George Herbert (1593-1633)

Today is the traditional day within parts of the Protestant church to honor George Herbert, priest and poet. He wasn't a looker, but o how the man could lay bare the soul upon the page! To my mind he is arguably the finest poet in the English language, but as C.S. Lewis puts these things better than I, I'll leave it up to him to express the essence of "Holy Mr. Herbert " and to Mr. Herbert to express the essence of life:

"Here was a man who seemed to me to excel all the authors I had read in conveying the very quality of life as we live it from moment to moment, but the wretched fellow, instead of doing it all directly, insisted on mediating it through what I still would have called the "Christian mythology." The upshot of it all could nearly be expressed, "Christians are wrong, but all the rest are bores." -C. S. Lewis

THE PULLEY.

WHEN God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by ;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can :
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way ;
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure :
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottome lay.

For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewell also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts in stead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature :
So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlesnesse :
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
May tosse him to my breast.

Well, give the Prince of Wales credit for this, I guess. What is better than an old English pub?

It is the Lenten season once again, and I raise my annual question and call: What do Catholic vegetarians give up during Lent? Make them eat meat.

I am feeling a little reactionary today: If I am to discuss what is wrong, one of the first things that are wrong is this: the deep and silent modern assumption that past things have become impossible. There is one metaphor of which the moderns are very fond; they are always saying, "You can't put the clock back." The simple and obvious answer is "You can." A clock, being a piece of human construction, can be restored by the human finger to any figure or hour. In the same way society, being a piece of human construction, can be reconstructed upon any plan that has ever existed.

G.K. Chesterton

I heard on NPR this morning (yes, I do listen to public broadcasting -- I pay for it) several activists opposed to a same-sex marriage ban becoming a constitutional amendment. Their complaints were quite similar in language, that the Constitution is a document affirming individual liberty, and was not intended to curb individual rights or allow discrimination.

Interesting theory, but wrong. First, even a ninny knows the Constitution is larger than the Bill of Rights, which were in fact added as a compromise to please some who thought we needed to tell the new government what it could and could not do. For good or ill, those rights have been constantly constricted, expanded, and rethought for 200 years -- how else to explain both the eighteenth and twentieth amendments? In that spirit, a marriage amendment is perfectly consistent with constitutional history.

Second, the preamble states quite clearly the document's purposes, with none being of higher importance than the others, a mere list of several important purposes: establish a system of laws and courts to dispense justice, keep public order, prevent foreign invasion, "promote the general welfare" (quite vague, but certainly not individualistic -- general welfare, common good, public benefit almost always leads to a diminution of individual rights), and (consonant with all these other things) give us liberty. Put down the Thoreau and read the preamble. Individual liberty is but one of many of the Constitution's purposes, and it shares the stage with public order.

And on a totally unrelated topic, has anyone seen the television show Cash in the Attic that airs on BBC America? For the unbaptised, the premise is this: a family needs money for something (a trip, a family reunion, a new "luxury bedroom") and sells off certain pricey items from their home to raise the cash. On the face of it, this seems noncontroversial and resembles certain other shows on BBCA and PBS like Antiques Roadshow and Bargain Hunt. But after you watch it for a while, you begin to notice these people are often selling family heirlooms. Now if the family was being evicted, or pursued by the taxman, or needed to pay for emergency surgery, I could see selling off grandma's china. But "a luxury bedroom?" Last night, one family ransacked their home and offered several items at auction, including grandmother's pearl necklace given specially to the mother of the family and a lovely cane inscribed in two places: the first was a 1910 inscription saying the cane was given by Queen Alexandra to some important general, the second saying that the aforementioned grandmother was given it by some friend. This just does not seem right, selling off family treasures for a new mattress. Clearly these people have little sense of family history -- wouldn't you prize that necklace and pass it on, and perhaps display the lovely cane with royal lineage?

In between teaching, prepping, writing, sleeping, eating, and drinking, I've been trying to squeeze in some personal, mind-saving reading. Right now it is Saintsbury and Chesterton. Some fun nuggets from Chesterton's What's Wrong With the World:

On the silliness of using organic metaphors to describe nations: This has produced, for instance, the gaping absurdity of perpetually talking about "young nations" and "dying nations," as if a nation had a fixed and physical span of life.
Thus people will say that Spain has entered a final senility; they might as well say that Spain is losing all her teeth. Or people will say that Canada should soon produce a literature; which is like saying that Canada must soon grow a new moustache.

On the need for dogma: There are two things, and two things only, for the human mind, a dogma and a prejudice. The Middle Ages were a rational epoch, an age of doctrine. Our age is, at its best, a poetical epoch, an age of prejudice. A doctrine is a definite point; a prejudice is a direction. That an ox may be eaten, while a man should not be eaten, is a doctrine. That as little as possible of anything should be eaten is a prejudice; which is also sometimes called an ideal. Now a direction is always far more fantastic than a plan. I would rather have the most archaic map of the road to Brighton than a general recommendation to turn to the left. Straight lines that are not parallel must meet at last; but curves may recoil forever ... the rational human faith must armor itself with prejudice in an age of prejudices, just as it armoured itself with logic in an age of logic. But the difference between the two mental methods is marked and unmistakable. The essential of the difference is this: that prejudices are divergent, whereas creeds are always in collision. Believers bump into each other; whereas bigots keep out of each other's way. A creed is a collective thing, and even its sins are sociable. A prejudice is a private thing, and even its tolerance is misanthropic. So it is with our existing divisions. They keep out of each other's way ...

Paterfamilias Collects

Never, ever bet the pater,
For your odds are always greater,
And you'll have to pay up later.

It's far safer to bet the mater,
And safer still, the Terminator,
than it is to bet the pater.

Yep, Dean's out.

Pay up, pay up, pay up to the old man!

The Postmodern Tales

I tried, but I couldn't let this one pass. Hip kids are worshiping in house style churches where they indulge in "revived medieval liturgies or practices, including prayer labyrinths and lectio divina, or sacred reading, a process of intense meditation and prayer over a short biblical passage. Some borrow Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox rituals that pre-date the Enlightenment", because "[t]he Orthodox practices represent stability. Marriage you can't rely upon. With the dot-com failures, having mad computer skills doesn't guarantee you a good job. That stability isn't there."

Yes indeed, youth apparently doesn't want a megachurch anymore. They "want it like a dusty cathedral. They want a sense of mystery and transcendence. Anything that sniffs of performance turns them off."

Because of course, rituals yanked from their context are so stable that they couldn't possibly be a performance by children who are so unambiguously obsessed with being cool that they wouldn't go to an actual cathedral. After all going to an actual cathedral might make them less judgmental of other Christians:

"I'm not that kind of Christian, I go to a cool church,' " said Lindsey Gice, 26, a graphic designer who had given up church after high school.

The church and small groups provided a different kind of community, Ms. Gice said.

"I'd go to churches that were way too judgmental or too ambiguous," she said. "At Spirit Garage, there is no question what we're doing. We're talking about Jesus. We're taking communion. We're just doing it together, as a journey."

Go read some Chaucer, hip kids, and then tell me how a journey with the hipply homogeneous could possibly be as interesting.

Speaking of hatred, rage and ignorance, here is an article from the New York Times on fear-mongering amongst those who think that John Ashcroft is checking their blue dresses for DNA.

Get a Memory

So this news anchor is saying to me, "Could this be the dirtiest presidential election yet?"

Oh, buh-rrrruuuuhhhhhh-thaahhhhh!!!

Doesn't anyone know about the Election of 1800, when John Adams was accused of being a would-be King, and Jefferson was being accused of Robespierre? How about 1824, and charges against Rachel Jackson of being an adulteress? How about 1828, with charges of a corrupt bargain, etc., etc., etc.

People who claim that politics is getting dirtier are just pig-ignorant.

Dr. Potomac's Memo

To my esteemed colleagues and readers, Dr. Potomac apologizes for his prolonged absence from the blogosphere. Professional duties and all that. A few thoughts to share on recent developments.

First, for all those losing their nerve in the wake of Senator John Kerry's triumphal procession through the Democrat primaries, Dr. Potomac commends to you an article from the February Atlantic Monthly in which Joshua Green outlines the contours of the 50/50 nation and its implications for 2004 election cycle. Green argues there are only 14 states in play in this election (from West to East: Washington, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Florida and New Hampshire) with the remaining states so solidly held by one or the other party as to be "off the table." Moreover, within these 14 states the electorate is evenly divided and highly polarized. Oregon, New Mexico, Iowa, and Wisconsin were all won by the Democrats with nearly invisible majorities in 2000. In all of these states, the balance of power is held by a tiny sliver of undecided, unaffiliated voters who are being targeted intensely by both Republicans and Democrats. For the first time in history, each party is armed with highly sophisticated marketing information and technology that has previously been the province of the commercial sector. A good deal will depend on which party has the better technological and human infrastructure to exploit this information. Give the advantage to the GOP which showed it had hustle in getting out the vote in 2002 and this year has the dollars to take that hustle to the next level.

Dr. Potomac draws a number of conclusions from this information. First, Kerry must draw the political equivalent of an inside straight to win this election. The most helpful way to think about the Democrat bind in putting together 270 electoral votes is to ask this question: "Which 2000 red states can Kerry convert to blue states in 2004?" The best targets on the list are New Hampshire where Kerry has high favorable ratings, and Nevada where President Bush reneged on his campaign promise and designated Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste repository. If my math is correct, winning those states and holding all the Gore states would still leave Senator Kerry a half-dozen or more electoral votes short of a majority. Looking at the remaining list of red state targets, Kerry probably has the best shot at winning Missouri. Dick Gephardt should probably keep his cell phone charged between now and the convention.

For the Democrats, there is no getting around the fact that the electoral college is a "target-rich" environment for President Bush. He will contest every single one of the blue swing states with particular attention to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Oregon, and Washington. The undecides of the upper Mississippi basin and suburban Portland and Seattle should prepare for a deluge of narrowly tailored campaign communications in every possible technological medium.

Did anyone out there catch the coverage of the Daytona 500? The pictures and stories are reminiscent of the surprise Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad. The Washington Post had a remarkable photo in the sports section of Air Force One buzzing the stands and quotes from the President about his days "in the Guard" as a fighter pilot. Message: I'm just like you, NASCAR fans. The bigger, faster and louder the machines the more I like 'em. And he means it, of course, which is what makes it believable. I can only snicker when I think about Kerry trying the same thing.

Two articles of note in the latest Spectator:

Mary Wakefield reviewing and rethinking (with momentary doubt) the rightness and legacy of Anglican female ordination. She concludes eloquently, and looks toward the next "new thing" to "open up" (read: water down and destroy/read: create more Roman Catholics) the Anglican Church: What eventually brought me back to my original position, opposed to the ordination of women, was not the Scriptures or even the fun of sneering, but looking at what has happened to the C of E over the last ten years. In 1992, the Bishop of Sheffield made a public statement explaining his opposition to women priests, ‘The reforms before us this week find their momentum not from Scripture, but from the generally held beliefs of everyone today,’ he said, ‘and once this replaces Scripture and tradition as the authority for the Church’s doctrine, almost anything becomes possible. What will be next? The parity of homosexual and heterosexual marriage?’ The Bishop has, of course, been proved right. The more the Anglican Church has tried to keep up with the times, to placate and include minorities, the more schismatic it has become. More than 500 priests defected to Rome after the Synod approved female ordination, and there is still a hard core of traditionalist bishops who exclude women priests from their dioceses.

The question of homosexual clergy is having much the same effect as the ordination of women. This Friday the General Synod begins its debate on ‘Issues in Human Sexuality’ to try to resolve the conflict: right-wing evangelicals side with the Anglo-Catholic aesthetes against the Archbishop of Canterbury; the Church in Africa is not talking to the Church in England, which in turn, is on non-speakers with the North American Church. Nor, once you’ve started the process of modernising, does there seem to be any end to the process: on Tuesday, for instance, the General Synod decided that the three wise men who visited Christ in Bethlehem could no longer be described as men. ‘While it seems very unlikely that these Persian court officials were female,’ said the Synod, ‘the possibility that one or more of the Magi were women cannot be excluded completely.’ A few days after the service, I came across a saying of a former dean of St Paul’s, the writer and preacher William Ralph Inge: ‘He who marries the spirit of the age will soon become a widower.’

And Theodore Dalrymple on the disinterestedness of modern business, in this case banks. The quintessential "big concern" (Schumpeter's term) in no fear of competition or customer unhappiness, abandons real service for the fake friendliness of first-name only phone operators (the omnipresent "Donna"). Dealing with commercial monopolies, or monopsonies, is often not so very different from dealing with government departments, particularly in England, where the customer, far from being king, is a bloody nuisance, whose importuning has the grossly unjust effect of interrupting Donna’s daydream of next weekend’s Saturday night clubbing, which as we know is the real, indeed the whole, end of human existence.

Ok Dr. Potomac, the field is yours. You have the beltway buzz. So what are people saying about this latest Drudge story about Kerry and the infidelity rumors?

Music and Markets

Lord knows the Union-Leader editorializes smartly and correctly. Most of the time. Today's editorial about the New Hampshire Symphony thinks too much in market terms, and attempts to commodify culture and the Western heritage of classical music. It reads in part: the number of performances or musicians may have to be cut for falling financial support. However, with continually dwindling resources, there could come a day when the orchestra doesn't have the fan base to stay alive ... The solution? Some will say government funding. But forcing people who don't want to listen to symphonies to pay for them anyway is not the answer. The only options are to increase the number of people who will pay to hear that kind of music, and to increase the amount of money contributed from existing fans. This is the orchestra's challenge. It is a difficult one, but not impossible.

I know budgets are tight and times are hard, but if states follow this market logic and aim cultural investment at those events popular with the public, Janet Jackson will soon be "performing" at a stage near you. A dim majority will opt for boobs over Mozart. Does that mean their choice is a good one? I trust the majority in a grocery store to pick out the best bread, pay for it, and thus use their cash (an economic vote) to set prices and demand. I do not trust the majority to make cultural choices for the whole community, because much like they will fill their bellies with bread that tastes the best, they will fill their minds with culture that tastes the best. That is seldom classical music. Does that mean, because of low demand, classical music has no worth? Because more people watch American Idol does this mean it has more value than PBS' Brideshead Revisited? Marketizing classical music places it in the same category with bread, just another commodity fighting it out in the global marketplace for market share. Yet market value and cultural value, an enduring, thoroughly un-democratic concept that connects communities with their cultural history, are far different things.

Cultural democracy and market logic are an awful way to shape cultural policy (and yes, there should be such a thing). There are certain historical and cultural resources, deep within the Western tradition, that have value apart from the opinions of the multitude, apart from the shifting demands of the market. The Swiss economist and advocate for the Humane Economy (an economy of markets and enduring cultural traditions) Wilhelm Ropke explained it thusly: This tradition has, in the eyes of our mass epoch, two things against itself: the fact that it is 'tradition' and that, necessarily, it is not within everybody's reach, or better, that it presupposes an intellectual hierarchy of people who are able and willing to make a determined effort to acquire it, develop it, and partake of it.

Yet, given proper oversight, why shouldn't a "state" (loosely defined) promote the arts and privilege those with historical roots (and hence evidence of its enduring value and greatness) deep in the Western tradition. So what if a minority or even (heaven forbid) an elite enjoy its blessings. Instead a state should rejoice over the cultural preferences of this remnant, that some within its borders are connected with its historical and cultural traditions. You are not privileging the few; you are privileging the best of what has been thought and written.

It pains me to disagree with the Union-Leader, but they have let their love for the free market conquer all. Sometimes a consumer does not know best.

Underwhelming

Yesterday I heard a senior scholar of my profession give one of the most grey and lackluster talks of my experience. Its topic was three of the most interesting personalities of the Revolutionary generation--that's the American Revolution, you darn kids--but you wouldn't have known it! There was little attempt at synthesis, and almost no attempt at insight.

Why do they do it? That is, why do senior scholars go around giving the same talk? Or, even worse, giving a talk they seem to have written on the plane? I begin to think that Eminent Historians, like Operatic Tenors, and Heavyweight Boxers, can't just say "no". Their egos are just too inflated...or maybe they just can't say no.

Anyway, it's tragic to listen to one of your professional idols, and then know in the quiet of the night that you could do better.

I never thought I'd be saying nice things about a book written by John Dean. Yet his new biography on my "living room icon," the Ohio wunderkund Warren Gamaliel Harding, who looks fondly down on my reading (and tippling) in my easy chair, keeps getting good reviews. I may have to take a peek at Dean's insights. Have you become a Friend of President Harding yet?

Boy, this is what government is all about, eh? In the lovely British town of Bury St. Edmunds, hanging plants that grace the lampposts have been banned because they might fall and hit people, or might bend the posts under the heavy weight. Not that any have fallen yet, mind you. Eating dinner tonight, I might swallow my spoon. I fully expect a spoon ban next week.

The constant plea of the advocates of revision [of the Anglican Psalter] is that 'the working man,' 'the uneducated,' 'the lower classes' -- all the pets and spoilt children of the present day -- are so puzzled by the dreadful old words, the strange constructions, etc., etc.! Now for more than fifty years we have been expending nearer hundreds of millions on the education of these poor dears; and what have we taught them? The answer is not readily forthcoming; but we seem to have untaught them a good deal. They can't, it seems, understand 'quick,' so we must make it 'alive,' and sacrifice one of the greatest phrases in English, 'the quick and the dead.' (Fancy 'the alive and the dead'!) And 'quick-silver'? and 'quick-sand'? But I suppose modern education does not concern itself with so treating a child that it will say to itself, 'I wonder why this difference between 'silver' and 'quick-silver'?' and be told and understand. Phonetics and civics and instruction in sex-questions, and statements of fads instead of facts about alcohol, no doubt leave no time for anything of that sort -- or, indeed, for Bible and Prayer Book lessons at all. George Saintsbury, 1923

This is how we fight crime in New Hampshire. With a two-foot long pizza knife. (Note the icon in the background).

Puffing

God bless one Lady Trumpington, a British peer doing her darndest to stop a bill in the House of Lords that would prohibit smoking in all public places in Wales. She opposes the measure despite (at the ripe age of 81) smoking for 40 odd years and only quitting in 2002: Do I feel better? No. Am I richer? I don’t know why, but no. Am I fatter? Oh yes. So I am thinking that the only gain has been sheer convenience. Would I start again? No, partly because it would give such smirking pleasure to those peers on the other side of the House who have taunted me through the years. Apart from those bigoted peers the answer is Yes.

‘But at the age of 81 I am left with one pleasure and that’s passive smoking. I love it! To listen to all the rubbish that is spoken concerning passive smoking only confirms me in my belief that somebody will find something wrong with everything if you only give them time.

Paraphrasing Mencken, Heaven forfend that somewhere, sometime, people are enjoying themselves in one of the last frontiers of traditional enjoyment (along with alcohol). I know I am on the Saintsbury wagon lately (and there could be far worse things), but as he says in 1923, reflecting that St. Paul advised Timothy to give up wine if it offended others: But really, considering that we know how for generations 'temperance' has been a fashion and a fad in America; how the American Podsnaps and Grundys have put the screw on public officials, and so forth -- the entire reversal of St. Paul's attitude -- the insisting that other people shan't drink wine because it offends you -- can hardly be called 'magnificent.'

What a nice reflection on modern individualism. In days gone by, people gave up things because they offended others. Today we pass laws to make people give up things because they offend us.

And how inviting does this lovely inn look? Tucked in Monmouthshire, wooden beams, cozy fires, and pints all around. I need an establishment like this.

Story from the Globe this morning: 11 Cubans in 50s Buick stopped at sea. Now that's when Americans really knew how to build cars! Too bad they were turned back; Buick could have used that for a great ad campaign. And kudos to them for actually getting that behemoth to float. I own a '58 Cadillac and it weighs twice as much as my VW Jetta. As a matter of fact, my VW could fit into the Caddy's trunk.

More Saintsbury musings and witticisms:

If Education can do anything at all it is by pulling people who ought not to be in ruts out of them, and accustoming those who ought to the best kind of rut obtainable and suitable.

Manners are perhaps the only thing absolutely exigible by man from man. Brains, beauty, strength, riches, birth, etc., are gifts; morals are subject to fearful temptation; but manners every one can have merely by choosing to have them.

I accept the congratulations for my dear, dear beloved Patriots. They are the anti-Red Sox in every way.

Yet I also apologize for shirking on blog duties for lo' these past seven days. Now that semester has begun in earnest, lectures and class prep have taken the lionshare of my time. But here are a few things of interest:

The mere title of this caught my eye: Hitler's Welsh Girlfriend Revealed. What?

An Englishman's Castle has a lovely little paragraph about attending an English farmer's funeral in the Wiltshire Downs.

I picked up George Saintsbury's Second Scrap Book today, and it is even more pleasing than the first. For there can or should be few passages in life with greater capabilities than that when a man is for the first time almost his own master, for the first time wholly arbiter of whatsoever sports and whatsoever studies he shall pursue; and when he is subjected to influences, local, historical, sensual, and supersensual, such as might not only 'draw three souls out of one weaver,' but infuse something like one soul even into the stupidest and most graceless boys.

BTW, I guess someone should congratulate the Doc on the heroic victory of his beloved Pats.

[Pause]

OK, that's done. Now I just wait for next year which, as Thomas Boswell has pointed out, is a cry of hope for Bostonians, but a curse for Philadelphians.

A Little Canadiana

There's a competition going on right now for something called the X-Prize. You probably haven't heard about it, but it's a prize for the first team to 1) Privately finances, builds & launches a spaceship, able to carry three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles); 2) Returns safely to Earth [Seems like an essential clause to me--ed.]; 3) Repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks.

About twenty-four groups have signed on to compete, though not all of them are serious. Two that seem to be are, can you believe it, Canadian corporations. One of them is the Canadian Arrow, whose design is essentially that of the German V-2 rocket, enlarged and updated with modern materials and technologies.

This tickles me silly, for several reasons. One is that one of the first private corporations with a good shot at being the first non-government entity in space is, from of all places, our semi-socialist neighbour to the north. Not only that, never have I seen so many maple leaves--other than on the Canadian hockey team--than in this picture of the astronauts selected to go up on the Arrow. Maybe Canadian patriotism, hitherto confined to hockey, might leak into bold and audacious entrepreneurial endeavours like private spaceflight.

And then a Canadian friend writes me the following:

There's even more irony there than you know. You see, the "Arrow" is the
name of a fighter jet that was developed--likely at a similar price as the
Concord cost the Brits and the French--for use in Canada and to sell abroad
during the 1950s and early 1960s. All was not going well with production and
the costs were over-running, but Canadians had been willing to put up with
that during the Liberal era. When the Tories won government, under
Saskatchewan's John Diefenbaker, they secretly destroyed not just the program
but, under the dark of night, disposed of "Avro Arrow." It was never to be
seen again. I tell you the truth--people were upset about this well into the
1980s. It just wouldn't die.

So, no doubt, these people have the Avro Arrow in mind in developing their
product, and are betting that the Liberal will be in government for a long,
long time.

Hmmm. Perhaps. Or maybe they are pointing out that they are going into space on an Arrow without any help at all from the Liberal government.

Canada to the stars! After all, the moon is hardly as inhospitable as winter on Great Slave Lake.