permanente of Northern California is a leader in such research and boasts the most aggressive screening program in the country.

Michigan doesn’t mandate prostate or cervical cancer screening, yet six of the University of Michigan’s seven insurance offerings cover both. That’s where Cohn gets his insurance, so I’ll bet him a fancy dinner that he has coverage for both, even without a mandate.

Cohn fears California consumers couldn’t enforce protections crafted in, say, Delaware. Evidently, he’s never heard of contract law, which lets California courts do just that.

Cohn frets that scam artists would cheat unwitting consumers - yet McCain’s proposal would make fraud less likely. If insurance commissioners spent less time fixing prices and telling law-abiding people what kind of health insurance to buy, they’d have more resources to prosecute bad guys.

Amazing that people think Obama knows what he is talking about. But this is a matter of style of substance. Obama isn’t some paragon of “complex thinking” and “common sense”. He is an ideologue, trying to put a nice-looking sheen over a massive government takeover and centralization of power. He has learned the rhetoric of seeming normal and smart. “Universal health care” has been the dream of the Left for decades, and it is born of the same well meaning but fundamentally anti-American, anti-Liberty impulses that have ruined the state of Education in America. All by pretending — yes pretending — that he is a “reformer”. What rubbish, as Cannon concludes:

In the debate, Obama said, “We have a moral commitment as well as an economic imperative to do something about the health-care crisis.” Indeed we do. The first step is to treat consumers like adults, and stop letting special interests and the government choose our health insurance for us.

If intelligent Americans can’t understand what is at stake in the medical insurance debate — fundamentally, the age-old battle between individuals/family and the State — then it is because of willful ignorance (i.e., you are an ideologue as well) or you simply haven’t thought through enough the actual consequences, especially unintended consequences, of centralized intrusion into your personal medical decisions.

Start thinking it through, already. Start with this question: why, precisely, am I not able to decide what kind of protection I need when I have a serious illness/injury? Why pass the buck?

This is a passage of Eliot’s that is often reflected upon by Marshall McLuhan:

What I call the “auditory imagination” is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word: sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end. It works through meanings, certainly, or not without meanings in the ordinary sense, and fuses the old and the obliterated, and the trite, the current, and the new and the surprising, the most ancient and most civilized mentality.

In other words, integral consciousness:

. . . If John Dewey is right, and in each of the great works of art are rooted in everyday experience that emerge through several factors as a unity of profound experience, then let our own experiences as working artists swim in the integral tradition, and let our creative works respond to the waves that call forth the timeless dilemmas of human condition, no matter our technological acuity. Let us be humble to our Humanities tradition, so that our works can boldly unify old and new, as living intuition that, when properly rooted, never actually dies. And let it not be theory, but the creative works of the Humanities and especially the arts, that are truly metaphysical.

So far, our choice to Classically Educate our children has been the right one. One reason is because the Classical approach bundles disciplines. What does this mean? In means that in a single activity, multiple disciplines of learning are trained. In other words, many birds hit with one stone. Here’s an example.

In the Latin Centered Curriculum, author Andrew Campbell suggests the daily activity of Family Read Aloud. Sounds straight forward enough: find time each day, from 15 minutes to, say, an hour, to sit together as a family and either Mama or Papa read a story aloud for all to hear.

But look here at the opportunity to bundle:

For one, this is excellent family bonding time, where not only is the family together, but the family is sharing the same “story space” and, thus, sharing interiors amongst each other — this is the root cause of family togetherness. Further, the parents assume their rightful position as the inculcator of the child’s learning: with the story coming through the mouths and bodies of Mama and Papa, they become co-stewards of enculturation. And from my experience, kids really like this time (even if they don’t always outwardly show so).

For two, the ability to listen and process a narrative without pictures is enhanced. The child can learn from not only the words spoken, but the gesticulations and melodic aspect of the parent’s storytelling voice. Our society has too many talkers and not enough listeners, besides, and Family Read Aloud helps stem that tide. And, of course, storytelling builds a child’s imagination.

For three, say you choose the story, Olivia: you may not know this, but this story is also available in a Latin translation. This means that for classical education — defined fundamentally as the study of Latin and Greek languages and cultures — a parent can help the child get to know and absorb the story so deeply that once the Latin edition is studied (in due course of Latin study, itself), the child can make connections between the ingrained sense of the story and the Latin syntax all the more quicker and indepth. Numerous books/tales can function in the role I demonstrated with Olivia: Aesop Fables are a popular choice, plenty of poems can apply here, short excerpts of books of the Holy Bible, and heck, even Cat in the Hat has a Latin edition.

I could unpack the bundling more (such as to incorporate the story as a model for learning how to write), but surely you get the picture. A daily habit of activity (reading Olivia), multiple kinds of impacts on the child’s learning and being. Or in other words, the savvy parent can use the Classical Approach to foster what is a buzzword often cited without rhyme or reason by non-classically educated people: namely, interdependence. After all, is this not how the mind itself seems to work?

And I’m with him. He makes, actually, some very astute points:

Earth to most Democrats/Lefties/Liberals. Even one of your own — Camille Paglia, a lifelong Democrat — can bring herself to (gasp!) appreciate Sarah Palin. Quoted in full:

Yes, both Todd and Sarah Palin, whom most people in the U.S. and abroad had never even heard of until six weeks ago, have emerged as powerful new symbols of a revived contemporary feminism. That the macho Todd, with his champion athleticism and working-class cred, can so amiably cradle babies and care for children is a huge step forward in American sexual symbolism.

Although nothing will sway my vote for Obama, I continue to enjoy Sarah Palin’s performance on the national stage. During her vice-presidential debate last week with Joe Biden (whose conspiratorial smiles with moderator Gwen Ifill were outrageous and condescending toward his opponent), I laughed heartily at Palin’s digs and slams and marveled at the way she slowly took over the entire event. I was sorry when it ended! But Biden wasn’t — judging by his Gore-like sighs and his slow sinking like a punctured blimp. Of course Biden won on points, but TV (a visual medium) never cares about that.

The mountain of rubbish poured out about Palin over the past month would rival Everest. Read the rest of this entry »

The author, a pediatrician, weaves statistics and anecdotes (from her family, and those of friends and patients) to make a very compelling argument that a father’s relationship to his daughter is more important than one might realize or consider. I am 1/3rd of the way through the book, and I heartily recommend it to any father of girls.

Yes, apparently at 13 months, she has learned how to test Mama and Papa.

This longish article on the subject ends entirely kosmic:

Even with the great good luck of generous patrons, the artist is left where he has always been: attempting to master his craft, trying to narrow the gap between his talent and his ambition, alone with his mad passion, ill-rewarded if rewarded at all — a grant here, a small prize there — hoping to make a little dent in the world’s great yawning indifference.

Exactly right. And what for the fine artist remains: develop a local community of people who enjoy your work, and provide for them. The rest, if it luckily emerges, is gravy.

There is common misunderstanding, and advocates of centralized health care (”universal”, “single payer”, anything Obama) often repeat the mistake, whether accidentally or, more likely, knowingly. Democrats claim that the “Republican, free-market approaches haven’t worked, and are hurting the middle class” and it is simply wrong. An NRO editorial from this morning reminds us of the truth (emphasis mine):

Today, most Americans have only as many insurance options as their employer provides — which is usually one, take it or leave it. This is largely a function of bad government policy. Federal law says that if your employer buys your insurance, the money he spends (which is taken out of your wages) is not counted as part of your income, and so is not taxed. But if you buy your insurance yourself, you do pay taxes on the money you use. For six decades, this has provided an enormous incentive to opt for employer-provided health insurance and has kept a real market for individually purchased coverage from developing. This is an enormous disadvantage for those who don’t have the option of employer-based coverage or who have needs that aren’t met by their employer-based plans.

The Obama approach will exacerbate the lack of free market. (A plan for government-provided “choices” is, by definition, not free-market.) Obama’s is a stealth proposal intended to lead to a genuine federal government takeover of the entire enterprise of health insurance. Can anyone point to a single instance where a federal government takeover of an entire sector of American life worked out well? (Two emblematic answers: Education?, no; agriculture?, no.)

The McCain plan (which is the main reason I’m voting for him) wants individuals and families to have more choices.

Should I continue on my employer-provided plan?
If not, which option for private insurance should I choose?

The McCain plan levels the playing field. People like myself who have private insurance are paying taxes that people who have employer-provided insurance don’t. That is fundamentally unfair.

The McCain plan rescinds the laws that currently prevent medical insurers from offering insurance plans across state lines. That means that, as a resident of Illinois, I won’t be restricted to choosing only from the companies that operate in Illinois. An across-state-lines plan is part of what makes automobile insurance cheaper. And part of what makes food cheaper. And medicines. And clothes. And coffee. And computers.

The McCain plan further encourages savings, through Health Savings Accounts — which (along with a private insurance policy) are a vastly better way to pay for medical costs, because the relationship between money spent and medical services received are close to, if not entirely, one to one. And if in a given year you or a member of your family doesn’t need much medical care, then the money you deposit in your HSA doesn’t disappear, but builds up over time as a savings account that provides tax advantages.

The McCain plan implicitly says that, just like we don’t insist that our car insurance should pay for normal car repairs, we should not automatically expect our medical insurance to pay for routine medical care (sore throats, ear infections, and that sort of class of illness). Instead, we ought consider paying out of pocket for routine care, and only use medical insurance to pay for non-routine, more expensive medical care. That sort of approach will cause everything — the routine care and more expensive care — to obey simple laws of economics and technology, and over time get cheaper and cheaper as technology improves (the market for computers, for example, is allowed to obey these simple laws, and are far, far cheaper than when computers were first introduced).

Yes, the McCain plan is basic, common sense. It is not perfect, but it is better than both the current system and Obama’s proposal by an order of magnitude. We need to pass his plan into law, and then work to fix the remaining holes immediately. And the fact that McCain has the wisdom and courage to propose this sort of remedy for our current insurance mess shows, as much as any one issue can, that he has the intelligence and sense of restraint to be our next president.

An editorial from the Daily News. On double standards against Republicans, G.W. Bush, and particularly Palin:

George W. Bush appointed the first two black secretaries of state, but does anyone on the left regard him as a racial trailblazer? When I raised that question to another liberal, she dismissed the idea, saying Bush “never thought about race.”

That exchange took place three years ago, but I still can’t grasp her logic. How does she know what Bush thought? Why would it be more important than what he does?

A similar blind spot toward the political “other” explains much of the contempt for Palin. If she were a Democrat, her unusual life would be spun into a compelling narrative that would make her the darling of the coastal elite.

How she’s raising that lovely brood of kids, her care for that severely handicapped baby, her relationship with that rugged hubby who often cares for the kids and is part native, her unlikely rise through the political minefields, her tough knocks and gutsy performance on the national stage - all would be testament to a breakthrough of historic proportions we would be ordered to celebrate in the name of diversity and equality.

Yes, I know there are many legitimate reasons to vote against her and McCain. And I am not arguing for a second they should be supported, least of all because of her gender.

But couldn’t we all at least acknowledge Palin’s moment and what it means for America?

Apparently not. She must lose, the liberal narrative goes, because she is unqualified, case closed.

Some day, we will look back with disgust at the abuse Palin has taken and wonder how it could happen in this great nation, circa 2008.

In national American politics today, one contender for high office new to the scene is celebrated (by some) as a savior, and another new to the scene is derided (by the same people) as a joke.

All by the same group of people who talk the loudest about “diversity” and “equality”. (Versus the other group, which doesn’t merely talk, but walks equality and diversity.)

Only in America.

Truth hurts:

Isn’t this a tad bit harsh and extreme? Come on, this recession was not the entire fault of the democrats. Fannie & Freddie are not the entire answer/conclusion/reason nor is the bailout an end all fix. Did Bill O’reilly take over your blog Matt? (kidding)

Me: As I understand it, the root problem is people getting mortgages that they couldn’t afford to pay. As I understand it, the reason for that was legislation enacted by Democrats and later encouraged quietly by then President Clinton, that made it politically incorrect, as well as possibly illegal, to discriminate with mortgages (even if “discrimination” was only in the perception).

I’m totally open to arguments that the root problem is not the above. Of course I would be. But I haven’t found anything persuasive. As far as the ad, yeah, a bit harsh in the portrayal. But all politics ads are that way — it is, an ad. But, as I said, if the root problem agrees with the basic message of the ad, then it seems within bounds, at least to me. But I might be wrong!

Update: Here is Thomas Sowell laying out the longer case.

It is over at The Woodshed. Dan Allison and I continue our conversation about our understandings of “God” and how these relate to making works of fine art. In Part II, we talk quite a bit about Marshall McLuhan. And don’t forget to read the insightful perspectives offered by other POLYSEMY staffers. All in all — we hope you enjoy.

Long promised, we finally have it ready. Check it out!

The bumpers at the very beginning and end reflect the film’s recent acceptance into the prestigious Kids First! Film Festival for the fall quarter. It is a traveling fest that might be coming to your town, so be sure to check to find out. (Hannah’s film is part of the shorts program.)

Here’s the current film poster:

From his fantastic, The Medium and The Light, pg 64:

I never came into the Church as a person who was being taught. I came in on my knees. That is the only way in. When people start praying, they needs truths; that’s all. You don’t come into the Church by ideas and concepts, and you cannot leave by mere disagreement. It has to be a loss of faith, a loss of participation. You can tell when people leave the Church: they have quit praying.

Actively relating to the Church’s prayer and sacrament is not done through ideas. Any Catholic today who has an intellectual disagreement with the Church has an illusion. You cannot have an intellectual disagreement with the Church: that’s meaningless. The Church is not an intellectual institution. It is a superhuman institution.

The point, as I take it, is to meditate along with the prayers and sacraments performed during a Mass. Already, I firmly believe that learning how to meditate along with reading books of the Holy Bible is the best way to absorb sacred literature. To meditate, as well, during the Mass forms a continuum, a dialogue even, that makes complete sense to me.

One question: Is it easier to meditate during Mass when the Mass is not in English, but instead in Latin? My sense is that the answer depends on the person, but for me is probably yes, given my outlook on the endeavor. What the Latin in the Latin Mass means becomes an active, embodied mystery in real time, something that to fully understand is probably impossible, and to partially understand would probably take a lifetime, even with dutiful reading of the translation on the Missal. And, yet, the faith all along, that the Latin in the Latin Mass means not just something, but something profound — of time-free truths that beat the heart of the human condition.

Mark Levin:

Conservatism is more than a quaint belief-system to be embraced and debated over donuts at Starbucks. It is more than a list of talking points. It is the foundation of the civil society. The liberal uses crises, real or manufactured, to expand the power of government at the expense of the individual and private property. He has spent, in earnest, 70 years evading the Constitution’s limits on governmental power. If conservatives don’t stand up to this, who will? If they don’t offer serious alternatives that address the current circumstances AND defend the founding principles, who will? The House Republicans have done both.  And I, for one, thank them.

Amen. (Emphasis mine.)

“The foundation of the civil society.” In McLuhan terms, conservatism is a medium, the message of which is not the content (actual words/principles/concepts) of what you hear from conservatives, but is instead the myriad secondary effects that one can in fact call “civil society” — the innumerable relationships between all of the levels of government in America: individuals, families, neighbors, local associations, local municipalities, states, all the three branches of the federal.

Progressivism (i.e., contemporary Liberalism), is a medium, too. Its message is the whole swath secondary effects that include “cosmopolitanism”, “compassionate government”, and in general, government relationships not decentralized, as in conservatism, but rather centralized in a federal government that variously manages, oversees, directs, and even swallows the non-federal aspects of civil society.

American politics, in other words, is the battle between two mediums, and two entirely different categories of secondary effects. The battle is real, and only one side can win.

It is the classic logo from the 1978-1993 editions of the team. Currently, it is used for Friday night home games. This is a cool thing to do, but not enough. We need this logo to be restored to full-time use. There is too much character, too much history to it to not do so. This is the logo, after all, worn by Yount, Molitor, Cooper, Fingers, Thomas, Oglivie.

I still show this logo to long-time baseball fans who, for the first time, see “what’s going on” in the logo, with the M and the B. Just happened yesterday, in fact, with a co-worker. How many logos can be said to possess nuance to surprise even long time fans of the sport? This all adds up to a remarkable imbalance between the classic logo and the current one when it comes to poetry.

A note from a longtime reader. Below it is my response.

I wondering why the Goosedrops section is so one sided regarding Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin?  You’ve gotta be able to find some noteworthy articles regarding McCain/ Palin out there.  Palin’s been pretty funny lately - Couric interview as example.  Hell I watched Fey on SNL Saturday before catching any of the Palin Couric interview and thought Fey was taking it way out of context, but then I saw Palin interviewed and was blown away with how close both were.  Funny stuff.

Just one reader’s opinion.

I agree that Palin had some bad moments with Couric. The Russia stuff is just silly, easily mockable especially when Fey looks so much like her. I also don’t think the fallout is in any way commensurate with the fact that the other three — McCain, Obama, Biden — have at times also given incredibly stupid answers to the press. It is because Palin is new to the scene, primarily, at a time closer to the election than the others’ entrance/gaffes. And it is also because, since Palin’s entrance into the race, the campaign against her has been fundamentally sexist in orientation.

No doubt GooseDrops is one-sided. The reason is simple: I don’t like Obama at all (plus, more generally, I think progressivism is fundamentally wrong, about which I’ve repeatedly written). I think  Obama is pulling a serious masquerade job on the public, and I think that poses a far, far greater risk to American ideals than anything going on with McCain or Palin. He is acting like a moderate when his background suggests nothing of the sort. I’m talking about Obama’s entire personna, rather than Palin’s mere stretching of one aspect of her record, namely foreign policy creds.

The public Obama really rubs me the wrong way, and has ever since he starting running for president. Mind you, I voted for him for U.S. senate, with none of the reservations I have now. But looking back at footage of that race, especially the debates, it is striking to see how his fakery is present even then. That just goes to show you how good he is at making himself seem like another person, a person more acceptable to mass audiences. Then again, his opponent for the senate was Alan Keyes, so not looking nuts was significantly easier for Obama to accomplish.

If you are a True Blue Brewers fan at heart, that is. Ryan Braun’s huge homerun this afternoon is the biggest moment in the history of the franchise since the wondrous/heartbreaking 1982 campaign (I can actually still name most of the players on that team) that lost to the Cards in the Series. And catch the replay — pure joy.

Jay Nordlinger:

Obama has mastered the trick of coming off as perfectly moderate — even when your career and thought have been very different. Listening to Obama last night, you would have taken him to be a Sam Nunn, David Boren type. No ACORN, no Ayers, no Wright, no community-organizin’ radicalism, no nothing. He certainly knows what it takes to appeal to people in a general election. Then, once he’s in — if he gets in — he will govern as far to the left as possible.

My private theory has long been that the dishonorable way they won a late-September 1908 against the New York Giants, which later gave them an opportunity to win the 1908 World Series — their last — accounts for the “curse” (if there must be a curse, which is questionable to say the least) that dogs the Cubs. This report about Fred Merkle, which I just found, agrees with me.

(And note, this is Americana is perhaps its purest form. Which means it is Awesome.)

This passage by Russell Kirk (quoted in WFB’s Nearer, My God), speaks to me quite a bit, with echoes of my own sense of my own journey:

What I found in the Church was Authority. Catholicism is governed by Authority; Protestants, by Private Judgment. I had become painfully aware of the insufficiency of Private Judgment in the twentieth century — every man creating his own morals. In my search, over the years, for a sound apprehension of the human condition, I came at last to recognize in the Roman Church the elements of Truth, as sustained by two thousand years of continuity; by the wealth of wisdom in the Church’s pronouncements; by the lives and words of St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Gregory the Great, particularly, among the Church Fathers; by Acton’s observation, if you will, that no institution purely human could have survived, over the centuries, so many blunders.

I was not “converted” to the Church, but made my way into it through what Newman calls illation — fragments of truth collecting in my mind through personal experience, conversations, knowledge of exemplars, and much reading and meditating. . . . Mine was the god of the philosophers, Pascal notwithstanding (though I read Pascal, too), rather than the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Father Hugh O’Neill, S.J., at the University of Detroit, who gave me some instruction during 1953-54, replied in answer to an inquiry of mine that most people seeking knowledge of Church doctrines came to him out of some psychological distress or want. It was not so with me: rather, I still was seeking the source of wisdom.

If you associate the somewhat troublesome word “authority” with the notion of a “source of wisdom”, this passage becomes a tale of a person who, using Reason at every juncture, did not pre-decide to be Catholic, but rather chose it because all other choices failed to provide indepth access to this “source”. And even when you remember the (correct) adage that to fully understand great thinkers such as Shakespeare and the rest of the Western literary tradition, one must read the Holy Bible as literature (at a minimum), things further fall into place about what “source” in fact means.

From his Nearer, My God, chapter six:

We continue to ask . . . about the dogged insistence on the use of the vernacular to the exclusion of Latin. The substitution, I continue to believe, was grounded on wobbly hypotheses, as also the sudden enthusiasm for the Mass done not alone by clergy but there and there jointly with the congregation. For a long while, for instance, we were instructed to say the Indroit Prayer (now the Entrance Antiphon) together. Why? It is difficult to know the reason for joint utterance of prayers that are different from those which, like the Pledge of Allegiance, presuppose a communal approach. Is sufficient thought given to the demands, anxieties, curiosities of the worshipper who, before it all happened, might begin the prayer five seconds before, or ten seconds after, the celebrating priest — who, himself enjoying the privacy granted him at Trent, pursued his prayers in his own way, at his own speed, ungoverned by the metronomic discipline of a choirmaster? It used to be that there were stretches of several minutes during the Mass when worshippers were, so to speak, on their own, left to follow the missal, in English or in Latin; or indeed to ignore the liturgical stagecraft and ponder, muse, inquire, worship. This was no longer possible.

What a joy it is to transcribe WFB. What a prose stylist. And as I do, it is clear to me that to connect the act of meditation with Latin, itself, is no large leap. To learn Latin is a form of meditation (as is all forms of study). With ecclesiastical Latin, many more layers are added to the contemplation, enough to last a lifetime. And then to witness the animation of Latin during Mass forms yet another manner of meditation.

To those who bemoan the loss of meditation, or meditative state of mind, from religion, I say consider the possibility that, at least for Christian tradition, the loss of Latin is the root cause, or one of a select few. This means, of course, that the root solution to the problem is to learn Latin, and to help our children learn, as well. For parents intrigued by the possibilities of home schooling, start here.