We have previously lamented what we lose when we forsake the serendipity of browsing a newspaper or magazine for the stultifying predictability of those custom-tailored electronic round-ups that tell us only what we want to hear. But I was reminded of this point in a somewhat surprising situation recently when I read a book by mistake, and found out I liked it.
How, exactly, does one read a book by mistake? Read the rest of this entry »
Last winter, when I donated to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, I made the mistake of buying a Ron Paul sweatshirt but no Ron Paul T-shirt. I do not remember whether that was simple inadvertence on my part or whether it reflected a conscious prediction that Dr. Paul would likely be irrelevant by the time it was too warm for the sweatshirt. Either way, it was a mistake, because Ron Paul’s role in the presidential election is today very much the same as it was back in January. He is a man who will not be president, but who will not stop asking some of the most important questions about the course our nation is on. It is perhaps no coincidence that he also provides the most philosophically coherent package of answers. Read the rest of this entry »
In case anyone is feeling disappointed about bets not made on Saturday, the following story may help. Read the rest of this entry »
A great deal has been written in the last few years about the extent to which we can or should trade liberty for security. Precisely because so much has been written, it may seem unlikely that anything new can be said now. But in a recent book review, Jeremy Waldron describes the nature of the tradeoff with a clarity that struck me as unprecedented. Although his observations seem obvious in retrospect, I have not seen anyone make them before, which suggests to me that perhaps they only seem obvious because they are so keen. Read the rest of this entry »
I spent a lot of time on my back this week due to a freak dog-washing injury. But I’m a silver-lining kind of guy, so instead of writing about the stabbing pain I’m writing about the fact that I got to catch up — a bit — on a few unread issues of the New York Review of Books, which always seems to give me so much to think about.
From the September 27 issue, I enjoyed Christopher Jencks’s review of Pat Buchanan’s State of Emergency, a book we also discussed on this blog a few months back, and also Janet Malcolm’s article “Pandora’s Click,” an uncharacteristically brief review that provides a timely reminder about the perils of e-mail and that medium’s own special contribution to our incivility. I also finally got around to reading the piece Jim Walsh recommended in the October 11 issue, Bill McKibben’s review of four books on climate change. But what really held my attention in the October 11 issue was this fascinating excerpt from Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s journals of 1966 and 1967.
It’s called “The Turning Point,” and it’s all about LBJ’s fateful decision to escalate rather than withdraw from Vietnam. Read the rest of this entry »
In a post a few weeks ago, I promised some thoughts about Andrew Keen’s polemic against “Web 2.0″ culture, entitled, “The Cult of the Amateur.” Keen, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has only recently become skeptical about the social impact of the Internet, takes as his jumping off point the famous T.H. Huxley image of an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters. Huxley says the monkeys would eventually produce Hamlet. Keen says the Internet as we know it today is putting that claim to the test. But the results, according to Keen, are not encouraging. Far from elevating our culture, we Internet monkeys seem to be telling lies to each other on blogs and posting videos of ourselves in various states of undress on Youtube. No sign of Hamlet yet. Read the rest of this entry »
Readers of this blog know life is about a dog, and that it’s important to leave room for the Holy Spirit and avoid making Movie-Indians. But since this blog has not exactly entered the mainstream of popular culture yet, other people are still busy writing books about The Meaning of Life, and I reviewed one in today’s Washington Times.
I read this review of Christopher Hitchen’s latest book in the Times Book Review this week and it got me thinking about how enlightenment style atheism is making a comeback in the popular press. Another book that has been on the best seller list in this vein is The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. To be fair to both of these authors, I haven’t read their books, only the reviews. As such, I am not qualified to and this post is not intended as a critique of their work.
However, one paragraph from the review of Hitchens’ book struck me as interesting:
“Hitchens is an old-fashioned village atheist, standing in the square trying to pick arguments with the good citizens on their way to church. The book is full of logical flourishes and conundrums, many of them entertaining to the nonbeliever. How could Christ have died for our sins, when supposedly he also did not die at all? Did the Jews not know that murder and adultery were wrong before they received the Ten Commandments, and if they did know, why was this such a wonderful gift? On a more somber note, how can the “argument from design” (that only some kind of “intelligence” could have designed anything as perfect as a human being) be reconciled with the religious practice of female genital mutilation, which posits that women, at least, as nature creates them, are not so perfect after all? Whether sallies like these give pause to the believer is a question I can’t answer.” Read the rest of this entry »
All of the following items inspired me to post, but sometimes inspiration is not enough, and now they’re old. I’m passing them along anyway.
1. When Less Is More. Dahlia Lithwick explains and dissects “[t]he nutty legal syllogism that powers the Bush administration.”
2. Democracy Takes a Village. Joseph Pearce invokes the thought of E.F. Schumacher to ask how big our nation can become without making our democracy impossibly undemocratic. (I now see this particular article from the December 9 edition of The American Conservative is not available online without a subscription, but if you don’t subscribe to The American Conservative, perhaps you should.)
3. What Would Jack Bauer Do? Michael Brendan Dougherty chronicles the disturbing extent to which some treat Fox’s hit show “24” as if it were a model for real life.
4. What Is “Legal”? On Abortion, Democracy, and Catholic Politicians. I’ve long admired Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., not only for the substance of his teaching, but for his theory of grading, which worked to my short-term detriment but longer-term benefit. In this piece, he asks provocative questions about the spiritual costs of abortion on demand, with this twist: Fr. Schall is asking less about the spiritual costs of any given abortion than about the spiritual costs of the political decision to make abortion legal. Part of what makes the argument so provocative is that it does not seem to include anything that would prevent one from extending it to any moral wrong countenanced by the law. (For example, what are the spiritual costs of no-fault divorce laws? Of allowing people to buy their way out of performing certain promises? Of allowing people to work on Sunday?)
5. What Did [Lincoln] Really Think About Race? The contrast between Abraham Lincoln’s quiet, practical effectiveness on racial equality and Frederick Douglass’s uncompromising articulation of moral principle is interesting for its own sake, as history. But in addition, people often draw parallels between the moral argument against slavery and the moral argument against legalized abortion, and this piece lends itself to that comparison as well. If the basic Lincoln/Douglass dichotomy in this piece is accurate, then so far the abortion debate is different from the slavery debate in at least one important particular: With respect to legalized abortion, we have Douglasses everywhere, but we can’t seem to find a Lincoln.
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