Booth Brothers music

The Booth Brothers are one of my very favorite Gospel music groups. They have a wonderful smooth sound, gentle humor, and genuine kindness. They're also very talented. The only thing is, it's been a little difficult to share their music on-line, because there are not all that many professional-grade videos of their music on Youtube. Most of them that are there are of them with the Gaither homecoming group. Here is a great one of them singing "Amazing Grace" with Russ Taff. Here is their video that goes with the song "Under God." (Note the allusions to Judge Moore in the latter.) Still, until recently I've been rather frustrated by the relative paucity of good-quality Booth Brothers recordings available on-line. So here are a few that are now available on Grooveshark. "While Ages Roll": This is a big fave of mine. It's classic, and they keep it moving. It took me a while to learn the melody for some reason, but now that I know it I love to sing it.



"Just Beyond the River Jordan": If you don't generally like Gospel music but do like "roots" music, you might like this one. I can picture Alison Krauss recording it. It was written by Jim Brady (a member of the Booth Brothers) and his wife Melissa.



"New Shoes": Love the jazzy sound of this. It'll cheer you up on any down day.



"I Still Believe in the Church": If you like jazz and are Catholic and can bear the thought of a song with great jazz chords about the resilience of the church, listen to this. Sure, the Booth Brothers are Protestants and don't really mean the Catholic Church. But I think it can definitely be an ecumenical song.



"Look for Me at Jesus' Feet": There are plenty of videos out there of the inimitable Michael Booth singing this one. It's so beautiful. This just happens to be my favorite recording of the ones I've heard thus far.

This is the face of "organized labor"

In case you were ever wondering, "Why does Lydia McGrew despise unions?" (a thought that I'm sure passes through your minds at least once a week), here's just one small example.

Extra Thoughts--Now with Google Chrome

I have to say that the new Blogger behind-the-scenes look isn't just overly appealing, but I suppose I'll get used to it. More urgent was the fact that Blogger recently decided that IE7 is just too, too ancient and no longer supports it, so I could only blog from Firefox on this site. Do-able (especially after FF fixed the bug whereby links would not go in the proper places on Blogger), but Firefox and my somewhat elderly computer (I've finally decided it is seven or eight years old) don't always get along. Various other IE7 problems were coming up, and I have finally given in and bought a new desktop with Windows 7 and IE9. (In the course of that I lost access to Adblock Pro, which is great for IE 7 but apparently doesn't work with IE9. Rats.) The transition will be somewhat painful, but one compensation: Unlike XP, which often (always?) didn't support Chrome, Windows 7 does. I like it. Super-intuitive, lovely ad blocking software. And Blogger likes it. (Of course.) Not that this means I'll be posting on here particularly more often. But at least I can do it from software that is fully compatible with the blog. Hurrah! Now if I can just get this dad-gummed New Blogger dashboard figured out...

A rant against the Men's Rights attitude

There is an attitude I'm running into occasionally among men, even young men who have not had anything terrible done to them, and I think it's highly, highly unfortunate. It seems to be based on this statistic one hears over and over and over again: "Women initiate x% of divorces." Usually the statistic is 80%.

Now, for some reason, the men who cite this statistic are interpreting it as if it means, "Women initiate 80% of the marital breakups." And even, therefore, "Women initiate 80% of marital breakups for frivolous reason." The idea seems to be that pretty much all women have within them an Inner Buffy who is just waiting for the opportunity to dump her husband one day in fit of hormone-driven pique because he fails to put his socks in the hamper. And then ruin his life, ruin the children's lives, break up his relationship with his children, etc.

So what this turns into is a bitter, misogynistic attitude (and believe me, I don't use the word "misogynistic" lightly) which causes the men who cite this statistic to approach any woman, even the most innocent, wonderful, carefully raised, Christian young woman, with an intention to smoke out her Inner Buffy in order not to be "taken in" and ruined like those many men who have become statistics.

It shouldn't really be too hard to realize that a man can leave his wife for another woman and that his wife may then formally initiate the divorce! In our current no-fault divorce culture, it is quite easy for an erring spouse of either sex to initiate a marital breakup and then put psychological pressure on the other spouse to agree to the subsequent divorce. If the other spouse happens to be the one to file the papers, that doesn't automatically mean the other spouse is the guilty party in the marital breakup. There are, of course, other scenarios as well. In how many of those 80% of cases was the husband using, and unable or unwilling to stop using, p*rn, perhaps even the type which made the wife fear for her own safety and that of her children? How about severe and uncontrolled substance abuse?

Now, am I saying that all of these are definitely reasons for divorce as opposed to separation? No, I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that they are non-trivial and are at least understandable and legitimate reasons for separation. It's also pretty much inevitable in the current cultural milieu where permanent separation isn't taken as an option that this will end up meaning divorce. And in any event, if that is what is happening in many of those 80% of cases, this shouldn't go down in men's minds as proof of the perfidiousness of women. Many of the breakups that go into that 80% statistic may be instances of the perfidiousness of men.

It is just incredibly frivolous and even worryingly bitter-minded to take a statistic about the percent of women who initiate formal divorce proceedings and translate that into, "Women want to break up marriages," "Women are untrustworthy," "Women usually abandon their husbands rather than husbands leaving their wives." Anecdotally, I can't help wondering how many of us find this to be true. I certainly don't. I know personally of quite a few more men who determinedly left their wives than vice versa. If the divorce papers say that the wife "initiated" the divorce (I have no idea) in these cases, that doesn't really matter. I know that it would be ludicrous to put these into the Men's Rights story about all the women out there who deliberately destroy their own marriages.

We're doing a disservice to our young men if we're teaching them to be bitter Fred Reed wannabes. If they really meet a great lady who could be, if they wanted her to be, the Christian woman of their dreams, they may just blow their opportunity if they approach her with a high-handed attitude that assumes she is guilty until proven innocent of harboring an Inner Buffy.

It's certainly true that we want to raise our young ladies, our daughters, to be gracious and loving, not to be feminists, to desire to raise children, to be more than happy to allow their husbands' career to determine where they live, and so forth. But the parallel to this on the other side is that we want to raise young men who honor women, who are grateful for a wife's sacrifices, who are prepared to love and respect a wife. They should therefore begin a relationship with a young woman whom they have reason to believe might be that future wife with the kind of respectful and kind attitude they wouldn't be ashamed to look back on later.

Do both women and men need to be careful? They certainly do. When they don't know one another, they have a lot to find out on both sides. There are all too many men who think using p*rn is perfectly okay and who have already damaged their hearts, minds, and (horrible to realize) sexual tastes by that use. All too many of them even (I fear) among Christians. Young women need to be trying to see whether the man they are getting to know is chaste not only in his actual physical relationships but also in regard to what he deliberately puts into his mind. And of course there are many other things to look for in a prospective husband. Young men are, on their part, perfectly within their rights, when getting to know a young lady, to wonder whether she is chaste as well as loyal, kind, and motherhood-minded. Moreover, it doesn't do for either party to be naive about the number of people out there who meet such a description. But care in relationships is not the same thing as initial anger and arrogance in one's approach to the opposite sex. Let's teach both our girls and our boys to pray earnestly about their possible future spouse and to make their friendships among (what we might call) plausible groups for that purpose, with kindness and hope in their hearts.

Michael D. O'Brien on burdens

"I am a burden to you. I should go away. Please, admit it. I am a burden to you."

"I will not admit such a thing."

"You will not admit it, you say. Such an answer could mean that it is true or untrue."

"You must learn to live with mystery, David."

"My life is nothing but mysteries."

"Then permit me a rabbinical answer. There are burdens, even heavy burdens, that ease the weight of a man's life. And there are burdens that, when they are lifted from a man's life, will crush him."

From Sophia House, by Michael D. O'Brien

Shaken patriotic faith

If you think America's criminal justice system is blind when the issue of race is involved (ahem) and when defense against attack is involved (ahem), think again. And no, I don't mean what liberals might mean when they said this.

This case will, I'm sorry to say, shake your faith in the system. Terrifying. God bless Richard DiGuglielmo Jr. and his family.

Happy Easter!

Herewith, Edmund Spenser's Happy Easter sonnet to Elizabeth, to whom he was to be married. Amoretti 68:

Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day,
Didst make thy triumph over death and sin:
And having harrow'd hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win:
This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin,
And grant that we for whom thou diddest die,
Being with thy dear blood clean wash'd from sin,
May live for ever in felicity.
And that thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love thee for the same again:
And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy,
With love may one another entertain.
So let us love, dear love, like as we ought,
Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

A blessed Easter to my friends and readers.

Several more Holy Week collects

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified; Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace, through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O Lord God, whose blessed Son, our Saviour, gave his back to the smiters and hid not his face from shame; Grant us grace to take joyfully the sufferings of the present time, in full assurance of the glory that shall be revealed; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, did institute the Sacrament of his Body and Blood; Mercifully grant that we may thankfully receive the same in remembrance of him, who in these holy mysteries giveth us a pledge of life eternal; the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit ever, one, God, world without end. Amen.

Almighty God, we beseech thee graciously to behold this thy family, for which our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost ever, one God, world without end. Amen.

O merciful God, who hast made all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor desirest the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live; Have mercy upon all who know thee not as thou art revealed in the Gospel of thy Son. Take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word; and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy fold, that they may be made one flock under one shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

Thy beauty long-desired, Part II

We sang "O Sacred Head" on Palm Sunday in church, with all the verses. In this post several years ago I meditated a bit on this one:

Thy beauty, long-desirèd,
hath vanished from our sight;
thy power is all expirèd,
and quenched the light of light.
Ah me! for whom thou diest,
hide not so far thy grace:
show me, O Love most highest,
the brightness of thy face.

As I sang it most recently, it seemed to me that the phrase about beauty was not particularly problematic (as it has sometimes seemed to me before). In the earlier post, I reflected on the fact that Mary, Jesus' mother, would have remembered his beauty as her child:

She had seen him laughing, running, studying Torah, intent over work with Joseph, asking the questions at the Passover meal, enjoying his food, seen him grow in strength and, yes, in beauty. So even from a purely literal, human, and historical perspective, there was one person at the foot of the cross who would have had a real meaning for the notion that his beauty had "vanished from our sight." That one person would have that contrast in mind--the face battered almost beyond recognition in contrast to the tiny infant face, the laughing boyish face, the young man with a twinkle in his eye, all those images of peace, joy, and relaxation. That human beauty that every mother's son, made in the image of God, has in the eyes of a woman who loves him.

But now I reflected, too: Is that not true of a man's friends as well? Don't his friends also love the details about him? C.S. Lewis said (I'm paraphrasing, as I don't own a copy of the essay in question) that if he loved a man as a friend he would not give up even the details of his mannerisms and dress. This makes sense to me. I can remember meeting with friends after years apart and thinking, with a feeling almost of joy, "Oh, yes, I remember that she would hold her hands in just that way."

So anyone who loved Jesus and saw him on the cross would have felt that his human beauty had been violated. Moreover, that human beauty was united in the minds of his followers with the idea that Jesus was the Messiah. Hence, it was "long-desired." Even though they had not yet understood everything, maybe did not yet understand that he was God Incarnate, they understood, as Peter said, that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. "The Christ" meant the Messiah, the anointed one, the one God had promised to send. So in all their interactions with him they were thinking, "This is the one. This man talking with me, eating with me, telling a parable, healing the blind, or making a joke. He is the Moshiach, the one God has promised to send. These hands, these eyes. This face is the face of the long-awaited One." It must have been an awesome thing to think of for those who were close to him. And now, look at what had been done to him through the malice of his enemies and the cruelty of the Romans.

It occurred to me too: At some level they had understood that Jesus had predicted his own resurrection. This comes up in the talk on the road to Emmaus, and even the chief priests knew it, which is why they asked Pilate for a watch on the tomb. So here the followers were, especially the ones like John and the women who had actually seen Jesus crucified. On the one hand, they had Jesus' own statements that this must happen, that he must suffer and die and rise again. It might seem then that his crucifixion was itself a part of a pattern, a necessary thing, a fulfillment of Jesus' own words. Yet on the other hand, how could it not, emotionally and existentially, seem like the final defeat? Who could stand and watch such a thing, who could literally go with him through his Holy Passion, and not be devastated by it? Crucifixion was not, in the normal course of events, significant of anything but the cruelty of man and the degradation of the victim, perhaps even the (as it was thought) deserved degradation of the victim. Hence the publication of their crimes above their crosses. The Roman soldiers were used to this sort of thing. They nailed him up there, sat down to watch him, and callously decided among themselves how to divide up his clothes. Later the apostles knew that even this cruel detail of the division of his clothing was a fulfillment of prophecy (from Psalm 22), but would any of them have been in emotional shape to think that through at the time? I'm inclined to doubt it. And if they did remember the Psalm, what must that have been like, psychologically? Like being torn in two, I should think--hoping and afraid to hope that this was not simply defeat, not simply the end.

This week, let us stand at the foot of the cross with them at earth's darkest hour. Even as our hearts strain forward to move past Good Friday and celebrate the glorious ending of the story, let us remember that if we suffer we shall also reign with him, if we die with him we shall also live with him.

In thy most bitter passion my heart to share doth cry,
With thee for my salvation upon the cross to die.
Ah, keep my heart thus movèd to stand thy cross beneath,
To mourn thee, well-belovèd, yet thank thee for thy death.

Blessed Holy Week

A blessed Holy Week to Extra Thoughts readers.

Assist us mercifully with thy help, O Lord God of our salvation; that we may enter with joy upon the meditation of those mighty acts, whereby thou hast given unto us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!

In which I stick my nose into someone else's business

I am a Protestant, as I have repeatedly said. So in a sense I haven't got much of a right to get involved in the present kerfuffle concerning Fr. Guarnizo's set-up by a lesbian. Tony Esolen's comment here (first comment in the thread) is excellent.

However, as this post shows, I do have an interest in the Sacrament. Besides, since Dr. Peters (see below) has made this a matter of canon law, I should think that an interested outside observer should be able to look at the arguments for himself.

I want to add that the Catholic leaders of Washington, D.C. should consider that their handling of this is a scandal, in the technical sense, to traditionally minded non-Catholics. To be clear, I have many reasons (which I don't intend to go into) for not accepting the claims of the Roman Catholic Church. But this bad treatment of a faithful priest trying to protect the sacrament from profanation by an open and proud lesbian is yet an additional reason. The hierarchy here, so far from preserving truth (which is truth on their own terms) is placing itself on the side of those who wish to destroy the Church and on the side of a woman who set out to persecute a real Catholic priest.

Now, you can read here Dr. Peters's learned disagreement with Fr. Guarnizo's refusal to give Holy Communion to Johnson. The nub of it appears to be that Peters believes that, despite the fact that Johnson lives openly with another woman as a lesbian and bragged about this fact on purpose to the priest ahead of time, Fr. Guarnizo could not really have known that her sin was "obstinate, manifest, and persevering."

Ironically (at least ironically in my opinion) Dr. Peters apparently thinks a priest could be justified in withholding Holy Communion from a person who was in "gravely immodest dress," because that would mean that the person was "objectively indisposed" to receive the Sacrament, but not from Johnson, who was running an obvious sodomite set-up of Fr. G. and bragged about her lifestyle.

That's pretty striking. In this day and age, when gravely immodest dress is so common, a devout Catholic young woman who had received poor guidance concerning her clothing (and I gather there are a lot of these out there) might approach the rail in, comparatively speaking, all innocence to receive the Sacrament, and Dr. Peters's argument would support denying it to her, while Peters supports the punishment of Fr. G. for refusing it to a hardened sexual sinner who boasted ahead of time of her sinful lifestyle and clearly indicated her intent to continue therein!

Without belaboring the point too much, let me just say that if a person who is living in open sexual sin approaches a priest ahead of time and introduces deliberately in conversation the fact that he is living with a mistress (whom he has brought with him), with a male lover, or a woman with a lesbian lover, this seems pretty obviously to count as showing the sin to be obstinate, manifest, and persevering. It should not be necessary for the priest to have known the person for a long time for such an open declaration to be sufficient evidence on this point. This seems only logical.

Finally, here is a thought experiment that I posted at a different blog. I think it says it all. If Dr. Peters or those who agree with him want to maintain his argument, they're going to have to show some relevant differences here, and I think they're going to have a hard time doing that. Or else they could just bite the bullet and say that this priest, too, would be "breaking canon law." Which, to put it mildly, should call either the present state of canon law or their interpretation thereof into question.

Imagine that the U.S. slides further into debauchery and that pedophilia is legalized. Now imagine that a man shows up at his mother’s funeral mass with a 7-year-old boy in tow, whom he introduces with a proud smirk to some target Fr. G., before the service, as, “My boy lover (isn’t he beautiful?).”

Based on this learned analysis of canon law that we are hearing about, is this hypothetical Fr. G. breaking canon law if he refuses to give the Sacrament to this man when he approaches the rail?

Can we be done now?

The left has entered a new level of insanity

Lawrence Auster has had some good posts recently on the contraception mandate. Like any sensible person, Auster is in something like shock at the audacity of the left in presenting these insane ideas, and still more, at the level of acceptance they are receiving:

I cannot get into my head that people are demanding, as a right, as an unquestionable right, that they should be provided with contraceptives totally free.... No one heard of such an idea a couple of months ago. And now it's already a pillar of America which no one may safely challenge.

He also makes this point:

This is liberalism taking off into hyperspeed. And if Obamacare is not repealed, we are going to be dealing every day for the rest of our lives with this faster-than-light liberalism.

I've noticed this as well since Obama became President. The left makes new demands at breathtaking speed. The Internet then puts out talking points for defending them as essential, and all the little leftist commentators go about repeating them everywhere until people simply believe that whatever is now being touted is now normal, a right, etc. We've seen a bit of this in the relatively quick speed with which homosexual "marriage" has moved from being a fringe idea to being the only alternative to evil bigotry. But the free contraception mandate sets a speed record.

My own opinion is that the abandonment of democracy and constitutional government is connected to this new speed with which insane liberal ideas become accepted by the public. Someone might argue that it is otherwise, that this shows the pitfalls of democracy, because people are too easily manipulated. But my instinct is that it is otherwise. I believe this contraception mandate would have moved much more slowly if it had instead been proposed as something to be passed individually by Congress. There would then at least have been a debate, with people saying, "What? This is silly," and so forth. As it is, because Sebelius was given dictatorial powers by Obamacare, the left stole a march on us by promulgating the rule as a done deal, as something they already have power to dictate. The debate then automatically takes place in reactionary fashion. Indeed, I've seen commentator after commentator piously declare, "This is now the law." Sebelius and Obama make this thing up out of their heads one fine day, announce it in a press conference, and that makes it "the law," and that is used as a pompous argument for its legitimacy. So real American constitutional representative democracy would have some power in slowing this process down, if it were operating properly. Which it is not.

Auster also makes the point that the left is losing its humanitarian halo in all of this. There are all sorts of people with serious illnesses and very high co-pays, or people who need drugs not on their HMO's formularies and who are in really dire straits as a result. And what does the left decide to declare to be "free" and an entitlement? Birth control pills! So much for their caring about sick people. Auster relates this to feminism:

The situation described by Mr. Zarkov exemplifies how, as Gintas and I wrote in another entry, liberals have launched themselves into some speeded-up liberal dimension of complete irrationality. As we all remember, nationalized health insurance was supposedly absolutely necessary because, as the Democrats kept saying over and over and over, there are so many people in America with terrible medical conditions for which they cannot afford the care. Nationalized health insurance was demanded on the basis that there are seriously suffering people who lack affordable health care and must have it. As flawed as that argument was, it at least made a rational-sounding appeal related to some supposed actual human need.

But now, with this contraceptive business, the Democrats have thrown away their own supposedly irresistibly compelling rationale for nationalized health insurance. Now they want to give free birth control to every woman in America who wants it,--free birth control from puberty to menopause--while people with serious, debilitating conditions must continue paying very large amounts for their care.

Why? What explains this?

What explains it is that the Democrats' sob stories about sick people in need were never their true or highest motivation. Their highest motivation is their ideology of sexual liberation and particularly of female empowerment, all aimed at destroying whatever remains of the traditional family and traditional sex relations.

I certainly agree that there is a connection to feminism. In fact, I've pointed out again and again that the state laws that are somewhat like the present federal law (though, contra the leftists, providing more loopholes for religious organizations) were passed on a wave of feminist ideology. This is for women. If you don't do this you are anti-woman. (A friend asked recently why the left is casting this as a women's issue rather than an issue affecting couples who are allegedly unable to afford contraception. The obvious answer is that neither the left nor the mushy middle gets really teary-eyed over couples. "It's for women" is a battle cry that rouses the public and makes the PC-whipped scurry to obey, so that's what they are using.)

But of course the other aspect, which Auster mentions, of "sexual liberation" is also powerful. There is a kind of frenzy here. Why push free contraception rather than free migraine medication? The only answer I can find is that contraception is not being treated as just another product by the left. If people were treating contraception as just another product, one can imagine their meeting with bemusement the idea that it should be free. Indeed, one can even imagine people who actually purchase contraception being baffled by this new entitlement. "Um, I also purchase many other products. Why is free access to this an entitlement?" I discussed here the selective Marxism of the left, the idea that things are to be "made free" on an ad hoc basis to the extent that they are considered "really important." It can only be that contraception is being treated not simply as important, but as uber-important, as somehow holy--to be worshiped rather than simply used in a matter-of-fact fashion like any other product on the market. And if it is to be worshiped, then evidently everyone has to participate in making it available "for free" to its users.

Now this is utterly crazy. This is sexual liberationist hysteria cojoined with economic stupidity. It is unclear what, if anything, will stop it. See above on the speed with which people start parroting talking points. I would say that perhaps it might be wise to send people suffering from other very serious health maladies to testify before Congress and to point out the bizarre double standard. "Why should contraception be free when my medication for rheumatoid arthritis costs me so much?" If you get enough of such testimonies concerning enough different illnesses, perhaps the sheer arbitrariness and sex-related frenzy of all of this will become more evident. And since hopefully even people without much economic sense can see that you can't make all of these things "free," the drive to make just contraception "free" might lose its oomph. It would be worth a try.

Ultimately, the best thing we can do is to appeal to people's common sense. This mandate is so bizarre that, if there is any common sense left in people, they ought to be able to see that it is insane tyranny, regardless of their position on contraception itself. Then perhaps Congress would wake up and take back some of those super-powers, the power to make laws with a snap of a finger, that they have delegated to The Secretary.

Heroes

Here is a passage from the Brothers of Gwynedd quartet, by Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter):

In the quiet courts of the Cistercian house of Dore, golden indeed that June, under a sky like periwinkle flowers, those two met and joined hands at last.

I watched them come together, I knew the desire that drew them, and the weight of wonder and thought that made their steps so slow and their eyes so wide as they crossed the few paces of earth that parted them. From the moment they set eyes upon each other they looked neither to left nor right, each taking in the other like breath and food and wine. And it seemed to me, when their hands linked and grew together, that there was in them, for all their differences, for they did not look alike at all, some innermost thing that set up a mirror between them, and showed each his own face...

"My lord of Leicester," [Llewellyn] said, and stopped to touch with his lips the hand he still held, as fittingly and royally he could, with the awareness of destiny upon him, "I rejoice that I see you at last, and I thank you for this kindness. I have long desired your acquaintance, and I wish the times better favoured me, for I know I trespass."

"No," said Earl Simon, and looked at him long and hungrily, and saw, I think, as I saw, the heart's likeness that surely was there, for still the mirror shone between them. "No, you refresh me. I have many times had need of you, and need you still. I had believed it was for a cause. I think it was also for my soul's sake. In my desert now there are not many springs."

He had known deserts in his time, for he had been a crusader.

Peters does a particularly good job in these novels of conveying the importance of friendship. Her narrator and protagonist Samson has committed his entire life to the service of his friend Llewellyn, the last native Prince of Wales. Llewellyn is Samson's raison d'etre. While love between the sexes is also important to Peters and portrayed with great vigor and passion, friendship is almost equally important, though sharply different. Samson understands why Simon de Montfort and Llewellyn mean so much to one another. He understands the need not to be alone and the need for friends who are also heroes and for heroes who are also friends.

One of the things one realizes on the Internet is just how lonely people are. It's almost crushing, the weight of loneliness one encounters on the Internet. A great many people are on the Internet in part looking for kindred spirits, for people who refresh our spirits by being admirable, as Llewellyn and de Montfort refresh one another. Friendship, in both the Aristotelian and the Lewisian formula, involves seeing the same truth. As Peters sees, friends who sees the same truth also see one another, and see one another as enormously valuable because of that kinship.

But there is a danger in this as well. One's heroes and one's friends can let one down. The Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away. The same medium that provides heretofore undreamt-of opportunities for finding kindred spirits also provides a nigh infinite number of pitfalls and opportunities for letting one another down.

The world is longing for heroes. Hence the idolization of sports figures. Hence, among Christians, the temptation to hero-worship Christian musicians. ("Here is finally someone I can really look up to, whom my kids can really look up to.") Probably something like this has always been so. The desire for others to admire and lean upon is no doubt an unchangeable part of human nature. But for some reason it seems especially acute here in the second decade of the twenty-first century. It amounts almost to a hunger and thirst--The world is so dreadful. Where are my heroes? Where is my community? Where are those I can admire?

I counsel caution. And I counsel, too, that we constantly remind ourselves that our Internet acquaintances are no more superhuman than our in-person friends. There will be just as many disagreements--more, in fact. Let us not lean too hard.

Let us look always unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. He is the one hero who can never let us down.

Related post here.

Three different approaches to Lent

There are at least three different ways to approach Lent. More, really, if one considers different degrees of each, but this will do for starters.

First there's what one might call the Rambo Protestant approach. "There is no such thing as Lent. Lent is a papish addition, a teaching of man, and no one should ever so much as think about it or have anything to do with it."

Then there's what we might call the strongly traditional Catholic/Eastern Orthodox approach: "Lent exists for the purpose of mortifying our fleshly nature and participating in Jesus' suffering. We Christians should all fast, preferably sticking to a vegan diet or at least abstaining from meat, except on Sundays if you want to be a wimp. Married couples should abstain from intercourse and from all sexual thoughts about each other (or anyone else, obviously, but that goes without saying). You should give something else up too, not something you need to give up anyway, but something totally innocent that you enjoy, just to toughen up spiritually. You should try to suffer in some way so as to share in Jesus' sufferings. Remember: Lent isn't about self-improvement. Lenten disciplines aren't like New Year's resolutions. It's all much more serious and stern than that. You will be improved by observing Lenten discipline, but that isn't why you should do it."

Then there's the modernized Catholic or doing-Lent-because-it's-kind-of-cool-and-useful Protestant approach: "Lent is an opportunity for self-improvement. You have liberty in Christ as to how you use it, but it's a good opportunity to engage in better self-discipline, to put your spiritual house in order, to draw nearer to the Lord as you prepare for Easter. To that end, giving something up may prove useful, especially if it's something that you've become obsessive about and need to break free of, which can happen with things that are intrinsically innocent. But if you do this, it's between you and the Lord. There aren't pre-set rules about it, and you shouldn't be blabbing about it anyway, because Jesus said not to tell people when you fast."

Readers won't be terribly surprised to learn that I'm inclined toward Approach #3, wimpy, modern, and feel-good though it may sound. I fully realize that it is quite different from Approach #2, and I would not pretend otherwise. For that reason, I think it's rather confusing to talk about "giving up" things one shouldn't be doing anyway, like "giving up bitterness and anger for Lent." Let's get real. Whatever else giving stuff up for Lent has been traditionally, that ain't it. However, I do think Lent can provide a good opportunity to abandon bitterness and anger. So, aside from "giving up" anything, what I would like to do during Lent this year is to be thankful. Gratitude is incompatible with so many bad things. It's like a spiritual cleanser.

Today I'm thankful for so many things, including the beautiful sunshine and blue sky and the snow that looks like diamonds.

Like it or not (you don't have to watch it if you don't want to), here's Veggie Tales to remind us: A thankful heart is a happy heart.

And furthermore...

As a fair number of people know who don't happen to live in my own town (because people who live in my own town never know what I'm actually doing, one of those strange things), I've been rather busy this past week blogging and being interviewed about some statistical strangeness published by the Guttmacher Institute concerning Catholic women's use of contraception.

In the many blog comments that I've read and responded to on this, what I've been perhaps most appalled by and had the least time to talk about is the sheer insanity of the entitlement mindset. My group blog colleague Tony put one aspect of this well, here:

Until a few years ago, lots and lots of employers didn't cover it, and no state mandated it. Now you want to call employer paid coverage "normative access". Just like THAT? What had been only a few years ago a voluntary feature of some employers becomes "normative"...why? Because lots of liberals don't want to have to pay for it out of their pocket. Now that's a compelling reason to violate the consciences of others.

[snip]

It appalls me to see this happen. Liberals rag on conservatives for wanting to preserve customs (usually, good, wholesome, worthwhile, highly integrated customs) because those customs stand in the way of some (usually minority) group's new libertine behavior. They laugh off the whole idea of custom, of tradition, having a bearing on what we ought to do today. But along comes some almost-brand-new practice that they have conned a bare majority into accepting in the last few years, and all of a sudden they LIKE arguments based on "normative" standards, i.e. based on "what people have been doing, and so expect to do". This is Orwellian, or rather Satanic, since he is the father of lies. It is almost too putrid to even speak about without gagging on it.

Commentator Untenured said this in another thread:

It is absurd for the liberals to claim that the Church is trying to "force" or "impose" its morality on people simply because it won't pay for people's pills and rubbers. And I have heard a lot of otherwise intelligent people make this claim. They are either a)deliberately and intentionally using the word "force" in an Orwellian manner so as to gain a rhetorical advantage or b)they are using the word "force" in a loosened Marxist sense that has been drained of all content and is of no moral significance. Either way, the underlying argument is absurd. The government is the one deploying all of the "force" here, and yet we are asked to believe that the Church is "forcing" people not to use contraception simply by not paying for it. Using this same "reasoning", the government is "forcing" poor people to abstain from alcohol because food stamps don't purchase liquor.

I replied thus:

Untenured, I tell you in all solemnity, the insanity of people's whole economic and entitlement approach to this is very nearly as frightening, if not more frightening, in its own way than the religious liberty issue. And indeed, the two are related. When something out of the blue becomes "health care" and then from there becomes an entitlement for full subsidy by the private sector, we really are moving into an extremely strange and politicized version of a communistic society. I say that knowing that it will get ridicule from the word-monitors. "She said a cognate of 'communism'! She's crazy!" Heck, around here I have even been called out for using "socialism" to refer to the notion that all the wealth of a country is the common stock of "the people," so long as that is not accompanied by the explicit assertion that the state should own all the means of production!

But indeed it is true that what we have here is a kind of selective and coercive Marxism. Arbitrarily, a politicized list of goods and services are treated as entitlements and, as the comments in these threads show, as though they have _always_ been entitlements, rather than having been newly minted entitlements in just the past year. From there the step to, "You are coercing me if you don't pay for this for me so that it is free-to-me" is but a small step.

In discussing this further, let's think about one of the most fundamental insights of free market economics: Nothing is free. There is no such thing as a free lunch. And things cannot simply be made free by magic.

I have a lovely illustrated book of fairy tales. In one of the stories a young man is given a rose by a fairy. All he has to do is shake the rose to get as much gold as he needs.

The leftist (and, I'm afraid, some social conservatives') approach to economics is, similarly, a magical thinking approach. In the world of someone who doesn't get the basic No Free Lunch principle, things can simply be made free by declaration, by fiat, and, most importantly, by good will. The only reason that things aren't free is because someone is being permitted to make a profit off of them, and profit is not necessary, so it's always a kind of great favor that the government is doing anyone by not declaring that he has to provide some goods or services for free. However, if something is really imporant, this benevolent permission can be withdrawn and the manufacturer or seller can be ordered to provide some specified thing for free.

Muddle-headed but well-meaning people usually start out on the road to economic magical thinking by looking at something and saying, "It shouldn't cost that much. It should cost less." They really don't know what they mean. Nor do they have anything specific in mind. It isn't that they are looking at the gas taxes that are making their gas more expensive and suggesting that government lower gas taxes. It isn't that they know for a fact that the store owner who puts that price on it is using precisely the difference between what the item "should" cost and what it does cost to drink himself to death. It's just a feeling.

Then, sometimes, they move to, "Why can't that be provided for free?" "That kind of thing should be free."

Usually, the kind of thing about which they say that is something very important, or something they view as very important, such as (legitimate) health care.

It can seem rather insulting to point out to these people that it is not free to manufacture drugs, that doctors have to live and eat too and should not be forced to engage in slave labor, working for free, any more than anyone else should, that medical supplies of all kinds are costly, that the education doctors have received involves other people and resources that do not come out of nowhere, and so on and so forth. Somehow if one points this out, one never gets very far.

Now, if we really tried to apply Rose of Gold economics consistently across the board, we would drive ourselves to economic hell in a handbasket extremely quickly (instead of only medium fast, as we are currently doing). No one actually says, "Well, heck! Everyone needs food, water, clothing, housing, and means of transportation as well as health care. Let's just declare all of it free! All important goods and services in America will now be free."

At some level they retain enough of a bare edge of common sense to know that that would be walking into a propeller. So instead we just cost-shift. We say that the means of living should be free to the poor--which means everyone else has to pay for them for "the poor" or that the cost is shifted down to the future by way of deficit spending.

Or we just try to make certain things free, things that seem really important to us. That means that other goods and services become more expensive so that manufacturers and providers of the "free" items can stay in business. (Also, by the way, making things appear to be free tends to lead to shortages.) Selecting the goods and services on which to exercise the make-believe of "free" can get extremely arbitrary, and that brings us to the Obama administration. Contraception is some kind of holy thing to these leftist extremists. So they declare it free. Free! Free! Free! They even (cough cough) tell us that by this application of the Rose of Gold economic principle, they will save us all money. (Because the existence of people costs money. So the fewer people, the more cost savings to everyone. Isn't that brilliant?) Having once declared it to be free, they work themselves up into a positive lather at anyone who dares to resist this mandate. The mandate itself is now holy, free contraception for all women is an entitlement, and anyone who opposes it is forcing, yes forcing, women not to use contraception.

The ludicrousness of this should be obvious. People do not purchase gasoline or orange juice for me. The world at large does not subsidize the repair of my car for me. I have to purchase those myself, with money which I acquire because I or my bacon-bringing husband have exchanged our own talents for the money with which to purchase gasoline and bacon. No one thinks that the whole surrounding world (or perhaps, especially, my husband's employer, since employers seem somehow to have a special subsidizing responsibility in the eyes of the left) is "coercing" us not to use gasoline or orange juice or not to have our car repaired because they do not purchse them for us and encourage us in the illusion that gasoline, orange juice, and car repair are free.

So the focus on contraceptive products and services is quite arbitrary and could not be extended indefinitely to other goods and services, even other goods and services that most people agree are quite legitimate, that most people use, that many, many people would even say that they need. In fact, the more widespread the use of some item or service, the more economically ruinous it would become to try to apply the Rose of Gold magic to it, because it would burden the rest of the economy tremendously to cost-shift the actual cost of a widely used good or service.

Try to talk this kind of sense to a leftist up in arms that some employers are resisting the Obama mandate, and you will get ab-so-lute-ly nowhere. Try to ask him how it can possibly be that Sally's birth control pills must be free, are an entitlement to her, and that Catholic organizations are thus doing something evil and coercive not to cooperate in buying them for her, and you will not get a sensible answer. You will only get endless repetitions of the same ridiculous claims about theocracy and "forcing everyone to follow the dictates of the Catholic Church" and other nonsense. You simply cannot reason with people.

Part of what has happened is this: The TANSTAAFL principle has been denied for decades and decades in American education, to the point that no one gets it. Even many conservatives, especially many trad-conservatives who don't like to be thought libertarians or libertarian-sympathetic don't get it. So many on both the left and the right accept the pernicious, corrosive, reality-denying principle that if we just really care about something and really recognize its importance and really have good will, we can make it free. In other words, they accept Rose of Gold economics.

Enter the culture wars. The left has its own priorities. It has its own things that it thinks we should really care about, really recognize the importance of, and really show good will by waving the Rose of Gold over. And things that fall into that category are entitlements, you see. And if they are entitlements then you are not a person of good will if you refuse to wave the Rose of Gold over them. You are a bad person. In fact, by withholding the Golden Magic, you are engaging in something like an act of aggression. Hence, you must be punished and squelched out of existence.

Even leftists are not really likely to move us directly to full-bore Communism. So they will just go about arbitrarily engaging in their economic magical thinking, selective Marxism and economic idiocy, on an ad hoc basis for those things that they think are needed exercises in left-wing good will.

The paleo- and distributist and anti-free market social right won't like this, because they won't agree with the socio-sexual goals of the left. I don't say that that is illegitimate. Moral issues certainly come into play here. It would be worse for a leftist regime to make, say, abortions free (or "free") than for it to make orange juice "free." I do say, however, that they should recognize the economic insanity, the reality denial, in the Rose of Gold economics that is at work here.

And they should also recognize that the entitlement mindset encouraged by Rose of Gold economics is a threat to the religious liberty they hold dear.

Nothing is free. Recognize that now, and recalibrate, and try to get a lot of other people to recalibrate, or prepare to have your conscience bulldozed in the name of the entitlement du jour.

The food Nazis are coming

Okay, this is pretty wild and creepy, and I have little more profound than that to say about it.

Public schools now have official Lunch Inspectors. The Lunch Inspector evidently goes around peeking into kids' lunch boxes. If he (or, I wouldn't be surprised, she) decides the lunch isn't "healthy" enough, the child is forced not to eat it, is given a "replacement lunch" instead, and the parents are charged a fee (in this case, $1.25) for the "replacement lunch."

Say, what???

In the story, this meant that a perfectly good turkey sandwich was probably wasted, because it would have sat in the child's lunchbox all day long and then been sent home. Nobody is likely to want to eat it at that point.

The Orwellian nature of this is scary. A turkey sandwich, banana, and apple juice? I'm going to scream. Big Brother is watching your child's turkey sandwich. Oh, I know, maybe the Inspector sniffed the sandwich and decided it wasn't lean, or was honey roasted, or something "unhealthy" like that.

I can sort of understand if Johnny comes to school every day with nothing but cookies for lunch, you pull aside Johnny's mom and have a confab. In an extreme case like that, some gentle discussion would be in order.

But it's beyond that: They have a set of USDA guidelines, detailed, that every lunch must satisfy before the child will be allowed to eat it. This is positively Germanic. Everyone's lunch standardized.

And aren't liberals the ones who are supposed to be concerned about The Poor? So, here they wasted these people's food and added insult to injury (or perhaps injury to insult) by charging them $1.25 they weren't expecting to have to spend. I can tell you one thing: When I was a kid my mother would have had an absolute fit. You Do Not Waste Food. Money Doesn't Grow on Trees. And other bits of working-class wisdom for which these liberal Nanny-Nazis apparently have no time.

Just take your kid out of the public schools. Do it now. Aside from the zillions of other things that could be said on that subject, think of the way this is teaching them to accept totalitarian busybody oversight of every move they make and every bite they take. Setting them up to be good little citizens of the All-Seeing, All-knowing, All-controlling state. Brrrr. What happened to America?

Another example of why I read and cite this blogger

Herewith, an example of why I read View from the Right:

Partner means, or used to mean, two people engaged together in some shared enterprise, or who are friends and are doing things together as a team. But now "partner" has become the quasi official term for two unmarried people--whether homosexual or heterosexual--who live together. And for the truly politically correct, "partner" is even the obligatory term for married persons, since it would "privilege" heterosexual married couples for them to be referred to as "husband" and "wife" while homosexual couples and unmarried heterosexual couples are deprived of those honored titles. Therefore, in the name of equality, husband and wife must be called partner and partner. And with the spread of homosexual "marriage," this change is working itself into the law as well, as I have pointed out many times.

In any case, since the default meaning of "partner"--without a qualifying adjective such as "business" partner--is now two people living together in a sexual relationship, if a man now refers to another man as his partner, people will automatically take that to mean that they are a homosexual couple. The perfectly normal word partner has thus been made radioactive for normal (i.e. non-liberal) people. Even the old-fashioned American idiom of addressing someone in a friendly way as "partner,"--as in, "Hey, partner, how's it going?"--will not be used any more.

I first heard "partner" used in the homosexual sense on a C-SPAN program in the '90s. Brian Lamb was interviewing some author about his book. The guest referred to someone by name, and Lamb asked, "Who is that?", and the guest said complacently, "My partner." I thought, "Partner in what? Are they co-authors? Do they have a business together?" Then it dawned on me what he meant.

Like the takeover and ruin of the perfectly good word "gay" by the meaning "homosexual," the perfectly good word "partner" has been taken over and ruined by the meaning "sexual partner."

I wish I had written that myself. That is the sort of thing a conservative blogger should write. It's part of living in the degenerate present world that we do not accept things like this disgusting revision of the meaning of the word "partner." A conservative is supposed, among other things, to love the English language and to be revolted by its ruination by the liberal agenda.

And in fact, every time I hear the word "partner" used in this way I feel a sense of sickness. If possible, I feel it even more now that open live-in heterosexual relationships are becoming accepted for political figures, so that public figures whom one might otherwise assume to be husband and wife turn out to be "partner and partner." Indeed, as Auster says, it devalues marriage.

In fact, this is one good example of the way that homosexual relationships have undermined heterosexual marriage. That bears thinking about.

However, I get bored, depressed, cynical, bitter, and tired, and I don't always think to say these things. Yes, I detest that use of "partner," but I never wrote a blog post about it before. If I'd thought of doing so, I probably would have said to myself, "Oh, heavens, there are so many things one could write about. Where does one start? And it would depress me to write that." But Auster did so, and that relief of having someone else say it for you is part of the value of Auster's trenchant Internet commentary. Surprisingly, a post like this is not depressing but rather uplifting. It shows that there are others out there who also detest the way that liberalism has defiled the English language. That's even exciting.

Good post.

A nifty biblical play on words

In the course of studying messianic prophecy, I recently came upon 2 Samuel 7:14. It's alluded to as a prophecy of Jesus Christ in Hebrews 1:5. (In Acts 3:24, the Apostles refer to all the prophets from Samuel onward as having testified to the later coming of Jesus, and I was trying to figure out what they could have in mind from Samuel.) So I read the chapter in Samuel for the first time in a long time. It begins with David's desire to build a house for God--a temple. David considers it unworthy that he dwells in a house made of cedar wood while the worship of God is still conducted in the tabernacle--a house made of curtains.

But the prophet Nathan tells David, from the Lord, that this is not to be and that David's son (clearly meaning Solomon) will build a temple for God.

What's literarily exciting is the way that the entire chapter plays with the word "house." Verse 11 says, "Also the LORD telleth thee that he will make thee an house," followed by prophecies that are partly of Solomon and partly of the continuation of David's line and the establishment of the kingship in David's lineage forever. (Hence the excuse for the author of Hebrews to take a portion of vs. 14 to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ, despite the fact that its first fulfillment is clearly intended to be in Solomon.)

When David replies, he goes in and sits "before the Lord" (in the tabernacle, perhaps?) and says, "Who am I, O Lord God? And what is my house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?" (vs. 18) David's entire prayer is a kind of poem. Here is a further excerpt:

And now, O Lord God, the word that thou hast spoken concerning thy servant, and concerning his house, establish it for ever, and do as thou hast said. And let thy name be magnified for ever, saying, The Lord of hosts is the God over Israel, and let the house of thy servant David be established before thee. For thou, O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, hast revealed to thy servant, saying, I will build thee an house. Therefore hath thy servant found in his heart to pray this prayer unto thee. (vss. 25-27)

So David tells God that he wants to build God a house, and God tells David, "No, I'm the one doing the building around here. I will build you a house," using "house" in the sense of "lineage" or "descendants." And David, the poet, is awed and delighted by God's promises and by God's use of wordplay in making those promises and turns around and makes a masterpiece of a prayer to praise God.

It's important for us Gentiles to realize how intensely Jewish all of this is. The Jewish delight in wordplay in the Old Testament is very strong. (Another example is the fact that "Samuel" means "God hears" and that when God speaks to the boy Samuel in the night in the tabernacle, the old priest Eli tells Samuel to say to God, "Speak, Lord, for your servant hears." God heard--which includes responded to--Samuel's mother and sent her a son. Her son must, in turn, hear the Lord.)

This is relevant to the whole notion of fulfillment and prophecy. It's very easy for us literal-minded Anglo-Saxons to feel slightly frustrated at such concepts as layers of meaning, double fulfillments, and the like. And impatience with highly, shall we say, creative Scriptural interpretations, interpretations that have an excessive ratio of imagination to justification, is understandable. But at the same time, part of understanding the meaning of Scripture, both the Old Testament and the New Testament, is understanding that symbolism, typology, and even what one might call puns, including historical puns, are part of the meaning. I may have more to say about this another time, as I've had an interesting discussion of the matter of Biblical prophecy and "reading the Old Testament in light of the New Testament" with a Facebook friend lately. For the nonce, just enjoy 2 Samuel 7.

A reply to a question

A reader has attempted to post an entirely off-topic question in a recent post. The question concerns probability theory and the resurrection. After some consideration, I've decided to recast the question a bit more clearly and answer it here rather than either ignoring it or publishing it in a thread where it does not belong. (Had the reader left an e-mail address, I might have replied that way, but he didn't.)

The reader's question, reworded by me, runs approximately like this:

It seems to the reader that the prior probability of the resurrection is an exception to the law of total probability. The reader asserts that P(R|~G) = 0. He also correctly points out that, on the assumption that P(R|~G) = 0, we should calculate P(R) = P(G) x P(R|G). The problem, the reader claims, is that multiplying the prior probability of God's existence by the probability that the resurrection takes place given God's existence appears to produce a probabilistic error. The reader produces a modus ponens argument:

p1= If God doesn't exist, then the resurrection is impossible.(The reader takes this to be analytically true.)

p2= God doesn't exist.

c= Therefore, the resurrection is impossible.

If premise 1 is analytic, one must deny premise 2 to deny the conclusion. But, says the reader, premise 2 need only be more plausible than not to be assertable. That would seem to mean that if P(G)<50%, the probability of the resurrection is 0, which, however, is not what we would get if we calculated the prior probability of the resurrection as we should using the law of total probability--that is P(R) = P(G) x P(R|G).

I'm going to waive the question of whether it is analytically true that the resurrection is impossible if God doesn't exist, because that either is simply a definitional matter (e.g., if you define "the resurrection" as an act of God) or involves a near-zero probability of a naturalistic resurrection.

The error in the reader's reasoning arises from his putting the wrong kind of weight--specifically, probabilistic weight--on the claim that one is justified in asserting that God doesn't exist if the probability of God's existence is less than .5. Even supposing that we grant that, that has no weight whatsoever for calculating the prior probability of the resurrection. You cannot go from, "'God does not exist' can be asserted justifiably if it is more probable than not" to "We should do our calculations of the probability of other propositions based on treating the probability of God's existence as 0 whenever the probability of God's existence is less than .5."

In essence, the above argument is a completely confused attempt to combine deductive and probabilistic reasoning. There would be no probabilistic inconsistency if the atheist were to say, viewing the prior probabilities, that probably the resurrection could not happen, or something like that. But that would have to be carefully spelled out by adding the word "probably" after "therefore" in the conclusion. (Compare "If John [defined by some definite description] doesn't exist, it is impossible for John to speak to me. John [defined by that definite description] doesn't exist. Therefore, it is impossible for John to speak to me.) The prior probability of R just is what it is. Nothing magical happens if the prior probability of G is below .5. Whatever the prior probability of G might be, you just plug that into the total probability calculation for the prior of R, and that's it. The modus ponens argument given simply doesn't tell us what the prior probability of R is.

Another way to put this is that you have already taken into account the assumption that the resurrection is impossible if God does not exist in the very act of reducing the prior probability of R to P(G) x P(R|G). Nothing more is required to take that assumption into account. The attempt to take it into account (somehow) more seriously by the modus ponens argument and the worry about what happens if the prior for G is less than .5 only darkens counsel.

The moral of the story: Don't mix apples and oranges, at least unless you're well-trained in the art of making apple-orange preserves. When you do probability, do probability. When you do deductive logic, do deductive logic. If you insist on mixing them, be verry, verry careful, or you could get yourself very, very confused.

Follow-up on Mearsheimer et. al.

This is a follow-up to the previous post. Subsequent to writing that post, I did more research on the British anti-semite whose book was lauded by allegedly respectable political scientist John Mearsheimer and who was defended (in the course of defending Mearsheimer) by philosopher Brian Leiter. I am indebted to this post by Pejman Yousefzadeh for links to this additional information. I put this information into the comments on my earlier post, but I think it deserves more attention than that is likely to get there.

One of the questions that arose in the course of Mearsheimer's and Leiter's defense of Mearsheimer's blurb was whether or not Atzmon, the author of the bizarre book that Mearsheimer blurbed, is either a Holocaust denier or Holocaust revisionist. Mearsheimer, in the course of doubling down and refusing to budge, stated unequivocally:

I cannot find evidence in his book or in his other writings that indicate he 'traffics in Holocaust denial.

Notice that this concerns other things Atzmon has written, not just the book Mearsheimer blurbed. Like Leiter, who blandly declared Atzmon (on the basis of extremely brief research) a "cosmopolitan" rather than an anti-semite, Mearsheimer declares him no Holocaust denier at all.

In the very first comment on Mearsheimer's post defending himself (and Atzmon), a reader attempted to provide more data. The reader provided a partial quotation and a link. I am here providing a longer quotation with a different link to the same post. Here is Atzmon on the Holocaust (emphasis added).

It took me years to accept that the Holocaust narrative, in its current form, doesn’t make any historical sense. Here is just one little anecdote to elaborate on:

If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein - free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war? I have been concerned with this simple question for more than a while.

[snip]

I am left puzzled here; if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators?

I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative that is sustained by political pressure and laws.

If this is not "trafficking" in Holocaust denial, I'm not sure what would count. In my earlier post I pointed out that Atzmon plays the post-modernist and says that he "neither affirms nor denies" the Holocaust. That's bad enough. Oddly, the postmodern mask seems to have slipped here. He's talking about "historical sense" and saying in so many words that such Holocaust details as the desire of the Nazis to eradicate the Jews from the Reich and the existence of a death camp at Auschwitz do not make historical sense. Yet I have no evidence that Mearsheimer and Leiter have revised their opinion on the subject or on Mearsheimer's endorsement of Atzmon, despite the fact that this information was made available to Mearsheimer. If readers have evidence that either Mearsheimer or Leiter has done a 180 and repudiated Atzmon, do post that evidence in comments.

Well, and here's a nasty tempest in a nasty teapot

I very recently learned about a little brouhaha that's been going on for a while when someone sent me a link to this article . It's about someone I know of in quite another context--Philosopher Brian Leiter.

As near as I can get the facts, they go approximately and briefly like this: Brian Leiter is a colleague (that is, at the same university) and buddy of John Mearsheimer, of The Israel Lobby fame (or infamy). Mearsheimer wrote a positive blurb for an unpleasantly bizarre little book called The Wandering Who by a Brit named Gilad Atzmon. The book, inter alia (and there are plenty of alia), implies that we should not entirely reject the blood libel against Jews in the Middle Ages. The blood libel, of course, is the claim that Jews kill or killed Gentile children to mix their blood with matzos at Passover.

Mearsheimer was strongly criticized (one should hope so!) for writing the blurb but refused to back down from it. Leiter leaped to Mearsheimer's defense without, it appears, doing his homework very well. In the course of that defense of Mearsheimer he implied that Atzmon is not an anti-semite and that therefore the criticisms of Mearsheimer for endorsing Atzmon are hysterical right-wing smears. This defense of Mearsheimer and, in the course of it, defense of Atzmon, resulted in Leiter's being named by Alan Dershowitz in the above article as someone who is helping to make anti-semitism acceptable in the mainstream.

Got that?

Now, please remember, I just started looking into this very recently, with even less motivation than Leiter should have had for being very careful. I wanted to be fair though, so, though I didn't want to read the whole of The Wandering Who, I did find a couple of Gilad Atzmon's own defenses of his book, including what he calls his "deconstruction" of Alan Dershowitz's criticisms. See here and here.

And guess what? Atzmon really does endorse at least a provisional acceptance of the blood libel. He says,

Anyway, [Dershowitz is] certainly not impressed by my idea that children should be allowed to question “how the teacher could know that these accusations of Jews making Matza out of young Goyim’s blood were indeed empty or groundless” (185). I suppose that Dershowitz hasn’t heard about Israeli professor Ariel Toaff’s study of Jewish medieval blood libel. Toaff found that accusations of blood rituals levelled against Jews in the Middle Ages were not entirely without foundation, to say the least.

Sweet, huh?

This exceedingly telling "defense" by Atzmon appeared on November 9, and Leiter's defense of Mearsheimer for endorsing Atzmon's book appeared on September 26. So Leiter didn't have access, presumably, to Atzmon's own further gloss on the passage in his book. But what Atzmon says here makes it clear that those who took him to be, shall we say, trying to open minds about the truth of the blood libel by portraying Jewish educators as stifling free inquiry were understanding him completely correctly! (Atzmon's story was about how he as a child raised a question about whether the blood libel was justified and about how he was sent home as a punishment for being so bold as to step outside of usual Jewish thought. His point in telling the story, now, billing his childhood self as the persecuted hero of epistemic honesty, is not terribly obscure.)

Now, just to complicate matters a tiny tad, Atzmon turns out to be, or at least finds it convenient to present himself as, some sort of postmodern historical skeptic. He says,

Dershowitz sure has some chutzpah, since it’s actually he who didn’t read ‘The Wandering Who’. If he had, he would have seen that in the book and in all my writing I neither deny nor do I affirm any historical aspect of the Holocaust, gas chambers or the Judeocide in general. Instead, I insist that history cannot be sealed by laws. I also insist that intellectual curiosity and our knowledge of the past cannot be vetted or confined by anyone, let alone such morbid minds as that of Dershowitz himself.

and

I actually urge my readers to question every historical narrative and this obviously includes the Shoa and Jewish history.

This allows Atzmon to be a Holocaust-denier with (im)plausible deniability. He can encourage people to be skeptical about the occurrence of the Holocaust as an "historical narrative," but when he wants to defend himself, he can fall back (as he does in the interview Leiter read--see below) on talking like the Holocaust did happen. He can also point out that he's treating the Holocaust like he treats all history. Nifty, huh? It's amazing what postmodernism can do for all manner of nastiness, including anti-semitism.

When Leiter hastened to the defense of Mearsheimer, he didn't apparently check into the allegations about Atzmon in any detail whatsoever. He seems to have based his evaluation of Atzmon on an interview (a fawning interview published at Atzmon's own site) in which Atzmon maunders on about the Holocaust in pseudo-academic terminology that downplays the true nature of his views. (Whaddaya know, it doesn't look like the little matter of the blood libel comes up in that interview.) From this Leiter infers that Atzmon is probably not an anti-semite.

Now, how can I put this tactfully? That's careless. If I had a colleague accused of enthusiastically endorsing a disgusting piece of anti-semitic trash, with the specific accusation that the tract in question promotes the blood libel, I'd try to do a leetle more research than Prof. Leiter appears to have done before rushing off and publishing something on the Internet calling the criticisms of my colleague "right-wing smears."

But maybe that's just me.

Cyrus walks into the pages of the Bible

I owe a certain debt to Cyrus the Persian. I made his acquaintance fairly early, for he lived between the pages of a children's magazine, in a series entitled Tales from Herodotus, or something of that kind. There was a picture of him being brought up by the herdsman of King Astyages, dressed in a short tunic very like the garment worn by the young Theseus or Perseus in the illustrations to Kingsley's Heroes. He belonged quite definitely to “classical times”;... Cyrus was pigeon-holed in my mind with the Greeks and Romans.

So for a long time he remained. And then, one day, I realised with a shock as of sacrilege, that on that famous expedition he had marched clean out of Herodotus and slap into the Bible. Mene, mene, tekel upharsin--the palace wall had blazed with the exploits of Cyrus, and Belshazzar's feast had broken up in disorder under the stern and warning eye of the prophet Daniel.

But Daniel and Belshazzar did not live in “the classics” at all. They lived in Church, with Adam and Abraham and Elijah, and were dressed like Bible characters, especially Daniel. And here was God--not Zeus or Apollo or any of the Olympian crowd, but the fierce and dishevelled old gentleman from Mount Sinai--bursting into Greek history in a most uncharacteristicway, and taking an interest in events and people that seemed altogether outside His province. It was disconcerting.

[snip]

It is rather unfortunate that the "Higher Criticism" was first undertaken at a time when all textual criticism tended to be destructive...But the root of the trouble is to be found, I suspect (as usual), in the collapse of dogma. Christ, even for Christians, is not quite "really" real--not altogether human--and the taint of unreality has spread to His disciples and friends and to His biographers: they are not "real" writers, but just "Bible" writers. John and Matthew and Luke and Mark, some or all of them, disagree about the occasion on which a parable was told or an epigram uttered. One or all must be a liar or untrustworthy, because Christ (not being quite real) must have made every remark once and once only.

[snip]

"Altogether man, with a rational mind and human body--" It is just as well that from time to time Cyrus should march out of Herodotus into the Bible, for the synthesis of history and the confutation of heresy.

From "A Vote of Thanks to Cyrus," by Dorothy Sayers

Christmas Post: He looked through the lattice of our flesh and He spoke us fair

I don't suppose I really screamed. What had happened was that I had fallen asleep at last and drifted into nightmare. I was imprisoned in stone. I knew then what men suffered who are walled up alive....And when I had been still for a little while I found myself slowly edging forward. There was a crack in the stone....I went on scraping through and at last there was a glimmer of light. It came to my feet like a sword and I knew it had made the crack, a sword of fire splitting the stone. And then the walls drew back slightly on each side of me, as though the light pushed them. I had a sense of conflict, as though the darkness reeled and staggered, resisting the light in an anguish of evil strength....But the light, that seemed such a small beam in comparison with that infinity of blackness, kept the channel open and I fled down it. There was room now to run. I ran and ran and came out into the light.

I had escaped. I was so overwhelmed with thankfulness that I nearly fell. I sank down on the ground and sat back on my heels, as children do sometimes when they are saying their prayers and are tired. It was ground, not stone, it was a floor of trodden earth. The stone walls were still there but the light had hollowed them out into a cave and they no longer frightened me. There was a lantern in the cave and people were moving about, a man and woman caring for a girl who lay on a pile of hay. And for a newborn child. As I watched, the woman stooped and put Him into His mother's arms....It was like one of the nativity scenes that the old masters painted, only not tidy and pretty like those. The girl was exhausted, her clothes were crumpled, and the sweat on her face gleamed in the lantern light. The man was dusty and tired and not yet free of the anxiety that had been racking him for hours past. The woman was one of those kindly bodies who turn up from somewhere to lend a hand in times of human crises. She made soft clucking noises as she gave the baby to His mother, and the two women gave each other a long look of triumph before the girl bent over her baby. He was like all newborn babies. He looked old and wizened, and so frail that my heart nearly stopped in fear, as it always does when I see a newborn child. How could anything so weak survive? His thin wail echoed in the stony place and then was stifled as He sought His mother.

...I remembered the rocks of the wilderness and the multitude of sinners surging in, selfish and clamorous, sick and sweaty, clawing with their hot hands, giving Him no time so much as to eat. I remembered the mocking crowd about the cross and the thick darkness. I remembered the second cave, the dark and stifling tomb....And I remembered Saint Augustine saying, “He looked us through the lattice of our flesh and He spake us fair.”...He was not the weakness that He seemed, for He had a sword in His hand and all evil at last would go reeling back before it. He had entered the prison house of His own will. And so He was not trapped, nor was I. There was always the way of escape so long as it was to the heart of it, whatever it was, that one went to find Him.

Elizabeth Goudge, from The Scent of Water

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. Thanks be to God.

He is here

"Not for me the Hound of Heaven, but the never-ceasing silent appeal of Tabernacle, and the sense of starving hunger."

J.R.R. Tolkien, from a letter to his son Michael, November 1, 1963

The Hound of Heaven, I would add, may have many ways of catching His quarry, not least with hunger.

I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world....Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him....This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever. (John 6:51ff)

I don't talk theology nearly as often on this blog as I think about theology. And the doctrine of Holy Communion is such a fraught one, over which many a literal war has been fought.

I believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Not being Roman Catholic, I am not required to believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation, and not being an Aristotelian, I'm rather glad of that, because I don't. But the pure memorialist view does not, in my opinion, do justice either to Christ's words of institution or to Christ's teaching in John 6 or to the Apostle Paul's solemn warnings to the Corinthians about Eucharistic abuses and the grave consequences thereof. At a minimum, it seems to me that these Scriptures imply that Holy Communion is a source of real spiritual life and strength--and that not only from the act of meditation on Christ's passion and atonement, but objectively: spiritual food. Beyond that I cannot and do not go--I simply know no farther to go. But, as the Ark of the Covenant was a place where the Lord God met His people and was, in that sense, present, so in the Sacrament. Here God acts. Here God meets man, objectively, on holy ground, in a physical object.

And for that I am thankful. As creatures of flesh and blood, we crave the ability to give and receive tangibly and physically. The Book of Common Prayer says of the Sacrament that Christ has "ordained holy mysteries as pledges of his love." A side note, or maybe not such a side note: Edmund Spenser, when he portrays the lady Charity as married and surrounded by her babies, calls them "pledges" of her husband's love.

Here is the prayer of thanksgiving after receiving the Sacrament. It was, to add to the head-shaking, convoluted uniqueness of Anglican history, apparently written (rather than translated) by Thomas Cranmer, who died because he was unwilling to return to Rome and accept the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost vouchsafe to feed us, who have duly received these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of thy favor and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs, through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom, by the merits of his most precious death and passion. And we humbly beseech thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honor and glory, world without end. Amen.

He "assures us thereby of his favor and goodness towards us." By giving us these gifts and coming to us in them, by deigning thus to condescend to us, He continually assures us, week by week, of His favor and goodness towards us.

I am a Protestant and will never be anything else. I will never even be a high Anglican; indeed, I will no doubt always be so low as to be in danger of falling right out at the bottom. There are many times when I feel a distinct reaction against high churchmanship. What's a nice Baptist girl like me doing in a place like this? But the holy mysteries are not the sort of thing one can whip up in one's kitchen, and if (per improbable) they are to be found in the Welch's grape juice and the broken matzos passed in plates from hand to hand in the churches that teach that they are not there, this is more a matter for trembling and fear than a reason to return.

It is impossible to be insouciant about the use I am about to make of a Gospel music song. I would like to make the usual flippant remark about my on-going and ungrateful project of uniting low Protestantism, Southern Gospel, and liturgical Christianity, but it's not just so simple as that.

The following song is one I cannot listen to without thinking of the Holy Sacrament. Yet that is not what it is about, where "about" is taken accurately to refer to the intention of the author and, for that matter, the performers. Quite obviously, it is a work of evangelical, perhaps even Pentecostal, Christianity. The teaching intended is that Jesus is present wherever "two or three are gathered" and that we become especially aware of His presence when reminded of it in the gathering of believers. That is a good teaching, one worth hearing and remembering. But how can anyone who believes in the Real Presence (in any sense whatsoever) hear "Holy, holy," "holy manna," and "You can touch him" and not think of that other Presence?

"He is here, listen closely. Hear Him calling out your name. He is here, you can touch him. You will never be the same."

So, with apologies to Wes Hampton, to the Gaither Vocal band, and especially to Kirk Talley (the composer), I put my own entirely unjustified personal significance on this song and present it for what it is worth, if there should happen to be anyone among my readers who finds it useful, as a meditation before receiving Communion. "He is Here."

Gaither Vocal Band - He Is Here [Live] from emimusic on GodTube.

God closes the book--Sunday quotation

"Men choose one side or the other, making the best choice that they can with the knowledge that they have. Yet they know little and the turns and twists of war are incalculable. They may fight for a righteous cause and yet at the end of it all have become as evil as their enemies, or they may in error espouse an evil cause and in defense of it grow better men than they were before. And so the one war becomes each man's private war, fought out within his own nature. In the last resort that's what matters to him, Froniga. In the testing of the times did he win or lose his soul? That's his judgment."

His voice trailed away into a silence heavy with dread and sorrow...

"One life knows many judgments," she said. "They are like the chapters in a book. What if every chapter but the last is one of defeat? The last can redeem it all. And God knows the heart that in its weakness longs for Him. Patient still, He adds another chapter, and then another, and then in the hour of victory closes the book."

From Elizabeth Goudge, The White Witch

A couple quotables from LA

I've been neglecting this blog recently and realize it. Call it laziness. Call it Christmas rush. Call it busyness home schooling. Probably more the first and the third. In any event, I'm now shamelessly going to borrow from another blogger, because he's made a couple of zinger statements recently that I think deserve to be repeated.

First, Lawrence Auster on Afghanistan:

From last Friday’s New York Times, a horrifying story about a young Afghan woman named Gulnaz who was raped, bore a child by the rapist, and was imprisoned for “adultery,” i.e., for having been raped. Then, in response to a documentary movie that featured Gulnaz’s plight, the Afghan government of our ally Karzai pardoned her, but there was a catch. To be pardoned, she had to marry the man who raped her. Gulnaz doesn’t want to marry the man and she fears him, but she feels she has no choice, since there is no place for her in Afghan society unless she is married and part of a family. But she also feels that her prospective husband is likely to kill her because of the shame she has brought on him by publicizing her case. So she is putting down a condition too: in order for her to marry him, one of his sisters must marry one of her brothers. That way, the rapist will hesitate to harm her, because if he harms her, his sister would stand to be harmed by her husband.

Afghanistan is a sub-human hell on earth. We should have nothing to do with that goddamned country unless it is directly threatening us and our allies, in which case we go in, topple the regime that is threatening us, kill its leaders, and leave, promising to come back and wreak much worse havoc if they threaten us again.

My one quibble would be with the term "sub-human." The people who perpetuate such a culture are not sub-human, they are human, and there is nothing so good nor so bad that it cannot be done by man. Gives a whole new meaning to the "what a work is man" concept. As in, sometimes man is a piece of work. But as a foreign policy prescription, let's go over there, beat the unholy hell out of governments that are threatening us, get done, and come back has a lot to be said for it. I've thought it sensible for a long time. War is not the problem per se, when a country is a threat to us or to allies. Nation-building is the problem.

Second, Lawrence Auster on a judge's wrist-slap for a wilding in London:

So: Somali Muslims carry out a typical black wilding on a white woman pedestrian, an extremely aggravated attack in which they knocked the victim to the ground then repeatedly kicked her in the head and tore her hair from her scalp, while also repeatedly shouting anti-white statements, and they don’t go to jail (1) because they’re Muslim and therefore not responsible for their behavior under the influence of alcohol, no matter how aggravated, violent, and racially motivated the behavior may be, and (2) because the victim’s boyfriend used force (ineffectively) to defend her.

This is not an event in the life of Britain. This is the rotting of the stinking corpse that once was Britain. And there’s much rot in the corpse of a great nation, many, many victims yet to come, incalculable human misery, yet to come.

Brits have always been a bit soft on regrettable acts committed under the influence of alcohol, but this takes it to a whole new level. My perception from old British novels is that the softness took the form of avuncular chuckles over Oxford undergraduates committing pranks and minor vandalism or old men making fools of themselves at the club, not aggravated assault and battery.

Someday

A couple of years ago I put up a post about this hymn and its new incarnation by blind singer Ken Medema. At that time it was not available on-line; now it is, on Grooveshark.




Ken has written a beautiful new tune for Fanny Crosby's words, which are partly taken from St. Paul in I Corinthians 13: "Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known."

You cannot stop lovers from making vows

It is not the fact that young lovers have no desire to swear on the Book. They are always at it. It is not the fact that every young love is born free of traditions about binding and promising, about bonds and signatures and seals. On the contrary, lovers wallow in the wildest pedantry and precision about these matters. They do the craziest things to make their love legal and irrevocable....[T]hey cut into rocks and oaks with their names and vows; they bury ridiculous things in ridiculous places to be a witness against them; they bond each other with rings, and inscribe each other in Bibles; if they are raving lunatics (which is not untenable), they are mad solely on this idea of binding and on nothing else. It is quite true that the tradition of their fathers and mothers is in favour of fidelity; but it is emphatically not true that the lovers merely follow it; they invent it anew.

From G.K. Chesterton, "The Superstition of Divorce"

In these days of confusion and great evil, in which marriage is under perhaps the severest attack it has yet sustained (an attack made possible by all the other attacks that have gone before and have weakened the foundations), we must hope and pray that Chesterton is right. For if he is right, then, though society be distorted and the minds of men darkened, the fundamental, life-affirming tradition in which a man and a woman take one another for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, will not die. It will be invented again by new generations of men and women, in whom the image of God has not been lost and upon whom the natural light yet shines.

May it be so.

Steven Curtis Chapman, "I Will Be Here"