I've come to enjoy reading his couple times a week column, posted in a couple places on the web, including NRO. I think he would be a fine president, though I do not know who I'll vote for. Here's the kosmic kwote from his piece published today:
This is our quandary. Memorial Day is about remembering. It's about remembering those who died for our country; but it's also about remembering why they believed it was worth dying for. Too many Americans, though, have never been taught our own history and heritage. How can you remember something that you’ve never learned?
A fantastic page with audio/video of Aaron's career, milestone moments, his 715th home run (listen in particular to Vin Scully's radio call), and articles on Aaron's cultural significance (which is immense and, somehow, still underrated). As Michael Bauman writes:
"If you were to pick the prototype person to break the most famous record in professional sports, you know who it would be? Henry Aaron," Selig said. "Why? Because of his class and his decency and his dignity. He has represented this sport so beautifully in every way."
Lost sometimes in the face of all those home runs is the fact that Aaron, breaking into the Major Leagues in 1954, still qualified as a pioneer. African-American players still faced built-in prejudice. For Spring Training, there were Jim Crow laws in the South. And even greatness on the diamond was no guarantee against bigotry. When Aaron was on his way toward breaking that most famous record -- Babe Ruth's 714 lifetime home runs -- Aaron was subjected to piles of vicious, racist hate mail, not to mention numerous death threats.
"He took so much abuse during that process," Selig said. "It was sad in so many ways. But he came through it, the same way he would accomplish anything else -- quietly, thoughtfully, and with dignity."
I quite like the following bit from Fred Thompson, possible candidate for U.S president, which is the end of a speech transcribed in full here:
... as Americans, our optimism comes not from an analysis of how things are, but from our belief that we can change what we see for the better.
We have road maps — at least two of them in fact — the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — to guide us. How can we look at the world without thinking about inalienable rights, and doing everything necessary to protect our country? How can we think of fiscal policy or even health-care policy without remembering the limitations appropriately placed upon government and the importance of individual freedom?
Talking about the nascent fan-mania in Milwaukee, given the Brewers' hot start of 24 wins and only 10 losses:
Bottom line: This is still a football market, but ... baseball is every day and a good team can captivate and energize a city. That hasn't happened around here in a generation. If they can play deep into October, the mania will be as intense as the Badgers' first Rose Bowl victories and the Packers' Super Bowl trip during the 1990s.
Baseball is everyday is the main point here. It is a game you live with. And since the 1860s, it is the game Americans have lived with more than any other. Camille Paglia rightly says that to understand military strategy, one must understand football. But to understand America — its incrementalism, its wide open spaces, its self-interest and perception-based underpinnings, its transcendentalism, its unpredictable predictability, its mythology, its trickery, its morality, its ambiguities, its relationship with weather, its many variations based on locality, its uneasy relationship with standardization, its love of lore and statistics, its odd yet earthy jargon — these come best through understanding of baseball.
For myself, it was my favorite game as a youngster (right about the time the Brewers last went to the World Series); it went away for me in high school, started to return a bit during college (in St. Louis and the storied Cardinals franchise); went away for the first 7 years of so of my relationship with Hannah (in part because we moved cities so often); and now, in perhaps baseball's best city, Chicago, my love of baseball, and interest in delving deep into its intricacies and analogies, is likely here to stay. I have little doubt it has something to do with having children, and feeling settled in Chicago. The game rewards treating it as a committed friend. And, even, sort of like family. There's a reason it is called America's "civic religion". Does anything bind Americans more?
New Mexico governor Bill Richardson offers up two very snappy, intelligently-produced ads. You wish all the candidates would make ads this fresh. There is so much creative talent in the advertising fields, honest I don't get why we usually get the stalest of the stale typical campaign ads. Take risks, candidates! If nothing else, you get free advertising from viral, embedded YouTubes, like below.
Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.
Republicans reject that view and, by a 7-to-1 margin, say the President did not know in advance about the attacks. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 18% believe the President knew and 57% take the opposite view.
Overall, 22% of all voters believe the President knew about the attacks in advance. A slightly larger number, 29%, believe the CIA knew about the attacks in advance. White Americans are less likely than others to believe that either the President or the CIA knew about the attacks in advance. Young Americans are more likely than their elders to believe the President or the CIA knew about the attacks in advance.
Good thing that the American founders were very suspicious of democracy, and populism in general. Because, as this shows, people can be just silly wrong. It is part of human nature, universally.
"A philosopher of art, in contrast to the philologist and to the maker of dictionaries, discovers that the identification of "creativity" with freedom is not hypothetical and that it is with widely received interpretations of freedom that he must deal. He finds, moreover, that the conception of freedom underlying speculation on art in all its phases — the artist's creativity, the autonomous judgment of works of fine art, and the productive imagination at work in the experience of profoundly moving works of art — is the theme of God's power and freedom to make or to originate the universe." — from the entry "Creativity in Art" in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas
I love "identification of creativity with freedom is not hypothetical", because it is a short road from "freedom" to "liberty"; and thus, to the ideals of America. I love, too, the connection here made between artist and God. On the latter point, it is crucial to understand "God" as a literary character that represents an idea that signifies a barely understood character of the human soul. In other words, through both outward expression and inward residence — as a unified Logos — our understanding of "what is the idea of God?" unfolds as genuine artistic freedom bound only by authentic representation of inward environs held in common.
Taking a nice three-day weekend, driving up to the Twin Cities tonight from Chicago. With luck, we'll get in before 1 am. But I don't anticipate being lucky.
Twyla's godmother, Arielah, will be our host for the weekend. We used to live in those them part, for four years, so we still have friends to see and catch up with.
Plus, we are going to take in the annual MayDay Parade and Festival, always put on by In The Heart of the Beast puppet and mask theatre. (See the poster for this year's parade below.) Hannah used to work there; and for several years, I was a parade/festival helper, setting up booths and stuff.
It is a big deal there. Over 30,000 people show up. Big community thang, ya know. Total lefty, hippie, progressive, countercultural extravaganza with lots of good food vendors. Will be great fun; and Twyla's, and Hall and Oates', first MayDay parade (first of many, I'm sure). We will be listening, on the car ride up, to the new Ella Jenkins CD I just downloaded from iTunes — Little Johnny Brown.
The study of both, if you can picture it, are endangered species in American universities. I previously posted about Shakespeare; now, according to a physics professor, quoted in this blog post, the study of gravity in university physics courses rarer than ever. Talking about American physics professors:
They explicitly deny the importance of gravity.
The reason for this denial of the importance of gravity and the Standard Model is that the vast majority of physics faculty would prefer to teach courses in their own narrow areas of expertise rather than teach the general physics which forms the foundation of these areas of physics. It is the same reason why Shakespeare is no longer a required course for English majors at most American elite universities. If Shakespeare were a required course, then faculty who actually understood Shakespeare would have to be hired to teach him and his works. But since there are fewer and fewer required courses in Shakespeare there are necessarily fewer and fewer Ph.D.’s in English who understand Shakespeare. And even more important is the drive of the English faculty to hire people who will support their desire to teach something other than great literature. A similar dynamic is occurring in physics departments in the United States. There is a push to hire only faculty who will teach courses only in very narrow areas of physics, faculty who will support the existing bias of the faculty.
GENEVA -- Centuries before it became a continent or country synonymous with wealth, power or freedom, ''America'' was coined by a Renaissance cartographer as the catchall designation for a world Europeans had yet to name or explore.
The name stuck despite its humble history and unsure start at a backwater French court. It celebrates the 500th anniversary of its baptism in the town of St. Die today, exactly a half-millennium after its first use on a world map.
Cartographer Martin Waldseemueller's map and accompanying 103-page book caused the hemisphere to be named for explorer Amerigo Vespucci instead of Christopher Columbus. Columbus believed to his death in 1506 that his four voyages had all been to Asia.
The state of Shakespeare in top American universitiesposted by MD
Not good. Of the top 25 universities, top 25 liberal arts colleges (both as ranked by US News & World Report), as well as 20 other schools (the Big Ten, and select in New York and California) — in other words, in 70 of the top university/college English programs in America— only fifteen require Shakespeare.
Fifteen! These are:
California Institute of Technology Catholic University Harvard University Middlebury College Smith College Stanford University State University of New York at Binghampton State University of New York at Buffalo University of California at Berkeley University of California at Los Angeles University of the District of Columbia University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University of Minnesota University of Wisconsin at Madison Wellesley College
I would argue this is a state of emergency if I already didn't think the great majority of universities and colleges in this country a profound waste of time and money, at least as their liberal arts education goes. But it is a bit sad, isn't it, that the greatest writer in the English language isn't required at every major university and college.
100% of the blame for this rests with Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, and the rest, who inspired a generation of American professors to ruin the Western tradition of Great Ideas.
For a thorough report that provides the above statistics, go to Vanishing Shakespeare and download it.
In the meantime, we must rededicate ourselves to reading Shakespeare, many times, to talking about the ideas in his works with others, and to insisting (and persuading) that our children and their children receive one of the most sustainable gifts of humanity to read and enjoy the drama and poetry of Shakespeare.
That, and raising hell with universities that don't require Shakespeare.
NASHVILLE — In a surprise move, a House panel voted today to repeal a state law that forbids the carrying of handguns on property and buildings owned by state, county and city governments — including parks and playgrounds.
"I think the recent Virginia disaster — or catastrophe or nightmare or whatever you want to call it — has woken up a lot of people to the need for having guns available to law-abiding citizens," said Rep. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains. "I hope that is what this vote reflects."
This is good; Americans have a 2nd Amendment for a reason — for the purposes of self-defense. The government, and its law enforcements branches, simply cannot be everywhere armed crime happens. Nor, I think, would anyone want them to be. For that would be a police state, would it not?
There are two aspects to my view. Firstly, there should be no federal law on this matter, in the first place; this is a matter for individual States to decide. It is reasonable to acknowledge that Montana and Connecticut can have justifiable differences of convention and driving necessity.
Secondly, I would argue (per Miller) that the age when we deem people fit to be soldiers is the age we for practical purposes deem them "adults"; and adults by definition enjoy the same rights and responsibilities as all other adults; which includes the right to drink alcohol legally; thus whatever the age for soldiery ought be the age for legal drinking. In our society, that's 18.
I encourage everyone to download and read the opinion. That (along with the language of the Act) is where all genuine commentary on the matter ought begin, and constantly reference.
For the record, the banned procedures in question are defined thusly:
an abortion in which a physician delivers an unborn child's body until only the head remains inside the womb, punctures the back of the child's skull with a sharp instrument, and sucks the child's brains out before completing delivery of the dead infant
I agree with the opinion that this is gruesome, barbaric, and should not be legal. And in what is the real issue at play here, I agree with the Court that it is constitutional for the Congress to have made a law against it. It is a deeper question (with regard to the operations of our Republic) than the mere question of whether PBA is barbaric.
I also acknowledge that reasonable people can disagree on this issue. But let those who disagree demonstrate comprehension of what was primarily in play, and what was not. Namely, the appropriateness of this topic for Congressional legislation was; whether PBA is merely "right" or "wrong" wasn't.
The suicide shooter would be unlikely, however, if he did not know that his act would be broadcast worldwide. The reason no one did this in 1920 was because news didn't travel as quickly and photographic technology was less advanced. The suicide shooter, like the suicide bomber, is performing for the vast audience that is the modern press.
There will always be persons among us who are born as performers, given to viewing themselves in the third person and indulging in the grand gesture. No society is without them. Unfortunately, there will also always be persons who happen to combine that trait with maladjustment.
The downside of being an advanced society knit together by a mass press is that there will always be persons of this kind who opt to act out their despair in a fashion designed to play to the nation, or the world, at large. The alternative would be if humans still lived as tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, where all members are intimately linked in a quest for survival and there is neither room nor motivation for existential angst.
There is a reason that Mass Media is so often at its "best" during suicide killing sprees, is there not?
Tell me again why it is at all important to ever watch anything of the MSM, again? For is not everything on it caricatured beyond reason?
I agree with Prager -- to hell with healing right nowposted by MD
And I agree with the other opinions he offers in his column today:
I believe that this early healing talk is both foolish and immoral.
It is foolish because one does not speak about healing the same day (or week or perhaps even month) that one is traumatized -- especially by evil. One must be allowed time for anger and grief. To speak of healing and "closure" before one goes through those other emotions is to speak not of healing but of suppression.
Not to allow people time to experience their natural, and noble, instincts to feel rage and grief actually deprives them of the ability to heal in the long run. After all, if there is no rage and grief, what is there to heal from?
The Jewish tradition, still observed even by non-Orthodox Jews, is to sit "shiva" (seven) days and do nothing but mourn and receive visitors after the death of an immediate relative. One does not have to be a religious Jew or even a Jew to appreciate this ancient wisdom.
It is not good for people to feign normalcy immediately after the loss of a loved one. People who have not been allowed, or not allowed themselves, time to grieve suffer later on. Any child who loses a parent and is "protected" from grieving by a well-intentioned parent who tries to act "normal" right after the other parent's death is likely to pay a steep psychological price.
Personally, I don't want to heal now. I want to feel rage at the monster who slaughtered all those young innocent people at Virginia Tech. And I want to grieve over those innocents' deaths.
This whole notion of instant healing (like its twin, instant forgiveness) is also morally wrong.
First, it is narcissistic. It focuses on me and my pain, not on the murderer and the murdered.
Second, it is almost obscene to talk of our healing when the bodies of the murdered are still lying in their blood on the very spot they were slaughtered. Our entire focus of attention must be on them and on the unspeakable suffering of their loved ones, not on the pain of the student body and the Virginia Tech "community."
This notion of instant healing and preoccupation with the feelings of the peripherally involved, as opposed to the feelings of the directly hurt and anger over the evil committed, are functions of the psychotherapeutic culture in which we live.
And, the other thing that bothers me about the "healing" sentiment, if you call it that, is how it is so boilerplate. People talk of "healing" anytime something bad happens, no matter the bad. Healing happens over time, not because we want it to, or because we do something about it. It just does. It is called moving on, as difficult as that usually is. Dealing with that difficulty, finding a way to accept it over time, that we can't control so much of what life is, as much as we'd like to believe otherwise, that is "healing", at least as I have seen it in my life. But it isn't "healing", as is meant when those in the culture call for it.
I linked to his spot-on Imus column the other day. Here's another fantastic column. Below, he's interviewed by Tucker Carlson. Outside of a slightly indiscriminate use of the word "terrorist" (though his point there is well-taken), again, this man is spot-on. I second Tucker's nomination. Talk about courage.
Prager, on Britain's lost greatness, and the U.S.posted by MD
Long excerpt from his new column, but worth the read:
The Labor government's decision was described well by the mother of a British soldier killed in Iraq. As reported by Reuters: "The mother of a 19-year-old British soldier killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq at the weekend said she would be 'very shocked' if any of the detainees were paid for their stories. 'If you are a member of the military, it is your duty to serve your country,' Sally Veck, mother of Eleanor Dlugosz, told the Times. 'You should do your duty and not expect to make money by selling stories.'"
That pretty well sums up the revulsion many feel at the British government's decision.
The other current example of Great Britain's decline is the widely reported (in the UK) decision of schools in various parts of that country to stop teaching about the Holocaust in history classes. The reason?
As reported by the BBC, "Some schools avoid teaching the Holocaust and other controversial history subjects as they do not want to cause offence, research has claimed. Teachers fear meeting anti-Semitic sentiment, particularly from Muslim pupils, the government-funded study by the Historical Association said."
No comment necessary.
But a word of caution: If Great Britain can cease to be great in so short a time span, any country can. All you need is an elite that no longer believes in their country, that manipulates history texts to make students feel good about themselves, that prefers multiculturalism to its own culture, and that has abandoned its religious underpinnings. Sound familiar, America?
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