“How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!”
Manly Poems, selected by the writers and readers of The Art of Manliness (via SB).
Doktor Luther is Back
What’s that roar of clarity and wit you hear on the horizon? It’s Doktor Luther criticizing the movies. Yes, he’s back, and he’s on Twitter. To wit:
- Lutherans who have not read Bo Giertz’s “Hammer of God” should be forced to wash Joel Osteen’s wife’s car for a year. http://bit.ly/bNggXW
- That also goes for the works of Lars Walker, despite his retrograde fashion sense. http://bit.ly/16Ujpg
- If you don’t buy this book now, I will find you and sit on you. http://amzn.to/bPXrBM Fascinating and sad.
- This guy created 20 rooms out of 350 sq. ft. He should be a Marvel superhero or something: Efficiency Man. http://bit.ly/bsRTvM
You’ve been blessed, haven’t you? Yes, you have.
Laws, Norse and Godwin's
I don’t think I need to expound here on what I think about yesterday’s decision by a U.S. District judge that California’s Proposition Eight marriage protection measure is unconstitutional. The judge’s name is Walker, which is (I hope) irrelevant. I’m not sure that it’s also irrelevant that he’s an open homosexual (appointed by the first President Bush—thanks again, George).
It’s tempting to call the whole thing unfair because the judge must have been biased. But if the judge were heterosexual, would that be less biased (though I’d expect a straight Ninth District judge to rule pretty much the same way)?
Any issue of gender has to be one where it’s hard to find anybody neutral. I don’t think we have a lot of eunuch judges available (though my knowledge of judges is limited).
But it reminds me of another issue involved in Njal’s Saga, about which I wrote yesterday. A common way of settling a legal dispute in the sagas (I’ve used it several times in my novels, because it cuts through a lot of red tape) is to offer “self-judgment.” Self-judgment is an option when you’re up against another man and have a sneaking suspicion you’re in the wrong, or that you’re representing someone who’s in the wrong. You can’t apologize, because that isn’t done in an honor-based culture. But if your opponent is an honorable man, it can be a shrewd strategy to offer him self-judgment—to say, “Set your own price on your injuries, and I’ll pay it.”
Offering self-judgment pays a compliment to your opponent (you’re publicly demonstrating that you consider him fair-minded. And if he asks an outrageous fine, he’ll forfeit some of the honor you’ve just paid him).
I don’t think Judge Vaughn Walker is someone I’d offer self-judgment to.
One further item—my Australian friend Hal Colebatch has a new column up at The American Spectator. It’s called “Don’t Be Scared of Godwin’s So-Called Law,” and deals with the common “rule” (which I’ve never known liberals to observe for themselves) that it’s always out of order to bring Nazis into a political discussion. Colebatch says, oh no it isn’t.
Try mentioning to a euthanasia advocate that the Nazi extermination program started off as an exercise in medical euthanasia. And as for suggesting that Jews and Israel are in danger of a second holocaust if Muslim extremists have their way, just wait for: “Godwin’s Law!” “Godwin’s law!” repeated with a kind of witless assumption of superiority reminiscent of school playground chants.
Worth reading.
Njal come back now, ya hear?
I’ve seen the artifact pictured above, in an exhibition. It’s one of the main reasons we believe the Vikings wore “nasal” helmets like the one I wear, even though none of that sort from the period has ever been found in Scandinavia.
I’d seen it pictured in books many times before I saw the real thing. Its size surprised me. It’s only about as big as a man’s thumb, an object somebody probably carved for fun out of a piece of antler, for no reason other than to pass the time.
A friend who reads this blog recently complimented me, in a personal note, on my “erudition” in Viking studies. I suppose I know a fair bit, when graded on the curve (I describe myself as a knowledgeable amateur), but I keep getting surprised by things.
Grim of Grim’s Hall has been moderating a reading of Njal’s Saga this summer, over at his blog. I drop in my two cents now and then, but I’m constrained slightly by the fact that a lot of things that confuse ordinary readers actually confuse me just as much. Especially when it comes to Norse law. Continue reading Njal come back now, ya hear?
Virtue Needs Cheaper Thrills
The blog of a Cuban who became an Orthodox Priest has a post on Calvin & Hobbes. Ahh, the virtuous life! What a dream of happiness it is.
The mud does not stick, this time
A few weeks back I wrote about a matter in the church which I attend, which has drawn national attention. I think it’s appropriate for me to follow that story up now, as our congregation has finished its investigation and the principle figure involved is speaking publicly again.
First of all, to name names, my church is Hope Lutheran Church of Minneapolis, and the subject of the story is our senior pastor, Tom Brock. Pastor Brock fought a long battle with The Very Large Lutheran Church Body Which Shall Not Be Named, over issues like women’s ordination, abortion, and homosexual marriage, before finally encouraging withdrawal from that church body and affiliation with ours a few years back. He has a cable television show, and a local radio talk show, in which he discusses religious issues. Through these outlets he has made himself fairly prominent, and indeed (as we have seen) a target.
A local homosexual publication called Lavender Magazine heard a rumor that Pastor Brock was attending a Catholic support group called Courage, a group for men struggling against same-sex attraction. A freelance reporter then posed as a prospective member, attended a meeting, and wrote an article for Lavender, in which he insinuated that Pastor Brock was leading a secret “gay” life. This move has been “viewed by many as journalistically unethical,” according to this AP story on the One News Now website.
Gee, ya think? Breaking the confidentiality of a Twelve Step Program?
Pastor Brock was placed on leave of absence while our congregation conducted an inquiry.
He appeared before the congregation again this past Sunday. He and members of the elders explained that he has been exonerated by their investigation. Among other things, they spoke, with his permission, with people in the Courage group in whom he had confided. They can find no evidence that he has been living a secret sex life. They are satisfied that Pastor Brock is celibate, which is all we ask of any man dealing with this difficult problem.
Reports that Pastor Brock was “back in the pulpit” last Sunday are technically true, but misleading. He did occupy the physical space behind the pulpit when he talked, but he didn’t deliver the sermon. He will be preaching again, but not right away. His intention is to resign as Senior Pastor but stay on staff, concentrating on the radio and television outreach that put him in the crosshairs in the first place.
I know Pastor Brock to say hello to. I do not know him well. But I shook his hand on my way out of the sanctuary, and told him he’s a hero to me.
My way or the Seg-way
Me on my Segway. Artist’s conception.
So I had a birthday recently, and my family gathered on Saturday to make a big deal of it. In their own, uniquely Walker way, of course.
The perfect Walker celebration involves finding an activity that’s a) something the subject’s interested in, b) fun, and c) slightly humiliating.
They found the perfect thing. First of all, it was a tour of St. Paul, the more colorful of our Twin Cities (there are two of them, reading from left to right, in case you’re wondering). Secondly, it was a history tour—right down my alley. Thirdly (and this was the clincher) it was a Segway tour, giving me (and, to be fair, all of us) the opportunity to look like dorks on the hallowed avenues of our state’s capitol.
It was a huge success. Honestly, my conservative, hidebound reservations about the Segway remain firmly in place. But it would be vain to deny that the things are easy to learn and a whole lot more fun than you think they’ll be.
The wonderful thing about a Segway is that it’s intuitive. You lean forward and it goes forward. You straighten up and it stops. Lean back (just a little) and it goes into reverse. You lean on the handlebar to go right or left. Because the machine senses your movements, and there’s no intermediate stage of controls and levers, it soon starts feeling like a part of you. When you have to yield it up at the end of your allotted time, you miss it, like an amputated (if numb) limb.
I hasten to add that this has not turned me into a “small is beautiful” greenie. The trouble with the Segway is that fun is about all it’s good for. When I ask myself, “What’s this marvelous device in service of?” the only answer I can come up with is, a showy toy for people with a lot of surplus money. It’s a cheap way (cheap in mileage, not in initial cost) to get around town, but most of us carry things when we travel, often bulky things. You can hang a backpack on a Segway, but that’s about the limit of its carrying capacity (I wonder if they sell a trailer).
My hope for the Segway is that American ingenuity can find a way to translate this cool technology into something actually useful—a new generation of wheelchairs, for instance. This is too good to languish as a rich man’s toy.
To my family, in any case, thanks for a very enjoyable day.
Be a Better Reader
The Iowa Review has a print interview (meaning it isn’t entirely online) with the host of radio’s Bookworm on training himself to read quick and thoroughly.
It Only Gets Freakier From Here
Author Terence P. Jeffrey talks with National Review Online editor-at-large Kathryn Lopez about his new book, Controls Freaks: 7 Ways Liberals Plan to Ruin Your Life.
LOPEZ: Why is a book published in 1910 important to you, Mark Levin, and the Social Security Administration?
JEFFREY: In Liberty and Tyranny, Mark Levin notes that Columbia University economist Henry Rogers Seager, in his 1910 book Social Insurance: A Program for Social Reform, laid out an argument for an American welfare state anchored in a social-security program. As Mark pointed out, the contemporary Social Security Administration is so taken with Seager’s statist views that it has posted his book on its website. Seager was the consummate Control Freak, someone who wanted to eradicate the pioneering spirit from American life, and he pushed not only for a welfare state, but also for eugenics — literally advocating the sterilization of people he believed unworthy of breeding. Seager exemplifies how modern liberals parted ways with both the constitutional and the moral traditions of our nation.
LOPEZ: Is the conscience front the most insidious? Or is the speech front?
JEFFREY: Yes, conscience is the most insidious. Liberals today don’t just believe they can force you to pay for the killing of someone else’s unborn child (and brazenly tell you they are not doing it), they also believe they have a right to teach your five-year-old kindergartner that same-sex unions are a good thing — without ever telling you they are doing it. There is a reason why liberal politicians like President Obama don’t like school choice, even if they send their own children to very expensive private schools. They see the public-school classroom as a moral battlefield where they can wage a 13-year insurgency to capture the soul of your child.
The wreck of the Narcissist
For reasons I’ll keep to myself (for a change), I’ve been thinking about growing old lately. That leads me to consider my whole generation, that fabled company known in the West as the Baby Boomers. I’m confident that future historians (I trust there will be some) will certainly rank us as one of the greatest disasters in western history.
The generation of Americans that survived the Depression and won the Second World War faced the post-war years with two firm goals—to have families, and to give their children everything they never had. The children they bore were (by and large) the most cherished, the most cossetted, and the most privileged in human history. Many (not all, but enough) were taught that they were the center of the universe, the most important people in the world. As they grew older, they were confidently informed that they were the smartest, best-educated, wisest generation the world had ever seen. They would, they were assured, change the world forever.
And change it they did. Continue reading The wreck of the Narcissist