Arts & Ammo

Eradicating Poverty

Anglican bishops, currently meeting at the decennial Lambeth Conference, have taken to the streets to march against poverty. Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown joined them and had this to say:

This has been one of the greatest public demonstrations of faith that this great city has ever seen. You have sent a symbol, a very clear message with rising force that poverty can be eradicated, poverty must be eradicated and if we all work together for change poverty will be eradicated.

One might think that with so many bishops present, somebody would have reminded the PM that Jesus said otherwise. But then the Anglican bishops have not been particularly troubled by such details lately. So many of them are willing to swim against the tide of procreative nature, it may appear a comparatively simple matter to remake the laws of economics.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said, “[O]ur faith challenges us to eradicate poverty, and not merely to reduce it.” St. Francis, call your office.

The liberals’ view that we have nothing to learn from history and that no wisdom resides in our culture and traditions leaves them in a state of perpetual experimentation – and frequently in a state of surprise or denial when their experiments lead to the same results obtained in the past. First and foremost, they must do something, even if the something is demonstrably wrong. Their faith is in their own power to change; they put their hope in audacity.

I have nothing against the Church taking positions on issues of public importance. The Church has much to contribute, especially when it brings to the discussion its vast scholarship and experience dealing with persistent aspects of the human condition. But surely that corpus of knowledge, had the bishops consulted it, would have argued against joining with Labour leaders in a march against poverty with the attendant message that some new legislation can accomplish the deed. (But then surely that same corpus of knowledge would have argued also against joining with gay rights activists to modify the sacraments.)

Of course, the bishops will be criticized either way – for ignoring a problem or for meddling in it. Cranmer commends them for taking a break from gender issues.

Of course most of these bishops are Socialists, with a commitment to wealth distribution because it is the rich getting richer who make the poor poorer. But there will be no placards ‘calling for free markets, free trade and better protection of private property’ until there is a dialogue between the Church and the Conservative Party which can bring enlightenment to Their Graces. It is not that no bishops harbour secret leanings to the right; it is that no-one from the right bothers to talk to them or convincingly reassure them that there is no shame in supporting a Conservative worldview.

I question the bishops’ march because I think the Church has a better understanding of poverty than the government does, and the Church squanders its position in advocating a political solution. And it squanders its authority when it argues on subjects like political economics on which it has no particular expertise. The Archbishop’s remarks predictably focus on the “gulf” between rich and poor. But that is not the definition of poverty. It is merely a justification for the easy task of making the rich less rich, even though that has never resulted in making the poor less poor. Liberalism offers the convenient solution of allowing the middle class to give someone else’s money to the poor – to give without sacrifice and feel good about it.

The Church on the other hand works through benevolence, not coercion. It calls on us to share our material wealth, but it understands poverty also as a dearth of intellectual and spiritual capital. The Church accomplishes far more by building hospitals and schools (and, yes, cathedrals) than by marching to buck up what the Archbishop calls the “global political will.”

July 29th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Politics, Religion | no comments

Cultural History of Alcohol

Jonathan Yardley reviews Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol by Iain Gately and comments on the fundamental role of alcohol in Western Civilization.

To the ancient Greeks, alcohol was an essential part of a civilized society: “Our word wine derives from their oin, whose consumption was considered to be both one of the defining characteristics of Hellenic civilization and a point of difference between its members and the population of the rest of the world, whom they termed barbaroi, or barbarians.” Rome, “the next great drinking civilization to emerge in the classical world,” was transformed “from a sober society, suspicious of both alcohol and drunkenness, to a major producer, populated with practiced and discriminating drinkers,” and as its empire spread, so too did its permissive attitudes toward alcohol.

Though Christianity is often associated in the popular mind with opposition to alcohol, the historical truth suggests otherwise. . . . [H]oly orders, in particular the Cistercians, played essential roles in the development of sophisticated techniques for making wine and beer, and to this day some beverages are closely identified with their monastic origins.

Yardley seems to gloss over the point that opposition to alcohol is characteristic of a particular strain of Christianity, and the historical truth bears this out quite nicely. That makes the history of alcohol in America a more complex topic. We noted a while back that George Washington’s distillery at Mount Vernon has recently been restored and is producing whiskey once again. Washington knew his market and became one of the largest distillers in America. One wonders why this charming aspect of the man was airbrushed from our lore (or was I just absent from school that day?).

Alcohol plays an important role in leisure, and according to Josef Pieper, leisure is the basis of culture. So Gately’s book may deserve a prominent place in the library of culture warriors.

Photo: Whisky Barrels, Invergordon Distillery by foxypar4 (Creative Commons)

July 28th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Leisure | no comments

The Dark Knight Martini

It’s possible that there is a martini for every occasion. I just don’t understand why having a new occasion requires a new recipe. Clearly I am in the minority.

I believe that the fictional character Bruce Wayne (a/k/a Batman) enjoyed martinis served up by his butler Alfred. I doubt that those martinis, fictional though they may be, contained chocolate liqueur. It’s hard even to imagine Alfred agreeing to make such a thing. It sounds more like a martini for Robin than Batman.

But let’s not be petty. The melodiously named Leslie Fishlock of @bar provides us with an example of American ingenuity and proof that martinis have a special place in the culture.

The Dark Knight Martini
4 fluid ounces chocolate liqueur
3 fluid ounces vodka
1 (1 ounce) square semisweet chocolate, grated

Directions:
In a cocktail mixer full of ice, combine chocolate liqueur and vodka. Shake vigorously and strain into 2 chilled martini glasses. Put on your bat tights and garnish with chocolate shavings.

Try it, and if it doesn’t hit the spot, maybe you can feed it your boy wonder.

Image by Ken30684 - Creative Commons

July 25th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Leisure | no comments

Dark Knight for Conservatives

Andrew Klavan says the latest Batman movie takes a conservative viewpoint. Batman confronts the terrorists in the only terms they understand, and Batman is vilified for it. Sound familiar?

I have not seen “The Dark Knight” because the nearest theater is 50 miles away and I have to have a pretty good reason to make the trek. I do that for the Met Opera productions, but I can postpone seeing most Hollywood releases until Netflix makes them available. Of course, many Hollywood releases can be postponed indefinitely if not forever.

Klavan reiterates a point that we have taken up before (e.g., here and here): why does Hollywood insist on promoting a losing point of view – a view that promotes losing the war and that results in losing money?

[T]ime after time, left-wing films about the war on terror – films like “In The Valley of Elah,” “Rendition” and “Redacted” – which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.

In contrast, “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune. Klavan also notes that Hollywood offers the conservative viewpoint only when it is disguised or sugar-coated in some way.

Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense – values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right – only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like “300,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Narnia,” “Spiderman 3” and now “The Dark Knight”?

I think Chesterton came up with part of the answer quite a while back in Orthodoxy.

My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery. I generally learnt it from a nurse; that is, from the solemn and star-appointed priestess at once of democracy and tradition. The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth. I knew the magic beanstalk before I had tasted beans; I was sure of the Man in the Moon before I was certain of the moon.

When Hollywood makes a realistic film about the war on terror, the values vanish, and moral equivalence takes its place. As Chesterton would say, the rational approach is abnormally wrong.

Klavan concludes with what we all know but often choose to ignore: Doing what is right is difficult. And he highlights the distinction between those who recognize the moral complexity in doing right and those who merely profess an easy morality while doing nothing.

When heroes arise who take those difficult duties on themselves, it is tempting for the rest of us to turn our backs on them, to vilify them in order to protect our own appearance of righteousness. We prosecute and execrate the violent soldier or the cruel interrogator in order to parade ourselves as paragons of the peaceful values they preserve. As Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon says of the hated and hunted Batman, “He has to run away – because we have to chase him.

July 25th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Film | no comments

Building the Perfect Shed

Well we had a pretty good day – my brother and I – got the outside frame of the floor done and put 4 out of 20 joists in place. The rest of the joists should be easy, might do a couple a day in the evening. When we put on the plywood subfloor (six sheets of plywood) the floor will be done, then we start on the walls, then roof. I’m not sure I want to go with the barn style per the plans I bought, as it seems limiting in terms of windows and skylight, but I don’t have to decide just yet. I think the hardest part was the foundation and floor. It should get a bit easier from now on, although the roof will be a challenge. Now, unfortunately, it’s back to work at the paying job, gearing up for trial.

My brother and I are like Gary Cooper in that movie about the architect – Ayn Rand’s fantasy The Fountainhead. We bow to no man, and follow the dream . . . of the perfect shed . . . as art … death before conformity! To Hell with the Building Code! The act of creation must be preserved, on film or in lumber!

So The Fountainhead was modeled after Frank Lloyd Wright? Yeah, as in Frank Lloyd Wrong! Nice ideas on paper, but horribly non-ergonomic buildings, chairs that hurt to sit in, doors where you have to step down and duck through simultaneously. Please, spare me FLW/R! Art belongs on a wall. A wall with a doorway fit for midgets is not art – sorry! Nor is a chair that is a hemorrhoid waiting to happen! Nor is a fork that won’t pick up a piece of rib-eye or a piece of lettuce. Patricia Neal can have the beamish S.O.B.!

Now, give me a nice piece of landscape architecture, and that’s a different story. A fountain, a waterfall, a barbecue pit. . . .

Here in the South, we’re concerned with space and ventilation, leg-room, gut-room, head-room, mind-room, mud-rooms, and cockroaches. We’re pragmatists who believe that form follows function, not ego, mushrooms, popularity, acid, adoration, publicity, sun-stroke, weirdness, funkiness, dementia, hero worship, or other flirt-ilizer, gim-crackery, crack, or general nonsense. We prefer horse-sense, barn style, barnyard, right angles, Anglican righteousness, righteous indignation, indignant outrage, and basic outrageous-ness, not to mention Elliot Ness, Lake Ness, lake effect, effective opposition, oppositional defiance, defiant self-righteousness, and generally being right (which brings us back to right-angles – which, frankly, Frank wrongly thinks are evil).

The ground in south Louisiana is nearly liquid, so it has the virtue of being flat in a way that Kansans can only dream about. Consequently, we naturally build our sheds at right angles to the ground and sky. The street lights on Bourbon Street are our plumb line, and when their angle to the ground appears too acute, or oblique, we know it’s time to go home and sleep it off. Somebody call Frank a cab.

July 24th, 2008 Posted by The Strafer | Film, Ranching | one comment

Suspend the Writ

Andrew McCarthy advances a pragmatic and much needed solution to the judicial usurpation of power in Boumediene. Suspend the writ of habeas corpus.

“What?” you shudder. Have you lost your mind? Has this Bush-whacky Constitution-shredder finally gone off the deep end?

No. Not even a little. I’m not talking about suspending the old writ of habeas corpus, the one that protects all Americans inside the United States.

I’m talking about suspending the new writ invented on June 12, 2008. The faux writ that Justice Anthony Kennedy and his four associates in the Boumediene majority weaved out of whole cloth. The writ that runs only to the protection of America’s foreign enemies in a war Americans overwhelmingly support. The writ that purports to extend the jurisdiction of the courts – which is to say, the rule of judges – anyplace on the planet where the federal government acts and where the American military fights.

I am talking about restoring the separation of powers and the proper, limited role of the United States courts.

Let’s all refer to our copies of the Constitution, Art. III, section 1: “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Art. I, section 8 lists among Congress’s enumerated powers “To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court” and “To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.”

The Court in Boumediene, however, decided that it has the power to alter Congress’s rules concerning the conduct of warfare and to delegate the making of new rules to the (inferior) district courts. Not content with arrogating to themselves decisions about how to conduct warfare, who the enemy is, where the battlefield is, and how the troops should go about their business,

. . . Justice Kennedy & Co. also undertake to dump the whole mess on the very federal district judges Congress cut out of the equation – as it was Congress’s perfect right to do – in the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act and, more emphatically, in the 2006 Military Commissions Act.

While McCarthy’s suggestion may sound radical, it is not. He simply suggests that Congress exercise its rightful authority to say that the Writ of Habeas Corpus is today precisely what it was for the 219 years preceding Boumediene, and that it is suspended only to the extent it was recklessly expanded by the Court.

Returning to the Constitution: “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Art. I, section 9. (We can leave for another day the interesting use of the word “privilege” as opposed to “right.”)

So does Congress have the authority to suspend the writ? Is this really a case of rebellion or invasion? McCarthy points to 9/11 as sufficient grounds. I would also argue that if Boumediene’s extension of habeas corpus is based on the United States’ de facto sovereignty on foreign soil, then rebellion and invasion can also be found in the same foreign territory. Justice Kennedy also relies on the fact that Congress has not suspended the writ, and were Congress to do that, one leg of Boumediene would be eliminated.

The judiciary has enjoyed free reign for most of the past century. It has seen itself, in a gross over-extension of Marbury, as the only authoritative branch of government, and the other branches have done nothing to counter that impression. Suspending the writ on foreign soil would provide an excellent object lesson concerning the court’s overreaching, perhaps begin to turn the tide away from judicial oligarchy, and help restore a proper balance of power.

McCarthy’s article deserves a careful read.

July 23rd, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Law | one comment

Preserving Creative Freedom

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown out the fine levied by the FCC against CBS for Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.

Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the Media Access Project, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of a group of TV writers, directors and producers, said the ruling “is an important advance for preserving creative freedom on the air.”

Creative freedom to do what? Have a malfunction? It’s hard to buy that excuse:

The 90 million people watching the Super Bowl, many of them children, heard Justin Timberlake sing, “Gonna have you naked by the end of this song,” as he reached for Jackson’s bustier.

And apparently Janet Jackson had planned the stunt:

The FCC had argued that Jackson’s nudity, albeit fleeting, was graphic and explicit and CBS should have been forewarned. Jackson has said the decision to add a costume reveal—exposing her right breast, which had only a silver sunburst “shield” covering her nipple—came after the final rehearsal.

Silver sunburst shields – worn by performers everywhere in case their other garments accidentally fall off. No, the wardrobe functioned as planned.

The creative content of a Jackson’s breast – what artistic insight, what bold juxtaposition of forms, what an amazing dime-store trinket covering the areola!

But our illustrious court of appeals missed the significance of this creative breakthrough and held Jackson’s breast (so to speak) artistically mundane – so mundane that CBS didn’t have sufficient warning that flashing it on national TV during the most watched “family” event of the year might be considered indecent. The FCC, according to the court, deviated from its 30-year practice of only fining for events so “pervasive as to amount to ’shock treatment’ for the audience.”

The event was intended to shock, to stick a thumb (or whatever) in the collective eye of the unfortunate masses in flyover country, clinging to their religion and false modesty.

But our sophisticated judges were not shocked, and they don’t think the rest of us were either, even though the event was reported that way at the time and still commands significant attention more than four years later.

Rest assured that it will be harder to shock us in the future (although those who hail this decision as “preserving creative freedom on the air” will try their best) and that the courts will continue to ratchet standards of decency ever downward.

July 21st, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Law | one comment

Failing Civics

Take the American Civics Literacy Test and compare your score with both freshmen and graduating seniors at America’s colleges.

The Anchoress inspired me to take the test today. I matched her score of 56 out of 60, or 93%. Oh well, you can’t know everything.

But then I didn’t go to Harvard where the graduating seniors had a mean score of 69.56%, which was the highest of all the schools.

The test is administered by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute to 14,000 freshmen and seniors at 50 colleges and universities. It tests American history, political thought, market economy, and international relations.

The average senior failed all four subjects, scoring less than 60% in each. Among the findings:

• Seniors do not know basic facts of American history. Only 45.9% know that Yorktown was the battle that ended the American Revolution.
  
  
• Seniors do not know the basic timeline of American history. Only 47.7% know that Fort Sumter came before Gettysburg and that Gettysburg came before Appomattox.
  
  
• Seniors do not know America’s founding documents. Only 45.9% know that the line “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” comes from the Declaration of Independence.
  
  
• Seniors do not know the rudiments of America’s historical relations with the world. Only 42.7% know that NATO was formed to resist Soviet expansion.

The results tend to be worse in the most prestigious universities.

Colleges that do well in popular rankings typically do not do well in advancing civic knowledge.

• Generally, the higher U.S. News & World Report ranks a college, the lower it ranks here in civic learning. At four colleges U.S. News ranked in its top 12 (Cornell, Yale, Duke, and Princeton), seniors scored lower than freshmen. These colleges are elite centers of “negative learning.” Cornell was the third-worst performer last year and the worst this year.
  
  
• Surveyed colleges ranked by Barron’s imparted only about one-third the civic learning of colleges overlooked by Barron’s.

How do you “unteach” history and civics to college students? I don’t think it’s very hard. One method would be simply to ignore those subjects entirely and rely on the students to forget what they have learned. Another would be to fill the students’ heads with enough mumbo-jumbo that they can no longer discern the facts. Another would be to design a curriculum around how students “feel” about civics and history. Another would be to teach history only as it relates to gender and sexual preferences. . . .

We could go on.

July 21st, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Education | no comments

Small Arms Fire

To the Spoilers Goes the Victory. The sack race and three-legged race have been banned from a school sports day because the children might fall over and hurt themselves. Simon Woolley, head of education at Beamish in Co Durham, said: “We looked at a three-legged race and a sack race but what we want to do is minimise the risk to the children. We thought we would be better to do hopping and running instead because there was less chance of them falling over.”

Trash Culture. “Not long before she died, Pauline Kael remarked to a friend, ‘When we championed trash culture we had no idea it would become the only culture.’” Robert Fulford elaborates:

Kael assumed she was safe to defend the choices of mass audiences because the old standards of taste would always be there. They were, after all, built into the culture. But those standards were swiftly eroding. [Paul] Schrader argued that she and her admirers won the battle but lost the war. Acceptable taste became mass-audience taste, box-office receipts the ultimate measure of a film’s worth, sometimes the only measure. Traditional, well-written movies without violence or special effects were pushed to the margins. “It was fun watching the applecart being upset,” Schrader said, “but now where do we go for apples?”

U.K. Moves Toward State-Sponsored Islam. “The BBC has announced that now the Government is to fund a ‘board of Islamic theologians,’ with Oxford and Cambridge Universities hosting debates on ‘key issues such as women and loyalty to the UK.’ Communities Secretary Hazel Blears said it was government’s job ‘to support Muslim leaders on controversial issues.’” Via Cranmer.

New Music Is Torture. Joe Queenan says the unsayable.

Having spent most of the last century writing music few people were expected to understand, much less enjoy, the high priests of music were now portrayed as innocent victims of the public’s lack of imagination. . . . [C]oncert-goers have learned to stay awake and applaud politely at compositions by Christopher Rouse and Tan Dun. But they do this only because these works tend to be short and not terribly atonal; because they know this is the last time in their lives they’ll have to listen to them; and because the orchestra has signed a contract in blood guaranteeing that if everyone holds their nose and eats their vegetables, they’ll be rewarded with a great dollop of Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn.

Beer Is a Health Food. George Will says it, so it must be true. And he backs it up with scientific and historical evidence. “Suffice it to say that the good news is really good: Beer is a health food. And you do not need to buy it from those wan, unhealthy-looking people who, peering disapprovingly at you through rimless Trotsky-style spectacles, seem to run all the health food stores.”

July 20th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Film, Music, Politics, Religion | one comment

Morality Without the Tommyrot

Joseph Bottum recounts the central role of mainline Protestantism in the history and cultural attitudes of America. It was the unifying principle:

Which makes it all the stranger that, somewhere around 1975, the main stream of Protestantism ran dry. In truth, there are still plenty of Methodists around. Baptists and Presbyterians, too—Lutherans, Episcopalians, and all the rest; millions of believing Christians who remain serious and devout. For that matter, you can still find, ­soldiering on, some of the institutions they established in their Mainline glory days: the National Council of Churches, for instance, in its God Box up on New York City’s Riverside Drive, with the cornerstone laid, in a grand ceremony, by President Eisenhower in 1958. But those institutions are corpses, even if they don’t quite realize that they’re dead. The great confluence of Protestantism has dwindled to a trickle over the past thirty years, and the Great Church of America has come to an end.

The once outlandish actions of Bishop Pike, for example, (“discarding doctrine in the name of ethics, and he was always ­ feckless: dangerously irresponsible, ­refusing to think his way through causes and ­consequences”) became the norm.

And that leaves us in an odd situation, unlike any before. The death of the Mainline is the central historical fact of our time: the event that distinguishes the past several decades from every other ­period in American history. Almost every one of our current political and cultural oddities, our contradictions and obscurities, derives from this fact: The Mainline has lost the capacity to set, or even significantly influence, the national vocabulary or the national self-understanding.

Among the causes, Bottum discusses Canadian law professor John Humphrey who completed a draft of the 1948 U.N.’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights and said what had been achieved was “Christian morality without the tommyrot.” Tommyrot to Humphrey stood for dogma, sacraments, prayer, and other trappings of religion. And morality without the tommyrot seems to be precisely what many Americans seek. Morality has been replaced by ethics, and religion by spirituality, and the core principles are no longer apparent.

Protestantism’s quest for greater relevance in the economic and political realm has led to its demise. The real tommyrot in hindsight seems more likely to be the lefty causes that distracted mainline Protestantism into irrelevance.

July 19th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Religion | no comments