God bless Dr. Charlton. If he did not exist, we would have to invent him (but would be unable to).
Our starting point should be that the basic inescapable features of life are meant and have a point and a meaning in the divine plan. Things like breathing, eating, talking, sleep, and elimination. (more…)
And now I have to touch upon a very sad matter. There are in the modern world an admirable class of persons who do long for the old feasts and formalities of the childhood of the world. William Morris and his followers shoed how much brighter were the dark ages than the age of Manchester. Mr. W.B. Yeats frames his steps in prehistoric dances, but no man knows and joins his voice to the forgotten choruses that no one but he can hear. Mr. George Moore collects every fragment of Irish paganism that the forgetfulness of the Catholic Church has left or possibly her wisdom preserved. There are innumerable persons with eye-glasses and green garments who pray for the return of the maypole or the Olympian games. There there is about these people a haunting and alarming something which suggests that it is just possible that they do not keep Christmas.
It is painful to regard human nature in such a light, but it seems somehow possible that Mr. George Moore does not wave his spoon and shout when the pudding is set alight. It is even possible that Mr. W.B. Yeats never pulls crackers.
If so, where is the sense of all their dreams of festive traditions? Here is a solid and ancient festive tradition still plying a roaring trade in the streets, and they think it vulgar. If this is so, let them be very certain of this, that they are the kind of people who in the time of the maypole would have thought the maypole vulgar; who in the time of the Canterbury pilgrimage would have thought the Canterbury pilgrimage vulgar; who in the time of the Olympian games would have thought the Olympian games vulgar. Nor can there be an reasonable doubt that they were vulgar.
-thus G.K. Chesterton
The problem with “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” is the “for tomorrow we die.”It is the justification. Seizing a last few defiant gasps of happiness before the great dark is a lie. Rejoicing now in anticipation of greater rejoicing later is the true rule of the universe.
The illegal alien who murdered Kate Steinle got off. Because he was an illegal alien; because she was so obviously a core American; because he murdered her for no real reason other than that she was a core American, and he was not; because his murdering was an inconvenient fact.
Justice was done. Social justice was done. He murdered her, but he did not social justice murder her. So he is guilty, but he is not social justice guilty. He walks free on all those charges.*
He has more rights in my country than I do. He has more rights in this country than you do. We would not walk free. We only have the right to justice. He has the right to social justice.
Who, whom.
We are the whom.
That is the definition of social justice.
America’s 200-year vacation from history is over. It doesn’t matter if you agree or not. Reality doesn’t need your consent.
Classical liberal regimes die this way. The Right in Weimar Germany. Both Right and Left in Republican Spain. First their wacko fringes kill and go unpunished Then the killings get organized. Ultimately they get official.
*But not completely free, because hilariously the California jury couldn’t forgive the ritual impurity of handling a firearm.
After the requisite soul-searching and angst and all that, Nephi cut off Laban’s head, snicker-snack. He probably did not know at the time that he was setting up a type of Christ. (more…)
I think authenticity is the modern day version of the Puritan doctrine of election.
Remember that Puritan Calvinists believed that only the elect could be saved and that election was a pure act of will by God. This meant you could not achieve election by your own efforts. But it also meant that you could not really know when you were elected. The resulting anxiety drove a lot of Puritan behavior.
Now, our modern Puritans want to be authentic. But how to be authentic? If you are trying to be authentic, you aren’t authentic.
The resulting anxiety drives a lot of their behavior. (more…)
Diagramming sentences teaches you a good deal about language. It also makes you realize some odd things about it that you had taken for granted before. Grammar is not the Platonic form of language. What it is is a good tool.
The West doesn’t think much about virtue. We do have a rich and neglected treasury of practical experience out there, and a decent amount of engineering knowledge, for those who look for it. We also have thinkers who address first principles and meta-ethical questions. What is the nature of the good? and so on. What we don’t have is anything in between. It is as if the study of biology knew evolution (along side stockbreeders who knew practical things) but had never invented anything like taxonomy.
A while back I accidentally invented a sophisticated tool for investigating virtue.
A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
And by chance there came down a certain woke priest that way; and when he saw the man he returned to Jerusalem and launched a campaign for travel control, so only licensed travelers with adequate provision to defend themselves against robbers would be allowed out on the road. Those he met were impressed with his compassion and wealthy caravanners donated to his campaign. #CareforTravelers
[For previous discussions of the Benedict Option, see here]
In reducing his signature idea to book form, Rod Dreher set a clear, if daunting, task for himself: 1) Describe the challenges that serious Christians face in the modern world due to increasing secularism, and 2) Propose solutions to meet those challenges. (more…)
On Sunday, I taught some 9- and 10-year-olds about the creation of the Doctrine and Covenants. We talked about how almost all of the revelations in it came through Joseph Smith, although there are also sections by John Taylor, Brigham Young, and Joseph F. Smith. I also took the liberty (sorry/not sorry, Curriculum Department), of directing their attention to the Official Declarations at the end, regarding the cessation of polygamy and the extension of the priesthood to blacks.
“Wait, so we used to be racist?”
Well, of course they didn’t know. (more…)
I have nostalgia for lives I’ve never lived.
I was just driving through a tiny foothills Spanish colonial landgrant. There are a few small adobes, willows and cottonwoods by the streams, a twisted apple tree, a few cattle, stacks of firewood, everyone related. And I felt a strong sense of the distinctness and value of their life. And an attraction, like nostalgia.
That’s what the best tourism usually is. Nostalgia for unlived lives. Imaginative communion with them. (more…)
Like many Mormon missionaries, I was the catalyst for a fair number of overdue weddings.
Been together for years, have several kids together*, can’t imagine living their lives separately, just never got around to an actual wedding. Indeed, it was usually impossible to tell which domestic arrangements were official until you asked them at the end of the fourth discussion. Happily, the goal of preparing for baptism was all that some of them needed to take the plunge (no pun intended).
Then there were the others, with the common refrain: “Why does it matter if we get married? We’re already together. It’s just a piece of paper.” (more…)
12 years ago my first daughter died of cancer. This is what I wrote on her birthday that year, with slight updates since. Today would be Betsey’s 16th birthday. Happy Birthday, Betsey Pearl.
Every year, this day seems to come by sooner.
This is a story of two friends in an airport.
“I don’t get it,” the one friend said. “Your life is so constrained. So narrow. You are standing in here in this little line. You won’t leave it. And then you’ll stand in another line and you’ll shuffle onto an airplane with an assigned seat you’ll have to sit in. It’s so suffocating. Me, I love my freedom too much to ever do that. By rejecting all these rules, I get to wander around wherever I want. I can go down to the luggage return or even out to the parking garage. I get to experience the airport to its fullest. There no limits. Whereas you, you just stand in line. Why do you do it?”
“I am flying to Paris,” the other friend said.
I.
“Mottramism” is a term that Rod Dreher has periodically employed to denote an unreflective acceptance of eccesiastical authority. The term was coined by Mark Cameron, who describes it thus: (more…)
A friend said, forget politics, the basic program for righting the world is three simple steps.
1. Get yourself together.
2. Get a good family going.
3. Get your kids to repeat steps 1-3.
He’s right.
