Entries from March 2008 ↓

First David Mamet, now Tom Stoppard, the British playwright, turns away in revulsion from 1960’s-era radicalism to find his inner conservative. Read 1968: The year of the posturing rebel.

Today is nine months before Christmas, making it the festival of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, the time to commemorate the conception of God in the flesh. We have the perfect way to bring back this holy day into our culture: Make it a time in the church to mark and protest and fight the evil of abortion!

The life of Jesus began with His conception. We proclaim Christ as not just the Baby in the Manger but the Embryo in His mother’s womb. For Christians, the Annunciation proves that human life begins with conception. Read this post from Scott Stiegemeyer and celebrate this anti-abortion day.

UPDATE: I should have said YESTERDAY, March 25, was Annunciation Day. I hope you had a happy one.

IN MY OWN DEFENSE: I thought TODAY was March 25.

Should we boycott the China Olympics, or at least the opening ceremonies, because of China’s oppression of Tibet and other human rights violations? Lots of people now are calling for a boycott, including some athletes who believe that competing while breathing China’s polluted air will hurt them. Read this (which argued that Olympic boycotts HAVE been effective in this past) and this (arguing that the China Olympics are going to be a mess anyway).

While being utterly opposed to China’s policies–I still insist on calling it COMMUNIST China, which it still is despite its exploiting free market tactics to gain worldwide economic power, the capitalist phase being a pre-requisite according to Marxism for true socialism–my instinct is to oppose a boycott of the Olympics, though I’m not sure why. What do you think?

We are so used to complaining about how court system that we can be surprised when it works as it was intended to do, upholding the law and defending our rights. The Supreme Court ruled that the World Court has no jurisdiction over the United States of America.

In a comment to “Aesthetics & American Idol,” Reader Mason Ian perfectly describes the “arduous” process of perceiving the greatest beauty:

Learning to subjectively like what is objectively good at first bounced off of my 3am quick-read blog-scan. But then I realized that this exact thing happened to me and I shall anecdote-ize it thus:

When first I approached Milton’s Paradise Lost I knew that I “should” treasure it as a sublime and beautiful epic of written art. But i could only (at first) force myself to appreciate it from the outside, like looking at an utterly alien thing that all others considered beautiful. You look at it sideways, squint a bit, trying to see what they see… but it is unutterably alien. Perhaps you see an angle here or there that has a symmetrical form that is pleasing, a curve here, a line there… but the whole is so beyond your current vantage point that the beauty is lost by your own unelevated perspective.

Then, after forcing yourself to merely “mentally ascribe” the designation of beauty to the form, you slowly achieve the ability to connect the slivers of recognizable traits of beauty that you CAN see from your current state.

This is achieved in literature by reading more. The more you read, the more you read. Sounds like very droll truism, but by it I mean the process by which reading one book end us turing you on to several other books, other authors, different ideas and concepts and styles. I read Samuel Taylor Coleridge and find a dozen more obscure authors through his quotes and references, which in turn leads me to more reading. Then, after ten years I come back to Milton and find that Paradise Lost IS beautiful to me in a very different way than the alien beauty I had firs admired as an outsider.

So at first I liked it for reasons outside of myself (others regarded it as the pinnacle of English poetry, etc, etc) then I learned to love it myself, through my own tastes and my own reflection.

We go from being outsiders to being insiders.

However, as it was pointed out, hollywood goes another way. The simple and quick way. the way of the lowest common denominator. Grasping beauty and goodness is a slow art that requires years of honing and exercise. Who has time? Pare down the representation of love to three lines of cheesy dialogue and a wet kissing scene and the audience is satisfied right?

Hardly. Here’s to those who take the time to find and create what is beautiful. It is a long and arduous journey but one which holds the most epic of rewards.

See, Milton and Shakespeare don’t make concessions to our impoverished vocabularies. You may have to read them with a dictionary at first. And they don’t pause every twelve minutes for a word from their sponsors. They go their own way and we have to catch up. But it is worth it when we do. The very subjective pleasure, if you want to reduce everything to this, is so much greater and deeper and more intense with these writers than with the lesser entertainment we content ourselves with (for one thing because we don’t always want to involve ourselves so much or work so hard–which is fine sometimes, as long as we don’t reduce our aesthetic standards to our own lazy pleasures and exclude what is really objectively good).

Anne Rice, who became famous for writing highly literate vampire novels, gives more details about her conversion to Christianity in a forum on the Washington Post online: On Faith: Guest Voices: My Trust in My Lord. Sample:

Look: I believe in Him. It’s that simple and that complex. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the God Man who came to earth, born as a tiny baby and then lived over thirty years in our midst. I believe in what we celebrate this week: the scandal of the cross and the miracle of the Resurrection. My belief is total. And I know that I cannot convince anyone of it by reason, anymore than an atheist can convince me, by reason, that there is no God.

A long life of historical study and biblical research led me to my belief, and when faith returned to me, the return was total. It transformed my existence completely; it changed the direction of the journey I was traveling through the world. Within a few years of my return to Christ, I dedicated my work to Him, vowing to write for Him and Him alone. My study of Scripture deepened; my study of New Testament scholarship became a daily commitment. My prayers and my meditation were centered on Christ.

And my writing for Him became a vocation that eclipsed my profession as a writer that had existed before.

Why did faith come back to me? I don’t claim to know the answer. But what I want to talk about right now is trust. Faith for me was intimately involved with love for God and trust in Him, and that trust in Him was as transformative as the love. . . .

Before my consecration to Christ, I became familiar with a whole range of arguments against the Savior to whom I committed my life. In the end I didn’t find the skeptics particularly convincing, while at the same time the power of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John swept me off my feet. And above all, when I began to talk to Jesus Christ again it was with trust.

On the afternoon in 1998 when faith returned, I experienced a sense of the limitless power and majesty of God that left me convinced that He knew all the answers to the theological and sociological questions that had tormented me for years. I saw, in one enduring moment, that the God who could make the Double Helix and the snow flake, the God who could make the Black holes in space, and the lilies of the field, could do absolutely anything and must know everything — even why good people suffer, why genocide and war plague our planet, and why Christians have lost, in America and in other lands, so much credibility as people who know how to love. I felt a trust in this all-knowing God; I felt a sudden release of all my doubts. Indeed, my questions became petty in the face of the greatness I beheld. I felt a deep and irreversible assurance that God knew and understood every single moment of every life that had ever been lived, or would be lived on Earth. I saw the universe as an immense and intricate tapestry, and I perceived that the Maker of the tapestry saw interwoven in that tapestry all our experiences in a way that we could not hope, on this Earth, to understand.

This was not a joyful moment for me. It wasn’t an easy moment. It was an admission that I loved and believed in God, and that my old atheism was a façade. I knew it was going to be difficult to return to the Maker, to give over my life to Him, and become a member of a huge quarreling religion that had broken into many denominations and factions and cults worldwide. But I knew that the Lord was going to help me with this return to Him. I trusted that He would help me. And that trust is what under girds my faith to this day.

The Washington Post, in a useful exercise, asked spokesmen for each of the three presidential candidates about what each of them would do to address our current economic problems. Go here, then click each candidate in turn.

The notion that Obama and Clinton have virtually the same policies does not hold, at least for this issue. And it is certainly not true that McClain is just like the Democrats. He stands for conservative free-market economic policies, addressing our problems through tax cuts, letting those who made bad investments fail, and refusing to bail out the financial industry. Obama offers a series of ingenious “incentives and guarantees” that would protect the little guys caught up in all of this, policies that would increase government’s impact in the economy, but which sound like they respect a free market and a free society. Clinton’s proposals, though, are full of government fiats: She would impose a 90 day moratorium on home foreclosures. The rhetoric is about what the government should permit and not permit. (E.g., “Complex lending vehicles for sophisticated financiers must ultimately be shown to benefit America’s working families”–shown to whom? who is going to have the power to approve or disallow such investments?) The point is, Clinton sounds far more hard-core statist than Obama does.

CBS dug through its files and did a story on what we blogged about yesterday, juxtaposing Hillary Clinton’s speech about running with her head down from sniper fire with video clips of what actually happened. See for yourself:

More details about that Muslim journalist whom the pope baptized, and sure enough, as we predicted on our post, he is in danger and the pope is taking heat from Muslims. See Muslim baptized by pope says life in danger:

A Muslim author and critic of Islamic fundamentalism who was baptized a Catholic by Pope Benedict said on Sunday Islam is “physiologically violent” and he is now in great danger because of his conversion. “I realize what I am going up against but I will confront my fate with my head high, with my back straight and the interior strength of one who is certain about his faith,” said Magdi Allam.

In a surprise move on Saturday night, the pope baptized the 55-year-old, Egyptian-born Allam at an Easter eve service in St Peter’s Basilica that was broadcast around the world.
The conversion of Allam to Christianity — he took the name “Christian” for his baptism — was kept secret until the Vatican disclosed it in a statement less than an hour before it began.

Writing in Sunday’s edition of the leading Corriere della Sera, the newspaper of which he is a deputy director, Allam said: “… the root of evil is innate in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual.” Allam, who is a strong supporter of Israel and who an Israeli newspaper once called a “Muslim Zionist,” has lived under police protection following threats against him, particularly after he criticized Iran’s position on Israel.

He said before converting he had continually asked himself why someone who had struggled for what he called “moderate Islam” was then “condemned to death in the name of Islam and on the basis of a Koranic legitimization.” His conversion, which he called “the happiest day of my life,” came just two days after al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden accused the pope of being part of a “new crusade” against Islam. . . .

Allam’s highly public baptism by the pope shocked Italy’s Muslim community, with some leaders openly questioning why the Vatican chose to shine such a big spotlight it.

Hear more from CHRISTIAN Allam at First Things.

Michael Horton, one of our most insightful Christian writers, has a striking article in “Touchstone,” entitled All Crossed Up about two models of ministry and worship. He describes them with this set of dichotomies:

Ordinary <> Extraordinary
Communal <> Individualistic
Predictable and Disciplined <> Spontaneous and “Authentic”
Respectful of office <> Respectful of persons
Hierarchical <> Egalitarian
Patient <> Restless
Receptive <> Expressive
Mediated <> Immediate
Wise/Knowledgeable <> Practical/Intuitive
Custodial/Pastoral <> Entrepreneurial
Formal <> Casual
Mature <> Creative
Traditional <> Innovative
Deferential <> Independent

He argues that whereas the Bible and historic Christianity favor the left-hand side, today’s church culture favors the right-hand side.

Hillary Clinton, touting her experience over Barack Obama, has been saying that President Clinton would send her overseas to places that were “too dangerous” for him to go to. Mrs. Clinton specifically has been telling about how she landed in the Balkans under sniper fire:

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”
–Hillary Clinton, speech at George Washington University, March 17, 2008.

Since then, the comedian Sinbad, who was on that trip along with singer Sheryl Crowe, has disputed the story, saying that that they were never shot at and that the trip was pretty uneventful. So fact checkers from the Washington Post investigated.

Not only did none of the people on that trip report getting shot at, CBS had footage of the landing! Mrs. Clinton was greeting by dignitaries and a little girl read her a poem. (The article links to the footage so you can see for yourself.) No snipers were in attendance.

But this is what gets me:

According to Sinbad, who provided entertainment on the trip along with the singer Sheryl Crow, the “scariest” part was deciding where to eat. As he told Mary Ann Akers of The Post, “I think the only ‘red-phone’ moment was: ‘Do we eat here or at the next place.’” Sinbad questioned the premise behind the Clinton version of events. “What kind of president would say ‘Hey man, I can’t go ’cause I might get shot so I’m going to send my wife. Oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.”

Replying to Sinbad earlier this week, Clinton dismissed him as “a comedian.” Her campaign referred me to Togo West, who was also on the trip and is a staunch Hillary supporter. West could not remember “sniper fire” himself, but said there was no reason to doubt the First Lady’s version of events. “Everybody’s perceptions are different,” he told me.

Mr. West was on the trip and didn’t remember getting shot at, something that MIGHT stick in one’s memory, but THERE WAS NO REASON TO DOUBT THE FIRST LADY? “EVERYBODY’S PERCEPTIONS ARE DIFFERENT”? That’s pure postmodernist dogmatism at its most idiotic. Either she was shot at or she was not. This is a question of fact, not “perception.” And everybody’s perceptions were not different, since no one else–including the person who said this–perceived bullets flying and having to run for cover.

What is the best–or only–construction that we could put on Mrs. Clinton’s speech? Help me out, tODD.

Once again, the US Postal Service has denied a petition to feature on a stamp the visage of Gen. Henry Martyn Robert. We have stamps honoring Wonder Woman and other individuals who do not exist, but we cannot honor the man who wrote Robert’s Rules of Order, a treatise used around the world, from church committee meetings to national parliaments, that, in many ways, makes participatory government and collective decision-making possible. I know none of us like meetings, but still, we should salute what this man accomplished. The linked article gives some background on Gen. Robert and how he came up with his rules:

As Robert the grandson tells the story, the elder Robert was living in New Bedford, Mass., in 1863 and was asked to preside over a meeting to consider the defense of the city during the Civil War.

He didn’t know beans about it [presiding over a meeting], and he found it very embarrassing,” Robert III said. “He made up his mind that if he got out of it alive, he would learn something about the subject.”

Learning something about parliamentary procedure involved reading a few books and making some notes, which he carried in his wallet for about four years.

When he moved to San Francisco, he encountered a city where prostitution was rife and Chinese laborers brought in to build the railroad were exploited, even chased by dogs for sport. Robert, a Baptist lay leader, was offended.

He joined the YMCA and several newly formed religious groups dedicated to relieving the plight of exploited souls, but he found that the city’s motley population had discordant notions about how to conduct meetings. San Francisco needed rules.

When Robert came out with the first version of his rules of order in 1876, he had trouble finding a publisher. Who’d want to read such a book? So he printed up 4,000 copies himself. Since then, Robert III says, it has sold 5 million copies.

I suspect that the very committee that turned down his stamp did so after receiving a motion that was properly seconded, with all in favor saying “aye,” and all opposed by the same sign.