Thursday, March 18, A.D. 2010

Absurd Intelligence

On View from the Right, Auster and pals have been discussing Bill O’Reilly, and there is widespread disbelief that the Fox News personality earned a 1585 on his S.A.T. In the thread, someone suggested a web site that estimates I.Q. based on S.A.T. and G.R.E. scores, IQComparisonSite.  The estimator would give Mr. O’Reilly an intelligence quotient between 150 and 155.

I think that general intelligence is difficult to measure precisely with tests, and I don’t buy the given estimates. Personally speaking, the spread between my S.A.T. based I.Q. estimate and my G.R.E. based I.Q. estimate is thirty points. The clinical score that I received as a child falls in the middle of the two, though close to the higher G.R.E. estimate. I took each test once, but I took the first after three years of disappointing public high school education and the second after four years at a Jesuit university. Wouldn’t education matter to how someone performs on a test? It seems obvious.

To use a sports analogy, let us assume two fellows with bodies suitable for Olympic gymnastics who are identical in every way except that one benefits from a professionally run gymnastics training program while the other one simply keeps fit with a standard exercise regimen. Of course, the first guy will perform better at a gymnastics competition. However, given time in training, the two would come close in their performance abilities.

I think that this holds true for mental gymnastics, too. Standardized tests may give a ball park estimate of who is smart and of who is stupid, but educational preparation must determine a significant fraction of the scoring. A more accurate system would involve a series of tests over a period of time that would measure mental talents by weighing academic performance. Wasn’t this once called school? Before the dark times, before grade inflation, before teachers’ unions?

Anyway, IQComparisonSite is bunkum. The site’s author provides the intelligence estimates of modern historical figures by a woman named Cox. Cox compiled the list in the 1920’s, when people were still interested in I.Q. differences. I have no idea how Cox tallied the I.Q. points of the men who shaped the modern West, but I don’t believe them. In today’s measurements, who can believe that Jonathan Swift had an I.Q. of 133? Or that Molière only had one of 138?  Or Bach, Beethoven, and Hobbes at 143?  I can believe Luther at 148, but Kant at 153? There is no way—especially with Condorcet at 158. Newton is at 168, Descartes is at 158, and Pascal is at 173. The top scorers are Leibniz at 183 and Goethe at 188. Most figures’ estimates seem so low. The site’s author notes, “I realize that these calculations shrink the pedestal that we keep the Eminent Geniuses on, but at least it should give more of you hope that you might be able to accomplish important things (as long as you are also gifted with creativity or perseverance or whatever other factors contribute to grand achievements).” Balderdash! I know some rather intelligent people, and I have a decent score myself, but I am not smarter than Mozart. The current top students at M.I.T., CalTech, Harvard, and Yale are frankly not at the level of the best of our civilization’s best. This is generational narcissism seldom seen!

Besides, this site would have Bill O’Reilly rank with Lincoln, Rousseau, Huygens, Kepler, Kant, Balzac, Cervantes, Calvin, Spinoza, Palestrina, Rembrandt, and Swift. So, the mind behind the “no spin zone” ranks up there with the master of the Critiques? Absurdly, outrageously idiotic nonsense!

Posted by Joseph on Thursday, March 18, A.D. 2010
Anthropology • (0) Comments • Permalink

Wednesday, March 17, A.D. 2010

Words That Hurt

A few months ago, I read the following article about a Washington state legislator who wishes to remove “negative language” from state law: “Wash. lawmaker wants to banish negative language.”

Decades ago, poor children became known as “disadvantaged” to soften the stigma of poverty. Then they were “at-risk.” Now, a Washington lawmaker wants to replace those euphemisms with a new one, “at hope.” . . . Positive labeling is more than a gimmick or political correctness, Franklin says. She believes her idea could lead to a paradigm shift in state government and to changes in classrooms across the state.

Of course, the politician is a Democratic woman, Rosa Franklin. I suspected that Franklin was black from the level of unseriousness that she exudes in the article, and I was correct.

By stating such, I am not referring to population disparities in the intelligence bell curve. Rather, and perhaps relatedly, there is far less quality control in the Democratic Party for their black politicians. Leftists harbor many stupid ideas based on foolish principles and the consequent unwillingness to consider reality when the world contradicts their cherished values. However, despite their perplexing adherence to stupid ideas, most Leftists in positions of power are not stupid themselves. Yet, Democrats’ white guilt and noblesse oblige curdle together to mollify any criticism of the leaders that poor, dysfunctional black communities elect. Occasionally, after much long suffering, the Democratic establishment may attempt to hoodwink the masses with back room political coups, but the diversity tooting Democrats are content to allow clowns to run around the circus as long as their antics do not generate too much bad press. As we know from experience, it takes a lot of bad press to tarnish a black Democrat politician—that soft bigotry of low expectations is rather widespread.

Yet, does Franklin fit that mold? My guess was that she was a public school teacher before politics. However, it turns out that she was a nurse who entered politics after being involved in community charities. According to an online biography, she has been married for almost sixty years and she is likely a pious Protestant. So, maybe we can simply attribute her silly ideas to classic, well intentioned, Christian Leftism.

My friend Andrew used to remark that Leftists locate power and meaning in words rather than the ideas and experiences behind words. Perhaps, this is logical for nominalist, postmodernist, deconstructionist folks who reduce insight and thought to word play and confusion. For many of them, there is no nature—only descriptions of our imagined objectivity that seem to originate in the will rather than the intellect. For the consistent (well, as consistent as such people can be), discourse can never be a joint labor with the ascent to the truth as its goal. Argument is simply a battle for domination. As such, propaganda replaces philosophy; he who frames the debate wins (and thus imposes his will on others). Have you ever wondered why the Left loves George Lakoff so much? He speaks their truth to them, insofar as they can use the word truth.

I do not deny that word choice is very important, and “framing the debate” matters immensely in persuasion. However, true thinking ought to rise above rhetoric. It must strive to overcome the limitations of convention and of the routine, well worn paths of the herd. Yet, it is this possibility that Leftist nihilists deny. For the honest ones, it is all about the will to power.

I certainly do not think that low level left wing politicians consciously entertain decadent Nietzschean or even Derridean theories, but I do think that the general world view and assortment of values and commitments of the political Left have been fully colonized by anti-rational philosophical theories (“philosophical” taken quite liberally). The judgmental non-judgmentalism, the intolerant cult of tolerance, the dogmatic hatred of dogma, and the (pseudo-)rational undermining of reason that pervade Leftist thinking all seep from the same murky waters. Dear Rosa Franklin may not realize the ideological genealogy of her proposal to help children through newspeak, but she has been compromised. She may genuinely wish to help “at hope” youth, but her understanding of the world has been distorted to think that words—and systems in general—are more primary than ideas and minds.

By the way, happy Saint Patrick’s Day to the Micks on the new calendar!

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, March 17, A.D. 2010
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Saturday, March 6, A.D. 2010

American Mandarins

I read yesterday that the Transportation Security Administration was installing more full body scanners at eleven additional airports, including Cincinnati, Columbus, Reagan National, and Baltimore Washington International—the very airports I most frequently use (and I bet that they will arrive in Dayton soon enough). Each scanner costs $250,000, but no price is too steep for a federal government that spends like a sailor in port and that cares as much for the dignity and privacy of its citizens as any crass Politbüro managerial overlord.

In protest, I wrote the following to my Congressional representative and senators:

I read today that the Transportation Security Administration is installing body scanners in more airports, including DCA, BWI, and our own CVG. If one refuses to submit to this invasive and humiliating “security measure,” then one has to be pat down like a criminal by T.S.A. employees. For how long and to what degree are Americans willing to act like an enslaved people? These regulations are not fitting for a free people, and yet Americans are being reduced to non-questioning, eagerly nodding lemmings that willfully suffer in an increasingly oppressive Big Brother society.

Please work in Congress to uphold Americans’ individual dignity. Are we to sacrifice everything for some phantom “security” that the all watching state keeps on promising? I would rather the government take a more direct approach to save us from terrorism—such as not promoting American hating radical Muslims in the military, increasingly cracking down on jihadist organizations in the U.S. as well as on Saudi funded institutions whose aim is the imposition of sharia law on our Western society, and restricting immigration from countries with populations that hate the traditional American way of life and seek to replace it with an alien political ideology.

We expect our people to submit to strip searches in order to visit grandma on Thanksgiving, but we open the doors to folks whose own religion commands them to kill Jews. This is madness. As an elected official, you have the responsibility to work against such policies that harm Americans and empower people who wish our destruction.

Of course, my little bit of civic participation will not amount to much, but if everyone complained about these bastards’ attempts to control our lives, the fiends would back off. Liberty is not secured by papers in the National Archives but by the conviction of a people to maintain it. Learned Hand spoke to the heart of every true liberal when he addressed his countrymen in Central Park during the Second World War:

We have gathered here to affirm a faith, a faith in a common purpose, a common conviction, a common devotion. Some of us have chosen America as the land of our adoption; the rest have come from those who did the same. For this reason we have some right to consider ourselves a picked group, a group of those who had the courage to break from the past and brave the dangers and the loneliness of a strange land. What was the object that nerved us, or those who went before us, to this choice? We sought liberty; freedom from oppression, freedom from want, freedom to be ourselves. This we then sought; this we now believe that we are by way of winning. What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow.

What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest. And now in that spirit, that spirit of an America which has never been, and which may never be; nay, which never will be except as the conscience and courage of Americans create it; yet in the spirit of that America which lies hidden in some form in the aspirations of us all; in the spirit of that America for which our young men are at this moment fighting and dying; in that spirit of liberty and of America I ask you to rise and with me pledge our faith in the glorious destiny of our beloved country.

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it” is so true. We Americans are losing this spirit; we are becoming a nation of Mandarins.

It is interesting that the forces eager to cripple American liberty originate on the Left and on the Right, both of which are willing to sacrifice American freedom to their other pet projects (such as socialist leveling or police state law and order). Similarly, we find that the American Civil Liberties Union and traditionalist American institutions (those old paleocons) oppose the slide to an increasingly Orwellian society. Shall we say that totalitarianism and opposition thereto are bipartisan endeavors?

Posted by Joseph on Saturday, March 6, A.D. 2010
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Friday, February 19, A.D. 2010

McGuckin on the Beautiful

I hope that Christians, West and East, are having a productive Lent. I know that several people refrain from the internet during the fast to spend more time in prayer, study, and charitible activities. I am not among them, but I wish them well. I have found that when I am “stranded” from the web while on trips or during projects, it is quite refreshing. In my normal life in East Coast exile, though, I find the net quite useful in maintaining sanity. In the film, Shadowlands, C.S. Lewis, played by Anthony Hopkins, asks a student why we read. The student responds—with his father’s wisdom—that we read to know that we are not alone. Lewis repeats the line later in the movie, and it is the sort of line that one remembers. I find it truthful. Though the internet is not a substitute for good books or personal conversation, it is a way to encounter other human minds—some quite excellent in insight and in wit.

Rather à propos, on the Serbian Church’s web page, I found a short essay by J.A. McGuckin, “The Notion of The Beautiful in Ancient Greek Thought and its Christian Patristic Transfiguration.” After summarily discussing how the Christian theological and philosophical tradition interpreted and transformed the Socratic notion of the beautiful, McGuckin suggests that this forsaken synthesis serve as medicine for Western civilization’s current malady:

The one reconciliation possible for a society that is in danger of losing even the distant memories of its religious civilisation, at a time when its preferred religions have turned solipsistic, and its schools of political, philosophical, and artistic thought have elevated short-term self interest to new heights, is no less than the return to a renewed sense of the Beautiful. It is, in the Christian reinterpretation of the Greek notion of kalokagaqon, the ideal synthesis of a religious, mystical, and moral transcendental. It is, if the Church can still act decisively enough to be the intellectual midwife and interpreter, the one concept and experience that can still be remembered well enough by a generally ‘paganised’ society to serve as the basis for a new pro-paideusis of what civilisation and human aspirations to ascent are all about. If the Church can find the wit, and the voices in the present generation who will be up to the task as were the farseeing saints, founders and teachers in the past, ( who dealt with an equally ambiguous and decadent society ), then this pro-paideusis will be no less than a re-evangelisation of the western world which has already declined far from its once high standards of civilisation, and now urgently needs catechising about the very nature of the simplest truths - what constitutes Beauty ; and where lies the reconciliation of Aesthetics and Justice - central ideas constitutive to a civilisation that even a few decades ago might have been thought to be hardly capable of being forgotten in so short a time and so widespread a fashion.

It delights me to find contemporary scholars who acknowledge the complementarity of Platonism with the gospel. It is no surprise that Plato has served as the paedagogue who has led many thoughtful people to Christ for two millennia. From men on the Areopagus who heard Paul’s sermon to Augustine to Lewis to many people whom I know, that beautiful transcendent vision has led philosophical minds to meet the God of Abraham as the God known by λόγος.

Posted by Joseph on Friday, February 19, A.D. 2010
Aesthetics • Anthropology • Epistemology • Ethics • Metaphysics • (0) Comments • Permalink

Saturday, January 30, A.D. 2010

Judge Lest Ye Be Mugged

Yesterday, commentator M. rebuked my hesitancy (well, refusal) to obey divine and clerical commandments not to judge on “The March, A.D. 2010.” My difficulty with this issue is one of my most significant problems with Christianity, and it has been a recurring theme in my thoughts and in my posts. M. wrote:

“It just seems absurdly mad not to judge everyone and everything. ...What does it really mean to refrain from judgment toward others without being reckless in one’s actions?”

The compulsion to judge is incredibly strong, isn’t it?  That is why it is so important to resist.

What I have been in the process of learning for a long time is that this compulsion distorts and constricts one’s own soul.  We judge in order to exclude.  We exclude because we are afraid.  We are afraid because we lack love.

It’s revealing, I think, that you feel that refraining from judgment toward others will lead to “being reckless in [your own] actions”.  What exactly are you afraid will happen if you stop judging?  That you might be too recklessly compassionate?  Too recklessly understanding?  Too recklessly moved by another’s plight?

Maybe you’ve heard this one: “When Christ returns to judge the world, will he say to you ‘Well done, you good and faithful servant’, or ‘Hey you, get out of my chair’?”

My advice: Try leaving the judgment to a higher authority, who is far better qualified for it than any of us—with our puny intellects, shrunken hearts, and blindness toward what is in other people’s souls.  Rest assured that he is up to the task, and that the universe will unfold as it should.

Or, to put it succinctly: “Judge not, lest you be judged.”

I started to respond in the comments thread, but I decided to make the rejoinder its own post. Such will be convenient for me, as I am about to leave to spend a chilly day in the woods near Frederick, and then I need not post something silly and trivial from YouTube.

Dear M.,

Thank your for your comment. I have heard that one; my mother was always fond of reminding me that there were no vacancies in the Godhead. I never appreciated the humor (well, not much). More so, I see such judgmental non-judgmentalism as excusing bad behavior. Bad actions ought to be called such, and their perpetrators often (though not always) ought to be called out.

I hear comments similar to what you wrote all the time from Christians, and I honestly find them rather unintelligible. I suppose that Christ calls us to be agents of love (as the metropolitan preached), but I refuse to love without limits—meaning, to love without judging. You wrote, “We judge in order to exclude. We exclude because we are afraid. We are afraid because we lack love.” I do not think that we judge in order to exclude, but our judging often has that effect. For example, if I judge that Mr. Smith is a drunken liar with lecherous tendencies, I will likely exclude him from my life, and I’ll encourage any potential victim of his that I know to exclude him, as well. This does follow from fear, as you wrote. For we exclude as a manner of defense (for ourselves and for those whom we love). We wish to shelter ourselves and our loved ones from danger, and it is our judgment that judges people as dangerous or harmless.

Does this fear follow from a lack of love? Possibly. It certainly means that we prioritize certain goods above loving someone that we find dangerous or harmful—goods such as our own well-being and that of our loved ones. Is this a rejection of Christ’s call to love our enemy? It may well be so, and on this point, I have severe reservations about the sanity of the gospel.

I think that we should love from a position of strength—we ought to aim to help others without endangering ourselves. I certainly do see the beauty and the honor of self sacrificial loving, but I only judge such self sacrifice worth it if what is gained is more important than what is lost. As bourgeois as it is, I do a cost-benefit analysis—from my limited and ignorant perspective, of course, but that is all that I have—for the universe as a whole. So, it makes sense to me for a man to die to save his city, but it seems outrageously unjust for a man to give his life to indulge the murderous lust of a depraved soul. Christians might say that God only asks what he himself does—self sacrificial love as imitatio Christi. God in his wisdom obviously knows what is right, but it just seems that, in God’s economy, it must have been worth it to redeem creation by the ultimate sacrifice. For it portends the final triumph over evil, and that is quite a prize. With Christ, however, we believe in such redemption. When Christians open themselves up like fools to dangerous predators, are they certain that such will pay off? What is gained? Is it martyrdom to indulge the wicked? Lacking cosmic redemption and renewal, I would rather see justice be done.

You wrote, “It’s revealing, I think, that you feel that refraining from judgment toward others will lead to “being reckless in [your own] actions”.  What exactly are you afraid will happen if you stop judging?  That you might be too recklessly compassionate?  Too recklessly understanding?  Too recklessly moved by another’s plight?”

Indeed! When people refuse to judge, when they turn off their powers of discrimination, they cease to be as wise as serpents. They endanger themselves and those around them. That is what I meant by reckless. It is our responsibility to be cautious and to trust and to mistrust based on good judgment. This is even more so when we have positions of authority by which we must concern ourselves with the welfare of our charges. For foolish judgment (or the refusal to employ judgment at all) might allow the barbarians through the city’s gates. While the savages commit atrocities and spill blood through the streets, are we to sit in self righteous moral satisfaction, consoling ourselves with the sweet, luxurious thought that at least we did not judge? “Woe to the city, but my soul remaineth pure!” Such is irresponsible, such is nonsense, and such is abomination to civilized man, who must recognize that evil is ever waiting beyond the city walls.

As Solzhenitsyn wrote, the line between good and evil passes through every man’s heart, but one’s petty egoism and sinful inordinances are not my chief concern. I am more interested in evil that ends in major social disturbances—rapists, vandals, murderers, thieves, and the like. I begrudge no ascetic his purity of heart. I just demand that such practitioners of holiness do not endanger their society by the reckless preaching of not judging others. To judge is necessary for human life when one is not willing to give up everything to brutes in return for a promised beatific vision . . . and I think that even the saints would reckon that the heights of holiness must be sought and accepted voluntarily rather than forced on everyone by one’s fanatical striving toward moral purity.

You are certainly correct that the tendency and faculty of judging may be used to exclude inconvenient people, as well—or even morally innocent “dangerous people” (like lepers). I take this to be your point in “Too recklessly moved by another’s plight?” I am more sympathetic to the Christian idea here, and in these situations, sacrifice seems nobler and often worth it. It does not involve indulgence toward bad men but rather the willing co-suffering with the unfortunate. Christian charity shines its iconic splendor when a Christian dedicates his life and treasure in love and in solidarity with others. However, it seems that even such a vocation involves judgment. We just have to judge wisely, rather than perversely. That is what I want everyone to do.

To help a leper and to help a sociopath both require putting oneself in danger, but I see the former as understandable and permissible while the latter as moronic and scandalous. Of course, the Christian would reply that both such men have diseases (one of the body and the other of the soul), and we are called by Christ to minister unto the sick. I cannot or will not see them as equivalent.

Moreover, I wonder if one may be irresponsible with either form of ministry. If your family depends on you and if you endanger yourself to help someone in need, is such responsible? It seems that society works better when people are willing to answer the call to help others in need without question or calculation. Indeed, we honor those who do so for their virtue and for their readiness to sacrifice themselves. By inculcating a sense of mutual responsibility, we maximize a safety net that is very useful in challenging times (such as disasters). A nation of men that see themselves as their brothers’ keepers is a stronger nation, as long as such mutual assistance does not enable dysfunctional social parasites. Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno is an effective motto among good men.

For example, let’s say that a man, Mr. Farbe, has a large family that depends on him. One day, Mr. Farbe happens to be near a crisis in which he could be of assistance. Helping in such a situation would endanger him, but it would also help others. Even though Mr. Farbe has many life commitments, it seems right that he would attempt to help if he could. For it just happened, by chance or providence, that it fell to him to be an instrument of salvation at that moment. Given the vicissitudes of life, any one of us might have to play that part in such a scene, and society works better—meaning that more people survive and flourish—if everyone is willing to answer the call of duty when such conditions arise. One’s other commitments ought not to figure in one’s calculation of whether or not to get involved, as a healthy society would look after those needs if someone gave his life nobly in the pursuit of the common good.

In less urgent situations, I think that self sacrifice is a matter for careful discernment—and judgment. Only the virtuous and wise may assess such circumstances correctly.

Well, I have rambled from judging to good judgment. To return to the need to judge others, let me simply state that we are social creatures. We live among many other free agents, some of whom will us good and some of whom will us ill. To navigate life well, we must be able to discern one group from the other. Moreover, in our relations with each other, we must be able to assess people in order to accomplish anything larger than ourselves and our own actions. Whether I judge someone fit to be in my life or to keep company with my loved ones or whether I judge someone capable or incapable of various tasks will determine how I relate to that person. The command not to judge, taken in an absolute way, would be a form of self imposed blindness and deafness. Indeed, it is akin to a spiritual lobotomy. I fail to see how God could expect such willful impairment from his rational creatures.

Posted by Joseph on Saturday, January 30, A.D. 2010
Ethics • Politics • (0) Comments • Permalink

Thursday, January 28, A.D. 2010

Kristor on Modern Rebellion

On View from the Right, Kristor has an interesting piece on the origins of adolescent rebellion in a post-Christian (post-religious) society, where the normal adolescent realization that all is not well in the world encounters a society that offers no credible answers. In traditional, healthy societies, such adolescents grow into maturity by acquiring their society’s traditional wisdom, which is the accumulated insight of generations with regard to man’s basic problems. In fractured, revolutionary societies, however, these young seekers after truth and wholeness find nothing but answers that their elders no longer believe. Thus, they turn to fads and gurus—or worse. Read the thread in “The Genesis of Gnosticism.”

Posted by Joseph on Thursday, January 28, A.D. 2010
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Wednesday, January 27, A.D. 2010

New World Byzantine

On Leitourgeia, I read a quote from architect Andrew Gould about church architecture that I found quite on target:

We don’t want to have a stage set, we don’t want to have a building that superficially looks like an Orthodox church, because that’s a stage set, that’s sort of what Baroque architecture is. That’s sort of trying to use plaster and ornament to give a theatrical impression of the Beatific Vision. But Orthodoxy’s not about that, Orthodoxy’s about building something absolutely solid, and permanent and honest that conveys the real ethos of the eternal Kingdom of God.

I then visited Gould’s architectural site, New World Byzantine, and it brought me great joy. We are, even in this age of ugliness, still capable of constructing fitting monuments for the faith. The soul stifling spirit of the present age makes one lose hope and think that we are only in a state of decay. Yet, here in the States and throughout the world, there is a resurgence of artists who value beauty, order, and the aesthetic tradition before the age of shocking originalism. The Intercollegiate Review had an interesting piece a few years ago by Noah Waldman, “On the Meaning of the Classical Movement in Architecture.” It gives me a reason to hope that the return to beauty is not simply a preoccupation of Christian artists but that the West in general is waking from its nightmare. Last year, I wrote about the architecture of Thomas Aquinas College in California in “Overcoming the Cult of the Ugly,” where even Novus Ordo folks have returned to the tradition of sacred and beautiful space. More recently, I attended liturgy in the newest church in Rome, Saint Catherine of Alexandria. It was a traditional and well situated temple. I believe that Christian architects are more comfortable now returning to the models of the past for inspiration instead of feeling like they need to ape rootless contemporary styles. Mencken remarked that Americans have a libido for the ugly, but perhaps enough people have been thoroughly satiated by the modern trough to know that they hunger for purer, wholesome food. I am not holding my breath, but I do wait for a modern renaissance. It must come, right?

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, January 27, A.D. 2010
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Sunday, January 24, A.D. 2010

The March and the Media

I have been attending the March for Life for over two decades, ever since my mother took me as a kid. Each year, an enormous crowd of folks descends upon Washington, and, each year, the media routinely ignore or distort the event. I have now spent the last decade in D.C., and I have a pretty good idea of what marches and protests look like in the city and how the media portray them. Without a doubt, the March for Life is the largest annual event. I’ll grant that the abortion rights march from A.D. 2004 was huge. It likely was larger than the annual March for Life. However, the abortion rights march occurred at the end of April, when it is loveliest to visit D.C., and it happened once. I did an internet search to discover that the previous abortion rights marches of significance were in A.D. 1989 and 1992. So, after twelve years, abortion rights supporters visited D.C. just as the Kwanzan cherry trees in East Potomac Park were in full bloom. For this, the American media establishment from every network and paper devoted much attention to the vitality of the abortion rights cause, as manifested by their march. Yet, the media ignore the March for Life year after year. Is this fair or honest coverage?

The scaly harridans of N.O.W. claim that the death march numbered more than one million people. However, based on my observations, the abortion march in A.D. 2004 could not have been more than twice as large as the annual March for Life. I would say that it was a third to a half larger. Thus, if the national coven really did number more than a million, then the annual March for Life would have to number at least 500,000, which is higher than anyone estimates (as the figure varies between 50,000 and 400,000, depending on the year and source). Moreover, I have noticed that the March for Life has significantly grown over the last five years, and I think that this year’s march was the largest showing that I have seen. It certainly took longer than ever for everyone to march, ending about an hour later than usual. Nevertheless, such a showing of concerned citizens about one of the most controversial social issues of our age elicits every little interest from the media.

Furthermore, the coverage that does occur is wildly, absurdly inaccurate. Every year, the media portray the march as a clash of abortion rights supporters with prolife marchers, and their photographs often focus on the few abortion rights supporters in a sea of baby defenders—“Yes, fellow citizens, we see here another picture of American democracy in action.” Yet, such a treatment is willfully deceiving. I remember that my first march had a number of abortion rights counter protesters. They were an insignificant minority, but there were enough of them for them to be visible—probably a few hundred people. By contrast, in the last ten years, I have rarely encountered any counter protesters. I believe that it was two years ago when I found one old woman sitting on the curb outside the West Building of the National Gallery of Art with an abortion rights sign—and no one else from the evil side. Last year, I wrote about the four “Keep Abortion Legal” counter protesters in front of the Supreme Court. This year, I saw no one until I was returning to Capitol Hill after having accompanied my brother to Arlington Cemetery for his school’s bus pick up. As I was ascending the escalator at the Capitol South station, I noticed about five girls with N.O.W. signs going down into the station on the opposite escalator. So, they did exist, but they were practically invisible. Nonetheless, the media likely covered them as much as the hundreds of thousands of prolife marchers. That, I suppose, is what the Left considers “fair and balanced.”

By the way, during the march, I did notice a disheveled man holding a sign that read, “End Theocracy.” Perhaps, he was a counter protester, or perhaps he was just a lunatic. Political activity attracts the crazies like a flame draws moths.

Given my abundance of experience with this consistently wacky and unfair media treatment, I was not surprised to read Steven Greydanus’ coverage of the coverage in the National Catholic Register. Greydanus is shocked. Hey, Steven, the shock wears off after several years of seeing the same brazen misinformation and bias.

Greydanus also links to Jill Stanek’s listing of media follies concerning the march. Among which, we find that C.N.N.‘s Rick Sanchez channeled Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf (“Baghdad Bob”) in a hilarious journalistic disconnect from reality: “It’s the 37th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade case . . . both sides being represented today, but it does appear to me, as I look at these signs that—which side is represented the most . . . Do we know?” I am not sure if laughter or a despairing sigh would be more appropriate.

Another egregious example was Krista Gesaman’s post on Newsweek that the prolife marchers were getting older and that young women were absent from the march. I suppose that these things may not appear as Baghdad Bobtastic unless you are familiar with the march. Gesamen seems to have based her fortune telling (as her post was published before the march began) on a change in the march route, thinking that such a shortening of the march by three blocks was to accommodate an aging marcher demographic. I have complained about this shortening, myself, but it has nothing to do with the average age of the marchers, as a considerable number of them are teenagers and college students from Roman Catholic schools. Rather, I suspect that police officials have pushed for the march route to be shorter to accommodate the growing number of people at the march. Even so, this year’s march was three blocks longer than last year, which was a return to the march route from A.D. 2008. So, Gesaman wrongly guesses at the demographic make up of the march based on a change in facts that she misinterprets—and the change in facts is actually the opposite of what she wrote! This is what passes for acceptable journalism at Newsweek?

I wonder if the media folks have simply lost their minds. Evidence for this theory? Consider the following, which you really have to see to believe:

May I rest my case?

Posted by Joseph on Sunday, January 24, A.D. 2010
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Friday, January 22, A.D. 2010

The March, A.D. 2010

As I type, many tens of thousands of Americans committed to the sanctity of human life are traveling toward Washington, D.C. for the March for Life today, including my brother, Aaron. On this anniversary of Roe versus Wade, I hope that they all arrive safely in town, and I wish them well in their attempt to raise awareness about our national scandal. However, I doubt that they will arrive warmly—it is supposed to be a cold, sleety day. Thirty degrees is not bad when one is dry, but it is miserable to have cold, wet feet. Still, I imagine that the mirth of the crowd will make it bearable, perhaps even pleasant.

Last night, I attended the vespers service at Saint Nicholas Cathedral, where the O.C.A.‘s Metropolitan Jonah addressed the crowd and spoke at length about the importance of the family and of a loving spirit of inclusion. He warned about the isolating power of judgment and condemnation. Instead of condemning, we should love and embrace—for many keep from repentance and salvation due to the fear of being condemned by Christians in the Church.

As usual, I have a hard time understanding this aspect of Christianity. I understand the old cliché of hating the sin but not the sinner, but how does one not judge a man? It just seems absurdly mad not to judge everyone and everything. For we have to use our practical wisdom in every decision that we make, and most of those decisions involve other people and our assessments of other people. When Christians begin saying warm, fuzzy, theological pop, I become quite agitated. For I do not know what they mean, as it is so ambiguous.

My friend Andrew tends to assuage my fears by interpreting such advice in an intelligent and rational way, but it is clear that many or most people fail to understand things intelligently or rationally. I know that there is sometimes rhetorical power in using vague language, but when such ambiguity is so open to misunderstanding, it seems to me that a better course would be to articulate more clearly what one means. What does it really mean to refrain from judgment toward others without being reckless in one’s actions?

I have to credit traditionalist papist intellectuals for their distinctions and clarity. Perhaps, the West’s experience with scholasticism has trained its traditionally educated intellectuals to delineate their arguments with precision. I wish that Orthodox hierarchs used such careful language more. Metropolitan Jonah seems like a good and sincere man, but his sermons frustrate me. Somewhere in the words, his love of God and man shine through. He invites us to follow the higher road, and, as Christians, we have a pretty good idea of where that road begins and whither it travels. However, the messiness and apparent nonsense of much of what he says leaves a lot of potential for misunderstanding by the masses and for exploitation by ideologues. I suppose that I want a mixture of John Chrysostom and Thomas Aquinas. Does that count as avarice?

There was a flock of O.C.A. bishops at the vespers service—far more than in previous years. I am not sure if flock is the appropriate collective noun. For bishops are shepherds, not sheep. Perhaps, a brace, bevy, or brood of bishops? I do not think that any other jurisdiction’s episcopate was represented, though I recognized priests from various jurisdictions. Such is a shame. For it seems that the march would be a great opportunity for inter-Orthodox ecumenical cooperation and fellowship. That is certainly the case with the clergy and laity—there are Greeks, Antiochians, Russians, Serbs, and all the rest there marching with the O.C.A. hierarchs, along with the hundred thousand or so other Christians who come faithfully every year in the worst of winter to remind the nation that our laws should be just, that the innocent should be protected, and that God will not be mocked.

Of course, God is mocked—but for how long?

Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just: for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins. My defence is of God, which saveth the upright in heart. God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.

I might just see you at the march. If so, thank you for marching. Stay warm. Valete!

Posted by Joseph on Friday, January 22, A.D. 2010
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Wednesday, January 20, A.D. 2010

Bay State Bonissima

Scott Brown, a.k.a. the Mass. Man in a truck, the “Scott heard ‘round the world,” and “Hottie McAwesome” according to HillBuzz, won the special senate seat election in Massachusetts to fill Ted Kennedy’s place in the upper chamber. Congratulations to Brown, the Brown team, and all the fine people of the Bay State.

I have a dark confession to make. Since I was sixteen years old, I have harbored ill thoughts of Massachusetts. That year, I went to Provence to spend the summer with a French family. For a week before I was to meet my host family at a “MacDo” outside Marseilles, I traveled with a group of North American students from Paris to Provence. The majority of the kids were New Englanders, with a few Canadians, Mexicans, and Californians thrown in. I never had any prejudice against Yankees before, but I developed a dislike that week. Luckily, I made friends with a corn fed all American fellow from Indianapolis, an Italian boy from Buffalo, a pretty blonde from Kentucky, and a sweet Mormon girl from Oklahoma. We were the kids who appreciated the trip, delighted at the sights, and gave thanks to God for such an awesome experience. The New Englanders were all wealthy brats who had been there and done that. They were insufferably pompous and bored in the arrogant, ill mannered way of new moneyed punks. I became a regionalist.

My years since have reinforced the stereotype, at least with folks from Massachusetts. I have come to know rather well a hundred New Englanders since then, and the term “Mass. Hole” has empirical evidence for it. While I now appreciate New Hampshirites, Mainers, Rhode Islanders, Connecticuters, and especially Vermonters, there have been precious few Bay Staters who broke my ugly stereotype. A fine chap who was a Latinist and traditionalist papist from Worcester almost redeemed the commonwealth’s reputation in my mind, but he became an expat in Edinburgh, having had the good sense to emigrate.

So it was until my father and I traveled to New England this past summer, about which I wrote on this site. I loved the land of the Yankees—its history, culture, and, yes, denizens. I expected to hate Boston, but both my father and I fell in love with the city, and we found most people to be quite genial. I continued to believe that Massachusetts drivers were rude on the road, and, for whatever reason, the crop that I have tended to meet throughout my life has been largely unpleasant, but I found the Bay Staters on their home turf, even in Boston, quite amicable. I still blamed them for their political idiocy (the Kennedy clan, the Tsongas tribe, O’Neill, Dukakis, Frank, Studds, Patrick), but humans are not perfect. How the land of the Bradfords and Adams has fallen since Calvin Coolidge (P.B.U.H.) was governor . . .

Then, the Senate race happened. It is just amazing! I have written before that I do not think that the United States have had a more destructive political figure than Edward Kennedy. On a personal level, I liked the man, and I admire what he did for his family in his later years. However, he was a harmful political force, and he may have, more than anyone else, doomed the republic’s fate. I do not even say that about Wilson or F.D.R., who changed the country in so many ways for the worse. Still, they had many redeeming qualities. Ted was a cancer on the body politic. Yet, to think that Chappaquiddick Teddy has been replaced by a Republican who is as conservative as one can expect in contemporary Massachusetts, and that he did so by running against socialized medicine and against the Leftist messianism represented by the Obama presidency—it is joyous! What a wonderful, glorious moment in American history! Even in politics, the Bay State has surprised me.

Thus, after so many years of insulting Massachusetts, I wish to say how proud I am of those Red Sox fans. They are wicked good.

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, January 20, A.D. 2010
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