To celebrate this not being a leap year, a variety of things for you today.

First of all, by way of Pastor Paul McCain of Cyberbrethren, a short but oddly fascinating film about calligraphy.

Pastor McCain says, “Type designer, illustrator and artist Seb Lester will revive the BlackLetter script that has been out of use for more than three hundred years. He will document his efforts on video, a gorgeous tribute to handwritten letters.” Link to original here.

From Mitch Berg at Shot In the Dark, a celebration of the brave men who sabotaged the Nazi atomic effort in Norway in 1943. I’m a day late with the anniversary, but I had to share it.

I’ll cop to it; after the 2009 “Nobel Peace Prize” award to a president who, as of the award deadline, had done nothing to warrant it, and has done even less since, my self-esteem-respect as an American of Norwegian anscestry has taken a bit of a beating.

But it’s on days like today – the 70th anniversary of the Norwegian raid on the Vemork heavy-water plant at Ryukan, Norway – that I get a bit of that old Norse møjø back.

Finally, a great little lesson in communication, from David All.

I’m not going to tell you the exact letters on the “vanity plate” on the car I followed on the way to work this morning. That could, theoretically, lead you to identify the owner individually, and it’s always possible I misunderstood them.

But the message of that license plate offended me morally, as I understood it. What it said sent the clear message that the driver did not have any children. Not in terms of lamentation, but as a boast – “I’m better than you are. I’m not cluttering the world up with toxic human beings.”

Now it’s hardly my place to criticize people for not reproducing, I who am myself a biological dead end. There are lots of innocent, even praiseworthy, reasons for having no children. There might be physiological causes, or psychological problems (my own case), or a person may have followed the call of the Lord to Kingdom service in a single state – as, for instance, in the case of priests and nuns.

But I’ve never heard anyone in those classes actually brag about not having children. Bragging implies a choice – not only a decision, but a decision of which one is proud. “Children are evil, and I have avoided that evil. I am no breeder.”

One of my college textbooks included a passage I’ve never forgotten, because it irked me. The author referred, with contempt, to Christian theologians (specifically John Calvin, as I recall), and called them “life-hating.”

His point, as I recall, was that the joy of life was identical with sexual gratification. Life-loving people were people who advocated (and practiced) the maximum amount of sex with the maximum number of partners, without consequences (the fact that sex without consequences was impossible in Calvin’s time didn’t interest him). Anyone who advocated traditional sexual morality – marriage and waiting for marriage – was obviously motivated by a deep-seated hatred for life itself.

Now, about forty years on, we can see the end of that thinking. The consummation of sexual “liberation” is not love of life, but hatred of life – at least human life. If life is free sex, then anything that interferes with sexual freedom (which babies certainly do) is anti-life. By this logic, having babies – extending life to another generation – is anti-life. To love life is to say that human life should end with Blessed Me.

For more on the consequences of such (profoundly life-hating in the true sense) thinking, see Jonathan V. Last’s new book, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting. I haven’t read it, but it looks like it’s worth reading.

Carlos Whittaker says, “In a society where people are now making art for the sake of fame as opposed to for the sake of art, this is the most refreshing documentary trailer I’ve seen in years. So many of us are pushed through the funnel of social media to create art for the sake of likes.”

He shares a curious trailer about a woman who kept her street photography in boxes behind a locked door, and then invites readers to share their secret arts.

You’ll forgive me, won’t you, if I don’t post anything tonight (except this)? I went home early from work today on account of sickness, and I’m interested to see what all this unpleasantness will develop into. I appreciate it, and thank you for patronizing Brandywine Books.

I got to thinking about freedom today. Specifically, about why it is that the Left hates freedom.

Oh, I know Leftists will say they don’t hate freedom. They love freedom, from their own point of view. Don’t they support freedom of sexual expression, and freedom from traditional social norms, and freedom to do whatever you want (unless you want to do something traditionally socially normative, of course)?

But in my view that’s not freedom, that’s distraction. That’s a three-year-old’s idea of freedom. When the Founding Fathers created our country – and even when European radicals first tried to establish communes and revolutionary governments in the 19th Century – the last thing they had in mind was the freedom to have sex with whatever gender, number, and species you like, or to run around naked in a public park shouting dirty words.

They wanted freedom to talk about important things. To hold a conviction and express it without fear of government reprisal. To do your best to make yourself wealthy (in America, at least) without a lot of busybodies telling you “You’re not permitted to do that.”

When it comes to things like that, wherever the Left rules, freedom gets reduced. Freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of the press – those must be subordinated to “sensitivity.” If you express the wrong ideas, it’s “bullying” and “hate speech,” and you have to be gotten out of the way. For the sake of the children, you understand.

That brings me to the second part of the meditation. Here’s why the Left actually hates and fears freedom.

It’s because their entire program is built on a falsehood, a lie about human nature. Ever since Rousseau they have believed that people are basically good. That if you just fine-tune the laws to provide the right environment, their virtue will blossom naturally.

This, of course, does not happen. It never happens. Because people are not in fact good.

The only way to avoid facing that truth is to clamp down on the people so tightly that they can’t actually express their true nature.

So freedom has to go. And it always does.

The Nuremberg Chronicles, 1493.

What’s my reaction to the Defense Department’s decision to permit women in combat?

I was surprised at how little it roused me. Not because I’ve changed my complementarian views, you understand. It’s just that in the climate we’ve entered into – in light of all the other outrages I see around me – this is neither surprising or especially notable. I’m reminded of a guy I used to know – a self-proclaimed heathen – who used to say (I’m pretty sure he was quoting someone), “I feel so much better now that I’ve given up all hope.”

I’ve achieved the serenity of realizing that the American experiment is over and (with sadness) accepting that fact. The people who look at what is not and say, “Why not?” (insufferable busybodies all) have won the upper hand, and they’re not likely to give it up.

Can we argue back, make our case? I doubt it. I could point out, among other things, that although this probably only means a few of the beefier feminists in the armed forces getting the chance to get their legs blown off in the short run, it will not end with that. Those who believe in absolute equality won’t be satisfied until 50% of the military is female, even if they have to lower the physical standards radically in order to achieve that. Not today. Not tomorrow. But eventually. And what happens if we have a national emergency and reinstate the draft? How can the egalitarians justify a draft for males and not for females? No, your daughters – even the small, gentle ones who get sick at the sight of blood – will have to be drafted on the same basis as men. Eventually.

We can’t make our case anymore, because cases don’t get made anymore. Anywhere. In any area of life. I’ve had the experience more and more frequently with the years (I expect you’ve had the same) that when you try to make a point in an argument with someone, their response is not, “You’re wrong and here’s why,” but “Why do you hate me?”

It’s all about feelings in the world now. A vast, bottomless sea of raging emotions, where every soul battles to dominate all the others by appealing to the unassailable superiority of its own feelings over everybody else’s feelings. Our world is ruled by passions; we have become like the dumb beasts that know only what they feel. The ancient Stoics, without the benefit of Jewish or Christian Scriptures, realized that the happy life is the life not ruled by passion.

I expect a lot of blood will flow before we learn that lesson over again.

“The Pinch of Poverty” by Thomas B. Kennington (1856-1916)

Like many of my generation, I grew up with parents who had stories about the Great Depression. My mother, in particular, had experienced genuine want, cold, and hunger.

There was one thing she said again and again. “We often had to wear patched clothes. But they were always clean. My mother made sure of that.”

Mom was harkening back to a social phenomenon that began in the 18th and 19th Centuries, largely (but not entirely) motivated by Christian pietism – the ideal of the Honest Poor.

Nowadays we’re so accustomed to being told that the poor are naturally virtuous that we don’t see how shocking that ideal was in its time. Jesus Christ, of course, had said “Blessed are the poor…” but the full quote is “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” a rather different thing. The disciples were expressing more conventional wisdom when they responded to Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler (Matthew 19). “It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” He said, and His disciples “were greatly astonished,” asking, “Who then can be saved?”

The disciples were expressing what most people have believed throughout history – that wealth and virtue went hand in hand. Everyone understood that poor people sometimes had to steal to survive, but if a rich man – who could presumably afford to be honest – didn’t have an easy road to heaven, what chance did regular joes like they have? Continue reading Poor but honest thoughts →

It was a late summer afternoon in Minneapolis. The year was 1980. Business had been quiet at the Hiawatha Motel (not its real name). I was working the afternoon shift. Motel clerking was a good job for a student. The money wasn’t great, but it was only a short distance from my apartment, and I could sit at the desk and just read a book with a clear conscience. I’d have to do my end-of-shift report in a few minutes.

The door buzzer went off and a young man came in. He wore jeans and a tee-shirt, and a short jacket. I couldn’t see his eyes well because he was wearing a blue bucket hat pulled down, but the rest of his face was long. Kind of horsey.

He stepped up to the counter, pulled a semi-automatic pistol (about a .38, I thought), and said, “Open the door.”

This was where I nearly got myself killed. I thought he said, “Open the drawer,” meaning the cash drawer under the counter. I realized later, when it was all over, that he could have easily thought I was going for a gun, and plugged me right there. But when I pulled the drawer open, he repeated himself. “Open the door!” Then I heard his friend rattling the knob of the office door to my left.

I opened the door for him and stepped back, my hands up. Both young men came in, and the guy with the gun said, “We want money and drugs. Give us all you got.”

“There’s no drugs here,” I said. “The money’s there.” I pointed to the open cash drawer.

The sidekick went for the money, while the gunman repeated, “Where’s the drugs?”

“There’s no drugs here.”

At that point someone else stepped into the office. It was my relief, the guy on the next shift. Another student, somewhat younger than me. He raised his hands too, and the gunman gestured us back into the unoccupied manager’s apartment behind the office.

“Get down on your faces,” he said. We did, side by side on the carpet. The gunman told his sidekick to find something to tie us up with.

While waiting, the gunman said, “We just want money and drugs. Nobody needs to get hurt.”

I told him there weren’t any drugs, but otherwise didn’t argue.

His friend came back after a minute with a couple power cords from electrical devices. They tied our hands, and the guy with the gun held it to each of our heads in turn, asking one last time for drugs. I said once again that there weren’t any drugs there. “Let’s kill ‘em,” said the sidekick.

“Nah,” said the gunman. “They’ll be good. You guys’ll be good, won’t you?”

We said we’d be good.

They twisted my high school class ring off my finger, and took my relief guy’s watch. “You stay here for half an hour,” the gunman said. “We’ll be watching. If you get up before half an hour we’ll kill you.”

Then they left.

We lay there not saying much for a few minutes.

“I think we can get up now,” I said. “Can you help me get untied?”

“I’ve got some friends coming in a few minutes,” the relief guy said. “They’ll untie us.”

I got up and looked around in the office. The relief guy stayed where he was. I struggled with my bonds, but couldn’t get loose. Shortly the relief guy’s friends did show up, and they untied us and I called the police. And the owner.

After that, cops, and telling the story. Finally I went home. Didn’t sleep well. I was pretty shaken for a few weeks. Felt like a target. I loaded up my replica Civil War Navy Colt and wore it under a sport coat for a couple weeks when I went to work. I’m pretty sure that was illegal, but the wisdom of the saying, “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six” had taken on new meaning for me.

And never – never – for one split second did I waver in my support for the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Trevin Wax draws out four points from The Intellectual Life, by A.G. Sertillanges, which may resonate with you.

1. Recognize the Intellectual Life as a Calling.
2. Submit Your Intellectual Pursuits to Truth.
3. Understand the Intellectual Life Requires Considerable Discipline.
4. Remember the Goal of the Intellectual Life is Virtuous Character.

Read his thoughts on these points here.

The fate of the Greenlanders has long interested me, in a melancholy sort of way. If you’re not familiar with the story, the place was settled by Erik the Red around 986, and prospered for a time as an exporter of valuable merchandise like walrus hides and narwhal ivory. Eventually, after Norway become a province of Denmark in the 14th Century, interest in the far-off colony waned, and the last ship sent to check on them, after a long period of neglect, found the settlement deserted.

There’ve been many theories over the years about what happened to them, most of them pretty depressing. Some thought they assimilated with the Inuit and lost their identity (unfortunately there’s no evidence for this). Others thought they succumbed to the Black Death or some other disease, or just starved due to the increasingly cold weather. Some historians pointed a finger at Portuguese or English pirates, suggesting they kidnapped all the Icelanders and sold them as slaves. (I particularly hated that theory.)

Now there’s a theory being touted as new (though I’m pretty sure I read something very like it in a book years back). It’s suggests that the Icelanders got sick of having nothing but seal to eat, and went back to Iceland and Norway. They seem to have some evidence. This article doesn’t mention it, but I’ve read elsewhere that they suggest that land was opening up in Iceland and Norway at the time, and the Greenlanders just went back there.

I’m all for this theory. Maybe some of the dozen or so people I’ve met in my life who informed me they were direct descendents of Leif Eriksson were right. Right by accident, but right nevertheless.

Tip: Archaeology in Europe.

In other news about frigid places where nobody wants to live, somebody over at Threedonia mentioned the Minnesota state flag in comments today:

Continue reading Cold news →