Religion

Wicked, American thoughts on the 3rd of July

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This global cooling we’re obviously experiencing means we had a pretty dismal spring, but summer so far has been rather splendid. Tonight was exquisite, and there were dragonflies around Crystal Lake.

I love dragonflies. They look sort of like little airborne Viking ships, and they search and destroy mosquitoes. That’s my idea of a good neighbor.



Mitch Berg over at Shot In the Dark memorializes the charge of the First Minnesota Regiment at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863. It was one of the most remarkable battle actions in history, but it suffers in memory because it happened the same day that Joshua Chamberlain and his Vermonters* had that little dustup you saw in the movie Gettysburg.

I was a corresponding member of the First Minnesota reenactment group back in the ’80s, but I was unemployed at the time and unable to buy equipment and so become active. It was my destiny to be a Viking, and I guess that’s for the best. For one thing, it’s more authentic to be a fat Viking than a fat Civil War soldier.

Ever argue with somebody about homosexual marriage? Then you’ve heard the question, “What harm does it do to your marriage if two men or two women get to enjoy the same institution?”

This is, of course, a diversionary tactic. Obviously nobody’s going to break into your home and force you to become a sodomite. (Not right away, anyway.) The effects on individual families will happen over a long period of time. The immediate effects will be on your ability to do business and to practice your religion freely.

Think I’m being alarmist? Read this column from Patrick McIlheran in the Milwaukee Journal (link from Feddie at Southern Appeal). And don’t think it’s just businesspeople who’ll be forced to violate their consciences. It’ll be church schools and charities and parachurch organizations too. The churches themselves will come under the hammer a little later, but it’ll happen.

Note in particular the comments below the column. Notice how people are saying, in essence, “Homophobes are bad, and bad people ought to be punished.” That’s what liberal openmindedness has sunk to: “I believe in freedom of conscience for all people, as long as they agree with me. If they disagree with me, of course, they’re wicked and must be purged.”

This election matters, because judges matter. Don’t kid yourself about that.

Meanwhile (now that I’ve depressed you sufficiently), enjoy Independence Day!

*Correction: Should read “Maine.” Thanks to Bill for the heads-up.

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In which I ramble on freedom and liberty

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What does freedom mean to you? How do you define it? What does it connote? Think about that.

Now, what does liberty mean? Is it the same as freedom? Does it connote different things to you?

I ask in part because we sing an anthem with the line “with liberty in law,” and I doubt many people could describe what that means. Well, now that I look it up, many of us may not be singing that part of the song. It’s in that beautiful second verse which has a lot of objectionable material. Turn the children away from the screen for the following:

O beautiful for pilgrim feet

Whose stern impassioned stress

A thoroughfare of freedom beat

Across the wilderness!

America! America!

God mend thine every flaw,

Confirm thy soul in self-control,

Thy liberty in law!

Are we looking for liberty in law from our public servants? Do we want our government working for us by using other taxpayers’ money for programs we can’t afford or by allowing us to keep what money we can earn to use properly for ourselves and our communities?

I used Google to search barackobama.com for the words freedom and liberty. Freedom: 29,000 hits. Liberty: 14,500. Change brought in 1,080,000 of course. The candidate said, “When anti-choice protesters blocked the opening of an Illinois Planned Parenthood clinic in a community where affordable health care is in short supply, I was the only candidate for President who spoke out against it. And I will continue to defend this right by passing the Freedom of Choice Act as president.”

For johnmccain.com, freedom came in at 1,290, liberty, 305 (the change buzzword, 8,710). Here, the other candidate said, “Blessed with opportunity, and intent on the challenges of work and family, our own lives often seem too full and hectic to take notice of offenses that seem distant from our own reality. There is also the threat in a society passionate about its liberty that we can become desensitized to the dehumanizing effect of the obscenity and hostility that pervades much of popular culture.”

(Oddly enough, the numbers for Obama’s site jumped from tens and hundreds this afternoon to ten thousands and millions this evening. – ed.)

Which of these men are really talking about defending the responsible freedoms of Americans, of getting government out of the way of the people while defending justice and promoting mercy? That’s liberty in law, isn’t it?

You can tell me to shut up now.

Non-fiction

Adult-Child Differences

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H.S. Key complains about Americans who need to grow up.

We want to discover our inner child. We wear shirts that say “Runs with scissors” and “Eats glue.” We sit in great big Starbucks chairs with our shoes off and our legs Indian-style, like Kindergartners on growth hormone. I can’t stand it. Those kinds of things are the subjects of this book, called The Death of the Grown-Up by Diana West.

I’m sympathetic to a point. I would love to heard someone say, “Vulgarity is to common people. That’s what they word means. We aren’t common people.” Or better, “My dad is my hero. When he bought me my first hat, I knew I was becoming a man.” But I don’t know that the hand-wringing in this book (or post for that matter) is all that it could be. As some of the commenters mention, there will always be extremists among us–weird parents with no morality. Because we hear about them doesn’t mean they represent most of us.

But all of that is beside the point. The real point is that more people should read BwB and The Art of Manliness for maturity and health. Can anyone question that?

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All you need to know about Minnesota

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In case you haven’t heard, our former governor, Jesse “A Certain Part of the Body” Ventura, says he’s considering running for Norm Coleman’s senate seat.

He’d given up after one term as governor. Because (apparently) he’d determined that Minnesotans could only endure so much political farce.

But then the Democrats nominated Al Franken. Which forced him to reconsider that assessment.

I went out to dinner this evening, with an old friend (I still have a couple) who’s going through a rough stretch.

We went to a steak place, a facility that’s apparently attempting to recreate the success of the “Outback” chain in a Texas idiom.

This involved having all the waitpersons gather, at one point, to do a line dance in the aisle.

Because Minnesotans have a pretty high tolerance for farce in their dining, too.

Good steak, though.

Authors

Hawthorne on Lincoln

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Nathaniel Hawthorne met Abraham Lincoln once upon a time:

There is no describing his lengthy awkwardness, nor the uncouthness of his movement. … He was dressed in a rusty black frock-coat and pantaloons, unbrushed, and worn so faithfully that the suit had adapted itself to the curves and angularities, and had grown to be an outer skin of the man. . . . The whole physiognomy is as coarse a one as you would meet anywhere in the length and breadth of the States; but, withal, it is redeemed, illuminated, softened, and brightened by a kindly though serious look out of his eyes.

Speaking of Hawthorne, I have an interview from Audible.com with authors Orson Scott Card and Ben Bova in which they fall into talking about American literacy. They said public schools failed to teach a love for reading by forcing children to read hard, bad writing and telling them the books they might like to read are inferior quality. Card said Hawthorne was never a good writer and shouldn’t be forced on unsuspecting students as good literature. He took a shot at Moby Dick too, which is just sacrilegious.

Perhaps he’s feeling a bit spunky due to the movie production and comic book series of Ender’s Game. Nah, he probably feels this spunky all the time.

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History of Independence Day

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Here’s an interesting article on some of the history of Independence Day. Take a look at the quiz at the foot this article called “The Strange History of American Independence.” It isn’t at all strange (insert semicolon) half of the question are on July 4 births and deaths, but for trivia geeks, it’s interesting. I’m pleased to say I got the Crossing the Delaware question right. I know some of that story.

The Press

Hrd Nws Slls

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If your local newspaper reported accurately (within reason) on events and people in your community/metropolis/region with a little on the nation and the internation, in other words, hard news, would you subscribe? Read why the future of newspapers is worrisome.

Fiction

In which I move from political to economic pronouncements

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A while ago (because, of course, this is a book blog) I did a post about contemporary movie actors being commonly unable to generate a recognizably human expression—due to the ubiquity of Botox use in the Hollywood community.

Yesterday, James Lileks at the Bleat did a review of the movie Wall-E. In it he rhapsodized about the wonderful expressiveness of the main character, a computer-generated cartoon robot.

So it seems to me we’ve come to this—we’re getting more recognizably human performances from animated actors than from actual people actors.

Signs of the times. Chesterton would have had something scintillating to say about it. Me, I just note it in my pedestrian manner, and stroll on.

Nathaniel Peters at First Things linked to an earlier First Things appreciation of P. G. Wodehouse by Joseph Bottum. Well worth reading.

A light went on over my head today (unfortunately it was an incandescent light, so the authorities forced me to switch it off).

I took a moment to look at a news page on the web, and checked the stock market, which as we all know has been weak lately. And I found myself thinking, “My 401-K has lost a lot of value.”

And then I realized that this was ridiculous. I haven’t lost a cent in my 401-K. My loss or gain will only be known when the day comes (a long time from now, I hope) when I take the money out of it.

Since that day is not yet with us, I’m actually in a cycle where the money that goes from my paycheck into my pension plan is able to buy more stock for the buck. I’m getting’ a bargain here. There are many reasons to be unhappy about the economy, but for me personally, that ain’t one of ’em.

This is not to minimize the pain the downturn is causing to many people. The thought of being laid off (it’s happened to me) gives me a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I’m just saying, there are times (rare, perhaps) when looking at the dark side doesn’t make a lot of rational sense. Continue reading In which I move from political to economic pronouncements →