Postmodernism, The Civil War, and Palestinians. Huh?

Since the 1980s, Benedict Anderson's postmodern view of nationalism has pretty much taken over academia. He defines it as an 'imagined community' which is sovereign and limited. While I think its crazy to posit nations as wholly imagined, his introduction of the concept was valuable. Imagined community IS central to nationhood, and to an extent sets it apart from dynastic and other types of societies which reigned before nation-states. This approach better accounts for the fluidity of national identity, and its ability to rise and fall with surprising rapidity (for more, see Great Britain.)

The consensus among historians seems to be that no one should do Civil War history until Ken Burns is 20 years in his grave. It's just too popularized for real historians or something. However, the subject seems ripe for re-evaluation on postmodern lines. If we accept Anderson's theories, as most do, then it wasn't a Civil War at all. The Confederacy meets every aspect of postmodern nationhood -- it was an imagined community, it considered itself sovereign, it considered itself limited to a specific group of people. It also boasted all the elements of a State. The Civil War, in these terms, wasn't a war between the states, but a war between States.

This concept also has implications in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Pro-Israel types (of which I am one) often point out that there was no Palestinian nation prior to the founding of Israel. By this they mean there was no ancient, primordial people who called themselves Palestinians. This seems to be true. But does it matter? If they had no national identity before, the last several decades have certainly created one. The Palestinians are a genuine, if insane, imagined community. It really seems they should be treated with all the respect we show other genuine-but-insane nations.

A Geneva Convention for the War Between the Sexes?

Lionel Tiger has a very good piece in today's OpinionJournal -- "How about a little fair play in the battle of the sexes?" He covers some of the same themes I did here.

He covers a lot of inequities which would be well-known 'social justice issues' if only the aggrieved parties weren't gonadally-challenged. Some of the gross inequalities include:

1. EDUCATION: A "publicly financed educational system is at least 20% better at producing successful female students than male, yet hardly anyone sees this as remarkable gender discrimination. While there is a vigorous national program to equalize male and female rates of success in science and math, there is not a shred of equivalent attention to the far more central practical impact of the sharp deficit males face in reading and writing."

2. HEALTH: "When it comes to health status, the disparity in favor of women is enhanced by such patterns as seven times as much federal expenditure on breast cancer as on the prostate variety."

3. SUICIDE: "And no one is provoked into action because vaunted male patriarchs commit suicide between four and 10 times as frequently as oppressed and brainwashed women."

4. DIVORCE: ". . .mothers gain custody in 66% of uncontested cases and 75% of contested ones. Less than a quarter of parents are awarded joint custody."

Worse is the presupposition in the legal and educational system that men are inherently in the wrong, what Tiger calls 'Male Original Sin.'

Given our changing mores, I think it might definitely be time to get past our Romantic dichotomy of female virtue and male depravity. Girls are getting meaner these days -- while 43% of boys had a fistfight in 2001, a full 24% of girls did as well. And while the image of men as inherently violent sexual predators has great commerce in some quarters, 40% of all teachers accused of sex with students are female.

Our cultural institutions need to begin looking at people according to the content of their character, not the letters of their chromosomes.

Artists you should Know: Francisco Muñoz

Here are two of my favorite works by Argentinian artist Francisco Muñoz. Most of his paintings are done en plein air, winning him the prestigious Altman Prize for Landscape from NAFA in 2003. He's recently been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship as well. Definitely one to watch. I personally don't like his landscapes, preferring his more personal works:

Variations on an Eggplant, 1997

Los Orígenes, No. 14, 2004

There's further commentary on Muñoz in the comments section, be sure not to miss it.

Update -- Since hardly anyone believes in poor Francisco, this seems to say more about my philistinous qualities than it does about contemporary art. . . My first impression when the fridge magnets arrived was that they were 'art' reproductions. Heh!

Frenchman suing to enter women's golf tourney -- Cool!

I laughed when I read this -- it would be a Frenchman wanting to play women's golf.

At the same time though, I think it's brilliant. A double standard has existed for ages now wherein any specifically male space is impermissible and becomes instant lawsuit bait for feminist activists. The existence of a male-only club or organization is assumed to be anti-woman. The fact that it might have nothing to do with women at all, and instead just be that guys wanted to hang out doesn't get considered.

Compare that with the endless, tedious discussion of women's relationships, women's 'space', women's circles, ad nauseum by feminists. While male exclusivity is inherently bad, there is something noble and spiritual about women hanging out with one another.

Consider, for example, the frenzied activism to integrate VMI and the Citadel. Then watch the same feminists have fainting spells over proposals to integrate all-female colleges. Observe the sobbing over Augusta, yet women-only health clubs proliferate.

Women are now seeking admission into men's professional sports. I invite them in. And it's only fair for them to do the same with their own sports.

Considering the ease with which men would dominate these, guys would be crazy not to embrace this gender-bending egalitarianism. I wonder how these feminists would enjoy seeing the sensible shoe on the other foot.

The Christmas Wars

I've seen a few pundits dismissing the Christmas vs. Holiday fight as a manufactured issue. Their reasoning seems to be that this is all just Bubba bait -- a way to stir up Red Staters by making them feel threatened. A bit like Libs with Alito -- there's no serious threat to Roe vs. Wade if one looks at the court balance, but it's good for fundraising.

I don't think it's Bubba bait. Instead, I think the frog has simply woken up in mid-boil and decided to jump. Creeping secularism has been eroding even the most mild free expression of religion in the public square for some time now. The only way to stop this gradual process is to call it for what it is and then push back. Christians have as much right as anyone to help define what sort of culture we're to have. More so, in that they constitute a huge majority of the population.

I'm glad to see us putting financial and social pressure on corporations that want to secularize the public square. Socially liberal companies have a right to pursue whatever agenda they want. We have an equal right to spank them for it. That's democracy in action, baby.

Bennifer, PC and Slavic Terror

Political Correctness likes to masquerade as a move to treat all people with dignity and courtesy. That's actually just good manners. PC goes further, demanding that we ignore uncomfortable truths. And the more these truths hurt us, the more insistent the demand that we lie to ourselves.

Alias is a perfect example. It was quite normal to show Arab terrorists before 9/11. True Lies, for example. Now that Arabs have incinerated thousands of us, it's suddenly verboten to actually show them doing it. Alias is a show which centers around terrorism. Yet 96% of the 'terrorists' are Slavic.

Does a little light never go off in the viewers' heads? Do none of them ever ask themselves the last time a Hungarian hijacked a plane? Can they remember the last Polish jihadist they met?

And so we end up with farces such as airport security giving the same scrutiny to Norwegian grandmothers as Palestinian youths. Wrong ideas have real life consequences.

Jesse Jackson -- America's own Yasser Arafat ?

One often hears the relationship of the Democratic Party and the black community compared to a plantation. This has some merit. But the problem is much deeper than party affiliation. The heart of the problem is in its relationship to American society as a whole. I think we can find some (limited)parallels in the Palestinian relationship with Israel.

Yasser Arafat made his millions and kept his power by fostering hatred between the Palestinians and Israel. In a horrifying irony, the Palestinians were and are led by the very people who have the least interest in lasting harmony.

Black Americans face a similar situation. The present crop of Civil Rights leaders make their daily bread stirring up mistrust among the people they claim to want to help. Rather than encouraging integration into the larger society, they perpetuate separatism and fear which serves only to marginalize the black community. This marginalization in turn feeds the cycle of disadvantagement.

Frankly speaking, mainstream society is where the jobs are. By allowing people like Arafat or Jackson to speak for and ostensibly represent them, blacks and Palestinians have contributed greatly to their own social hardships.

The situation in America is much better than that in Palestine, of course. Americans as a whole have a true commitment to equality of opportunity. Public racism has been almost entirely eliminated in recent decades, excepting the occasional N-word from a Democratic senator or racist caricatures of people like Clarence Thomas, Michael Steele and Condi Rice.

The irony is that the organization most hated by African-Americans according to opinion polls is the one group with any fresh ideas for improving things. Republicans are the ones who have stayed true to the vision of a colorblind, integrated meritocracy. Republicans are the ones with fresh thinking about charter schools, school choice, continued welfare reform and opportunity zones.

However, all of these will be of limited utility so long as the black community is led by those most vested in continued racial strife.

Public Schools and the Assembly Line

My father-in-law put the imagery of Pink Floyd's The Wall into my head today. He spontaneously monologued a bit about public schools; it was good. He basically said:

"People say public schools are bad, but that isn't true. They're very good at what they were designed for -- to create people who could work in factories. They teach you to arrive at a bell, go to lunch at a bell and leave at a bell. You learn to sit at a desk and do the same work everyone else is. These things don't really have anything to do with education.

People don't realize that these things aren't inborn. In the old days, people regulated their lives by the schedules of agriculture. It took public schools to teach people to show up to the factory on time."

You can see where TulipGirl gets her brains from. What he said made a lot of sense to me. Our public schools aren't bad -- just obsolete.

Cowboys take up AK47s to combat drug runners on Mexican frontier

First of all, this is why I love America. We have cowboys. With AK-47s.

Secondly, can we please build the flipping fence now? "Cowboys take up AK47s to combat drug runners on Mexican frontier" is a great premise for a modern-day Spaghetti Western, but it's no way to run a border.

The Mystic Chords of Memory: Reclaiming American History

Heritage Foundation has a lecture posted on Russell Kirk and American history. Kirk was one of my defining influences growing up, so it's always nice to see a tribute to the old fella. It's my great regret never having visited him at the gatherings he held at his home in Mecosta, MI. It would have been something of a pilgrimage.

A good starting point for exploring Kirkian thought is The Roots of American Order, one of the early attempts to trace both the origins of American culture and a conservative pedigree within it.

"Historical consciousness gave him a broad, capacious vision, which always insisted that the civilization we enjoy has deep living roots. Those roots of American order extend back in time not only to 18th- century Philadelphia, but further back, to London, Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem. Virtually everything he wrote testified to his intense awareness of the immanence, inescapability, and indispensability of the past, and not only the past of the previous generation or two, but the distant past. . ."

"What struck many readers as mannered or affected diction in Kirk was actually something quite different. It was evidence of his strong conviction that words, like people, are living things, bearing living pasts deserving of recognition and respect. That was typical of him. He had the ability to make even the dullest things gleam with the luster of historical imagination. . .

In particular, Kirk lamented the deification of progress, the cult of absolute equality, the advance of the Leviathan state, the licentiousness of the autonomous self, the transvaluation of values, and other such modern abstractions that have transformed and eroded the American republic."

This is yummy.

Johnny Depp is leaving France. It's too violent for him.

Savor the delicious irony for a few minutes. This is the guy who left America with fanfare a couple of years ago, telling a German magazine:

"America is dumb, it’s like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you," he said. "My daughter is four, my boy is one. I’d like them to see America as a toy, a broken toy. Investigate it a little, check it out, get this feeling and then get out."

Where will he go now? France has always been the Mecca for America-hating celebs.

Well, given all the support they've given radical Islam by undercutting our war in Iraq, perhaps they could just start going to Mecca.

McCarthyism, Heresy and Intelligent Design

This is not a post about Intelligent Design. I have read not more than a paragraph about the subject. Ever. Science is a terrible bore. I do believe that the highly intelligent God of the Bible designed both the heavens and the earth. As to the scientific merits of the theory known as Intelligent Design, however, I am quite agnostic.

Just to get that out of the way.

Now, does it seem to anyone else that the decibel level of attacks on ID people is getting just a bit shrill? I can't remember this level of hysteria about anything since the Republicans cut the school lunch program by increasing spending on it by 8 instead of 12 percent.

Do you know what the ID people are being treated like? Heretics. Only heretics can inspire the sort of venom I see directed at the ID crowd. The scientific community, and those who take their cues from it, are reacting exactly like a religion which senses an internal threat.

It's ironic that the academic community, which prides itself on open inquiry, seems to have declared a specific line of inquiry beyond the pale. This from the people who brought you Masters and Johnson and cloned sheep. My understanding is that academicians with even ID sympathies are being persecuted.

Again, I have no idea if the IDers are right or not. But it would be a rare thing for an ideally totally bereft of power to elicit such a McCarthyist counter-reaction. It makes me wonder if maybe they're on to something.

UPDATE: Jared Bridges at True Pravda is blogging on the scientists as a priestly caste.

Dutch Moonbats on the Wing

Last week, we were mourning the impending death of Europe. Today, our expat pal Liberal Media drew my attention to a story from Holland. It's a reminder that sometimes cultures, like people, sink so far into dementia that they can no longer survive on their own.

Death threat for killer of Domino-toppling sparrow

"At least seven organisations have become involved in the saga surrounding the sparrow shot dead on Monday.

The little bird's crime was to knock over 23,000 of the 4.3 dominoes laid out for an attempt to break the domino toppling record . . . Animal rights group Dierenbescherming and the provincial authority have both appointed officials to investigate the shooting dead of the bird with an air gun. . . Meanwhile, the man who fired the fatal shot has been threatened with death.

Posted by Discoshaman at 12:21 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Multiculturalism: Does it Work?

The rioting in France has put the cult of multiculturalism back in the spotlight. You have two population groups in France both seeking to maintain their own language and cultural identity and now conflicting with one another.

This led me to think -- Where has multiculturalism ever worked? I mean genuine multiculturalism, two or more distinct linguistic and cultural groups living together in one nation state. The nightmare of Bosnia-Serbia-Kosovo? The Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda? The Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq? The Basques in Spain? The Québécois? Aceh in Indonesia? The Flemish and the French in Belgium? The Tatars and Ukrainians? The blacks and Arabs in Sudan? Where?

Multiculturalism has a longer record of failure than Bob Shrum. Can we point to any real successes, and are there lessons to be learned from them?

This seems to be a fair and relevant question for Americans to ask these days. For the first time in our history, the overwhelming majority of our immigration is coming from a single, different linguistic and cultural source.

We are heading toward exactly the sort of hybrid nationality we see in some of the above-named countries. As I've said before, it is a vast sociological experiment which is being performed completely contrary to the wishes of the American people as expressed in opinion surveys.

The 'Religion of Peace': reality trumps theology

There are about 70 million Reformed or Presbyterian Christians in the world. Imagine for a moment that a small percentage of us decided to organize a globe-encompassing terrorist network that slaughtered innocents from Bali to London. Then ask yourself these questions:

1. Would the vast, vast majority of us be issuing mealy-mouthed non-denunciations of the terrorists while portraying ourselves as the real societal victims? Would a huge percentage of us sympathize with the terrorists? How long would it be until the great majority of us repudiated and excommunicated the terrorists and began turning them in?

2. Would the media and government be falling over themselves to placate our feelings and make sure we didn't feel discriminated against? Or would the expectation be that we have some responsibility in this, and should clean up our own house?

It's a ridiculous song and dance when we try to blame only the terrorists for the terror problem. The problem is with Islam as it currently stands. Before anyone starts quoting religion of peace drek from the Koran, I'm not speaking of Islam theologically, but culturally.

There is something fundamentally diseased about a body of believers that can sustain terrorists in every country where that religion has a presence.

The unpopular truth is this: The terrorists wouldn't last a day without the tolerance, sustenance and shelter of "mainstream" Muslims.

100 Wonders of the World

Rebecca Writes links to the Top 100 Wonders of the World. It's discouraging to see how much of the world you -haven't- yet seen. I'm 30 this year, so I need to get busy. . . I've got these crossed off the list:

1. Pyramids of Egypt at Giza 2. Grand Canyon 3. Karnak Temple 4. Acropolis/Parthenon 5. Nile River Cruise 6. Egyptian Museum 7. Valley of the Kings 8. Louvre Museum 9. Versailles 10. Carlsbad Caverns 11. Prague Old Town 12. Delphi 13. Sahara Desert 14. NY Skyline 15. Eiffel Tower 16. Niagra Falls 17. Suez Canal 18. San Francisco 19. Yosemite Nat'l Park

Humane Conservatism, Cont.

I just wrote on the one-party system in American Academia. There is very genuine discrimination against the conservative movement there. But it won't do us any good to complain about it. But the conservative movement needs to do the same thing the Left did -- work hard, think rigorously, and get PhDs. No one handed the universities to them; they captured them fairly.

Some of my thinking on this goes back to our earlier thread on Humane Conservatism. We've become a conservative movement of think tanks rather than universities. Policy papers rather than Great Books. It's not that think tanks are bad, it's that they're ephemeral. The conservative movement needs to be influencing the literature and philosophy departments, not just the evening news cycle.

The rise of academic standards at Christian universities is a positive sign. But in the overall picture, the conservative movement seem to be losing ground if anything. The heart of America is conservative. For too long we've allowed the head to be liberal, with unfortunate consequences.

Keywords: Conservatism, conservative movement

With open minds like these, who needs Orwell?

Deb Saunders writes today on Mob Rule in Academia.

The responses by liberals to recent remarks by Ward Churchill and Larry Summers is instructive. Churchill compared 9/11 victims to Nazi war criminals. Summers made some debatable-yet-reasonable remarks about women, Bell Curves and Academia. Yet whose blood is the academic community thirsting for?

Much of the liberal talk about open minds and free inquiry is nothing more than empty self-congratulations. From which side is the movement to criminalize vaguely-defined "hate speech"? Who thought up campus speech codes? Who uses epithets like "bigot, sexist or homophobe" to cow honest debate?

Many liberals seem to see "tolerance" as a privilege, not a right. You forfeit this privilege if you transgress against their sacred cows, as Larry Summers has learned.

Universities should be centers of free inquiry and thought. My experience was just the opposite. Liberal "diversity" seems to be all about genitalia and genetics. Sadly, the idea that true diversity is one of plurality of thought or opinion is often lost.

Speaking of the lack of diversity on campus, check out this report I found by the American Enterprise. They ran surveys of party affiliation on major US campuses.

Why History People are Naturally Superior. . .

. . .to other social science types.

We have our own muse -- Clio.

Self-defeating Socialists

People who say that socialism can't work are simply wrong. It CAN. As long as its applied on the level of a tribe, family, convent or cultic community.

The Weekly Standard has a good article about the Eurabianization of Sweden -- their percentage of foreign-born residents is now equivalent to the USA's at its highest point. Socialist economics made the country into a welfare magnet. Surprisingly enough, the Muslims don't share the same liberal values as the Swedes.

But that's old news. What I found interesting was this quote by Mauricio Rojas, a Swedish politician:

"High levels of taxation require that the people taxed be a community," he says. "And this has for a long time been a tribal society. . . . A good tribe! Very peaceful and nice! But a tribe."

There are two nuggets here:

1. The folly of many who believe that economics that "work" in a nation of 9 million relatively homogenous people will be equally efficient in a massively diverse one of 280 million.

2. Socialistic economics only work even fitfully when there's a very strong shared sense of community and purpose. It's ironic that the very people who most want socialistic policies in the States are also those most aggressively pushing multiculturalism -- a dogma which destroys any national sense of community and unity.

Art and the Christian Ghetto

Note-This is a post from 2003 that Evangelical Outpost linked today. I thought it would be good for both my regulars and the newcomers to be able to interact on this thread. Be sure also to check out his ongoing links to Evangelical artists.

Original Post:

Inkling had some good things to say on a recent thread. We were discussing Christianity and the recovery of the arts. He's taught drama in school for ten years now, and has seen several of his students go on to big-name schools. Here's some of what he had to say:

" I'm not so sure they benefit that much from the post-secondary training they receive. And yet these are the places they have to go to advance their careers. . . Having experienced the Theatre and the arts culture at the University level and seeing the cultural environment chew up and spit out so many kids I would advise parents to be very careful about encouraging their kids to major in The arts unless they are well grounded."

I think this is very good advice. I've watched several "Christian" friends go off the deep end after leaving for art school. One girl, who was an enormous influence on me as a young Christian and whom I looked to as a dynamic believer, has gone completely into the world. When we told her that we'd become missionaries her response was, "Well, I hope you aren't a judgmental Christian." She'd completely internalized the values and beliefs of the Miami arts scene.

The art schools are the gatekeepers, as Inkling pointed out. And they're a hostile place for believers. Yet, they're only hostile because we've ceded this realm to unbelievers. Something of a vicious circle, isn't it? I think Inkling's advice that only grounded Christians should make the foray seems wisest.

As for the Church at large, here are a few modest proposals:

1. Stop funneling anyone with an artistic bent into either the praise band or the church dance team, and expecting this to be a sufficient outlet for them

2. Take Thomas Kinkade to the outskirts of Monterey and stone him.

3. Pray that non-liturgical Christians will learn to write readable prose (excluding our Jared, of course.) Statistically, they're the future of Evangelicalism, for better or worse.

4. Learn to distinguish art from kitsch. Stop visiting the merchandise section of the Family Christian Store altogether.

5. Lose the parasitism. Much of what passes for culture in the Christian ghetto is intensely derivative. I'm slack-jawed with amazement that we haven't yet had a baptized Harry Potter-esque series as an "answer" to Rowling. Our "answer" to the world seems generally to be that of a dumbed-down form of aping.

6. Abandon our Gnostic-like denigration of creation, beauty and art, and our visceral suspicion of believers with an artistic calling who don't exclusively paint crosses or write tractarian novels.

7. Accept the lock-out and form our own alternatives? The conservatives, facing the lock that the Libs had on media and the universities, simply constructed their own counter-establishment over a 40 year period. Do Christians need to do the same with the arts? It seems like we're already in-process. How would you rate the progress so far?

Socialized Medicine and the Euthanization of Fun

Today I don't want to talk about the economics of Socialized Medicine, but its implications in an American social context.

There's one inflexible rule in American politics -- whatever the government subsidizes, it regulates (excepting, of course, NEA grants for pee-soaked images of Mother Theresa.)

When Uncle Sam is paying for your health, he's going to want a BIG say in what you're doing with it. What you eat, what you drive, the degree of extremity in your extreme sports. . . All of that becomes his bailiwick.

It's no different than I am with my children -- I'm the one paying the doctor bills, so I'm going to tell them what not to do. The Nanny State is a misnomer. Such governments aren't maternal, they're paternalistic.

We already have an inordinate number of private-citizen health fascists in America -- dreary, joyless consumers of tofu and obscure nutritional supplements whose only pleasure is in nagging others. Imagine life once government bean counters are added into the mix.

I have seen the future, and it looks like West Palm Beach

Check out Stanley Kurtz's new piece for Policy Review -- Demographics and the Culture War. It's more exciting than it sounds.

With something to intrigue or annoy just about anyone, Kurtz takes a peek at our possible future. Turn everything the ZPGers were saying in the 70's about Population Explosion on its head, and you have the article. Kurtz makes a case for a dangerous population decline, and backs it up with stats. Then he explores the economic, cultural and political ramifications of it all.

Plus you get weird bits like this: "The United Nations estimates that by 2050, 42 percent of all people in Italy and Japan will be aged 60 or older."

I'm looking into a shuttleboard franchise.

Business -- Conditional Ally

The broad-stroke view of politics posits that conservatives are the pro-business faction. To an extent, it's true. Particularly in the fight against collectivization and Communism, we had a common cause.

One day we can look at things historically and see how new this alliance really is, but not today. Instead let's focus on the now. What should conservatism's relationship be with business?

Like the title says, I think we need a conditional alliance. There are plenty of areas where we have agreement -- reducing the size of government, protecting America's interests abroad, and so on. But a blanket pro-Business stance is naive.

The market enables us to live, but it can't tell us how to live. We need to bring our values to the market, not derive them from it. Especially as conservatives.

The market is creatively destructive. That's often necessary. But what happens when something historically precious is going to be destroyed? In such situations the liberals are often actually the ones being genuinely conservative.

The same could be said for the environment. While opposing the religion that environmentalism has become, conservatives should all be conservationists. Too often though, we fall into a reflexively pro-business stance.

Immigration is another good example. While the Wall Street Journal loves having millions of low-skilled workers cross the border to work for peanuts, conservatives should at least be asking what this influx means on a cultural and social level.

The area where we'll eventually see the biggest split is in the area of bioethics. As the technology advances, business will be drawn inexporably by potential profits. They'll lobby hard to have limits on cloning and genetic experimentation lifted. Not all of this will be bad. But it will inevitably take them into areas where conservatives cannot follow, and instead have to resist. Do we have the will to do so?

There are so many other areas where real conservatism and business part ways. One that drives me craziest is the commodification of sports. I love America's pasttimes, and I hate that corporations have co-opted every aspect of them -- from stadium names to putting Spider-Man webs on major league bases to advertise movies.

Conservatives understand that some things are priceless. Business thinks just the opposite -- everything has its price.

Racial Miscommunication

If there was ever a healthy interracial dialogue in America, there isn't one now. In place of a realistic appraisal and discussion of race relations, we've substituted a crude morality play of perpetual victim and villain.

The script is a simple one -- accusations and invective from half of the cast, ritualized introspection and self-denunciation from the other. Uncomfortable realities are avoided by both sides in favor of safe pieties. Double standards are rife. The result is simulaneously condescending and unjust.

Who suffers most from this?

Certainly not middle-class whites in their well-policed suburbs. As with so many things, it's the socially and economically vulnerable who suffer, particularly the third of the black community mired in the underclass. We can't realistically address minority poverty and social decay so long as "endemic racism" is the only permitted primary cause. Scapegoating others may be comforting, but it doesn't accomplish much else.

Racial reconciliation is so very necessary. No one who cares about social justice can see the marginalization of black America and not want to do something about it. However, will real reconciliation come unless everyone can approach the table as equals, without fear of being verbally battered into shamed silence?

Montagues and Capulets, Boys and Girls

In Romeo and Juliette, there isn't really anything in the text to distinguish the two rival families in their feud. But I've always inclined toward the Montagues, because they're Romeo's House. During the intermission at Romeo and Juliette, I asked TulipGirl whom she favored when she read the story.

"The Capulets." Why? "It's Juliette's family."

So we got to talking about gender identification and loyalty. All things being equal, are men and women tribal about their gender? Which faction do you identify with when you read the story, and why?

Marrying into the Matriarchy

The picture of Yulia below captures the quintessence of the Ukrainian woman -- beautiful, but clenching a fist.

During the Revolution, a Ukrainian friend made this comment about the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko dynamic: "It's typical Ukrainian family. Of course the woman is the strong one."

Externally, Ukrainian women are the most aggressively feminine on the planet -- they make Parisian women seem dowdy. When Western guys come across ads for "Russian Brides", all they see are the pictures. The fact that this is an entirely different culture is lost, because the girls LOOK like the ones at home (albeit thinner and better-dressed.) Cross-cultural marriages can be great, but they're rarely easy.

Before anyone answers one of those ads, they should think through the implications of marrying into a generally matriarchal culture. Read the fine print, and you'll see that many of these marriage contracts require a trip to obedience school.

Opera and Life's Beautiful Things

The Duchess and I did an opera-and-sushi date tonight -- Roméo et Juliette followed by a stop at the Okeon. Let's face it, nothing spells romance like dead Veronans and freshwater eel.

I think Gounod's score is a little heavy-handed, but the cast was excellent. Lyudmilla Semenenko was a great Stephano.

During the second act it struck me how much opera depends on society's consensus that it's "high culture." Stripped of this, there would be something ridiculous about the whole thing. Take away its prestige, the loveliness of the voices, and the grandeur of the theatre and you're left with slightly overweight grown-ups in costume enacting a tenuous plot with overacting direct from the William Shatner School.

Opera, like so many of the beautiful things in life, is impractical, unhip, and dismissed as elitist. The same could be said for formal dress, customs, local traditions and especially manners. They've always relied on a cultural consensus that said, "These things are impractical and time-consuming, but they have value in themselves."

These are the things that make civil society civil. As we urbanize and atomize, they're anything but out of date -- they're vital. They're the antidote to the coarsening and ugliness of daily life.

And the winner. . .

. . .for most ironic quasi-oxymoron is:

the problem with Massachusetts (just one?)

The Duchess and I spent the first five months of our married life in the Berkshires of western Mass. It was our first cross-cultural experience. We failed.

The time there did give us a peek at an entirely different mentality toward life. Everything is "wicked bad", it takes about 15 years to make friends with someone, and cheerfulness is considered a sign of mental defectiveness.

With that, I'll link you to an American Spectator piece on Why Massachusetts Doesn't Grow -- it's the only state in the Union with a declining population. With such bubbly personalities, it's hard to imagine why.

Tucked away in the article is this fun thumbnail of 19th Century American history: "'Warehouses lead to whorehouses, whorehouses to a police force, a police force to courthouses.' Voilа, civilization."

Urban Tribes and their Mechanized Caravans

The Guardian reviews an intriguing new book today -- Urban Tribes.

"They have been to university, they have confidence and money, but they are uninterested in what comes next in the conventional middle-class life: a structured career, marriage, children. Instead, Watters's subjects form groups with like-minded peers, and spend the decades between early adulthood and middle age going out together, bonding and gossiping with their new extended family. . . "

At first blush, the concept could be a contrived rationale to sell a book. But then I thought back to my own social life, and realized that every one of my circles of friends have fit the description -- apolitically liberal, neo-Pagan or secular in religion, and "earning money by freelance means, and drinking a great number of leisurely coffees." I was the token married-with-children guy in the bunch.

While I love my friends, tribal life was a cheery, aimless one -- days filled with role-playing games, computers, road trips and parties. Jobs were viewed not as a career, but as a means of survival. Intellects were put to more interesting uses than work -- like learning Japanese to watch anime in the original language. It's a mayfly sort of existence, flitting about and spawning with no concept of a future.

TS Eliot spoke of those who were "destroying our ancient edifices to make ready the ground upon which the barbarian nomads of the future will encamp in their mechanised caravans."

I think they've encamped.

A night at the opera

TulipGirl and I caught La Bohème tonight, our first opera of the season. The sets were good and the orchestra was great. Unfortunately, the usual Mimi was out of town and a weak understudy filled in -- perhaps the company hired an actual consumption victim. That would score some serious vérité points.

This is a mildly unsettling Mick Jagger-inspired self-portrait of TulipGirl and me.

During the death of Mimi, TulipGirl leaned over and said, "Mimi and Musetta are the archetypical virgin and whore." You have to love a girl who'll whisper that to you in the dark.

The name of the brunette Musetta escapes me, but she's getting known in Western Europe. We'll lose her eventually.

Roger and Diane McMurrin -- he's the conductor of the Kiev Symphony Orchestra and one of the founders of the first Presbyterian church in Kiev after the fall of Communism (there are now four.)

The parochial Left?

In the whole Red-Blue State meme, the Reds are the provincials and the blues cosmopolitan. The Blues are exposed to a world of ideas and diversity while the Reds suffer from intellectual insularity.

But these days, maybe provincialism isn't a province only of the provinces.

Think about it. A thinking conservative is educated in an NEA-run school, then goes off to a university where the most positive thing he might hear about conservatism is its quaintness. Throughout his life he's immersed in a pop culture tat's generally a product of the Blue world. He reads liberally-oriented journals of opinion, and gets his news primarily from organizations with a preponderance of liberals (however objective they may strive to be.) By adulthood, he's well acquainted with liberalism from first-sources.

An urban liberal, on the other hand, has no such "advantages." Unless he actively seeks it out, it's possible to go a lifetime with little interaction with intellectual conservatism, or even Red-state culture. (Insert obligatory Pauline Kael "Nixon" quote here.) Which is why, for example, the NYT writes about Evangelicals like an alien race.

In a perverse way, this is of advantage to conservatism. An intelligent conservative in America has had his beliefs tested by fire. And he knows the opposing system intimately, rather than having it translated to him through an echo chamber.

NOTE: There are many, many exceptions to this on the Left. No faction holds intellectual honesty and curiousity as an exclusive preserve, and plenty of liberals have taken the time to study conservatism.

Land of the Free, Home of the Slightly Off-Kilter

The Orange Revolution made me realize that I'd become a sort of 3rd-Culture person -- neither fish-nor-fowl when it comes to national identity. I never plan to live long-term in America again, but I still have a great love for her. Distance has lent objectivity to my view, though.

Every day I hear stereotypes about America from people who have never been there -- both Ukrainians and European expats. Some of their shallower critiques have merit. Americans are fat.

Going deeper though, you see they have no clue what makes America a fascinating country. To hear them, Americans are gray, mass produced beings whose idea of the good life is sitcoms and fast food.

What's missing is the vibrancy of life, the colorfulness of the American people. Not so much in a "We Are the World" multicultural quilt sort of way, but in the unique, sometimes crazy people the country produces. You really never know who you're going to meet in a place like America.

The Lone Wacko provides a great example -- the Ferret man, the Libertarian candidate for Lt. Gov in California's last gubernatorial race. Check out his running mate, the "existential druid".

America may be a little crazy, but it's never dull.

bowties and the lies we tell ourselves

It seems to me that deep in his bosom, nearly every person nurses a secret belief that he's especially favored by the universe, exempt from things that are universals for other people. It's a survival skill -- an assertion of the will in the face of six million teeming humans.

Examples are legion -- Smoking kills people, but not me. Forget the past, Bob Shrum is just what my campaign needs. Yes, puns are the lowest form of humor, but my pun really is funny. . .

The bowtie is the standout example. Has anyone since TS Eliot been hip in one? No. But what cocktail party is complete without someone in a blazer-n-bowtie combo, preferably with polka dots? Neither this cravat nor the polka itself has been cool in fifty years, but the individual has a conviction that there is something inside him that adds a dashing note to the sad little twist of cloth.

Bowties are proof that hope really does spring eternal.

the Atlantic and the atheists

According to the YouGov poll, only 44% of Britons believe in God. Even giving some extra margin for error in that this was an online poll, this is another toll of the bell for the West. It seems to me that no society can exist with a hollow center for any length of time. If you remove the crèche from the public square, something else will eventually take its place.

This statistic is fascinating on another level as well. Compared to the 44% in Britain, about 96% of Americans tell Gallup they believe in God, and have done so consistently since 1944. Even when we define God as an "all-powerful, all-good Being who controls the world", 69% of Americans agree.

Metaphysics underlie a nation's politics, culture, and theoretically, their ethics. Of European nations, Britain is the closest culturally to our own. With such a divergence over something as fundamental as the existence of God, the widening of the Atlantic rift is understandable.

Unavoidable Africa

The popular conscience would like to forget Africa. For the past fifteen years, authoritarianism, disease and poverty have lost battle after battle in Latin America, Eastern Europe and even Afganistan. But if anything, Africa has sunk only deeper into corruption and epidemic. South Africa is now the rape, murder and AIDS capital of the universe. Such suffering makes a mockery of bright, humanistic assumptions about man's nature.

It is a humanitarian challenge that Christianity cannot ignore. Yet the causes are so vast and culturally ingrained that any aid we might offer can seem pitiful in comparison. Our friend Gideon Strauss gives this bleak prognosis: "Ever so slowly – as at the outer fringes of the Roman Empire from the fifth century to the twelfth century – Christianity seems to be working itself into the soil of African culture. The Christian transformation of African culture seems likely to be a 500-year project."

Read more about his fight against Apartheid and his work with the Truth and Reconciliation Committee at The New Pantagruel. His recollections are frank and moving.

Behold the (Mad) Man

"I know my fate. One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful -- of a crisis like no other before on earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience, of a decision evoked against everything that until then had been believed in, demanded, sanctified. I am not a man, I am dynamite."

I'm re-reading Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, and this passage really struck me today. It's as if, in an episode of syphilitic madness, he had a vision of the modern Literature department. Or the Jenny Jones Show.

Okay, The Incredibles lived up to the name.

More importantly, it challenged one of the key tenets of the Hollywood faith -- the worship of equality. Excellence was held up as something positive -- but not in any creepy Who is John Galt? sort of way. But rather in a positive manner that flies in the face of liberalism's belief that the pursuit of excellence is somehow elitist, racist, or insensitive.

Since at least Reconstruction, the central organizing principle of our nation has shifted progressively from liberty to equality. We'll ultimately lose the gay "marriage" fight, because the tide of egalitarianism is relentless. Everyone must be equal, which means identical, and any differences are prima facie discriminatory.

So how incredible it was to watch a movie where the supervillain dreams of a world "where everyone is special" and therefore "no one is special."

The Moral Side of Capitalism

I just started Baldacchino's Economics and the Moral Order, and it's set me to thinking. We're in the middle of what seems to be a realignment in the American political scene, with R's retaking majoritarian status for the first time since the Depression. However, the Dems still hold one huge advantage over us (well, two, counting the New York Times) -- they still cling tenaciously to the economic moral high ground. The national consensus seems to have become, "Liberal economics are dumb, but they sure are caring."

We need to better articulate the moral basis of capitalism. I love this quote from the book:

"People do not live by cheaper vacuum cleaners alone. . . an ethical system without at least a potential for serving man's ethical nature contains the seeds for its own destruction."

As conservatives, we need to do a better job expressing the moral worth of freedom, not just its utility. And as Christians, we need to both strengthen and infuse the free market system with the proper virtues. Because if it really is simply a game of skill and chance with no values higher than self-interest, à la Hayek, then it doesn't deserve to survive. It seems to me that an inefficient yet idealistic Socialism would be preferable to an absolutely amoral Capitalism.

Just as with any human freedoms, economic freedom derives its quality and value from the virtues of the people.

EW's Top Cult Films of All Time

I've bolded the ones I've been subjected to:

1 This Is Spinal Tap
2 The Rocky Horror Picture Show
3 Freaks
4 Harold And Maude
5 Pink Flamingos
6 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
7 Repo Man
8 Scarface
9 Blade Runner
10 The Shawshank Redemption
11 Five Deadly Venoms
12 Plan 9 From Outer Space
13 Brazil
14 Eraserhead
15 Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
16 The Warriors
17 Dazed And Confused
18 Hard-Boiled
19 Evil Dead II
20 The Mack
21 Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
22 Un Chien Andalou
23 Akira
24 The Toxic Avenger
25 Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory
26 Stranger Than Paradise
27 Dawn Of The Dead
28 The Wiz
29 Clerks
30 The Harder They Come
31 Slap Shot
32 Re-Animator
33 Grey Gardens
34 The Big Lebowski
35 Withnail and I
36 Showgirls
37 A Bucket Of Bood
38 They Live
39 The Best Of Everything
40 Barbarella
41 Heathers
42 Rushmore
43 The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension
44 Love Streams
45 Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
46 Aguirre, The Wrath of God (this one's in my NetFlix queue. need to check it out, I guess)
47 Walking And Talking Nicole Holofcener
48 The Decline Of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years
49 Friday
50 Faces of Death, Vol. 1
51 Monty Pyton and the Holy Grail
52 A Clockwork Orange
53 Mommie Dearest
54 The Princess Bride
55 Swingers
56 UHF
57 Valley of the Dolls
58 Fight Club
59 Dead Alive (aka Braindead)
60 Better Off Dead
61 Donnie Darko

I think it's bizarre that Ferris Bueller didn't make it, and neither did What's Up, Tiger Lily? What other flicks are missing?

Hat tip: Mysterium Tremendum

Liberalism, Western Suicide, and Islam

In all its multitudinous manifestations, Liberalism is the ideology of Western Suicide, just as James Burnham taught us. In the course of a century it has taken us from a thriving, confident culture to a guilt-wracked declension which slides ever closer to demographic self-annihilation. Key to all of this is a carnival mirror view of history which magnifies all of the (admittedly many) sins of Westerners, while shrinking those of other groups beyond notice.

Liberals, and the 3rd World bigots they pander to, can't shut up about the Crusades. Listening to them, one would think Western Europe decided to annex the Holy Land on some sort of ecclesiastical lark.

Lost somehow is the fact that the Crusades, while not politely conducted, were only a minor counter-offensive in a 1400 year history of almost unbroken aggression against Christians by militant Islam. Do these idiots never stop and ask HOW there were Arabs in a former Roman colony to begin with? Are they so ignorant of history that they know nothing about the conquest of Spain, the sacking of Constantinople, the enslavement of the Balkans, the forced conversion of North Africa, the reduction of the Copts to dhimmitude, the slaughter of the Armenians, the genocide and slavery in Sudan, and the slaughter of East Timor?

Of course they know. Just as they know of the countless other atrocities inflicted on us by militant Islam ever since its inception. Christendom, and particularly its historic center in Europe, has suffered the depradations of fanatical Islam for centuries. But only our attempts to defend ourselves rouse Liberal ire -- whether attempts long since passed, or our continuing fight against Islamic terror.

Is ANYTHING Priceless Anymore?

I just noticed on Drudge that MLB will be decorating all of its bases and on-deck circles with a web pattern to help promote the next Spider Man movie. This is in line with the trend toward the "Cogswell Cogs Rose Bowl" and the like. I hate it.

Realistically, is the world imperiled when a new stadium gets named for an insurance company rather than a local sporting legend? No. But it does make our culture that much coarser and uglier. It tosses out one more myth in favor of a buck.

I'm a conservative. I am an unabashed free marketeer. But modern conservatism often forgets that Capitalism, absent cultural restraints, is every bit as stupidly rapacious as its opponents make it out to be. Libertarianism has so infected our thinking that sometimes we forget that there are things more hallowed than economics, things that should be conserved even against the market itself.

So I'll give another rare hat tip to the Liberals. They're clueless about how an economy works, but they've been more vocal than Conservatives about the creeping commodification of our civilization. Some things are priceless, and they should stay that way.

Update- Case in point: Nader is blasting MLB about similar things. I feel a little queasy agreeing with Nader on anything, but there it is.

Assistant Watchmakers

I just noticed that scientists are on the verge of "creating life" for the first time in a lab. My prediction is that once they've crossed this threshold, the media will seek out Fundamentalist preachers to dutifully deny that it occured, because "only God can create life."

I personally don't see the development as particularly challenging to my worldview. Once they've performed this feat, they'll only have proven what I've always believed -- life is enormously complex, and could only have come about through the guidance of a brilliant mind.

Racial Reconciliation and the Civil Rights Industry

True racial reconciliation would do more to strengthen our country than anything I can imagine, short of a second Reformation. The social and economic marginalization of 12% of our population is horrible, regardless of where you place the blame for it. We could spend all day listing the terrible hurdles that black young people face. One stark stat to put things in persective -- the leading cause of death for black males ages 18-25 is murder.

The good news is that over the past three decades, white public opinion has shifted massively in favor of equality and integration, to the point where "consensus" is a fair description.

The tragic irony is that during this same period, the Civil Rights leadership has largely abandoned their commitment to ML King's vision of racial integration. Once they sought to move African-Americans into the economic and social center -- that land of low crime, decent wages and health care. But now the leadership has retreated into an antagonistic stance in which mainstream society is the enemy. This benefits no one, least of all those on the vulnerable margins.

Worse, Civil Rights has become an industry. ML King, Jr. has gone from a flawed-but-great leader to an iconic cash-cow. Jesse Jackson has changed the boycott from a weapon of social justice into a tool for self-enrichment. Al Sharpton, the new face of civil rights, personifies this shift. Whether inciting literally murderous hatred against Korean shopkeepers or spreading lies about cops, the message is always the same -- the rest of America is out to get you, so give me your money and I'll watch out for you.

Take a look at the hotel bills during his quixotic presidential campaign. While Dean was spending $176, Sharpton was snoozing at the 4 Seasons for $3,598 a night. Think how many inner-city church ladies sacrificed to fill the offering plate as he did the church fundraising circuit. This could be a metaphor for the modern civil rights industry -- a class of parasites living luxuriously on the backs of those they claim to help.

It used to be said (fatuously?) that university cancer researchers had no incentive to find a cure, as it would put them out of a job. The professionalization of civil rights entrusts reconciliation to a class of people who benefit from racial strife and mistrust, and stand to lose everything if whites and blacks ever do find lasting harmony.

Who Needs Eton When You Have Veritas Press?

After watching The Four Feathers, I've been thinking a bit on the British Empire. And while it's not an original observation, I'm amazed at the scale of what they accomplished -- both for good and not. The British public (private) schools turned out pasty-legged, privileged young men who went on to conquer India, climb the Himalayas, chart unknown seas, explore the Poles, excavate the pyramids and subdue the wilds of countless islands. Their schooling certainly wasn't vocationally tailored for the making of mountain climbers, Viceroys or privateers. It was instead focused on creating the kind of man who would do these things.

Our government schools seem focused on creating a certain kind of man as well -- college-prepped, docile, reasonably-literate, and well-up on issues of diversity and sundry birth-control methods.

And so it cheers me when I look at the growing number of young Christians involved in classical schools, parochial schools and homeschooling. Much of this education seems focused not only toward preparation for university, but preparation for manhood.

The British upper classes demonstrated enormous self-sacrifice, zeal and dedication toward the cause of Empire. If our children brought just a fraction of this élan to the cause of the Heavenly Kingdom, they could "turn the world upside down," as a nice Pagan once said. I have hope that these new movements in Christian education will bear that sort of fruit.

Ukraine: B-Movie Paradise!

With so much bad news about Ukraine out there, I wanted to say a little something in her defense -- Ukrainian TV is a wonderland for B-movie lovers like myself. Not only do you have lots of badly-lit Soviet films to choose from, but there's apparently a national law that at least one film featuring Christopher Lambert, Gary Busey, or Jackie Chan must be on at any given hour of the day. Plus they have a copy of pretty much every film made in Hong Kong since the British arrived. Tonight was Bruce Lee in The Big Boss. To make my joy complete, I just saw an advert -- every Friday is now "Bollywood Night." Admit it, you're jealous.

Gallic Celluloid

The Duchess and I enjoyed Le Pacte du Silence, a French psychological thriller featuring Gérard Depardieu as a priest-physician treating a young nun suffering from a painful and unexplainable malady. For those for whom the phrase "psychological thriller" conjures up Esterhazian lesbian serial killers, this film is of a different sort. And Depardieu thankfully lacks the Michael Moore-like sweaty-armpit-circles sort of mookishness that often characterizes him. Unfortunately, the Big Twist at the end is more of a mild curve, and hinted to death well before the finale. I still do recommend the film, even with this weakness.

Swimming Pool was a huge disappointment. It's an interesting bird, a French film in English put out by Canal+ and France2. I'd looked forward to seeing it, but now I can see why it shared Dogville's fate. Both were shut out at Cannes this year after receiving lots of buzz in the lead-up -- Paris was coated with posters for them this summer. It does have a superficial intellectual weight to it, with a langorous French plot pace and lots of shots of people looking thoughtful and smoking.

But once you've excised the admittedly stylish cinematography and the gratuitous nudity, you're left with little -- caricatures of England and France in the persons of the two main characters and a "surprise ending" that's inspired some comparisons with Bobby-in-the-Shower on Dallas. In fairness, both Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier turn in memorable performances in this forgettable film.

The Passion and Earned Media

Christians have proven to be the best promoters of offensive cultural knick-knacks. If you want an item to sell, stir up the Fundamentalists and Catholics. This has helped push everything from 2LiveCrew albums to The Last Temptation of Christ into best-seller territory.

Which is why it's so nice to watch the pagans do it to themselves for a change. In politics, the thing you search for if you're underfunded is "earned media" -- exposure from events, rather than paid advertising.

The tizzy the grievance-mongers at the ADL and its ideological brethren are raising about The Passion couldn't be more helpful. And hopefully, it'll end up doing what no amount of advertising would do -- make non-Christians curious enough to go see it. Thanks, uber-PC extremists!

Poverty: A Culture Issue, Not a Race Issue

Poverty is a problem that cuts across color lines. Only about one-third of the black community is part of what we call the underclass. There are large numbers of whites and Hispanics which also fall into this category. The factors which keep blacks in the underclass are the same which keep others mired there -- illiteracy, illegitimacy, crime, substance abuse, etc.

Children of single mothers are six times more likely to be in poverty, for example. Illegitimacy rates are sky-high across the board in the underclass, it's a cultural trait shared by each race. Likewise, a high default rate on loans makes it hard for members of the underclass to get credit and thus start businesses or buy homes. That's the case for poor people of any race. We could say the same for each of the primary factors "keeping people down."

In other words, it isn't racism that keeps people in the underclass. If it was, then we wouldn't have large pockets of white poverty, as we do. It is fair to say that the legacy of racism does -- slavery, Jim Crow and a million other factors contributed to the social pathologies, and help explain why there are a disproportionate number of blacks in today's underclass.

But these historical causes are exactly that -- largely history at this point (with a few notable exceptions like crack sentencing guidelines.) The immediate causes of poverty are what need to be addressed if it's to ameliorated.

Unfortunately, racism has become a scapegoat. It reminds me of the situation in the former Soviet Union, where many blame Western conspiracies for destroying Communism, and refuse to believe that any inherent weaknesses brought about its downfall. Likewise, rather than acknowledge and address the cultural problems among the underclass, there's an entire cottage industry of racial grievance-mongers who place the blame on whites, Korean shopkeepers, and the like. It generates an ugly us vs. them dynamic in society which helps no one, least of all the poor.

It's a bit like those "progressive" schools that have tossed out grading. Sure, it helps the self-esteem, but at the end of the day has it helped anyone learn to read? Likewise, denunciations of racism are very affirming, but do nothing to actually raise anyone from poverty. Even if racism disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn't change the education levels, crime rates, chemical dependencies or family structures of the inner city a jot.

It's unfortunate that discussions of poverty have become racially charged. It distracts us from the real causes, and kills off whatever small interest middle-class whites have in addressing inner city problems. Poverty isn't a racial issue, it's a cultural problem that we all have a stake in alleviating.

Racism: Reality and Perceptions

Genuine white racism is a rare bird these days. Coming across an openly racist group or individual gives one a time warp sort of feeling, something like finding a modern-day polemicist for the Temperance Movement. Like Temperance, white racism just seems incredibly declassé and anachronistic.

But just because racism is mostly dead doesn't mean that it's lost its impact. (I'll take a moment now and acknowledge that there certainly still exists white racism, what I deny is that it is widespread.) Like some sort of malevolent ghost, it haunts the popular memory of the black community. To listen to many of the self-appointed African-American spokesmen is to visit an alternate reality -- one where despite massive gains by blacks in every sphere of endeavor, little has changed since circa 1965 and every perceived slight is "Selma!" all over again.

Now put yourself in the place of a young person growing up in such a milieu -- with columnists, preachers, politicians and newspapers all telling you that the rest of America dislikes you and seeks to do you wrong. Do you begin looking for these slights? Do you then put up barriers to friendships with these people? Does success among these hostile people then equate to "selling out"? Does cooperation with them turn one into an "Uncle Tom"? Does it poison the well for any sort of dialogue with the other group? Of course it does. And these factors marginalize young people from jobs and opportunities.

Am I saying that African-Americans should forget the past? No. But I am saying that their community's "leadership" does them a disservice by constantly inflaming mistrust and raising the specter of racism. The perception of racism can be just as debilitating as the thing itself.

Check in tomorrow for our last installment on this theme -- Poverty: Not a Race Problem, a Culture Problem.

Wholistic Fish Fry

I came across a great article in the NYT's 'Dining and Wine' section today.

"As we would soon discover, cooking a fish on the bone -- with its head and tail fin intact -- is among the most rewarding ways to experience fish at home, producing a clarity of flavor and a texture unrivaled by the precut, disembodied fillet. Moreover, cooking a whole fish is a breeze. . ."

The article gives tips for oven and pan roasting, and notes on how to get an even roasting and how to check for doneness. A few recipe ideas are included too. Back home I loved fishing the Gulf of Mexico, but the fish in the Dneiper have more heavy metal than an 80's hair band. So these new recipes might have to wait.

Color-Blindness and Nitroglycerin

"Donna Edwards wants to send a message with her vote for the Rev. Al Sharpton in South Carolina's Democratic presidential primary next month. "Being black, I am always going to support black politicians because they speak for me," said Edwards, who teaches dance at Benedict College.

I'm about to stray into touchy territory in our hyper-sensitive times, and actually make a statement about race. These days, this is something like juggling nitroglycerine -- one slight mishandling and it explodes in your face.

Nevertheless, I want to point out Ms. Edwards' comment, which was admiringly quoted at USA Today. Does anyone want to pretend that if a white person had said something similar the article's focus would have been on their chosen candidate? Of course not, it would have been about "white extremists backing Candidate X."

Do I want the right to say "White candidates speak for me"? Not remotely. It would never occur to me to think of a candidate's race making him my spokesman -- his ideas and his beliefs are what decide this, not his skin color.

But how can we ever hope to have a serious national dialogue on race when an enormous double standard exists? Does anyone think that Ms. Edwards' position of racial exclusivity is unusual in her community? How do programs and slogans of black power, black consciousness, black empowerment, black pride and the like meet the ostensible "color-blind" standard that Americans claim to hold to (and that is ruthlessly enforced with white people)? Why do these pass the racism test, but any similar program for whites would be on an FBI extremist list the next day?

Again, I don't WANT these types of programs. What I'm asking is, on what basis does America maintain the double standard? Why doesn't anyone ever speak the truth -- that if color-blindness is the ideal, then we should ALL be color-blind.

I'll tell you why there's no open dialogue on race in America -- because the instant someone attempts one, the denunciations of racism ring out. And so instead we meekly observe the double standard and pretend it's just.

My ideal is a color-blind meritocracy in America, where each person is equal in the sight of the law, and able to use the gifts God has given them to the fullest. I remember back when Liberals claimed the same ideal.

Realistic Marriage Reform

Christians, conservatives, and plenty of other people are worried about the state of marriage in America. Rightly so. As goes the family, so goes society. And as goes marriage, so goes the family. That's a scary thought, given the state of our unions these days.

For most social ills, there's little the government can do. Generally it helps most by removing the negative influences it's already exerting. In the case of marriage, the government has drained the act of marriage of solemnity and consequence through easy No-Fault divorce laws. People now view it as a temporary contract that's freely entered and can be freely left -- a bit like an Arminian view of salvation.

It seems to me that covenant marriage, as practiced in AZ, AR and LA provides a tangible step towards restoring marriage in America. Esssentially there are two tiers -- standard marriage, and "covenant." The Covenant variant requires pre-marriage and pre-divorce counseling, and severely restricts divorce. Either version can be freely chosen by the spouses-to-be, and "upgrades" are available. The beautiful thing about social pressure is this -- what guy wants to tell his fiancee that he wants the easily reversible model?

While not a panacea, it seems a hopeful step. I'm surprised there isn't more talk of instituting it through the initiative process. Dozens and dozens of initiatives get on state ballots each year. Wouldn't this be a more effective use of our political resources than some of the picayune things Christians get up in arms about?

The Dated Myth of French Superiority

While regular Le Sabot readers know that I'm a committed Francophile (something still on the books as illegal in Georgia and Texas), there's one thing that annoys me about the French -- their insufferability. They still view us the way the Greeks viewed the Romans, as powerful but primitive.

Back in the days of Henry James, they had a point. But is it still valid? A lot has changed in a century, particularly in the past two decades.

The Potterybarnization of America -- the filtering down of upper-middle-class things to the middle classes -- has effaced many of the cosmetic differences upon which the French pride themselves. Regular Americans now wear designer clothes, drink espresso, and pay attention to interior design. They buy gourmet olives and mushrooms, exotic breads and pastries. The Metrosexual trend is in many ways just an acceptance of European ways. I wouldn't have gotten manicures or moisturized two decades ago.

Going beyond consumer choices, America has caught or surpassed the French in most other areas of culture. While the French film industry has gone dormant (with the occasional exception of an Amélié or Trois Couleurs), Americans create fresh, daring independent films. The French music industry is a shambles, with Ingrid and Daft Punk their only decent artists in years. America is now the place for musicians and artists of all kinds -- from violinists to blues to emo.

It's also the home for literature, a fact brought out nicely in Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon. Ambitious young writers now go to New York, not the Left Bank. And despite French disdain for American "disposable society", even the printing for our books is ages beyond theirs. Read a French book in the cold and it splits in half -- the cheap binding glue freezing solid and then snapping.

There still remains a gap in High Culture, but this is rapidly shrinking. American philanthropy pours money into opera houses, museums, theatres and galleries. The French have nothing to compare to Broadway. We're making strides in fashion as well -- Donna Karan, Kenneth Cole, Marc Jacobs and Narciso Rodriguez are just a few of the growing number of American designers.

In the realm of education, America is poised to be the first country on the planet where half of the adult population has a college-degree. Our universities are the best in the world, and we're the destination of choice for the children of the world's wealthiest.

If you'll excuse a barbaric Americanism, sometimes plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose just ain't so. . .

The Gay Gene: Would it Matter?

In the past, Christians have gotten on the wrong side of science because they've misapplied their Bibles. They clung to a geocentric view of the solar system well past the point of tenability, because they thought their Bibles told them to.

Christians now have bought into the whole "God is a gentleman" meme, and project their own democratic notions of "fairness" on Him. Which explains why they so vociferously oppose any genetic component to homosexuality. Because if it were ever proven that gays really couldn't "help" it, then that would paint God into a great corner of unfairness. Or so they think.

But what happens if researchers do one day find a large genetic component, as I think is entirely possible? The Church will face embarrassment not because of any flaw in the Bible, but because men took dogmatic stands based on their own reasonings rather than the Word.

There is nothing written in the Bible to counter a genetic aspect to homosexuality. There is nothing in the nature of God that would prevent Him from allowing someone to be born with a predisposition toward a sinful lifestyle. As a matter of fact, every human born since Adam has had precisely such a predisposition -- it's called the Fall. And that Fall affected man in all his components -- his will, his emotions, his reason, and yes, his genetics.

Children, wealth and sex are all blessings from God. That doesn't mean that God has promised us all equal measures of them. It's a fact of a Fallen world that some are called to barrenness, some called to poverty, and some to celibacy. That doesn't make God unfair. It makes Him sovereign.

Distasteful Thoughts About Cannibalism

City Journal has a short, but pithy little piece on German cannibal Armin Meiwes. It applies to the case the widespread notion that anything done between consenting adults is permissible.

"According to the evidence, Meiwes and Brandes were consenting adults: by what right, therefore, has the state interfered in their slightly odd relationship?. . . Lest anyone think that the argument from mutual consent for the permissibility of cannibalism is purely theoretical, it is precisely what Meiwes's defense lawyer is arguing in court. The case is a reductio ad absurdum of the philosophy according to which individual desire is the only thing that counts in deciding what is permissible in society. . . What is wrong with that? Please answer from first principles only."

Stalin and the New Tolerance

CONSTITUTION OF THE USSR -- 1936

"ARTICLE 124. In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church in the U.S.S.R. is separated from the state, and the school from the church. Freedom of religious worship and freedom of anti-religious propaganda is recognized for all citizens."

Few remember that the Soviets enshrined religious freedom in their Constitution. It's easy to forget, given the tens of thousands of priests, pastors and nuns they executed during this period of "freedom". But it's right there on paper -- people had a right to believe what they wanted.

What they lacked was a right to take it seriously. For example, by teaching others that God's law is higher than Marx's, or that the end of history would bring a Heavenly Kingdom rather than a dictatorship of the proletariat. That made you guilty of thought-crime. And you were then denounced as decadent and anti-revolutionary.

It's not so different today. Modern enlightened tolerance assures you an absolute right to believe whatever you want -- you can worship Odin, pyramids, Jesus or Allah, it's all good.

What you lack the right to do is take it seriously. For example, by actually believing Jesus's 'totalizing discourse' on being 'the Way, the Truth and the Life' and the only path to the Father. That way lies the road to intolerant perdition. And once you cross the line of taking your beliefs seriously, you're considered guilty of thought-crime. And you're then denounced as bigoted, Fundamentalist or fanatical.

Thankfully, those charges only get you exiled to Alabama, rather than Siberia.

On French-Bashing. . .

Now that we've discussed Vichy, I'd like to clarify another thing for our French apologist. Namely, the difference between criticizing French foreign policy and "French-bashing." One can oppose French policies without disliking the French themselves.

That's the case with me. The French political culture is one of the most craven and cynical on the planet. The farcical notion that they're a valuable ally should have been abandoned ages ago. While we've been talking about valuable allies, they've been nattering on about how to hamstring the "hyper-power" across the Atlantic. They are at best a cool neutral, and our policies toward them should reflect this.

But life is more than politics. With the exception of their foreign policy, I adore the French. Growing up, my city had the largest French film festival in the world besides Cannes. Every year the town was inundated with Frenchmen, and I enjoyed meeting them. I still love French cinema. I began studying French in 6th grade and kept it up through university. Unless God's plans for me are very different than my own, the Duchess and I hope to live and work in France in the future. Perhaps for a very long time.

This is anything but a French-bashing blog. It's just a French-government-bashing blog. :-)

Habitat for Democracy. . .

Discount Blogger links to a bleak article about Habitat for Humanity today. It describes the descent of a Habitat subdivision into a crime-infested near-slum.

Private charity faces the same cultural barriers which make a mockery out of governmental attempts to help the poor. Thankfully, private groups generally show more wisdom, effectiveness and efficiency in helping the poor than the Feds ever will. But providing material benefits to people isn't sufficient to raise them out of poverty. As this subdivision shows, if you give a group of underclass people a middle-class set of houses, lifestyle choices and habits can quickly remake them into underclass homes.

I write this not as a commentary on how we should approach charitable work, but in how we approach nation-building and democratization. I've been accused at times of being a Neo-Con. I am not. I don't fetishize democracy. As we seek to foster a more open and free Iraq and Afghanistan, we should be realistic about what we can achieve.

We CAN help them improve on the likes of the Taliban and Saddam. It would be hard not to. But at the same time, these countries will never be liberal Western democracies. Even if they evolve toward liberal democracy, it will be a regional variant. And it will be a long process which will depend in large part on the people themselves, and only peripherally on us.

Christ as Transformer of Culture

A lot of good (and some appalling) thinking is going on within Christian circles about the challenge of Post-Modernism. People have raised some very useful points and suggestions for contextualizing the Church and the Gospel for this new era.

One thing I don't see enough of, however, is an articulation of Christ as a transformer of culture. Some seem to write as if a word-based, rational culture just happened to spring up in Western Europe contemporaneously with Christianity, and particularly with the Reformation. As if it were a random cultural bounce and the church went along with it.

Could it be, rather, that having a religion that was centered on the Word, and which believed in a rational, coherent and Providentially-guided universe might have helped form this culture?

I'm not saying we should defend all things Modern. But there are some aspects of Modernity that are quintessentially Christian, such as the Word-not-Image orientation and the knowability of objective truth. If we've lost the cultural consensus on them, it seems to me that we should be fighting to reclaim it. If we carved out this consensus in the face of premodernism, we can do it again.

So let's contextualize all we can. But without capitulation.

Postmodernism and Christianity

I'll soon be teaching our college-agers on Postmodernism and Christianity. We'll be looking at both the challenges and opportunities it presents to the Church. If you were putting together such a lesson, what points would you definitely include?

Think Socialism is Expensive? Wait for Dhimmitude.

The French right now are agonizing over whether to ban Muslims from wearing scarves and veils in public schools. They're worried that the "secular identity" of their society is being eroded.

This reminds me a bit of their spastic attempts at defeating "Franglais" -- the slow seepage of English words into the French vernacular. They make a few symbolic swipes at English by banning it from advertising and the like, while an unbroken stream of American movies and music flows unabated into society at large.

As with the linguistic, so with the demographic. A wave of Muslim immigrants is flowing into the country, with no more interest in assimilating French values than Hollywood has. And the French response is to symbolically ban headscarves. If they think secularism is the only "French value" that Islam is inimical to, they haven't observed the Middle East's rather novel approaches to Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité. . .

Of course, the politics of symbolism are central to French governance. Observe the pro forma UN resolutions against Iraq that they consistently supported, or the ritual denunciations of dictatorship and slaughter in their former African colonies.

Taxes are already crushing in socialist France. Once the price of dhimmitude is added, they might actually have to give up their 6-week vacations in order to make ends meet.

Guns: The Great Equalizer?

I've been reading John Keegan's magisterial History of Warfare (magisterial being the adjective for any history book over 400 pages in length.) Reading through his section on the advent of firearms sparked an independent realization -- guns are the most democratizing invention I can imagine. Ironic, given that "Progressives" are so universal in their hatred of them.

I don't mean democratizing merely in the frontier God Made All Men, Sam Colt Made Them Equal sense, though it's true. But in a broader way. Before gunpowder, warfare and force were the province of the rich. Armored knights ruled the battlefield and infantry was an uneducated rabble of peasants. With the coming of the gun, the center-of-gravity shifted to the common man. The cavalry was marginalized to a raiding and scouting role. And with this change in value, the importance of training and educating individual infantrymen expanded.

Further, war became a matter of clashing peoples, rather than disputes between various nobles. The Grand Armee of Napoleon is a good example. And once it was possible for common people to form credible armies, Revolution became a viable option. Before, any peasant uprising was simply ridden down by iron men on horseback.

We give the firearm credit for changing warfare, but I don't think we always acknowledge the way it changed society.

Passionately Ambivalent About Football

My ambivalence towards football continues.

On the one hand, it's likely the closest I'll ever come to prison life -- giant concrete slabs hemming me in; a press of profane, chemically-dependent men with a median IQ of 80 surrounding me; and the particular frisson that comes from the fusion of alcohol and testosterone. In short, Hell.

On the other hand, it may just be the last redoubt of European masculinity and patriotism. As the various nations of Europe are melded into a bland bureaucratic super-state, football is a holdout of nationalist impulse. The last time the Russians were in town there was a mass streetfight outside the stadium. I think also of Christopher Brookmyer's novel Boiling a Frog where the Scots are still singing anti-Romanist anthems during the games (this despite the fact that every team-member is foreign save one.)

The guy sitting in front of me tonight at the Dynamo Kiev/ Inter Milan game kept standing and blocking my view of the pitch. He'd somehow decided I was a crypto-supporter of the Italians, and wanted to punish me. Once my friends assured him I was a good Ukrainian, he hugged me with a soggy sort of comradeship. Then he picked a fist-fight with the guy in front of him.

A Clarification.

Some have objected to my "modest proposal" that Thomas Kinkade be taken out of the city and stoned. I wanted to rush to clarify that I have no plans to undertake this myself. My hope is that the militant wing of the Theonomy Movement will find him in violation of one Graven Image statute or another, and take care of the dirty work for me.

Pop Aristocrats

Reading an essay on Bulgakov, I came across a section where he opposes placing poets on pedestals. He quotes Kierkegaard on the danger of "confusing the aesthetic with the ethical." In our country, we could substitute either athletic or theatrical in place of aesthetic. Collectively we seem to have decided that the ability to toss a ball through a hoop, or mouth pre-written dialogue convincingly somehow lends a person moral, intellectual and political weight. They've become a sort of Pop Aristocracy.

It's no surprise though, not really. Humans are naturally hierarchical beings. Conservatives have noted for at least two centuries that we can only stand so much democracy. Denied a titled aristocracy, we've simply elevated our own.

Hollywood Babylon: All About the Money?

Our friend Jon Luker has been posting some good thoughts on violence and the film industry down on the Blood and Orchids thread. We disagree over one point, and I thought it was worth elevating to its own blogpost.

He maintains that:

"Hollywood is motivated by one thing: green. I don't believe in conspiracies or internal memos stating: "Make movies with MORE gay priests, pre-marital sex, and lots of gore."

First of all, I would agree that there is no sinister conspiracy directing things. The filth flows out quite naturally, without any need for central planning. Where we part ways, however, is in his belief that Hollywood is motivated only by money.

Anyone who's watched the parade of stars appearing on Capitol Hill over the years, or watched the the hundreds of thousands of dollars that pour from the film industry into Democratic coffers, can see that the political orientation there is far, far to the Left of the rest of society. There's a reason Reagan once quipped that statistics show that one out of every three Hollywood conservatives would eventually be elected president. And this politicization has increased over the years. Anyone who watched the recent 'Hate Bush' event at the Hilton might recognize this fact.

These same 'Hate Bush' types are the ones who make the decisions about what we watch. Perhaps they all have a godlike detachment from their worldviews as they make these decisions, but that seems somewhat unlikely. That doesn't mean they're consciously making fiscally irresponsible choices, but it does mean that these views color their choices. These liberal scolds who come to Washington to lobby, or fly down for lovefests with Castro, do have agendas.

And these agendas aren't dormant as they write their screenplays and make casting and production decisions. Even if they try to, writing is a creative process, and an expression of who we are as individuals. We write what we know, and what we care about. Which is why nearly every TV drama seems to center around one liberal social issue or another. And by putting out such "edgy" or "boundary-pushing" episodes, they get the applause of the people whose opinions they value -- the rest of Hollywood.

Then there's the sheltered mentality that they seem to have. Most of them don't seem to understand that there's an entire segment of the population that thinks differently. A bit like the New York Times writing about Evangelicals as if they're aliens, rather than probably the largest religious demographic in the country. We're beyond their ken. So their conception of what is normal or likely to be popular is skewed.

Think that's farfetched? Look at an analogous case -- the media. Jon might say the media have no agenda either, money being their only focus. But again, we see an overwhelming number are liberal, and a clear agenda in much of what they write. But they DO respond to fiscal incentives, despite this agenda. For years liberals held a virtual lock on media. Then Fox was a huge sucess, and suddenly the others realized there was a demographic block out there that wasn't satisfied. And so now everyone is scrambling to add a token conservative or three to reach out to us. It had never before occured to them that people might want to hear an alternate viewpoint.

Perhaps it will one day be the same with Hollywood. They'll look out beyond LA and see the rest of us, and realize that there are other types of films to be made. Perhaps some conservative will make the film equivalent to Fox News, and shock them. . . Stranger things have happened.

A Novel Idea. . .

People have done tons of 1st person novels written in the form of letters or diaries. Who'll be the first to publish a novel in the form of blog entries?

Blood and Orchids

I just saw Tarantino's latest Pulp Culture pean -- Kill Bill. While not without weaknesses, it's a brilliant hodgepodge of genres. Anyone who grew up on old Kung Fu movies, anime, Japanese gangster flicks or David Carradine won't be disappointed. The soundtrack is his usual inspired melange of oldies and hiply obscure tunes. The plotline isn't just pulpy, it's fresh-squeezed. From the Bruce Lee-style opening credits to naming his assassins after poisonous snakes, the man is shameless. The actions scenes are a bit gory, but done in a tongue-in-cheek fashion that takes some of the cringe factor from them. My favorite part of the film wasn't even created by Tarantino directly -- a great anime clip giving the bio on O-Ren Ishii.

Taking the film for what it is, I enjoyed it. But it lacks both the sharp dialogue of Pulp Fiction and the intensity of Reservoir Dogs Thankfully, it also lacks the interminability of Jackie Brown.

I've also recently watched Kill Bill's polar opposite -- Adaptation. Charlie Kaufman, screenwriter for Being John Malkovich, takes his scripting to a new level of surreality. This film is probably the most self-consciously Po-Mo that I've seen. . . Without giving too much away, it centers on the screenwriter himself trying to adapt a novel about Florida orchid thieves to a movie script. It's difficult to speak of a plotline, as the film is utterly non-linear, jogging cheerily back and forth from four billion years BC up until the present day, and quite nearly everywhere in-between. There are even scenes which take place on the set of Kaufman's last film, along with cameos by Charles Darwin, a decomposing fox, and the Ice Age.

Overall, the film is lovely, and Nicholas Cage gives one of the least annoyingly phlegmatic performances of his career. The ending is a little weak, as Kaufman tries for a parody of Hollywood and comes up a bit flat. But the remainder of the film more than compensates.

The Era of Big Government Hair Isn't Over?

I just saw a pair of legwarmers on a fashionably dressed young woman today. Can this mean the much-anticipated 80's Revival is finally here? Such joy would be mine if music video producers stopped rehashing the same incredibly tired 70's disco themes. . . As was pointed out here at Le Sabot recently, the 70's nostalgia thing has now lasted longer than the decade itself. I'm ready to relive the Age of Reagan. . .

Don't Be a Lager Lout. . .

The myriad perfections of Guinness should be reason enough to prefer it to lager. It's more nuanced, fuller and richer, and inspires an emotional bond from its drinkers that no lager can match. It is quite possibly nature's most perfect food.

As if these weren't enough, now there's another reason to choose stouts over lagers -- your health. According to this BBC article, drinking a pint a day may be as beneficial for your heart as aspirin.

"The researchers told a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida, that the most benefit they saw was from 24 fluid ounces of Guinness - just over a pint - taken at mealtimes. . . They believe that "antioxidant compounds" in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls. "

Peace, Love and Leave it to Beaver

Conservatives are often nostalgic about the old B&W television shows, and rightly so. But watching a tape of The Little Rascals with the boys today, I remembered something a prof told me in back in Uni. He pointed out that the generation that was raised on Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best was the one that went on to birth the New Left and tear the country apart. The last thing I want in the house is a quartet of hippies. Maybe my kids should be watching SpongeBob instead.

Metrosexual Much?

The incomparable Duchess came across a Metrosexuality Quiz yesterday. While I think it gives a BIT too much emphasis to depilatory queries, it's not bad. I came in with 33 out of 50, which must be close to downtown -- near the border between Metrosexual and Suburbosexual. Or something.

In the Army Now...

Last night was one of the most interesting I've had since coming to Ukraine. I was honored to be the only American invited to my friend Dima's Provodi. It's a cultural relic of the Soviet Era -- an all-night send-off for young men who've been drafted.

We watched DMB, a hilarious parody of Russian military life on the order of Stripes. We sang, drank vodka with chili peppers, ate hard sausages, and kept him awake 'til morning. As we're all Presbyterian, I introduced them to an old Scottish tradition -- whiskey. It's an acquired taste, and one they haven't yet acquired. The most common word they described it with was samogon -- moonshine.

In the morning we all walked him to the induction center and said our good-byes. Given the composition of our group, we were all sober. That couldn't be said for any of the other inductees, however. It was quite a sight -- joking boys, crying mothers, babushkas and girlfriends, and stoic fathers. Dima's going to do great in the military, both as a soldier and a missionary.

Carnival-Mirror History

Foxnews carries a stupidly and insultingly tendentious obituary of Elian Kazan today. Roger Friedman gives us a carnival-mirror look at Kazan's life that somehow manages to reduce a brilliant career that included "On the Waterfront" and "Splendor in the Grass" to about two lines of text, while magnifying his HUAC testimony into the sum total of his legacy.

The Left has two constant lines of attack whenever covering this period of history -- 1. There were no Communists in the cultural fields of America and 2. Even if there were, it was despicable for anyone to testify about it.

The second point is never established. WHY was it wrong for people to testify against those whose goals and ideology were dedicated to overturning the American way of life and system of government?

As for the first, it's demonstrably false. Communism enjoyed a tremendous vogue among the cultural elites during the 30s, 40s and 50s -- particularly during the Great Depression. But the Left's revisionists have performed a similar carnival-mirror trick with the issue itself -- ignoring a hundred relevant examples in order to focus entirely on Senator Joe. They've turned him into a talisman whose very name, when coupled with "ism", magically dispels the actual history of Communist activities in the US.

It somehow erases the period of time when the ACLU's governing board was comprised of a majority of Communists. And the time when the nation's largest student organization had a highly contested leadership fight -- between the Maoists and the Marxist-Leninists. And the fact that the General Secretary we sent to the UN "organizing conference" was Alger Hiss, whom KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin identifies repeatedly as a long-term spy for GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence.) Hiss was actually awarded a GRU service medal for the work he did at the Yalta conference. Also the militant influence of the Communists in the actor's union during the 50's. The list could continue for paragraphs.

If what I'm saying sounds radical, it's only because the educational system in America has done an almost Pavlovian job of inculcating red sirens and a flashing "McCarthyism!" sign into virtually everyone who passes through it.

For some eye-opening reading, I recommend:

Witness by Whittaker Chambers
Destructive Generation by David Horowitz
When Character Was King by Peggy Noonan
The Sword and the Shield by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin

For a more specific look at the literary world, I recommend Mary McCarthy's (a novelist, no relation to Joe) masterful essay "My Confession." Not only does it describe the travails of a New York Trotskyite and author during the era of Stalin, but it's beautiful writing. You can find it in Penguin's collection of 20th Century essays.

Here's a quick excerpt:

"As for Trotsky, the only thing that made me think he might be innocent was the odd behavior of the Communists and fellow-travelling liberals who seemed to be infuriated at the idea of a free inquiry. All around me, in the fashionable Stalinist circles I was frequenting, I began to meet with suppressed excitement and just-witheld disapproval. Jeweled lady-authors turned white and shook their bracelets angrily when I came into a soiree; rising young men in publishing or advertising tightened their neckties dubiously when I urged them to examine the case for themselves..."

Boys, Girls and Culture

I'm beginning to see parallels between coming to love and understand another culture and coming to love and understand a member of the opposite sex.

There's a permanent alienness to them both, no matter how deeply you come to know them. You can study them diligently, serve them faithfully, but they will always be Other. Becoming one with them is a beautiful ideal -- but one that will never be perfectly realized. All the limitations of speech and thought are manifest in such a relationship. No matter how you study the language of the other, there will always be nuances lost, offense given.

And there will always be a certain ambivalence, no matter how strongly you love the other. It's the differences of thought and feeling that attract us to the other, and at the same time these differences irritate and repel us.

And so there's an eschatological longing bound up in both of these relationships. . . for a Spouse that will care for and understand us perfectly, and for a time when every tribe, tongue and nation will stand united in love.

Football -- Not Just For Women and Children

I did something unprecedented today and changed an opinion. After cheering my lungs out with 78,000 Ukrainians as we stomped Moscow 2-0 in a Champion's League match, I must admit that soccer isn't so bad. Euro football will never replace real football in my affections, but it's joined my list of interests. While American football is like a military campaign, full of skirmishes and tactics, Euro football has its own particular charms -- such as the streams of urine pouring down from the upper deck, and the riot police beating the people in the Muscovite section after they set off fireworks. Fun for the whole family!

Madonna -- Unelected Senator?

Our pal Jared, from Thinklings had this to say in our discussion on T.S. Eliot:

"The British Modernists had a great literary concept going -- the truth has been broken and scattered and must be recovered."

I love that image. It's interesting to reflect back on a time when poets were actually greatly influential in society. Nowadays, it's become such a hermetic, insular sort of endeavor. Poets seem more interested in snob appeal than in moving people's hearts and minds.

The Duchess and I were just discussing how recorded music has brought musicians and singers to the forefront, and how this has also contributed to the decline in poetry. They're now the 'unelected legislators of mankind', as poets once were. Before video killed the radio star, did vinyl LP kill the poetry star?

It's sad to think of Eminem as the Byron of our time, but the analogy has some validity. . .

What Are We Conserving?

This is a companion to my last post.

One reason I'm a conservative is because Conservatism deals with reality rather than ideological abstractions. Here's reality -- we have a multi-ethnic, diverse population. Even if we were to massively lower immigration levels (as we should in a post-industrial era), America will remain diverse. It's MOOT to discuss the benefits/negatives of racial homogeneity. America is, was, and will remain multi-ethnic.

As conservatives, our job is to conserve the inherited wisdom of the past, and pass it on to the next generation. The next generation will be demographically much different than the current one, which makes this a challenge. But it is one we must rise to.

But before we can pass on this inheritance, we need to define it, to borrow a thought from Chesterton.

So again, what is unique, integral and valuable to American civilization that we should conserve and pass on? What does it mean to be an American, regardless of hyphenization?

Poverty Pimping on the Skids/ American Particulars?

Likely many of you are following the slow dissolution of Jesse Jackson's racial-extortion empire with the same cheerful gloating I am. Opinion Journal has a nice update on his long-deserved and slow-motion comeuppance. Not only has Augusta laughed at him, but now NASCAR has finally stood up to his Mau-Mauing.

I thought this line was thought-provoking: "And it wasn't so long ago that he was outed for his close and fruitful relations with a female staff member of his Citizenship Educational Fund, a scandal that occasioned a trip into the political wilderness that lasted most of a weekend."

The Postmodern world is essentially tribal. The message of PoMo seems to be that we owe our first loyalty to those of our Race/Class/Gender, and that our individual identity is a distant second to these identifiers (which vary in importance depending on who is doing the propagandizing.)

Jackson was able to maintain most of his support in the black community because loyalty to a member of the group outweighs mere concerns of moral, sexual and financial corruption. If you need a clearer example, look at OJ Simpson, where huge majorities supported him despite all evidence that he was a murderer.

Multiculturalism as it is currently being taught is a formula for national suicide. It tells members of the various groups making up the US that their primary identity is to be found in their skin tone or their national origin, and that there is no defining characteristics of 'American-ness' that they need to conform to.

If this truly does filter into the national consciousness, we're looking at a situation not unlike Yugoslavia -- a composite state filled with mutually antagonistic tribes who feel little loyalty to the country as a whole. Ironically, some of those most concerned about multiculturalism seem to fall for its central argument -- that race is paramount in determining identity.

A question -- What things ARE so central to American identity that they need to be accepted by all groups, regardless of national origin, class, gender, and so on?

Dorian Gray -- Metro When Metro Wasn't Cool?

We watched League of Extraordinary Gentlemen today on video (available for about $4 American.) More than a little disappointed. The Nautilus was by far the most interesting character in the story, and it's an inanimate object. Skip the movie and use the money you save to by the infinitely superior comic series by Alan Moore. The Duchess and I devoured them when they first came out.

One question... If James Dean was the first teenager, was Dorian Gray the first Metrosexual?

Insomnia

We spent this evening watching Al Pacino and Robin Williams in Insomnia. It's one of the most essentially Christian movies I've seen in ages. Pacino plays an LA detective called to Alaska to investigate a murder, while back home he's under investigation for corruption. Robin Williams plays the killer, and restrains his tendency toward mawkishness to such a degree that he comes off wonderfully creepy. After this and 1-Hour Photo I may stop ritually spitting every time I say his name...

The story takes place during the around-the-clock sunshine of Alaskan summer. Without posting spoilers, I'll just say that the constant light symbolizes Pacino's conscience, and the Truth he can't hide from. Throughout the movie he battles to sleep, and the light won't let him. Williams is the cool, reasonable voice of the devil which subverts his will every time he would do the right thing. Lies begat lies, and sin leads to sin. Only the truth can set us free.

The cinematography is great. The director plays with light and perception beautifully. He not only gives the viewer the feeling of hallucinatory exhaustion, but reinforces the theme of the searing power of light shining in a dark place.

Metrosexuality on a Budget

I just saw at Foxnews.com that Kenneth Cole's profits are way up. I was glad to see it, because he's putting out some great casual day-wear these days. Most of my everyday stuff comes from either him or Donna Karan. He has a very clean, very urban sort of look that has good lines and wearability. The only thing I've been less than impressed with is his suits, which have a good cut to them, but poor fabric quality. But check out his new arrivals, shoes, and outerwear. His watches hold up extremely well. He's not Issey Miyake, but for anyone shopping on a budget Cole's line is worth looking into.

Three cheers for prigs!

The idea that liberty is man's natural state doesn't quite square with history. It is rather a rare and delicate thing. Emerson said that an educated and moral population was necessary for it to survive. He had a point -- for freedom to remain viable it must be limited or else human sinfulness turns it into chaos.

In the past these restraints were formed in our country by both social pressure and legislation. The populace was largely united around a Reformed moral view (even in cases such as the Unitarians who rejected Calvinist theology.) Priggery kept liberty from turning to license.

Until God sends revival and reformation, this sort of social consensus isn't likely to return. Our culture is roughly unified around a mushy pluralistic libertarianism. There's no governing moral standard, and the legislature is progressively being extruded from the moral realm (this displacement seems to be shoving them into economic regulation instead.)

So what bulwark remains to prevent liberty from degenerating into complete decadence?

Consequences.

The time isn't far off in America when one's legally-sanctioned lifepartner(s) will take whatever form one chooses. You'll be able to smoke what you want, so long as it isn't tobacco. The government will continue to yield ground in the face of a clamor for freedom in lifestyle choices. The only restraint people have in such a situation is the natural consequences of their actions -- medical, psychological and financial.

People are beginning to find even this restraint odious. So they're using the power of the courts to shield them from the effects of their choices. The tobacco lawsuits are a perfect example. The recent, abortive attempts to sue McDonalds for causing obesity is another. A million others could be added to the list. This trend will grow, because thanks to the beatification of victimhood there's no shortage of grievance-mongers looking to sue their way to riches.

Without priggery, laws or consequences to order our liberty, decadence will bore like termites through the foundations of our freedoms.

I'm feeling like a right ray of sunshine today, in case you missed it.

Metrosexuality, Part Deux

I wrote in an earlier post that the rise of metrosexuality wasn't as radical a shift in masculinity as the author seems to believe. This is because metrosexuality brings with it no redefintion of manhood or a man's place in society. It's essentially a matter of style and consumer habits. These are culturally relative and shift throughout history even within a single culture. The average white collar worker of today would seem terribly effete to a 19th Century farmer. He cannot plow, thatch a roof, or slaughter animals. Decidedly girly-man by that era's standards.

Secondly, this isn't a new type of man. There have always been men who appreciated clothing, groomed well, loved opera and cared about thread counts. Bruno Magli and Armani didn't open their first ateliers last week, after all. Previously, however, these people belonged to the upper-middle class. Several factors are widening these tendencies to a larger pool of men:

1. Urbanization tends to make one urbane.

2. More and more people are receiving a higher education. This generally refines a man.

3. Globalization brings with it cosmopolitan influences. European men have always been more prone to the metrosexual end of the spectrum than Americans.

4. Pottery Barnization, the process by which style and design are brought down in price and made accessible to the middle class.

5. The death of Modernism, with it's ugly and sterile utilitarianism.

6. The Pink 90's, and the emphasis on aesthetics and style that seems to inevitably result whenever homosexuality is in apogee in a society (one of its few cultural benefits.)

It seems to me that much of what is meant by the label metrosexual is simply what other eras termed "cultured." If not taken to an extreme, metrosexuality is much closer to the chivalric ideal of martial valor coupled with refinement, sensitivity and a love of beauty than other historic views of manhood. Certainly closer than the sweating jock, the swaggering thug or the sniggering mook -- the three archetypes of Gen X and Y manhood.

Metrosexuality, Part I

The Times today carries a feature I think will eventually cause a lot of buzz. It's entitled Metrosexuals, and deals with the emergence of a new trend -- young, straight, urban guys who defy traditional gender stereotypes. (Registry is free at NYT if you can't access the article.) These are "straight guys who (are) into Diesel jeans, interior design, yoga and Mini Coopers, and who would never think of ordering a vodka tonic without specifying Grey Goose or Ketel One." They like shopping and know how to cook.

The more I thought about the phenomenon, the more sense it made. You have large numbers of upwardly-mobile whites leaving the 'burbs and repopulating the cities. You've had 10 years of the Pink '90s popularizing or at least leeching the stigma from a lot of things that were formerly considered "gay" -- for example grooming, fashion and camp. And there's the trend of the middle classes beginning to appreciate things that were previously reserved for the upper-middle, like interior design, exotic skin treatments, haute couture, mochaccino and the like. How many people knew what salade niçoise or freschetta were 15 years ago?

Lastly, perhaps as America continues to evolve into a neo-imperial power, it's also developing some of the traits of empire, such as decadence. The Metrosexuals sound like they would have gotten on quite well with Wilde and the Decadents.

While not about to 'come out' as a Metrosexual anytime soon, I could identify with much of the article. A lot of what the author has written rings true. But unlike the author, I don't see it as a radical redefinition of masculinity. I'll develop that idea in my next post on the subject.