Conservatively speaking

First things first: I have a column up today at The American Spectator Online: They Don’t Make Hate Like They Used To.

I was thinking of linking to a particular internet post today, and then I thought, “No. Too political.”

And it occurred to me to ask, “We’re obviously a conservative blog. How is being conservative different from being political?”

This is an important question, and I think Phil and I are generally agreed on it.

Political questions refer to matters of legislation and electioneering. Heaven knows we comment on such things from time to time here, but it’s not what the blog is about.

Cultural conservatism is a much broader concept. I was a cultural conservative back when I was still a Democrat.

Cultural conservatism means having a long-range view of cultural issues. The fact that an idea is new gives it no more than neutral weight. Newness tells us nothing. The fact that an idea is old disposes us toward it positively (though certainly old ideas have been proved wrong from time to time). That which has worked for our ancestors is very likely to have good reasons behind it, even if we no longer see them.

Ideas do not age.

I know what you’re thinking: What about slavery?



But the fact is, the basic idea that slavery is wrong is not a new idea. Abolition is a new practice in history, but the essential principle is the Golden Rule—do as you would be done by. No one wants to be a slave, so no one should make a slave of another. That’s been true from the beginning.

The inconvenient fact that, up until the Industrial Revolution, civilization was impossible without slavery kept most people from examining the matter too closely.

But the principle itself is one of those old, conservative ones.

Link sausage, 7-17-12

A few interesting articles that caught my attention today.

From World Magazine: Despite protests, Boy Scouts reaffirm policy on homosexuality.

“The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers and at the appropriate time and in the right setting,” Mazzuca said. “We fully understand that no single policy will accommodate the many diverse views among our membership or society.”

What an outrage. When will this benighted organization understand that a boy’s life is forever blighted if he misses the opportunity to spend a night in a tent with a homosexual?

From National Review: A Letter to Young Voters, by the great Dennis Prager.

But just in case you need an argument to take an older person’s thoughts seriously, ask any adults you respect whether they have more wisdom and insight into life now than they did ten years ago, let alone when they were your age. The answer will always be yes. (And any adult who has not gained wisdom over the course of a lifetime is not worth listening to.)

Which directly leads to my point: Did you ever wonder why people are far more likely to become conservative in their views and values as they get older?

This seems an excellent point to me. How do you answer it if you’re a liberal? Either it’s false that people get more conservative as they get older (which utterly defies all experience) or it’s false that people get wiser as they get older (and try telling that to the Boomers, even the liberal ones).

And finally, a Minnesota-related post, from Mitch Berg at Shot in the Dark: The Beatings Will Continue until Morale Improves. It involves a huge, disruptive light rail project going on in St. Paul right now, which (aside from bankrupting many small businesspeople, most of them East Asian immigrants) is forcing drivers to divert to other streets. What’s the city to do? They’ll turn one of those streets into “bikes only!” That’ll make everything better (it should be noted, by the way, that Mitch is an avid biker).

Joe has too much faith in Wahhabi transit activists. They’re a little like post-modern German artists, the type that glumly intones “Art IS destruction and ugliness” as they unveil their latest, “installation”, a dancing man clad only with a jar holding a gutted cat pickled in urine.

Like the post-moderns, the chaos – to drivers, anyway – is precisely the point. The goal is to make driving, and drivers, miserable. And to them, it’s no matter if you deal with that misery by jumping on the train, or by expressing your anger, fulfilling their prophecy that drivers are base, benighted, spoiled, arrogant and above it all.

Netflix review: Rebus

In the wake of the considerable pleasure I took in watching the BBC TV series, Luther (review further down the page) on Netflix, I went ahead and tried a different British detective show, a Scottish series based on the Rebus novels by Ian Rankin, of which I’ve read a few.

The main surprise awaiting the unsuspecting viewer is that the series, as packaged and presented on Netflix, is actually two series.

The original four episodes, from the year 2000, starred the actor John Hannah (whom you may know from the Spartacus cable series, if you watch that sort of thing). It hewed fairly close to the original books, presenting the dark, gritty world of lower-class Edinburgh, where Det. Inspector John Rebus works. Hannah’s Rebus is a tortured man, plagued by inner rages and a serious drinking problem (not the kind that TV writers add to a character as amusing color, but the kind that messes up both his job and his family life). The detective often makes serious mistakes, and his job security is shaky.

An interesting element is a few suggestions that Rebus retains a tentative hold on some kind of religious faith.

Then comes Season Two, which first aired in 2006. Not only do we have a new production team, there’s a new cast, new sets, and a new, slicker look. Even when Rebus stays in the slums, they look less depressing, more bright and airy. The Edinburgh of this series is one you’re tempted to visit. I wonder if the Scottish Tourist Board didn’t apply pressure to make that change. Continue reading Netflix review: Rebus

The 24th Letter, by Tom Lowe

I reviewed Tom Lowe’s first Sean O’Brien mystery, A False Dawn, a while back. I liked the writing (though a copy editor might have been profitably employed) as well as the characters, but felt the story was weakly constructed and fell apart toward the end. My report on the second book in the series, The 24th Letter, is that the storytelling has improved, but I still wonder that St. Martin’s Press would have purchased the manuscript. Author Lowe shows substantial progress in his craftsmanship, but he’s still writing at a high amateur level, in my opinion.

This time out, retired Miami police detective Sean O’Brien is contacted by an old friend, a Catholic priest. The priest tells him he has been told by a prisoner—who was recently wounded by a sniper while on the way to testify in a drug trial—that a man O’Brien himself put on death row for the murder of his girlfriend is in fact innocent. The prisoner will soon give the priest a written confession, detailing where vital evidence is hidden.

But soon both the prisoner and the priest have been murdered, and O’Brien, conscience-stricken that he might bear responsibility for the execution of an innocent man—works against the clock to unravel a convoluted mystery before the date of execution. Continue reading The 24th Letter, by Tom Lowe

Not Quitting Their Day Jobs

Dave Astor describes the gainful employment of many authors, not as professors and journalists, but as clerks and anthropologists. For example, Anthony Trollope worked in the British post office. (via Books, Inq.)

Night Vision, by Paul Levine

This wasn’t bad. Although I found things to dislike in Paul Levine’s second Jake Lassiter novel, Night Vision, I also found things that pleased me. So I may possibly read another.

In this outing, Miami lawyer Jake Lassiter, having (apparently) recovered from the tragic loss of the love of his life in the last book, so completely that he now never thinks of her at all, is called in by an ambitious district attorney to act as special prosecutor in the murder of a local female TV reporter, strangled while engaging in sex talk over the internet. Jake, along with Charlie Riggs, his retired pathologist friend, is soon embroiled in a serial killer investigation, and along the way Jake meets a beautiful English psychologist who becomes a romantic interest. But who can he trust? Somebody’s telling a lot of lies and laying a lot of false tracks. Continue reading Night Vision, by Paul Levine

Odd Interlude, 1, 2, and 3, by Dean Koontz


Such genuine trust, so sweetly expressed, bears witness to an innocence in the human heart that endures even in this broken world and that longs to ring the bell backward and undo the days of history until all such trust would be justified in a world started anew and as it always should have been.

There’s a large company of readers for whom a new Dean Koontz book is always cause for rejoicing. But more than that, a new Odd Thomas book is cause for double rejoicing. The wandering fry cook from Pico Mundo, California is Koontz’s greatest creation, one of the most perfect depictions of actual saintliness ever conceived by an author. Not the common conception of saintliness—stuffy and judgmental—but the actual, biblical kind—humble, gentle, and quietly courageous.

Odd Interlude is an “odd” entry in the series. It’s a novella, offered in three installments, One, Two, and Three, sold for Kindle at $1.99 each, partly to raise interest in Odd Apocalypse, a new novel coming later this year. As if we needed motivation. Continue reading Odd Interlude, 1, 2, and 3, by Dean Koontz

If Necessary, Use a Real Quote

Glenn Stanton writes about a popular quotation that isn’t something he actually said: FactChecker: Misquoting Francis of Assisi. Francis preached the gospel with words often, but he did emphasize the need for personal devotion before preaching, so that his true passion for the Lord will pour forth in his public speech and actions.

Netflix review: Luther

It is a fact generally acknowledged, that the English do cerebral television better than the Americans, and Americans do action better than the English. But the two things aren’t necessarily mutually contradictory, as you may see by watching the BBC series Luther, available now on Netflix. It was first recommended to me by Gene Edward Veith at his Cranach blog. You can read his thoughtful review here.

I’m not sure about all the theological conclusions Dr. Veith draws—it seems to me that biblical and Christian references are bound to show up in any literate script, even in our day. But I entirely agree on the narrative power of this superlative cop series. Continue reading Netflix review: Luther