Jason Braaten, at Concordia TheoBLOGical Seminary, links to a good Touchstone essay by Anthony Esolen, then draws some incisive conclusions of his own:

Talking about taste is not bad with regard to the arts in the church, unless you have none. And it is this that we as the church have been reticent to discuss-mainly due to the fact that we ourselves don’t actually have taste. We have knowledge of what we want people to think is good taste, but don’t actually have it. It isn’t a part of the fiber of our being. We are fakes. We are phonies. We have no taste-some to a lesser degree than others.

What strikes chords that resonate within me with this essay is Esolen’s ability to say just that. To evaluate tastes, you must have some taste. And what the church hasn’t done, nor is it quite prepared to do because we are in a very real sense victims and perpetrators of the enemy issues, is come out to say some tastes are better than others. We have not inculcated and nurtured people to identify with those tastes that are higher and better. And this is not just the case in church, but probably more so in the home. There is objectivity to beauty and taste, even though we have learned otherwise. And the saddest and most shameful thing about this is that we have chosen simply to maintain status quo and hand it on to subsequent generations.

To remind those of us who say we believe in “absolutes” against the postmodernists who deny there is any such thing, the three absolutes were and are Truth, Goodness, and BEAUTY. Christians are against relativism when it comes to truth and goodness but they tend to agree with the postmodernists that beauty is relative. This must be challenged. Once beauty goes, the other absolutes quickly become unravelled. (This is not, by the way, just the problem of churches; rather, it reflects the even bigger tastelessness of the culture as a whole, which Christians, while criticizing the culture on many points, emulate it on this one.)

Yes, beauty involves a subjective response and that “tastes” differ, but taste, like other human faculties, must be cultivated, educated, and disciplined. We need to learn how to take subjective pleasure in what is objectively GOOD.

By subdividing private property into miniscule shares, capitalism has allowed the masses to own the means of production in a way that socialism never could.

The stock market numbers give us the sum-total of millions of individual decisions, which form an aggregate that affects the whole economy. The stock market also lets us see the laws of price and demand and other economic forces working seemingly instantaneously.

Anyway, yesterday on Wall Street was something to behold: Following a world-wide collapse on the previous day, when the American markets were closed, stocks, as predicted, followed that trend, dropping 300 points. But then, people seeing that they could get blue-chip properties really cheap, started buying. And buoyed by an interest rate cut from Treasury, they kept buying. The market ended 300 points up. That would be 600 points from what it was in the middle of the day!

Robert D. Novak offers a window into the Republicans in Congress, who, in their desperation to get re-elected, feel they must funnel large amounts of taxpayer money to their districts in the form of unnecessary pork-barrel “earmarks.” This, again, is one reason why so many of them despise John McCain, who consistently opposes that kind of spending.

Novak says that an important thing to watch is whether the Republicans will give the seat on the House Appropriations Committee to Jeff Flake of Arizona, a stalwart pork fighter. If they do, that would signal a return to the old Republican ideal of fiscal conservatism. If they don’t, since the other candidates for that slot are pork-barrel spenders, that would signal a commitment to the status quo. Nevermind that the status quo is disillusioning America–and even rank and file Republicans–against the Grand Old Party.

But maybe Jeff Flake, Tom Coburn, and some of these other mostly-young crusaders might represent a new breed of Republicans that will rise from the rubble.