Gene Edward Veith Jr.'s Blog, page 455
October 23, 2012
Reactionary liberalism
Do you remember how liberalism used to be idealistic and ambitious, taking on big problems with boldness and confidence? Liberal presidents were always proposing vast new programs to solve our social ills: the New Frontier, the Great Society, the War on Poverty. Now, points out Michael Gerson, liberals seem bereft of new ideas and new programs. They are simply trying desperately to hold onto the old programs, oblivious to their problems. And instead of idealism, all they have is anger. Read Gerson’s whole column, linked below. An excerpt:
The Obama agenda also reflects a broader shift in American liberalism, which has become reactive. Liberals often defend unreformed, unsustainable health entitlements — even though these commitments place increasing burdens on the young to benefit those who are older and better off. They often defend the unrestricted right to abortion — even though it represents a contraction of the circle of social inclusion and protection. They often defend the educational status quo — even though it is one of the nation’s main sources of racial and economic injustice.
Others have termed this “reactionary liberalism.” It is more the protection of accumulated interests than the application of creative reform to new problems. In the place of idealism, there is often anger. When Obama failed in his first debate, liberals were generally not critical that he lacked idealism. They were angry that he wasn’t sufficiently angry.
via Michael Gerson: Liberalism’s shrinking agenda – The Washington Post.
October 22, 2012
Live-blogging the final presidential debate
I’m on the road, but I hope to get back to my hotel room in order to comment on the debate. If I’m not here, you go on without me. (Just add your “comments,” refreshing the page periodically to follow what other people are saying.)
The debate is supposed to focus on international relations. (We’ll see how well the candidates adhere to that topic.) Take a drink of your caffeine-free-diet-soda or other beverage every time you hear the following:
(1) “jobs in China”
(2) “another war in the Mideast”
(3) “throw under the bus”
(4) “America’s respect in the world”
Vocation as sacramental
A paragraph from a piece by Peter Berger, via Anthony Sacramone:
The Lutheran understanding of the Eucharist implies a view of creation itself being a sacrament. All of nature, the world as perceived in ordinary experience and in empirical science, is sacramental—in the words of the Book of Common Prayer, displays “outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace.” In one of my earlier ventures into unauthorized theologizing, I adumbrated this proposition by the phrase “signals of transcendence”: God, as it were, hides in the universe, but here and there we can find signs of his presence. In their understanding of the Eucharist, Lutherans used the phrase finitum capax infiniti—“the finite can contain the infinite.” The finite, perishable elements of bread and wine can, invisibly, contain the infinite, eternal presence of the risen Christ. But so can the finite, perishable reality of the empirical universe. George Forell, one of the best American interpreters of the Reformation, opined that the phrase finitum capax infiniti expressed the very core of Lutheran faith.
via Luther vs. the Proto-Pentecostals « Strange Herring.
I would just observe that the Lutheran doctrine of vocation is also sacramental in this sense. Not a sacrament, I hasten to add, but an example of how God works through and by means of the physical world. Vocation, according to Luther, is all about how God works through human beings (giving daily bread by means of farmers and bakers, creating and caring for new life through parents, protecting us through lawful magistrates, granting healing by means of the medical professions, teaching through teachers, expressing beauty by meaning by means of artists, proclaiming His Word and administering His sacraments by means of pastors, etc., etc.). other gifts
What presidential debates do
Tonight is the final presidential candidate debate. Help me live-blog it tonight at 9:00 p.m. ET.
I think the significance of the debates is not so much whether one candidate scores more points than another, zings his opponent more effectively, or makes or avoids gaffes. What the debates do for us voters is to allow us to see the two candidates side by side. We can also hear them unfiltered by the news media, the punditocracy, or political advertising. What the public wants to see is whether or not the two candidates are articulate, intelligent, can think on their feet, can master a host of complicated facts and information. Granted, being able to do all of that will not make a person a good president. But the absence of those traits is, for most people, a disqualifier. Notice how so many of the candidates in the Republican primary could not measure up to those relatively simple standards.
Mitt Romney has benefited from the debates because, in the comparison with Barack Obama, he has emerged as presidential, someone who comes across, at least, as equal to the current president. So he has become, in many voters’ mind, a plausible candidate. He didn’t really seem that way in the scrum of the primary, but now he does.
I know, scholars have made the case that debates don’t matter, that polls don’t matter, that campaigns don’t matter. They have said that the economy is all that matters. But this time we are seeing that the economy may not matter either; otherwise, Romney would be running away with the election. The point is, no one can predict the outcome with certainty, any more than a mere mortal–Biblical prophets excepted– can predict any other future event.
By the way, I am not backing off my mere-mortal-and-thus-uncertain prediction that Obama will win, even as Romney rises in the polls. I think Obama still has an advantage in the electoral college. But, as is so often the case, I will be glad to be wrong.
OK, now it’s a depression
The Dust Bowl has returned to my native Oklahoma. A huge dust storm hit Blackwell, Oklahoma, causing a 30-car pileup on I-35. Blackwell is where my daughter, son-in-law, and three grand-daughters live!
October 19, 2012
Why Paleo-Evangelicals are leery of Republicans
Thomas Kidd coins a useful new world–paleo evangelicals–and says why this brand of conservative Christians do not identify with the Republican party:
The paleo evangelicals are not liberal in any sense. They come from diverse backgrounds and perspectives: some are deeply conversant with the ancient history of the church, and with the Reformation; some are sympathetic to Roman Catholic social doctrines and traditions (if not all Catholic theology and ecclesiology); some are deeply conscious of the church’s mission outside of America; some gravitate toward outlets such as The American Conservative or the Front Porch Republic, publications and blogs focused on the conservative themes of local culture, limited government, and ordered liberty.
These paleo evangelicals keep the Republican party at arm’s length for three main reasons:
First is a deep suspicion of American civil religion. Civil religion seems to be a particularly prominent tenet of evangelical Republicans. But as this summer’s controversy over David Barton’s The Jefferson Lies illustrated, there are many evangelicals who have reservations about the blending of American national history with their faith. Last week’s post at the Anxious Bench by Miles Mullin represents yet another example of a young, conservative evangelical who believes that Barton and other Republican activists have conflated American history too closely with evangelical theology and conservative politics.
Our faith needs to be focused on Christ, the paleos say, and rooted in the deep, wide tradition of orthodox church history. We do not base our faith, in any sense, on the personal beliefs of Jefferson, Washington, or Adams. Especially when viewed from the perspective of the global church, American civil religion looks peculiar, at best. Yes, Christianity played a major role in the American founding, but that fact does not place the founding at the center of Christianity. The paleos admire many of the founders, but do not wish to read the founders alongside Scripture, as Barton would have us do in his new Founders’ Bible.
A second reason they are reluctant Republicans is that the paleo evangelicals do not place much hope in any political party doing that much good in this world. Big political promises of hope and change typically come to naught, whatever party is making them. Although some might agree that churches and pastors have the constitutional right to endorse particular candidates, paleos think doing so mistakenly implies that, as a church, we put our trust in that candidate or party to advance the Kingdom of God.
A third reason that paleo evangelicals may only tepidly support the Republicans is because of problems with certain Republican positions. Among those is a reluctance to keep getting involved with new overseas conflicts, such as what happened in Iraq. Paleos may wonder whether a President Romney would draw us into a precipitous war with Iran. War really should be a last resort, the paleos argue. Another problematic issue is immigration. Though these evangelicals undoubtedly support tough border security, they understand that the illegal immigrants among us are largely here to stay, and they should dealt with as charitably as possible. Churches should always be welcoming to the stranger, and the paleos — including some non-Anglo evangelicals among them — hesitate to endorse policies that seem angrily anti-immigrant.
But on some of the most compelling issues, the Republican Party still seems like the best option for many paleos. [Daniel McCarthy writes about similar electoral choices facing traditionalist conservatives, at The American Conservative.] Are Republicans really committed to doing anything about abortion? Maybe not, but at least they’re likely to nominate judges who are open to allowing states to protect unborn children. Likewise with preserving the historic meaning of family and marriage, and honoring religious liberty: many Republicans may just pay these issues lip service, but at least they’re not fundamentally opposed to the traditional evangelical positions on marriage, religious freedom, and the unborn, as some Democrats seem to be.
via Paleo Evangelicals as Reluctant Republicans.
Does this describe you? Are you paleo?
What did you think would happen in an Obama presidency?
Frank Sonnek points to this post, which rehearses all of the dire warnings made four years ago about what would happen if Barack Obama were to be elected, most of which never amounted to anything: “This is the most important election of all time!” (again).
He asks, “What were other Republican predictions of an Obama presidency? Did they pan out?”
That’s a fair question. Was he as bad as we thought he would be?
He did not unmask himself as a Saul Alinsky communist, despite his community organizing days, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, at least as far as I know. So we should give him credit for that.
Of course, we could also turn the question around, asking those who voted for him the first time, was he as good as you thought he would be?
What were your expectations, and, for better or for worse, did Obama fulfill them?
(For example, I figured that he would at least stop the wars. But our people are still fighting and dying in Afghanistan. I thought stopping the wars would at least be a benefit of his liberalism. And now we have the drone wars, straight out of Star Wars. I didn’t see such bloodshed coming out of an Obama administration.)
I suspect that the reason Americans tend to re-elect incumbents is, paradoxically, their conservative nature. The current guy may not be very good, but at least the Republic has survived while he was running things. We don’t know if it will or won’t under the other guy.
Tolkien’s new book on King Arthur
J. R. R. Tolkien has a new book coming out next year, a 200-page narrative poem about King Arthur. From the British newspaper The Guardian:
It’s the story of a dark world, of knights and princesses, swords and sorcery, quests and betrayals, and it’s from the pen of JRR Tolkien. But this is not Middle-earth, it’s ancient Britain, and this previously unpublished work from the Lord of the Rings author stars not Aragorn, Gandalf and Frodo, but King Arthur.
HarperCollins has announced the acquisition of Tolkien’s never-before-published poem The Fall of Arthur, which will be released for the first time next May. Running to more than 200 pages, Tolkien’s story was inspired by Geoffrey of Monmouth and Thomas Malory’s tales of King Arthur, and is told in narrative verse. Set in the last days of Arthur’s reign, the poem sees Tolkien tackling the old king’s battle to save his country from Mordred the usurper, opening as Arthur and Gawain go to war.
“It is well known that a prominent strain in my father’s poetry was his abiding love for the old ‘Northern’ alliterative verse,” said Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien, who has edited the book and provided commentary. “In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight he displayed his skill in his rendering of the alliterative verse of the 14th century into the same metre in modern English. To these is now added his unfinished and unpublished poem The Fall of Arthur.”
Tolkien began writing The Fall of Arthur a few years before he wrote The Hobbit. Its publication is the latest in a series of “new” releases from the author, including The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún in 2009 and the unfinished Middle-Earth story The Children of Húrin in 2007.
For the book’s editor at HarperCollins, Chris Smith, the news that Tolkien had finished work on The Fall of Arthur was an unexpected surprise. “Though its title had been known from Humphrey Carpenter’s Biography and JRR Tolkien’s own letters, we never supposed that it would see the light of day,” he said.
He described the previously unpublished work as “extraordinary”, saying that it “breathes new life into one of our greatest heroes, liberating him from the clutches of Malory’s romantic treatment, and revealing Arthur as a complex, all-too human individual who must rise above the greatest of betrayals to liberate his beloved kingdom”.
He added that, “though Tolkien’s use of alliterative verse will mean the poem is of more specialised interest than his other work, we would like to think that the subject of King Arthur is one that will resonate with readers of his more celebrated works.”
“In The Fall of Arthur we find themes of lost identity, betrayal, and sacrifice for greater glory, which have their echoes in other works, such as The Lord of the Rings, but anyone looking for closer connections will find no wizards or magic swords. In this respect The Fall of Arthur is closer to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún.” . . .
John Garth, author of Tolkien and the Great War, said that from the fragments he had seen, the omens looked good. “In The Fall of Arthur, Tolkien depicts Arthur going off to fight the Saxons in Mirkwood – not the Mirkwood of Middle-earth, but the great German forests. Whether it’s as good as the best by Tolkien will have to wait on the full publication, but snippets published so far are encouraging, showing him in darkly evocative mode writing about one of the great English villains, Mordred: ‘His bed was barren; there black phantoms/ of desire unsated and savage fury/ in his brain brooded till bleak morning.’
“Any addition to the Arthurian tradition by a major author is welcome; this one is also exciting because of what it adds to our picture of a great modern imagination.”
via ‘New’ JRR Tolkien epic due out next year | Books | guardian.co.uk.
I’m excited about this. I’m even excited about the narrative verse, which uses the alliterative patterns of very early English poetry, as in Beowulf. Here are the opening lines of The Fall of Arthur, as quoted in the Guardian:
“Arthur eastward in arms purposed
his war to wage on the wild marches,
over seas sailing to Saxon lands,
from the Roman realm ruin defending.
Thus the tides of time to turn backward
and the heathen to humble, his hope urged him,
that with harrying ships they should hunt no more
on the shining shores and shallow waters
of South Britain, booty seeking.”
Can you handle a story told in this kind of poetry?
Whatever happened to narrative verse? Other cultures and other times have loved stories told in poetry (think Chaucer, Milton, Longfellow). Have we just become too prosaic? Do you think Tolkien can bring back the form?
HT: Jackie
October 18, 2012
Machiavellian reformer
British author Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize for her novel Bring Up the Bodies. This is the second time she won this top award for British fiction. The first time was for Wolf Hall. Both novels are about Thomas Cromwell, the consigliore to Henry VIII. And they are both spellbinding.
Cromwell is typically presented as a Machiavellian villain who made it possible for Henry VIII to marry Anne Boleyn and then cynically framed her and engineered her execution. Mantel, though, in her thoroughly-researched imagining of those tumultuous times, presents him sympathetically. Her Cromwell is a man of high ideals who wants a more just society and will do what it takes to make those ideals reality. Specifically, he is a man of the Reformation, someone with a brilliant intellect who has memorized the Bible, possesses books by Luther that would earn him the death penalty, and who does what he can to rescue Protestants from the torture chambers of Sir Thomas More. But his effectiveness depends on how well he can work with the volatile, passionate egotist who is the King of England.
Mantel’s books capture the texture and nuances of a complicated time, and her characters are complex, historically-grounded, and utterly believable. And her handling of the religious issues of 16th century England is especially illuminating. King Henry breaks from the Pope and makes himself head of the English church because of his marital intrigues, but he retains the medieval Catholic dogmas, inquisitorial spirit, and hatred of the Lutheran Reformation. (Did you realize that it wasn’t the Catholics but King Henry after his break with Rome who had Tyndale burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English?)
Anyway, if you like historical fiction written at the very highest, most sophisticated level, and if you enjoy tales of intrigue, you will love Hilary Mantel’s books. You need to read them in order, so start with Wolf Hall. Then you will want to read Bring Up the Bodies (which deserves another prize just for its title). She is reportedly working on another volume to round out the Cromwell trilogy, which may well earn her a third Booker prize.
Fired for signing a gay marriage petition
The Maryland state legislature has legalized gay marriage. Some citizens, though, as is their right, have circulated a petition calling for a referendum on the issue. So the D.C. area gay newspaper, The Washington Blade, published the names of the people who signed the petition, opening them up to harrassment, intimidation, and punishment.
T. Alan Hurwitz, the president of Gallaudet University, the federally-funded college for the deaf, learned from a Lesbian couple on his faculty that one of his employees, Angela McCaskill, the college’s diversity officer for 24 years, signed the petition. So he suspended her from her job.
McCaskill, a deaf African-American, insisted she was not anti-gay; rather, she is pro-democracy, thinking that a question like gay marriage needs to be decided by the people as a whole. She said she signed the petition at her church.
She said, via signing, “I am dismayed that Gallaudet University is still a university of intolerance, a university that manages by intimidation, a university that allows bullying among faculty, staff and students.”
See Gallaudet worker: ‘Pro-democracy,’ not anti-gay – The Washington Post.
Should citizens be in jeopardy for their employment for exercising their political rights?
What does this case suggest about how opponents of gay marriage will be treated? Do you believe those who oppose gay marriage, including pastors and churches, will be tolerated once gay marriage becomes the law of the land?
