11/2 is fast approaching

Interesting article in this morning's Union-Leader by Congregationalist leader Rev. David Runnion-Bereford, warning against the upcoming "consecration" of Gene Robinson as Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire. He brings up some interesting facts. Did you know New Hampshire has the lowest church attendance in the nation? He continues: The congregational churches affiliated with the United Church of Christ are the founding spiritual bodies of most of New England’s towns and villages. Yet our denomination has led the nation in promoting male homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders and other folks involved in the behavior of sexual license to ordained ministry and positions of leadership.

The consequences have been devastating. We have lost and continue to lose more members and children on a percentage basis than any other denomination in the United States. Congregations are disaffiliating at a steady rate. Growing numbers refuse to provide any financial support to the denomination. One third of the churches have suffered such decline they can no longer support a full-time pastor and are in danger of closing. There is an acute clergy shortage with fewer than 200 clergy under the age of 40 in the entire denomination.

Much of the spiritual malaise of our state is directly reflective of the indigenous churches affiliated with the United Church of Christ who have sold their birthright in Christ to conform to the moral confusion of a post sexual revolution society.

Quite deplorable, yet unsurprising in so many ways. All eyes will be on Manchester on November 2nd.

I'll let Waugh rest for a bit after this, but BBC 4 has linked up a series of audio clips from a 1960 interview with EW on various aspects of his life. And apparently, they are re-airing a half hour Waugh roundtable discussion this Friday the 31st.

All Profile, No Courage; All Sail, No Anchor

What I say here about Virginia Postrel's new book The Style of Substance runs two risks. One, I haven't read the book yet, so I have to rely merely on the reviews, trusting they "have the book right." Two, I have looked at so many of these reviews that anything I say begins to look like a literary "Kevin Bacon Game," linking six reviews back to the original book.

That said, David Frum's comments on Postrel's book (himself commenting on George Will's review of the same) brings several things to mind. Postrel writes about how style and design have become the substance of our buying preferences in the past 50 years -- that we purchase cars, toasters, and computers not only because they take us places, make good toast, and create spreadsheets, but because they tell others by how these products look how we want to be seen. Producers are selling, and consumers are buying, purpose and personal identity. As Will writes, Americans are consuming design and designing themselves.

Frum brings up two problems: designer babies and the bioethical problems therein, and artistic decay. This second dilemma he links to Charles Murray's new book bemoaning the decay of art and beauty in a world that does not treasure God. Says Frum, almost nobody in a secularized world can see any reason to sacrifice the rewards of the here-and-now for the artistic vocation. Hence there are no 21st century Michelangelos in a designer world more interested in what the neighbors think of their new Honda than in tending to the salvation of their soul.

Now, finally, where does this leave me? Reading this, I thought of Schumpeter's warning of capitalism's pervasive tendency to "marketize" and rationalize everything, thereby extending the strict economic reasoning that sets prices and wages to social institutions like church and family. In doing so, these institutions come under pressure and scorn as irrational silly relics, held in contempt by intellectuals and economists alike. Yet these institutions are the structure upon which capitalism depends, impressing upon people the value of hard work, diligence, principle, and honesty. Thus in the end, totalistic capitalism tends to undermine itself, and I found myself wondering: Is Postrel's stylistic thesis an example of Schumpeter's and Murray's fear? That without the social and historical non-market foundations pointing us beyond price tags and pay checks, beauty becomes a Brittany Spears' song rather than a Haydn Mass -- that which sells the most and appeals to people's constantly changing feeling of style, rather than that which appeals to our history and common traditions.

Frum continues: But if the idea spreads that there really is no difference – that what say Cezanne did is just a rarified version of what the stylists at Starbucks do – one should not be surprised that potential Cezannes decide to forgo the hardships and risks inherent in the life of the artist and sign up for the certain benefits of working as a stylist. With those who can actually draw or compose a tune or write clever words absconding for work in the style economy, the art world is left empty to be filled up with misfits and weirdos attracted to the life of the artist precisely because of its hardships. We’ve created a world in which those with artistic talents are systematically hired away from artistic vocations – while just about everyone drawn to an artistic vocation lacks basic artistic talents. By "marketizing" everything, including art and music, freeing it from its religious moorings and making it a rational, buyable, consumable extension of personal identity here-and-now, are we destroying our history and social identity? Are we destroying those things that make us a distinct community and allow us to survive as a society?

Julian Johnson's new book, Who Needs Classical Music?, struggles with this idea, that style (commercial success) trumping all other considerations is both historically unique (the pre-1800 world would have thought America nuts by saying all artistic value is personal taste) and thoroughly corrosive. In other words, if style is everything, all value is determined by what sells the most, and in near syllogistic logic, because Brittany Spears sells more than Haydn, her music is more valuable. Johnson writes, [Classical music's] lack of commercial success, following this logic, is de facto proof that it is effectively good for nobody: it has zero value. Peter Hitchins fears the same with his Spectator article a few weeks back, defending the seemingly indefensible BBC -- where would intelligent, historically aware conversation about art, music, or thought be without non-market institutions?

If everything is style and design (and hence fleeting, marketable, and consumable), what is steady and reliable? Where are the cultural and social compass points, the necessary foundation upon which we innovate and create, that point us in fruitful directions and warn us away from the shoals? Personal identity based upon style passes nothing from one generation to the next but outmoded fashions. That is a gloomy and perilous prospect.

Headline in a Bioethics Update: Rats Cloned in France

Quelle Surprise!

Actually it is a surprise. Rats have been relatively difficult to clone, and the scientists working on the project had to develop a new technique.

There's a new and fascinating blog from Baghdad by name of Healing Iraq. It looks like it's a good source of information, and the blogger himself has a very interesting voice. See especially his remarks about the attempted bombing of American troops outside his home.

Did everyone see this oddity, the Free State Project? Apparently, libertarians have banded together to take over an American state (via elections, of course), and that state is New Hampshire, mine own true home. They are promoting the emigration of 20,000 true believers to the Granite State, men and women coming from all around the country to shape state politics and make it a libertarian nirvana.

Here is what they hope to achieve: What can activists for liberty do in a single state? A great deal. They could repeal state taxes and wasteful state government programs. Since we do not have a state sales or state income tax, this should be interesting -- repeal the state property tax? What will we run the state with? Tariffs from Massachussetts? They could end collaboration between state and federal law enforcement officials in enforcing unconstitutional laws. That should be fun, a mini Nullification Crisis up here, with Judd Gregg perhaps playing the part of John C. Calhoun? George Bush as Andrew Jackson? Barracades across Route 93, preventing the intervention of federal troops? They could roll back gun control and drug prohibition. What gun control? This is NH, for God's sake. I once came out into my backyard to find a blood trail and hoof prints through the snow, evidence that a local hunter could not quite hit the mark. Pehaps his aim was off from those illegal drugs he was taking? They could end asset forfeiture and abuses of eminent domain. Already a long history of New Hampshire hating eminent domain -- see their relationship to railroads in the 19th century. They could privatize utilities and end inefficient regulations and monopolies. Then they could use their political leverage to negotiate appropriate political autonomy for our state. "Appropriate political autonomy" seems an odd phrase for a libertarian, a bit too loose, a tad too interpretive -- be careful now -- lots of nasty things were done under the label "appropriate."

My bet is that the whole thing will fall apart when too many libertarians from Alabama and Texas move here, the natives begin wondering about the Dixie accents, and bumper stickers begin to appear on the back of pick-ups, "Welcome to NH, now get out." And they better get more than 20,000 of the faithful -- I would bet that many relocate from Massachusetts every day! And with the prominent exception of yours truly, they are not usually the libertarian types.

And a funny aside: Many local towns here sponsor scarecrow/dummy competitions during Halloween, where local kids get to design their own and post them along the roads in the village centers. The best one yet was an "Old Man of the Mountain" scarecrow, complete with an accurate profile. He wore a t-shirt that read, "I've fallen and I can't get up."

Note to professors: plastic surgery can improve your career prospects. So can a hip suit. Lose the socks'n'Birkenstocks if you want to get ahead.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I...I...I don't know what to say. It's taken me two days just to get to Blogger, to have the stomach to speak of what happened on Thursday night. Scooter lived to tell the tale, although he seems a bit nervous around me now. My wife felt so bad, we had a special dinner last night (two big martinis too) just to soothe me.

All I can say is, Red Sox fans demand a sacrifice, and that sacrifice is manager Grady Little (the nicknames have already started: "Stuart Little," Grady Little League," etc.). He is almost wholly responsible for this debacle and should not be welcomed back to Fenway. Faced with open fan revolt and a bitter roasting from both national and local media, Little must do the honorable thing and decline to return before the team makes that move in the coming couple of weeks.

In the biggest Red Sox game in 17 years, probably the biggest in team history (at least in the fabled '86 Game 6 you had a Game 7 to try and rebound -- in '86 there was a tomorrow -- AND the '03 game was against our biggest rival), "that man" flinched, "that man" blinked, "that man" extended our misery. It wasn't Pedro -- he left everything he had on that field. It wasn't Wakefield -- what cruel fate that he was left "holding the bag" with the Boone homer. I am sure Grady is a lovely man, great at a backyard bbq, a good friend and neighbor, but he was hired to win baseball games. And in the biggest of all, he screwed up and is a national laughingstock.

Goodbye, Mr. Little. You are persona non grata in these parts.

Yes. I can see poor little Scooter curled up in a fetal position on some Corgiville street corner, with a sign saying "Will beg for food". A cute little tyke, driven into hysterics by Curmudgeonry. And I say this as someone who, watching the Sox at the top of the 8th, is pretty close to hysterics himself. Corgiville is starting to look pretty good...

No, apparently it's "The Muppet Show".

Scooter/Skipper...whatever...the point is there's a traumatized corgi out there that's going to run off to Tasha Tudor's for some R&R. (However, the SHOCKING language that he's surely learned in the meantime will probably mean he'll turn out like Edgar Cat. )

And my dog's name is Scooter, not Skipper. Skipper? What the hell is this, "Gilligan's Island?"

I haven't said much on the Boston-NY series because I am nearly ill with heart and stomach trouble from watching these games. Every day is a thrill or a torture. And so it comes down to Game 7 tonight in the Bronx, as it had to. Pedro versus Roger, as it had to.

Even the colleges are affected by the baseball buzz. The last several days, most of the profs disappear by 330pm, heading home for the 4pm games, while those of us evening toilers have to get by with computer/web updates and quizzing passing students with Boston hats, "hey, what's the score?"

8:18 tonight. Oh my. May have to double up on the bp medicine.

Steyn on Plame

Mark Steyn's got an essay in The Spectator that covers the Le Affaire Plame. It's got some sensible conclusions on the problems with the US intelligence community (if you want to go so far as to call it a community; in words taken from Yes, Prime Minister, "it's more a collection of warring tribes").

But the best of the essay is of course stuff like this:

...The Independent summed up the angle most of the press seems to be interested in: ‘Disclosed CIA Officer Fears For Her Life’ — i.e., Ms Plame’s name was leaked in order to put her in danger. The implication seems to be that she’s on some top-secret mission but, like 007, travelling under her own name, perhaps as an innocuous businesswoman: ‘The name’s Plame. Valerie Plame. Universal Export.’

‘Very interesting, Ms Plame,’ replies Blofeld, stroking his cat, in whose litter tray lies the front page of that day’s Washington Post. ‘Any relation to the CIA agent of the same name?’

Philadelphia Story

No, I'm not thinking about the awful Iggles (if McNabb has a sprained thumb-and it shows-why can't he have two weeks off, Coach Reid?) but of the John Street Bugging Episode.

The current mayor of Philadelphia, like all his predecessors, has a somewhat uneasy relationship with ethical behavior. He is now locked in vicious combat with a Republican oppenent in the mayoral election; surprising, but true. And then last week the Philadelphia Police discovered a bug in Mayor John Street's office.

Here's the latest on the incident from The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Now here's my idea of a fun family night out. Myself, I see no point in renting a flamethrower. Not a precision piece of machinery. Although the guy renting the .50 caliber Barrett was gouging his customers, I would probably have lined up to be gouged.

BTW, the Doc has yet to comment on the Yankee-Red Sox imbroglio...

The Doc has a little dog by name of Skipper who loves him. When the Doc watches the Red Sox games, he sometimes gets a little upset. Just a little. And then the little dog starts to whimper and back away slowly. I figure by the end of this series, poor Skipper will need therapy.

Navel gazing in France

Apparently the French are engaging in some self analysis, unusual for them I know but apparently true. In one piece critical of France's current state, L'Arrogance française, the journalist authors, Romain Gubert and Emmanuel Saint-Martin, state:

"With our sermons, our empty gestures and our poetic flights, we (the French) have pissed off the planet. Worse: we make them laugh."

You mean they haven't been trying to be amusing? All my illusions shattered! (I must say that the French have never pissed me off, but they have made me laugh a lot.)

In a moment of extraordinary Dr. Curmudgeon Convergence, the Moldy Fig (Harold Bloom) comes out in support of the Empty Uniform (Wesley Clark)!

Hmmm...this comes after Clark wrote an essay on the Iraq war (broodingly "Iraq: What Went Wrong") in the New York Review of Books. Apparently Clark is trying to bleed off the extreme Dean voters or something. But they probably think he's a facist!

Proving that it's not just The New York Times that can write whiny yet nonetheless strangely unctuous and oily editorials, here's The Wall Street Journal weighing in on the recent very bad decision to send Turks as peacekeepers into Iraq.

We're disappointed that Turkey's decision has been met with threats from some Kurds and cries of "sell-out" from some of their American supporters. Turkey was an indispensable protector of the Northern Iraqi Kurdish safe haven for more than a decade, providing it with a vital trade link to the outside world and with the air bases to support Operation Northern Watch.

We're "disappointed"?!?! As in, "I'm not angry, but I'm really disappointed in you, Johnny." How weak and pathetic and passive agressive! This is supposed to be a rabid conservative editorial page?

So much for tone. How about the tenacious grasp on non-essential facts? Yes, after some arm-twisting in 1991 the Turks did allow relief to go the Kurds. After, it should be noted, the Turkish troops looted humanitarian supplies of food and medicine (which information I got from a Green Beret who was there). And they were indeed willing to contain Saddam. And? That's where it ended. They were distinctly unwilling to actually do anything about Saddam.

There's no reason to be mad at the Turks forever, or keep the ball and fire truck away from them. But why let them do what they manifestly tried to prevent? Bizarre.

But the WSJ has some more gobbling and clucking to do:

Some of the ideas being mooted to soothe Kurdish sensibilities--such as moving Turkish troops by air or sea--would justifiably be considered an affront by the Turks, who are putting themselves very much in harm's way. If Washington is going to turn the Turkish parliamentary vote into an actual deployment, it is going to have to talk bluntly with Kurdish leaders Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani.

Give. Us. A. Break. Please. Now the editorialists are concerned about Turkish sensibilities. I have no time to consult the editorials back when the Turks refused to allow the Fourth Infantry Division through Turkey to start a second front in Iraq. But do you think that they were then a little, ahhhh, less solicitous of Turkish sensibilities? But now they are suggesting that we run over Kurdish sensibilities with a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, as if it is somehow our right, and in our interest...when it is in neither.

If this disgusting little piece of editorializing was in The New York Times then the WSJ resident blowhard James Taranto would be slamming it faster than you can say "Howell Raines". And quite rightly, too.

On Waugh

A nice review on the current public regard of Evelyn Waugh, a personal favorite of yours truly. My only gripe is the strenuous denigration of "Brideshead Revisited," described as Waugh's worst book, an overheated bit of wartime nostalgia and romanticism for an aristocratic Oxfordian England that never existed. Be that as it may, as a work of fiction, it never bothered me that much.

But is it also true that Waugh's growing Roman Catholic piety loaded down the book? But Waugh's developing obsession with his faith meant that the comedy in his work becomes intermittent and less successful: it lacks the cool, gimlet-eyed dispassion of the earlier works. As Waugh's novels became more self-consciously serious - as God entered the frame - so they began to creak and sag. Well, if they "creak and sag" as comedies, they hold their own about the effects of Catholic faith on the mental structure and physical acts of a person's life, the inescapability of the Faith no matter where you run; hence, the interesting inclusion of Chesterton's "Father Brown" mysteries within "Brideshead," with their telling imagery of God "tugging on the thread" of those who have fallen away from Him. If that's not the stuff of novels -- mystery, doubt, escape, and the necessary return -- what, pray tell, is?

In Absentia

To be honest, I have not been writing much lately because I have not had too wide a reading circle. My sole focus (or very near) has been the Boston and NY sports pages and the television stations, watching my near and dear Red Sox press on toward salvation.

I nearly went bald and died of heart failure watching the remarkable Red Sox-A's series last week. Last night, I smiled and took diabolical joy in watching Tim Wakefield baffle the Yanks with his wonderfully unhittable knuckler. I even (dare I say this, and admit that I am thinking too far ahead?) began thinking in bed last night, how do the Sox and Cubs match up? Cubs have better starters, Sox have better bullpen and much better offense, push on defense.

Like Stephen King predicted, something apocalytic must happen if a Sox-Cubs series came off. A giant astroid destroying the earth, the Resurrection, something other-worldy must happen to interrupt a Fenway-Wrigley spectacle.

Must pace myself, don't get too excited too early, play game to game. Still, this is the best Red Sox team I have ever seen since I began following them religiously as a teenager in 1983, even better than the 1986 World Series team that imploded against the Mets and robbed me of my baseball innocence, like a cap-wearing Adam thrown out of Eden Park. In fact, the team they most resemble is the 2001 New England Patriots, defying predictions, winning in crazy ways, playing solid to the last moment, never losing focus or getting caught up in the coverage and hype.

And we all know what happend to the Pats.

Breathe, deep breathing now, long way away yet, just relax...

Classic stuff from Lilek's Bleat du jour, describing his visit to the World Trade Center site:

Late Saturday afternoon, almost five. Hundreds of people looking up at nothing. Hundreds of people looking into the pit. Everyone had come to see what wasn’t there.

Flowers stuck into the fence; journals and candles, gifts, votaries, offerings, messages. The daily crop, removed at dusk. To my surprise they didn’t just throw up a fence, but put up a series of signs that explained the history of the site, back to the Hudson Terminal Towers and beyond. The historical plaques, the fence, the reactions of the visitors - it felt like a death camp site. If you had no idea what had happened here you would know almost at once that it this place had suffered a hideous calamity. It had an emptiness I can’t describe, an emptiness made all the more obvious by all the congestion around the site. It was like entering a parlor whose walls and tables were filled with framed photos, and you notice that there’s nothing on the mantelpiece.

One building had a gigantic mural devoted to hope and remembrance. I’m sure it’s just an accident that this wretched culture of ours didn’t put up something reminding us to smite the bearded foreigners and run their blood into the gutters. An oversight. Last minute mistake.

Good column by Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (USA, Ret.) in the New York Post on media bias in Iraq. He makes what seems to me to be some elementary points about media objectivity.

The media are not detached from all responsibility for the events they cover. A journalist will tell you - sometimes sincerely - that he or she only reports the facts. That's never quite the truth. And it's often an outright lie.

Even the best journalists must choose among the facts to form their reports. Ethical reporters do strive for accuracy. But phony efforts to provide "balanced coverage" - to report the mass-murderer's side of the story with evenhanded sympathy - skew reality. Struggling to be fair to the viciously unfair is a sign of moral weakness, not objectivity.

Still worse, the competition for headlines drives journalists to report only those tiny slivers of ground-truth that qualify as "news." Setbacks make the cut. Successes don't.

Call me a nasty Postmodernist, but this has sort of been the, uh, common level of opinion in historical studies for about twenty years. You "must choose among the facts" to form your "report" of the past. But journalists, so politically liberal, are a bunch of ultra-conservatives when it comes to their epistemology, that is, their philosophy of how things can be known. It's an interesting mix; and a dangerous one. Because it means they are without any humility, intellectual or otherwise if they really believe that they are offering the cut-and-dried truth.

But of course Peters is talking about something else, ultimately, like why the occupation of Iraq is going well. Really.

For the finest piece on the Eagle victory conveying the essence of all things Philadelphia, I direct attention here.

The faithful will be happy to know that the Linc is fully christened, now that blood was spilled in the fan section.

And it also gives me great pleasure to point out that the Eagles (or Iggles) finally won one in the new stadium. Naturally they made it as hard on their fans as they possibly could. But it seems that the Lower Merion Township High School team that suited up for the first two games in Philly was not on the field yesterday...not until after the half, at least. Nice kids, but they aren't quite up to NFL standard.

I am also curious about the dip in Limbaugh's Philly rating. On the one hand, just about every Philly fan has said worse things about McNabb's playing. But, on the other hand, that is a family matter. And Rush is not family. We can boo our players, but people from other cities need to leave their batteries at home.

The Power of Place

I am really falling asleep at the blogging switch of late, for which I apologize. This little tidbit should make up for that. Imagine the delight of turning to the online journal of Colonial American studies, www.common-place.org, and finding an essay on my home region of South Jersey? And not just about "Down Jersey", but about the pleasures of doing research in Down Jersey? It's by John Fea, the one other academic alive (or so it would seem) who is interested in Philip Vickers Fithian, an 18th century resident of my home village.

The Monadnock region of New Hampshire is wicked nice, to be sure; but Down Jersey has its undeniable charms. What's particularly nice for a native are all the accompanying pictures, like the one of the New Bridge Road in Salem County, the shot including the New Bridge, which must be about 70 years old.