Tag Archives: politics

Music, Poetry, Uncategorized

Remembering 9/11 and What Little Security We Have Today

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Everyone knows, I hope, that actions speak louder than words, which is a saying my old book of proverbs seems to derive from similar, older maxims such as this one from the French: Le fait juge l’homme or the deed proves the man. (Phrase Finder points to a 1693 sermon for the specific wording.) Words reveal our intentions, how we frame a problem, and if our actions give proof to our words, people believe us. They attest our integrity. If our actions work against our words, then our hearers have every reason to say we’re full hot air.

Politicians have historically low trustworthiness, according to polls, because their job is to overpromise and underdeliver, especially congressmen. They can’t do all they say they will do, because they have to work with a crowd of others who promised to do other things—some of which should not be done. Since Nixon shattered American confidence, the highest average percentage of people “who say they trust the government to do what is right just about always/most of the time,” according to the Pew Research Center, is 54%. That was on October 25, 2001.

On Monday, we will mark the 22nd anniversary of the hijacking of four commercial aircraft in an effort to punish the United States for crimes against Islam. Many politicians and civil servants have learned nothing in that time, judging by their actions. They want to be judged by their words alone, and not all of their words. Only the current ones. Why dig up the past by rehearsing old lies when the current lie is all we need? If they say we’re safe, secure, prepared–that’s all the proof we should need.

This being the third year of the Biden administration, and our country is weaker than we were in 2001. Yes, it’s Biden’s fault, but any of the recent Liberal/Progressive crop would have done the same. Progressivism undermines its own goals. If the optics are good, the goal has been achieved.

They give money to Iran and say it can’t be used for nuclear weapons development, so it’s safe. They open the southern boarder to allow thousands of who knows who to cross every day but claim it’s secure, so no worries. They spend from the FEMA fund on non-emergencies and are caught short when wildfires catch Hawaii responders off-guard. Oh, but the optics were good on that one, so maybe the president can hand out some money, tell a story about almost losing his house and car, and that will smooth over hurt feelings.

If it doesn’t, you can shut up, because Progressives don’t want your words unless you agree with them. Disagreement on some subjects is violence.

If 9/11 were to happen under this administration, they would be give the same speeches they give today about bravery, American unity, and how the president knows from personal experience how hard something like this can be. But nothing responsible would be done.

Subtle Sounds: The Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, has a 93-foot tower with forty wind chimes for the forty passengers and crew who died while opposing their hijackers. It’s called the Tower of Voices. The National Park Service has a good description and many photos. This video has captures the sound better than others I’ve found.

Antiquities: In other news, detectorists win again! A Norwegian man named Erlend Bore found a “cache comprised nine gold medallions and gold pearls that once formed an opulent necklace, as well as three gold rings” dating from 500 AD. (via Prufrock)

Poetry: A few thoughts on mirrors, “Witness,/ Mimic, tyrant of the departed years”

Music: And finally, this piece about the resurrection.

(Photo by BEERTA MAINI on Unsplash)

Religion

Happy Halloween, You Filthy Animal

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Here are a couple holiday ideas for you to consider when you can get a moment’s peace tonight.

Professor Collin Garbarino notes the connection Halloween has to Celtic paganism is largely, if not entirely, speculation. “The Celts didn’t write stuff down, and the Romans who did write stuff down didn’t give us much reliable information about the Celts or their religion.” But we do have a solid record of All Hallow’s Eve and All Saints’ Day.

The Protestant Reformation had political ramifications as well as religious ones, notes Professor Adam Carrington. Sola Scriptura supported the rule of the written law and public education so everyone could read the Bible for themselves. “The equality of human beings before God naturally bolstered ideas of human equality in the political realm. This enhanced arguments that the people should be the ultimate human authority since no person was born, or otherwise made by God, superior to another.”

Stay safe out there.

And also this artwork of Nazgul by Anato Finnstark.

Blogs, Socials, Non-fiction, Religion

What of Our Deeds Will Matter for Long, Statesmen, and Blogroll

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“Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,
                           Nothing but bones,
      The sad effect of sadder groans:
Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.”
from “Death” by George Herbert

A handful of life paths — intellectual and artistic work in particular — are about trying to create, as Horace wrote, “a monument more lasting than bronze.” They are a calculated gamble that a life dedicated to the difficult and narrow path will continue after our death, however unrewarding it might have been to experience.

But that we even have Horace’s poetry to read is as much a caprice of fate as a function of his poetic virtue. Some manuscripts survive the collapse of civilization, others do not; it seems unlikely that these survivals and disappearances precisely track merit. We have Horace and we are missing most of Sappho.

It’s Very Unlikely Anyone Will Read This in 200 Years (via Prufrock)

Statesmen: A review of The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation by Daniel J. Mahoney. “The best politician employs the intellectual and moral virtues and ‘all the powers of the soul,’ with proper humility and deference to divine and moral law, to better the community.” Has anyone in this generation or last done this? Have we lost this type of man for a while?

Racism: Albert Camus has something to teach us about anti-racism in his book The Fall. “The Fall operates as a reverse confessional with the priest as the penitent who, rather than seeking absolution, wants only to implicate us in his guilt. With this inverted symbol Camus recognizes that power often wears a priestly frock.”

Abolition of Man: Do you think you understand Lewis’s Abolition of Man? Here’s some help. “Through Ward’s page-by-page, sometimes line-by-line, and occasionally word-by-word exegesis of Abolition, we discover the wide plethora of sources upon which Lewis drew to critique his opponents as well as to appeal to Western and non-Western thinkers who have maintained confidence in reason’s capacity to know moral truth.”

Evil: A review of Sarah Weinman’s Scoundrel: “The moral of this tragic story is that people are often too trusting of criminals professing their innocence, and ignore the reality of human nature: Evil exists. Heinous crimes don’t commit themselves.”

Christian Living: What do believers need today? We need power.

Photo: Brooklyn Hotel, closed. Brooklyn, Iowa. 2003. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Fiction

Who Do You Really Want for President?

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Modern Age asked several people who they want for president, “any character from any book, film, play, television program, poem, or folk tale” or anyone else. If you’re still looking for an outside candidate, you could consider one of these.

  • George Bailey, an American ideal, “a supporter of small business, an advocate for those working hard to enter the middle class, and a fierce defender of free and competitive markets against monopolizing power.”
  • Frodo Baggins, “a natural aristocrat” who eschewed power when he had it wheld.
  • Monty Bodkin. “He kisses babies with the best of them, and he knows his way around an office, having once helped edit the journal Tiny Tots.”
  • Lettice Douffet. “’Language alone frees one!’ Douffet declaims, and what is in more need of repair than our regal English language, reduced as it is to epithets, expletives, and texted LOLs?”
  • Hazel. “He’s not the biggest or the smartest rabbit in his warren, but he’s the best leader.”

I confess I may have voted too early.

Religion, Uncategorized

‘The End of Liberal Democracy’

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My close personal friend (well, I’ve met him in actual space and time, which makes us pretty close by 2020 standards) Hunter Baker, of Union University, has a useful article in Touchstone in which he discusses an issue a lot of us are thinking about these days — is liberal democracy failing? Is the experiment over?

Nevertheless, let me, without rehearsing all the relevant developments, simply say that many of those structural limitations have now been overcome, through either amendment, expansive court decisions, or shrewd use of the powers to tax and spend. As a result, a constitution designed to embody Cicero’s wisdom for harmonizing diverse interests and avoiding the excesses of the various classical forms of government has been substantially transformed into something much closer to an ordinary majority-rule democracy. When one notes the calls for the termination of the electoral college, the politicization of the Supreme Court, and the discrediting of federalism due to the South’s intransigence with regard to both slavery and civil rights, it becomes clear that we are reverting to the mean as our Ciceronian (and even Calvinistic, as I’ve written elsewhere) constitutional democracy becomes more typical.

Read it all here.

Religion

Herod Heard John the Baptist Gladly

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What should Christians do with power?

Years ago, I heard Cal Thomas talk about a book he co-authored with the late Ed Dobson, Blinded by Might. He said Jerry Falwell and others like him believed they were influencing the president and political leaders to take Christian approaches to civil problems, but what Thomas and Dobson saw first-hand was a willingness to compromise any issue for the privilege of remaining in the inner circle.

“Whenever the church cozies up to political power, it loses sight of its all important mission to change the world from the inside out,” Thomas writes in the book.

I thought of that Saturday while listening to the Gospel of Mark. In chapter 6 we read that John the Baptist had been put to death by King Herod, but verse 20 states, “Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he kept him safe. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly.”

How often had John preached or spoken to Herod? What did he say? Did John think he could be in a relationship with Herod that would be similar to Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar? He was in prison because he angered Herod’s wife, but while in prison he had the king’s ear on occasion. And the king heard him gladly.

But then Herod made a vow in front of his peers, “the leading men of Galilee,” to give his wife’s daughter anything she asked for, and she asked John’s head. Where did his gladness go then? He was sorry to do it, but he would not admit to a mistake by implying, if not actually stating, that this prisoner’s life was more valuable than his oath. Nothing was more valuable than the king.

How many believers think they are making progress with political leaders because they seem to listen to them gladly, never suspecting that Christ’s call to put God’s kingdom first will never work for them. To them, God must serve their political kingdom, and humility would be great if earned votes.

While the king is in power, he may hear a preacher gladly, but when his power is threatened, then his priorities will become clear.

Music, Religion

The promise that isn’t there

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I think I can explain everything that’s wrong with western politics today. All intelligent people (that is, everyone who already agrees with me) will understand immediately.

I think the problem rises from the fact that westerners – even those who expressly reject Christianity – base their ethic on the teachings of Christ.

Only they misunderstand it.

They start with Christ’s Golden Rule: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do yet also unto them.” And that’s good. It’s the best of ethical rules, and well worth following.

But they assume a corollary. They assume the next stage is, “And then they will do the same unto you in return.” Be nice to others, and no one will hurt you. A thousand Sunday School papers and children’s books make the tacit promise that that’s true.

But the passage doesn’t actually say that.

There’s no promise that anyone will return your kindness. In fact, Jesus often warns His disciples that people will hate and persecute them.

Most sophisticated westerners assume that if you’re peaceful and act peaceful, and if you’re kind, that will protect you from evildoers. Your kindness will make them kind, too.

There is no such promise.

That’s why the Apostle Paul tells us that the emperor bears the sword. Because somebody has to protect the vulnerable.

It isn’t the government’s job to practice the Golden Rule, unless you want everybody to die.

Here endeth the lesson.

And now, just to prove to you how old and white I am, another instrumental piece from my youth for a Friday – “The Syncopated Clock,” by Leroy Anderson (1908-1975). He was Swedish-American, by the way, and is probably best remembered for the Christmas favorite, “Sleigh Ride.”

Non-fiction, Publishing

Who Would Read a Twitter Feed in Book Form?

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New Hampshire professor Seth Abramson has put in many hours following the news on President Trump, updating his readers with tweets like these:

  1. [Aug 15, 2018, 2:55 PM] (NOTE) As to Bruce Ohr, who is currently employed by the federal government, Trump’s THREAT to revoke his security clearance—which would make him doing his job impossible, and might lead to his termination—is, given the “grounds” Trump has spoken of on Twitter, WITNESS TAMPERING. [93 replies 2,191 retweets 4,133 likes]
  2. (NOTE2) Trump is AWARE that Bruce Ohr is about to testify before House Republicans (see below) and he is seeking to INFLUENCE his testimony, as his statements on Twitter make clear, with this THREAT against him. Mueller will undoubtedly investigate this. [Link to The Hill, “House GOP prepares to grill DOJ official linked to Steele dossier”] [25 replies 777 retweets 1,728 likes]
  3. (NOTE3) A key national security expert for MSNBC just said on-air, “This is quite clearly designed to send a chilling effect to all of those who would criticize Donald Trump or his administration that this will not be tolerated.” Do people realize that, as to Ohr, that’s a CRIME? [28 replies 677 Retweets 1,801 Likes ]
  4. Seth Abramson Retweeted Donald J. Trump
    (NOTE4) This tweet is now evidence of a federal felony: @realDonaldTrump [link to this tweet]
    <<Bruce Ohr of the “Justice” Department (can you believe he is still there) is accused of helping disgraced Christopher Steele “find dirt on Trump.” Ohr’s wife, Nelly, was in on the act big time – worked for Fusion GPS on Fake Dossier. @foxandfriends>>
    [35 replies 1,028 retweets 2,240 likes]
  5. (NOTE5) People do not yet realize—but soon will—that Trump has just made as big a mistake as he made in firing Comey. You *cannot* threaten the job of a witness against you in a federal investigation and SAY ON TWITTER that your reason is that he will offer testimony against you.

Now, Abramson is shopping around a proposal “to ‘bookify’ my feed.”

According to the proposal, the book will be based off of edited and rewritten versions of his Twitter threads—a conceit, Abramson declares, “whose time has come.” The book will create a “comprehensive, chronological review of the Trump-Russia case by transforming my Twitter ‘threads’ into prose.”

“A book of this sort is daring,” he writes. “Few if any have leveraged the advantage that books offer in collating, organizing, and amplifying in narrative form an intensely followed Twitter feed.”

This looks like an incredible waste of every resource devoted to it, but I think I’ve seen similar wasted efforts in printed books. Not that there’s anything daring about it, except that writing any book believing people will buy or read or both feels daring. Of course, there’s the daring of the carefully planned tightrope walk over Niagara and the daring of the spur-of-the-moment motorcycle jump into the Grand Canyon. [via Prufrock News]

Uncategorized

“Whom does it serve?”

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Puritan church drummer

Sohrab Ahmari’s The New Philistines, which I reviewed last night, sparked a few thoughts under my follicles.

I noticed some years back that my interest in movies, once keen, was waning. Taking the trouble to make the trip to a theater just didn’t seem a good exchange. Whatever the old rewards had been, they were diminishing. And today, although I have Netflix and Amazon Plus, I don’t use their streaming services a whole lot, either. If I decide I want to view a movie, as often as not I can’t find anything I care to click on.

I used to watch television all evening, every evening. I liked some shows better than others, but I could always find something to amuse me. Then gaps started opening up, where there was nothing I wanted to watch. And now I’ve reached the point where there’s zero network programming that I watch regularly.

Ahmari’s book illustrated why those changes happened. I grew more and more aware – unconsciously at first, but consciously more and more – that everything coming out of Hollywood, big screen or small, was propaganda. In the legend of the Holy Grail, one of the questions asked of the seeker of the Grail was, “Whom does it serve?” With modern entertainment, even the most trivial, that question always applies. Each offering is in service of something. And that something is always some social or political cause.

In the days of the Puritans, it was often complained that people got religion shoved down their throats, that everything turned into a sermon.

Ahmari’s The New Philistines might have been called The New Puritans. Because in the 21st Century, the sermons never end.

Religion

Extension granted

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Today a musician who visits the school from time to time dropped into my office, and we talked for a couple hours. At no point did we mention the election, or politics.

It was bliss.

I hope more bliss is to come. One of principles of conservatism is that we should be able to live our lives as much as possible without reference to politics. One of the monstrosities of Progressivism is that each citizen is expected to think politically at all times, down to a painstaking ideological analysis of pronoun choice every time we frame a sentence.

I haven’t made any secret of my lack of faith in Donald Trump. I supported him, as I’ve explained on this blog, simply on utilitarian grounds. If he appoints Supreme Court justices in the manner he’s promised, we ought to retain speech and conscience liberties for the foreseeable future.

I should be more elated than I feel. The cavalry, after all, came over the hill in the nick of time. At this hour yesterday I was steeling myself for a Democrat victory, and all that would entail – especially in the curtailment of constitutional liberties. I was trying to figure out the best ways for a middle-aged, sedentary man to prepare for the purges. (I couldn’t really come up with anything. If the secret police come, I expect I’ll just go quietly. Can’t think of an effective countermeasure.)

But now – it appears – things should be OK. At least for the remainder of my expected lifespan. Like Hezekiah in one of his less admirable moments, I can say, “At least there will be peace in my time.”

Of course there is something to do about all this. I need to work at my ministry, sowing the seed of the Word. Running a library for a seminary and a Bible school. Writing novels.

Prayerfully. With thanks for an extended day of grace.