White Cop Arrests Black Man, Has Beer with President

Let me get this series of unfortunate events straight:

1. White cop arrests a prominent, elderly black Harvard professor without much cause in the professor’s own home and takes him to jail
2. Cop charges him with disorderly conduct
3. The charges are dropped
4. The President, a man of color himself, calls the unapologetic cop stupid
5. The result is that said cop gets to have a beer with the President, the Vice President and the arrested professor

It sure is nice to be a white man in America. Even when you do something utterly stupid, hubristic, and probably racist you end up having a beer with the most powerful man in the world and his sidekick Joe Biden. Now every officer is going to be arresting people without a reason to get into White House happy hour. I guess white cops are always right.

-Michael E. van Landingham

The Unconservative Fury of the Crunchy Con

Erin Manning’s strange attack on environmentalists reminded me of another Crunchy Con post from long ago, in which Rod approvingly cited an article by Wesley Smith called “The Silent Scream of the Asparagus,” about the decision of a Swiss ethics committee that plants have their own dignity.

A funny title. But a foolish article. A highlight of the committee’s report:

A “clear majority” of the panel adopted what it called a “biocentric” moral view, meaning that “living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.” Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim “absolute ownership” over plants and, moreover, that “individual plants have an inherent worth.” This means that “we may not use them just as we please…”

Wesley called this “enough to short circuit the brain.” “Asinine,” Rod chipped in. It’s astonishing that people who call themselves conservative should not recognize the panel’s statement as deeply Aristotelian and deeply Christian. Of course plants have an inherent worth. Didn’t G-d pronounce them good before humans were even created? Of course they have dignity, which is just to say there is a certain way of treating them that is appropriate for the kind of thing that they are. Of course life itself is sacred, as such. The people who disagree with these statements are disagreeing with a whole worldview — the worldview of Aristotle, the Bible, and all of Western Culture until quite recently. In what sense is it conservative (much less crunchy) to attack the sanctity of life and the dignity of the created order?

-David Schaengold

Sex is My Religion

Well, not my own. But it seems to be the religion of the polyamorists described in a recent Newsweek article. The tendency of cultural conservatives who read about these polyamorists will be to call them self-indulgent and self-obsessed. While these people are self-obsessed, they are far from self-indulgent. Instead they are making huge, almost fanatical sacrifices in order to realize the ideal of our modern society: self-actualization through desire. Only be ceding to their every sexual impulse can they be fully “free” from repression. In order to achieve this freedom they go through feats of spiritual self-discipline. Jealousy is conquered through frank discussion and the acceptance that one will, from time to time, have to overhear his partner having sex with someone else. Attachments to children are considered, but ultimately submitted to the ideal of sexual freedom.

The polyamorous family described in the Newsweek article has a historical antecedent. In medieval times people joined in non-traditional, quasi-familial units and tried to realize the highest ideal of their age through, in part, strange sexual practices: they were called monks and nuns. The historical irony is that the polyamorous lifestyle of the article’s subjects seems to require nearly as much self-mastery as any celibate’s vow. What one thinks of this new fanaticism will, of course, be influenced by whether you think every human attachment and instinct should be submitted to the single-minded pursuit of sexual–which for these people means spiritual–freedom. Every age has its true believers; these men and women are ours.

-Matthew Schmitz

Truth and Fairness in the Birther Controversy

I may have been the only person surprised to see Andrew Sullivan joining with notorious “birther” Orly Taitz and some of the most insane elements of talk radio in calling for the public release of the original copy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Sullivan did not for a moment think that Obama was born outside the U.S., but he did believe that the president might as well release the thing. And after demanding various records of Sarah Palin, it only seemed fair to avoid “double standards” and call for the same openness from Obama.

Here’s my beef with Sullivan’s stance: insanity should not aspire to even-handedness. Hackery should be humble enough to not claim objectivity. I much prefer the partisans who only make false, outrageous and offensive claims about one kind of politician to those who, out of an inflated moral sense, see fit to make them about all sides.  Obama should never have had to address the birth-certificate controversy, even if doing so was easy, because it had no basis in reality. (Much like some of the allegations about Palin that Sullivan actually believed.) If you wrong one person, it’s not somehow fair to wrong everyone else. It is simply more unjust.

-Matthew Schmitz

My New Favorite Phrase

“Horse, foot, and dragoons.” Oh, Pat Buchanan (go to 9:25).

-Michael E. van Landingham

Watching “The Watchmen”

During my sabbatical I enjoyed many momentous events, concluding with a visit to my family in South Carolina. Seeing as the price of a movie night at the theater for four runs around the same as the United States’ current account deficit, we decided to stay in and rent a movie. I confess that my taste in films is neither as darkly interesting as Schmitz’s, or as artistic as Schaengold’s: I enjoy mindless blockbusters almost as much as any art house flick. So we chose to see The Watchmen, the 2009 film based on Alan Moore’s 1986-87 adult comic book (a.k.a. graphic novel) of the same name.

I love superhero films. Wolverine made me want to inject my skeleton with adamantium, and I was looking for a radioactive spider long after a live-action version of Peter Parker’s exploits graced the silver screen. Similarly, I can appreciate some level of artistically gratuitous violence, as in Kill Bill, vol. 1 or any of the Blade trilogy. Yet The Watchmen shocked almost all of the veteran moviegoers at our home that night. Sure, I had read reviews that prefigured its violent subject matter, but for some reason they didn’t sink in. Dana Stevens of Slate wrote, “Like the money shots in porn movies, Snyder’s action scenes are an end in themselves—gratifying if you like that sort of thing, gross if you don’t.” That doesn’t seem to convey the actual level of violence appearing in The Watchmen, but simply its gratuity.

No, not even the ever-snarky A.O. Scott of The New York Times captured how this movie made my family feel. He noted the way in which Zack Snyder, the film’s director and the erstwhile director of The 300, captured the spirit of violence in The Watchmen:

The sex may be laughable, but the violence is another matter. The infliction of pain is rendered in intimate and precise aural and visual detail, from the noise of cracking bones and the gushers of blood and saliva to the splattery deconstruction of entire bodies. But brutality is not merely part of Mr. Snyder’s repertory of effects; it is more like a cause, a principle, an ideology. And his commitment to violence brings into relief the shallow nihilism that has always lurked beneath the intellectual pretensions of “Watchmen.”

I wish I had read this before the film, because I may have been more prepared for Snyder’s gore. What surprised me about the movie, however, was the fact that no one I spoke with at the time of its release remarked about the level of violence as anything extraordinary. Even more disturbing was the films long, disturbing scenes of violence against women. Truly horrific (attempted) rapes, assaults, and the murder of a pregnant woman are all fodder for Snyder’s lens. Anyone with even the slightest empathy for women would be hard-pressed to sit through that filth, and there is no payoff other than shock.

While The Watchmen certainly gets you talking after its utilitarian conclusion, I cannot imagine why any of the film is necessary. Alan Moore said a movie couldn’t be made out of the comic book, but it was. I think the better question would be “Should we make a film out of it?” Any attempt to defend Snyder’s graphic choices are as shallow as the comic book’s sophomoric intellectualism that Scott highlighted. Sadly I cannot unwatch The Watchmen.

-Michael E. van Landingham

Eric Sloane: The Diary of Noah Blake

Of a more artistic bent than W. Berry, I hold Eric Sloane to be one of localism’s quiet (and often unsung) champions. To some extend it is understandable why he does not figure in the growing movement of conservative localists (some of us might argue that “localist” is an altogether unnecessary qualifier). Sloane rarely discusses about tradition, or or transgenerational contracts, or local institutions, in an intellectual way; rather, he picks up the tools, customs and ways of life of an earlier era and invites you to think about them, observe their beautiful construction, use them, and think about how the express a certain view of what it means to be human. He reflects:

When I show my collection [of American tools] to young people, I am very carefull to avoid saying, “See how old these things are.” Instead I say, “See how carefully and beautifully people created things in those days. How aware these people were of the kinds of materials they worked with. How aware they were of the time in which they liveded; everything is dated and signed. How richly awake they must of been to every moment of each day!”

Sloane’s gentle ink drawing are much like his topic: simple, practical, and steeped in narrative. The direction of his pen strokes are always visible, and the intensity of his line always apparent, and so the craft of his illustration are displayed along side the crafts and trades of early America.

Raising the wood truss bridge

This will begin a series of posts on some of Sloane’s works. As some of you may know, Sloane had a peculiar fascination with the sky, especially clouds. However, I will be focusing on his Americana works, the first of which I read being the The Diary of an American Boy. Given my healthy obsession with bridges, I have posted his illustration of the raising of the wood truss bridge from Noah Blake’s diary of 1805. I have often reflected that given Noah’s often reserved entries,

22: Day spent in forge barn Fashioning trunnels for bridge. Did forty.

23. Rain and wind. Worked in the garden sowing pease [peas] and beans.

Sloane fills the boy’s diary  with life and dimension. Sloane depicts Noah’s character as hard working, optimistic and quiet, unconsciously responsible and naturally directed toward the basic goods of human life. This literary imagination of The Diary of an American Boy is the most comprehensive illustration of Sloane’s localism than any of his other writings, and is a natural starting point for those interested in Sloane’s many works.

- P. Langdale Hough

Brooks on Posterity

Brooks reveals his complete misunderstanding of the philosophical and theological foundations of basic Christian eschatology:

If, say, the Western Hemisphere were sterilized, there would soon be a cataclysmic spiritual crisis. Both Judaism and Christianity are promise-centered faiths. They are based on narratives that lead from Genesis through progressive revelation to a glorious culmination.

There most certainly would be a spiritual crisis, but not because the foundations of our knowledge of the transcendent was shaken; rather, because the condition of the human subject within the narrative of salvation history has been profoundly changed, and that does not happen without a painful and yet joyful growth in faith. He continues:

Believers’ lives have significance because they and their kind are part of this glorious unfolding. Their faith is suffused with expectation and hope. If they were to learn that they were simply a dead end, they would feel that God had forsaken them, that life was without meaning and purpose.

I am somewhat at a loss as to how Brooks develops such a paragraph from the traditional Christian teaching on the telos of human life.

- P. Langdale Hough

Why Do Crunchy Cons Hate Their Closest Allies?

Environmentalists get a weirdly bad rap even among Crunchy Cons. At their eponymous blog, Erin Manning writes:

Environmentalists do think of us, generally speaking, as human pollution. They do tend to believe that the way to fix the planet’s problems is to eliminate as many people as possible–and that means teaching civilizations which still value many children that it’s wrong for them to do so, and that they should be contented with just one or two. Ask an environmentalist about China’s policy of forced abortions and forced sterilizations, and often you’ll get either an uncomfortable silence, or else rationalizations (sure, it’s terrible, but they have way too many people, and this is the only way to deal with that situation, etc.).

This is false. Environmentalists do not, generally speaking, think of humans as “pollution.” I’ve talked to some extremely radical environmentalists in the most environmentally radical cities in the United States, some of whom even believe (as I certainly do not), that we have a moral duty to have very few children. I have never met a single one unable to bring himself to condemn China’s forced abortion policies. Why even Crunchy Cons feel obliged ritually to attack the environmental movement, which for its occasional excesses is unquestionably a good thing, remains a mystery to me.

-David Schaengold

Americans with Gender Disabilities Act

In a world untouched by sin and the fall, we would have many of the same ideas in more fanciful form. There would be no sickness or deficiency, but we would still have the Americans with (Gender) Disabilities Act. Places of public accommodation would be required to have doorways built so that men could easily hold doors open to let ladies pass. Lanes would be drawn on the sidewalks to make sure that men  always walked nearest the street. In short, law would everywhere make room for the gracious and considerate interplay of the sexes.

In such a world, the U.S. Congress would mandate that interiors be acoustically designed to soften the loud, low tones of male voices and amplify the female voice, which goes too often unheard. There would be no braille or sign language, but men would be taught a simple, picture-based code into which women could translate statements made in the female tongues of body language and social cues.

This, though, is not the world we live in. Our disabilities are accommodated by ungainly ramps and loading-dock elevators (all serving, of course, a worthy purpose). Of course gender, be it male or female, is no disability. But even a world that was free from disability would still have to make special accommodation for humans who are, one might say, “differently enabled.”

-Matthew Schmitz

Thinking about Sacred Space: Theology and Metaphysics

I am finally going through a collection of excellent posts by a young Dominican student brother on the Theology and Metaphysics of the Gothic Cathedral. He begins:

The British philosopher Alain de Botton has written that “Any object of design will give off an impression of the psychological and moral attitudes it supports… in essence what works of design and architecture talk to us about is the kind of life that would most appropriately unfold within and around them”. Given this basis to our evaluation of all architecture, and especially sacred architecture, it seems to me vital that we pay attention to the cultural and philosophical milieux which give rise to various forms of architecture. For a beautiful building that transcends the merely functional is a work of art, which expresses deeper realities. An architect, then, is an artist whose art is that of organizing structures, giving it form, to create a beautiful space which can be enjoyed aesthetically. The beautiful space, so arranged by the art of the architect, is then enjoyed by those who walk through the space, so that it becomes, in a sense, a living and enduring work of art with which we interact. Thus the French philosopher Etienne Gilson says that “architecture is the art of that which is to last as music is the art of that which is to pass away”.

If your interest sways that way, I highly recommend taking the time to read through them:

Part I: Introduction, The Medieval Vision and Symbolism

Part II: The Church on Earth as it is in Heaven

Part III: Beauty and Order in the Gothic Cathedral, The Metaphysics of Light

Part IV: Conclusion

Don’t worry if your pseudo-Dionysius is a little rusty, or if you are not familiar with old Abbot Suger. More from me on Br. Lew’s thoughts when I am finished…

- P. Langdale Hough

Growing up Left

During my childhood I never ate grapes except stealthily at friends’ houses, because Cesar Chavez had called for their boycott in 1984 (the boycott didn’t end until I was in high school). My parents never brought a soft drink into our home. So this guy’s fascinating tale of childhood leftism resonates with me. A crucial difference: my parents were proto-Crunchy Cons, so I got an equally intense dose of traditional moral philosophy.

-David Schaengold

Eating Beef to Save the Environment

Environmentally conscious diners are told that one of the best ways to reduce their carbon footprints is to eat less meat. Much more energy is required to produce a pound of beef than a pound of, say, tofu. Making things worse, cows account for some 20% of greenhouse gas emissions.

However, that’s not the full story, according to a recent report in the Utne Reader:

In large-scale farming confinement systems, manure flows into (disgusting) lagoons, where its decomposition releases millions of tons of methane and nitrous oxide into the air every year. “On pasture, that same manure is simply assimilated back into the soil with a carbon cost close to zero,” Hamilton writes.

What’s more, grass-fed livestock can be an essential player in a sustainable set-up. Manure revitalizes soil (in lieu of chemical fertilizers or shipped-in compost), and grazing encourages plant growth. Hamilton also points to Holistic Management International, an organization that proposes managed, intensive grazing as part of a climate change solution.

“In order for pasture-based livestock to become a significant part of the meat industry, we need to eat more of its meat, not less,” Hamilton writes. “So if you want to use your food choices to impact climate change, by all means follow Dr. Pachauri’s suggestion for a meatless Monday. But on Tuesday, have a grass-fed burger—and feel good about it.”

Conservatives leery of lefty dining choices should remember that the main type of agriculture practiced today has more to do with a industry than what we usually think of as agriculture. Its logic of efficiency and consolidation, of industrial production, entails the extinction of the family farm.

Before pasture-fed beef became a bobo-targeted marketing ploy, it was simply the way that most ranchers operated. Even if you don’t care about the environment, it’s worth doing what you can to support a type of agriculture that could, just maybe, create more space for family farms.

-Matthew Schmitz

Should We Turn Central Park into an Airport?

An idea so bad, it’s hard to see how Robert Moses didn’t come up with it first: a group calling itself the Manhattan Airport Foundation has suggested that the most “underutilized” parcel in Manhattan be turned into a central, conveniently located airport. The only thing stopping this prank proposal from becoming reality is that it involves planes instead of cars. If we could turn central park into a cloverleaf cum parking lot, now that idea would take off.

(via kottke)

-Matthew Schmitz

Monasticism Watch: Ralph Adams Cram

From Walled Towns (1919), by Ralph Adams Cram (courtesy of Schmitz). Pages 34 – 35:

At the beginning of the Christian the impulse was personal, the individual was the unit, and the result was the anchorites and hermits, each isolating himself a hidden mountain cave, a hut in the desert, or if his fancy took this eccentric, on the top of a lonely column, like St. Simon Stylites. With St. Benedict the group became the unit, a sort of artificial family either of men or of women, as the case might be. He himself began as a hermit in the cleft of a far mountain, but within his own lifetime his original impulse was overridden and the new communal or group life came into being, though each monastery or convent was quite autonomous and self-contained. Five centuries later (or four to speak more exactly) began the Cluniac reform, which was followed by the Cistercian movement, and here, though the old Benedictine mode was followed at first, in a brief time came the differentiation, for now all the houses of one order were united under a centralizing and coordinating force. Here we have the State as the parallel of the new scheme. Latest of all, in other five centuries, came still a new model, the army, with the Society of Jesus as its perfect exponent. So we have at almost exact five century intervals four models of monasticism: the individual, the family the State and the army. A fifth is now due; what will be its form?

How does Cram’s historiographical theory make sense of the small monastic communities found in the letters of St. Jerome? Or of the eremitical revival which accompanied the rise of Cluny in the 11th century? Or the conflict between Cluniacs and the Cistercians and their disagreements regarding centralized governance? Or the representative democracy of the Dominican constitution of the 13th century that was deeply grounded in familial relationships? Or the rise of the Military Orders during the era of “State” monastic scheme?  Or how the Jesuits and the Carmelites could share a common spirituality yet pursue very different forms of religious life? While Cram’s thesis is an interesting one, any further reflection on the development of monastic life in the West necessarily requires one to reject it.

Abbey of Cluny (ca. 1130)

Make no mistake: I am a sincere admirer of the architectural works of Cram, and not only on account of my Princeton days. But this forcing of historical narratives and its selective presentation of evidence is, much as the luthier carves and bend the ribs of a violin, quite simply the brutal coercion of fact on behalf of theory. Perhaps architects should, in general, be careful when dealing with wacky historiographies.

- P. Langdale Hough

Progressive Bioethics?

Those who follow the often tendentious debates over bioethics will be encouraged to see this article in the journal Democracy, which deflates much of the rhetoric of the so-called “progressives” who oppose any limits on the biotech industry:

It is not “anti-science” or illegitimate to bring political values to bear on science policy–even when it’s Bush or his religious supporters doing it. To suppress scientific evidence or distort research findings because they are politically inconvenient, to disregard expert advice and relevant technical information–these practices are anti-science, and the Bush Administration made a habit of them. But to consider social and ethical values in the course of crafting policy is not only appropriate, but necessary. And disagreement about social and ethical values, or about how to apply them, is a necessary aspect of democratic political contestation.

Maybe there is some hope of moving forward in these discussions.

-Matthew Schmitz

That 1902 look…

I confess that I am of two opinions of Ivy Style. On one hand, they (perhaps more precisely, their following) can at times be somewhat oblivious of the farce of contemporary “prep”. On the other, it offers some of the most interesting (and informative) interviews and articles on traditional men’s attire to be found online. Perhaps rivaled only by this chapter on Brooks Brothers from G. Bruce Boyer’s book Elegance is the the most recent set of posts, a two-part interview with the current manager of the Cambridge J. Press store, Mr. Denis Black. It’s a easy read filled with some of the most delightful anecdotes and professional observations on menswear since the founding of J. Press in 1902 through their philosophical parting with Brooks in “around 1967″.

- P. Langdale Hough

$20 a gallon?

Before most of us come back in full swing on Monday, I recommend taking a look at Dreher’s summary of Christopher Steiner’s piece on the cultural ramifications of the rising costs of fossil fuels. While a bit too optimistic,

America has never seen so great an innovation spur as escalating petroleum prices. This tale will bring with it all the global impact of a World War and its inherent technology evolutions–minus all the death. Some people even welcome oil’s coming paucity and expense as one of humankind’s grand experiments. And, in fact, it will be so. The future will be exhilarating.

…yet it is an event that Plumb Liners and Front Porch Republicans might look forward to. Anyway, a look on the bright side of things won’t kill you.

- P. Langdale Hough

The Most Violent American Movie?

Action and violence lie at the (bloody) heart of American cinema. Rambo, and Hannibal Lecter define its essence and, for that matter, its limits. An art form obsessed with exploding cars and pulsing muscles has little time for the depiction of the mundane exchanges that make up life.

It was precisely for breaking these constraints that Whit Stillman’s 1990 film Metropolitan was widely hailed. By depicting little other than the the conversations of its characters, it seemed to reject not only the usual visual orgy, but any idea of plot. The natural comparison seemed to be to the more plotless films of French New-Wave directors like Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette.

Metropolitan, though, is a consummately American film. Far from eschewing violence, it is obsessed with the damage that can be done by words, especially those spoken by those we love.  The few scenes of physical action that the film contains–one punch and one brief appearance of a pistol–look comically innocuous next to the much more vicious exchange of insults. Future attempts to understand violence on the screen should devote a little less attention to the likes of Mel Gibson and a little more to Stillman’s films.

-Matthew Schmitz

The Greatest American Newspaper Names

In this era when many of America’s greatest papers are going web-only or passing away altogether, I think it’s worth calling to mind the wonderful strangeness of American newspaper names. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most colorful names are concentrated in the South and the West. Best of all, many of these obscure papers are online:

Argus Leader (Sioux Falls, South Dakota)

Daily Boomerang (Laramie, Wyoming)

De Queen Bee (De Queen, Arkansas)

Fairplay Flume (Fairplay, Colorado)

Jefferson Jimplecute (Jefferson, Texas)

Nome Nugget (Nome, Alaska)

Pantagraph (Bloomington-Normal, Illinois)

Solid Muldoon (Ouray, Colorado)

Standard Laconic (Snow Hill, North Carolina)

Daily Comet (Thibodaux, Louisiana)

Tombstone Epitaph (Tombstone, Arizona)

Unterrified Democrat (Linn, Missouri)

How about it? What are your favorite newspaper names?

(via Eric Shackle’s eBook)

-Matthew Schmitz