Kindergarchy: A fun new term for Union dichotomies!

I always thought there needed to be a snappy term for the world dominated by child-worshiping suburbanites.

In Defense of Poverty

A new Slate piece on how to measure poverty makes a couple of good points about the meaning of poverty:

Adam Smith put his finger on the problem back in 1776. In The Wealth of Nations, he wrote: "A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessity of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt. ..."

Smith's point is not that poverty is relative but that it is a social construction. A person can lack the money necessary to participate in society. Whatever Eurostat may say, people don't become poor just because the median citizen receives a pay raise, but they may become poor if something they cannot afford—such as an Internet connection—becomes viewed as a social essential.

That is why a new unofficial poverty threshold, published this month by—appropriately—the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, makes more sense than it at first appears. The standard was set by focus groups working out what was and was not necessary "to participate in society." The results are frugal—there is a budget of £40 ($80) every two years to buy a suit, for instance—but they were always bound to be controversial. The list of essentials includes a self-catering vacation, a cell phone, and enough booze to get drunk twice a month.

But the new threshold's apparent weakness—its subjectivity—is in fact its strength. Poverty is not relative, and it cannot be objectively determined by an expert. Adam Smith understood that very well.

I agree that poverty is in some respects a social construction, and Smith's observation is right on the mark, but I dread the day when we try to eliminate poverty based on what it takes "to participate in society". To even begin to explore what that means would seem to nudge us further towards the bland middle-class ideal that America is already too fond of. Poverty is indeed a problem that calls for much charity. But to go about trying to eliminate all class differences is something different, and far more dangerous an impulse. We'd be losing something beautiful if we killed The Old Cumberland Beggar:

Him from my childhood have I known; and then
He was so old, he seems not older now;
He travels on, a solitary Man,
So helpless in appearance, that for him
The sauntering Horseman throws not with a slack
And careless hand his alms upon the ground,
But stops,--that he may safely lodge the coin
Within the old Man's hat; nor quits him so,
But still, when he has given his horse the rein,
Watches the aged Beggar with a look
Sidelong, and half-reverted.

And now, for something completely tasteless

'No Values Voters' Looking To Support Most Evil Candidate

The Dark Knight: Chaos, Order, and the Problem of Vigilante Justice

The explosion-filled summer action flick and the comic book-turned-blockbuster are models that too often lead to look-alike films filled with predictable plotlines and rife with tired clichés. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. But The Dark Knight, the most anticipated movie of the year and the newest installment in the Batman saga, manages to break this mold and weave all the glitz and extravagance demanded by the genre together with themes worthy of serious thought.

(Warning: major spoilers ahead)

Any discussion of The Dark Knight would be incomplete without a contemplation of the chief villain, Heath Ledger’s Joker. The Joker, of course, is a representation of chaos, and chaos in its purest form. The visually disturbing scars and makeup and the spine-tingling tone of his voice practically beg for a foray into the Joker’s past. But to construct such a story would bring understanding and order to a character that strives primarily to deprive us of both, and so instead we hear the Joker give several conflicting accounts of his downfall, none of which come across as a stronger candidate for the truth than the others.

Chaos abounds even when he is locked up. His fingerprints are unidentifiable, and even his clothes lack labels from which we could extrapolate even a far-fetched explanatory narrative. “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you…stranger” says the Joker, adopting a Nietzschean dictum to fit a twisted brand of nihilism that is so deeply ingrained in him that he sets his own piles of money aflame. As Alfred tells us, the Joker is not motivated by any external force; he simply wants to watch the world burn.

Interestingly enough, the foil for the Joker is not so much Batman as it is Harvey Dent, Gotham’s hard-hitting District Attorney. Dent, by relentlessly prosecuting criminals and throwing his personal safety to the wind, becomes the public face of safety and social order. For all the failings of the mob-infiltrated police bureaucracy around him, Dent presses on in pursuit of justice and in defense of the common good.

Though distressed by Dent’s relationship with his beloved Rachel, Bruce Wayne recognizes the particular quality in Dent that is paramount to the achievement of peace for Gotham. As the “White Knight” in the eyes of the citizens, Dent can bring about something that the vigilante Batman never can – a Gotham that accepts the justice that Batman has been fighting for all along.

But Harvey Dent is also a flawed character. Thanks to one of the Joker’s cruel games, Dent finds himself communicating with his love Rachel while both are in remote warehouses about to be blown to smithereens. Knowing that Batman only has time to save one of them, Dent assumes that Rachel will be the one spared. But Batman has been given the wrong address for each victim, and so it is Dent that survives. In the moments before Rachel dies, Dent tells her that everything will be alright.

This lie and the episode surrounding it haunt him for the rest of the movie, leading him to conclude that his fight for justice was meaningless and futile, as it was always subject to chance. Dent cannot accept the presence of tragedy in the world, and so instead he accepts the Joker’s chaos as a natural component of life. Dent, then, becomes a living representation of Machiavelli’s conception of Fortuna. As Two-Face, Dent’s will is only half in control.

Seeking revenge upon Police Commissioner Gordon, whom he blames for Rachel’s death, Two-Face captures the Gordon family and holds a gun to the head of Gordon’s son, demanding that Gordon tell his son that everything will be alright. Gordon complies, implicitly acknowledging what Two-Face cannot: there is virtue in what Edmund Burke called pleasing illusions. Sometimes, an inspiring and well-intentioned half truth is better than the full story. Thus, when Batman comes to the rescue and Two-Face is presumably killed, Batman and Gordon decide that Gotham must never know the true fate of Harvey Dent. To tell the truth in this case would be to destroy the hope that the city’s citizens had for establishing peace. To maintain the public faith in public officials and thereby maintain social order, Gordon eulogizes Dent as though he died a brave and just man. The now falsified image of Harvey Dent as a noble hero is, as Burke would say, “necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature.”

But whither Batman? He is, as the Joker reminds him, a freak. As one reviewer noted, the denizens of Gotham refer to him impersonally as the Batman. He is an outsider, swooping in when the skylight calls him. But in the process, he interferes in the affairs of the civil government, dangles SWAT teams off the sides of tall buildings, and breaks all kinds of laws. As such, Batman, while sharing a conception of justice with Dent, can never hold the public confidence in the way that Dent can, and thus the justice of Batman is necessarily chaotic. The administration of justice requires order, and so the evils of the Joker can never be destroyed while the vigilante Batman enforces the good. For the good of the community of Gotham, Batman must be hunted down by the civil authorities, even though, as noted by Gordon’s young son, he did no wrong.

Therein lies the profound tragedy of The Dark Knight. While wholly just and good in his actions, Batman must, for the foreseeable future, be among the furiously pursued. The Dark Knight is, true to the words of Gordon’s epilogue, “the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now.”

The case of Veal v. Ackerman

I've only heard Yale Law professor Bruce Ackerman speak once. It was at a Federalist Society event on the topic of stare decisis, and I have to say that Ackerman did an impressive job of defending the doctrine.

But today Tom Veal takes him to town on the matter of Ackerman's recent article in Slate, which accuses the Bush administration, following in the footsteps of Reagan, of issuing a secret executive order that would bypass the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate in the presidential line of succession. Such a directive would be a clear violation of the Constitution.

Rather convincingly,Veal finds Reagan, Bush, and even Clinton not guilty, and accuses Ackerman of having a bad case of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

I give credit to Ackerman for bringing up the topic, since an executive order of this type does seem to address problems with maintaining a stable chain of command in the middle of chaotic events, even if such a solution is blatantly unconstitutional and itself would cause a good amount chaos. On the question of whether such steps have actually been taken by any of the presidents, though, I have to score it Veal 1, Ackerman 0.

Iz da Pope hip enough 2 txt u?

According to a British paper, the Pope, while on a visit to Australia, is sending daily text messages to pilgrims in Sydney. Today's papal communique read as follows: "The Holy Spirit gave the Apostles and gives u the power boldly 2 proclaim that Christ is risen! - BXVI."

Should the Pope be doing such a thing? I see humor here to appreciate, and I don't want to suggest that it's a bad thing for Christians to reach out to and connect with youth in ways that they can more easily understand. If you were raised Christian, no doubt you sat through countless Sunday school lessons tailored to the popular fads of the day, not to mention desperate attempts to recreate the whole of that popular culture in a more Christian manner, i.e. most "contemporary" Christian music. But these types of things can fall flat on their faces, as noted by Hanna Rosin in a commentary on Daniel Radosh's book Rapture Ready (hat tip to whoever spammed the DS11 panlist with the article).

Though I realize that they are not exactly fans of any type of Christianity, I think Rosin and Radosh are justified in some of their harsh critiques of the evangelical subculture:

At a Christian retail show Radosh attends, there are rip-off trinkets of every kind—a Christian version of My Little Pony and the mood ring and the boardwalk T-shirt ("Friends don't let friends go to hell"). There is Christian Harlequin and Christian chick lit and Bibleman, hero of spiritual warfare. There are Christian raves and Christian rappers and Christian techno, which is somehow more Christian even though there are no words. There are Christian comedians who put on a Christian version of Punk'd, called Prank 3:16. There are Christian sex-advice sites where you can read the biblical case for a strap-on dildo or bondage (liberation through submission). There's a Christian planetarium, telling you the true age of the universe, and my personal favorite—Christian professional wrestling, where, by the last round, "Outlaw" Todd Zane sees the beauty of salvation.

At some point, Radosh asks the obvious question: Didn't Jesus chase the money changers out of the temple? In other words, isn't there something wrong with so thoroughly commercializing all aspects of faith?

...What does commercializing do to the substance of belief, and what does an infusion of belief do to the product? When you make loving Christ sound just like loving your boyfriend, you can do damage to both your faith and your ballad. That's true when you create a sanitized version of bands like Nirvana or artists like Jay-Z, too: You shoehorn a message that's essentially about obeying authority into a genre that's rebellious and nihilistic, and the result can be ugly, fake, or just limp.

In general, I'd say the Catholic Church has done a much better job avoiding these pitfalls than Protestants and evangelicals, seeing as how the Catholics have a much better grasp on the role of tradition and authority than many other denominations (full disclosure: I've yet to commit myself to a denomination). Thus, I wouldn't accuse the Pope of intentionally encourging nihilism or rebellion, but does not text messaging in broken English constitute a step in the wrong direction?

Next thing you know, Benedict will start slipping in references to ceiling cat...

For once, Tony Snow can't hit back

Posted by Matt

While attending a "conservative" conference put on by the Young America's Foundation in Washington last summer, I had the pleasure of getting a front-row seat during a talk with Tony Snow in the Eisenhower building next to the White House. Since the room we were in was once used for press conferences by JFK, it had the feel of Snow's usual gig, especially when one of us budding right-wingers decided to push him on the issue of comprehensive immigration reform. Many present would have gladly bashed President Bush on various charges of not being sufficiently right-wing, but in what I take as an illustration of the power of his affable personality, the room stood up and erupted with enthusiastic applause when Tony Snow waltzed to the podium.

During the question and answer session, I prefaced a question with an expression of sympathy for the fact that day in and day out he had to deal with such the infamously liberal and downright hostile White House press corps. But Snow would have none of that, and so he cut me off right away with a retort: "You should feel sorry for them!"

Unlike many in the Bush administration, Tony Snow was admirable in his ability to be critical of his boss, yet fiercely loyal in defending him the moment he found himself in the public light. And as a man who had been a pundit before coming to the White House, Snow (in stark contrast to his predecessor Scott McClellan) genuinely loved sparring with the press. And so the more I reflected on the job that Tony Snow did in defending President Bush, on occasions when I thought the President right and when I thought him wrong, the more it was the press core that I felt sorry for.

Perhaps, then, it is Snow's relative success at the job that drove the Associated Press to issue such a nasty piece of reporting today, just hours after Snow passed away at the ripe young age of 53, having finally lost a long and tragic bout with cancer. According to the article, Snow possessed "a quick-from-the-lip repartee, good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook — if not always a command of the facts." He "brought partisan zeal and the skills of a seasoned performer" to the task, making him "a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses." And, it goes without saying, to the dismay of the folks at the Associated Press, who could easily see through Snow to the partisan performer underneath, who "was never shy about playing to the cameras".

But it actually gets worse. "Critics", says the AP, using a word that is all too often no more than a stand-in for what the liberal reporting establishment believes, "suggested that Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation." The AP laments that "he challenged reporters, scolded them and questioned their motives as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing."

Never have I seen such hateful vitriol in a piece that purports to be no more than an objective news update. If Snow were still alive, he'd be taking them to town over this. And despite the attack, he'd probably still be feeling sorry for them.

Rest in Peace, Tony Snow, no matter how hard the press tries to stop you.

Like gladiators playing chess

Posted by Matt

Part of my morning routine at work is to scour the opinion pages and letters to the editor of various newspapers in Illinois for those who are friendly to the ideas of the organization that employs me. Those who have spent much time reading letters to the editor or local editorials in your average American paper will note how depressing this task can get. Let's just say that much of it is not the greatest reading material.

But if you read enough of them, you stumble upon some humorous bits (like complaints about men in chicken suits dispensing beer or tirades against the expensive cereals that are killing our children), a touching anecdote here and there, or even a reasonable commentary on Sex and the City written by somebody other than Helen. Today, mistaking a Kathleen Parker column printed in the Southern Illinoisan for a local piece, I had my confidence in the average American restored and then, alas, deflated when I realized my mistake.

But the Parker column, which is a commentary on the Nadal vs. Federer tennis match that I unfortunately missed, is good enough to bring to your attention nonetheless.

Some rare days, the performances of others inspire and uplift. Sunday was one of those days. The match also provided a welcome reprieve from the coarseness of our culture, the pile-driving pace of our perpetual politics, and offered a glimpse at what sportsmanship - on and off the court - ought to look like.

To those who don't care whether the little ball gets over the net, as a friend of mine once described her lack of interest in tennis, Wimbledon may not have made the radar screen. But Sunday's contest transcended a single sport and entered the realm of surpassing spectacle. It was a gripping contest of will and spirit.

And to add to the debate on conservative attire and drag:

Throughout, both men were mesmerizingly fierce and yet imperturbably calm. At crucial points they were like gladiators playing chess. Notably missing were the tantrums, histrionics, profane outbursts and end-zone antics we so often witness in sports these days. At a time when adults bemoan the paucity of role models, Wimbledon provided a banquet of riches.

Tennis has always been a gentleman's (and lady's) game, though in recent years standards have sagged. Manners aren't as fashionable or as rigorously enforced as once upon a time. Attire has evolved from traditional whites to duds of one's choosing. Yet Wimbledon still requires players to dress in white.

Nadal wore knee-length "shorts" and a sleeveless shirt, while Federer was dressed more conservatively. We moderns like to pretend clothes don't matter, that personal style is simply another function of freedom of expression. Yet we still judge others by how they present themselves, and Federer's presentation on the court bespoke a higher level of respect for the game.

As for the purpose of bow-ties on conservatives, I think "respect for the game" might be a good way to put it.

One-upping Phil Gramm

Posted by Matt

Tom Veal is up to the task:

A legion of perpetually offended, constantly angry poseurs has replaced the brash, cheerful, thick-skinned Americano of yesteryear, and the alteration is not for the better.

A historic president, indeed

Posted by Matt

I used to be one of those conservatives who largely just denied that there were any racial problems left in the United States. And while I still think that crazy people can vastly overstate the problem and end up doing more harm than good, the traditionalist and communitarian tendencies that have grown in me over the past year have made me more aware and more sympathetic to the problems that minority communities can face.

If, as I suspect, Barack Obama becomes the next president, the most notable thing about his time will probably not be a failure or success in the policy realm. It will be the fact that he is the first black president. But this is so not because Obama can top the long list of "First African-American to do ____", but because of the huge consequences it would have for the way black Americans think about themselves. I encourage you to read the whole thing, but I will take the liberty to quote a little from this fascinating article from The Root, which I'm not accustomed to enjoying so much.

On the prospect of a black president:

We don't know how to act. We don't have a plan. We're searching for our equilibrium. And until we regain our footing, we can expect all sorts of bizarre behavior from people who ought to know better. Hold on to your hat.

We haven't really been in a place this confusing since 1954, when the NAACP's crusade against segregation culminated in the Brown vs. Board decision and the walls came tumbling down. It's fair to say that we were so focused on winning that fight that we weren't prepared for the victory or its aftermath. We've spent nearly 60 years since then trying to figure out what kind of relationship we want to have with America and with each other. For the most part, we, like [Jesse] Jackson Sr., have seen ourselves as outsiders battling for justice and a seat at the table. Our default has been to protest. And while that mindset has served us well, it has, in a flash, been made damn near obsolete by the prospect, even the likelihood, that one of us may soon become the most powerful man in the world. If that happens, how can we seriously argue that we're being held back by anything but the limits we place on ourselves?

On Obama's shifts to the center:

But they, like Obama's Father's Day speech urging black men to take more responsibility for their children, are more than political posturing. They represent the first stirrings of a new consensus that places more emphasis on a public discussion of personal responsibility than on protest, on publicly delving into our own shortcomings and dysfunctional behavior.

There's nothing new about this kind of self-examination, but in the past we've conducted it mainly in private, in barbershops and beauty parlors, and churches. We've bristled when whites in power like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, joined in the critique of, for example, our soaring rate of out-of-wedlock births. We've moaned about the negative consequences of washing dirty laundry in public. But such a self-protective mindset no longer makes sense because Obama is one of us, who has taken part in our private handwringing about the self-inflicted wounds that bedevil segments of the black community. He hasn't said anything most of us haven't heard or said at the dinner table. But now, because Obama is who he is, the whole world is listening in to the conversation.

The attention makes us uncomfortable and disoriented. So does the prospect that one of us might soon be in charge of trying to fix this mess instead of simply complaining about it.

There's an interesting question left on the table. What happens to the mentality of the black community if Obama loses? Having already been labeled a racist by Noah by virtue of being on the right, and having spent the last month knee-deep in Obama-worshiping African-Americans, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if Obama loses, there's a small chance that the entire south side of Chicago will burn to the ground. And you know what? I don't think I could blame them for being frustrated with their cultural and political situation. While I think the whole "hope" schtick is both without policy content and downright silly for the majority of Obama supporters, the possibility for a black president does present the self-examining black community hope for a change in their collective mindset. Even if this hope is much more symbolic and abstract than the campaigning Obama means it to be, you might even say that for the first time since 1954, the black community can look to the horizon and see change they can believe in.

Now if only he didn't enjoy partial-birth abortion so much...

Of shortfalls and Chagalls

Posted by Matt

One of the reasons that I began to appreciate great art was that, like most other kids, I went through the torture of six years of arts and crafts during elementary school. And it was torture for me in some sense, since I lacked (and continue to lack) all of the necessary skills for success in such endeavors. Facing the reality that even my stick people looked hideously deformed, I soon gained quite an appreciation for the technical skills of a true artist.

However, I’ve recently realized that I have another artistic shortcoming that is a little more serious. Namely, I know almost nothing about art. Shamefully, I managed to make it all the way to Yale without realizing the ways in which art is connected to the realm of ideas, let alone contemplating the relationship between art, beauty, and truth in detail. As a consequence, my capacity for critiquing and commenting on art is pretty limited. Intellectually, I am a neophyte when it comes to art – the equivalent of the little kid in the gallery glancing at a Monet, juice box in hand, screaming “Mommy! Look at the pretty colors!” So don’t say I never warned you.

Anyway, a combination of yesterday’s Google logo celebrating what would be the 121st birthday of Marc Chagall and some great “Jews for Jesus” literature I was handed on my walk home from work today reminded me of Chagall’s White Crucifixion.

Besides the fact that it hangs only three blocks from my apartment at the Art Institute of Chicago and is viewable for free from 5-9 on Thursdays and Fridays, this painting stands out to me for a couple of reasons.

The work of course depicts the horrors the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews. But interestingly, it was completed in 1938, before many of the worst events of the Holocaust had taken place. Such knowledge makes the already haunting images of the burning synagogue, destroyed homes, and wailing ancestral spirits all the more foreboding.

The use of the crucifixion by Chagall, a Jew, is also striking. When viewed in person, the deathly pale tone of Jesus’ skin and the effect created by the blood stains, which seem to have been lightly misted on, suggest that Christ had little blood left to give by the time he was finally hoisted up. Like the Jewish people caught in the destruction of the Holocaust, Christ was tortured and drained of his vitality even before he gave his life. The Hebrew script above Christ’s head and the prayer shawl he wears make Jesus a part of the scene – a fellow sufferer and a fellow Jew.

And so Chagall, for all his flaws, strikes me as a traditionalist in some sense of the word. Like much modern art, the work is certainly chaotic, but the chaos is used purposefully to convey the emotions of remorse and terror that Chagall experienced while witnessing the upheaval of the Jewish community. And unlike many of the so-called "artists" of the past century, he did not strive to throw off the yoke of his social context. Indeed, Chagall’s Jewish heritage pervades all of his paintings. Judaism provided not only convenient subject matter for Chagall, but gave rise to thought-provoking questions about the tradition he was born into. The brilliance of the piece, then, lies not in any technical skill, but in the way in which the artist, shaken by what must have seemed like the impending doom of his cultural inheritance, was able to produce the same shaking in those who view his art today.

Hate the sin, not the sinner

Posted by Matt

Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina was indeed an intimidating figure, and I could probably fill several posts with absolutely terrible policies that he advocated or racist comments he made. To give one of the tamer examples, he once became frustrated while riding in an elevator with his Republican colleague Orrin Hatch and one of my old Senators, African-American Democrat Carol Moseley-Braun, after Moseley-Braun helped defeat a bill pertaining to the Confederate flag. “Watch me make her cry,” snapped Helms to Hatch, “I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries.” And then he did.

So when Helms passed away on the 4^th of July, it’s no wonder that much of the press coverage was decidedly negative. The extremely foul and inexplicably popular liberal blogger Wonkette was so upset by the particular day of Helms' death that she decided to invent a conspiracy theory in which he actually died the day before. Such a reaction (the overall criticism, not the expletive-filled conspiracy theory) to the death of a very public personality who very clearly crossed the bounds of morality on several occasions may be appropriate up to a point, and such clear judgment actually has a somewhat refreshing quality, coming as it does from the same media that too often strives not to pronounce such condemnation of criminals, terrorists, and dictators.

But as Augustine says in his Confessions, “it was made clear to me that all things are good even if they are corrupted,” for “unless they were good they could not be corrupted”. Setting aside the obvious practical considerations about the emotional state of grieving family and friends and politeness in general, this theological doctrine explains why Christian funerals usually involve hymns, readings, and eulogies emphasizing the good deeds and admirable traits of the deceased individual, even if he was not much of a repenting churchgoer or if he died in such a way (suicide, for example) that seems to cast doubt on his prospects for heaven. From an early age, we are taught that at a funeral, we should be giving God thanks for the joy that the person brought into the world, regardless of the circumstances.

In this spirit, then, and not in one that condones all the actions of the man who became known as “Senator No”, I thought I’d share an inspiring story from an admittedly one-sided op-ed in today’s Washington Post:

What made Helms stand out was his willingness to stand up for his beliefs before they were widely held -- even if it meant challenging those closest to him. In 1985, his dear friend Ronald Reagan was preparing for his first summit with Mikhail Gorbachev when a Ukrainian sailor named Miroslav Medvid twice jumped off a Soviet ship into the Mississippi River seeking political asylum. The Soviets insisted that Medvid had accidentally fallen off -- twice. The State Department did not want an international incident on the eve of the summit. But Helms believed it was wrong to send a man back behind the Iron Curtain -- no matter the cost to superpower diplomacy. He tried to block the ship's departure by requiring the sailor to appear before the Senate Agriculture Committee, which he chaired then -- and he had the subpoena delivered to the ship's unwitting captain in a carton of North Carolina cigarettes.

Despite Helms's efforts, the ship was allowed to leave for the Soviet Union with the Ukrainian sailor aboard. Miroslav Medvid was not heard from again until 15 years later, when he came to Washington to visit the man who fought so hard for his freedom. I was working at the time on Helms's Foreign Relations Committee staff and witnessed this emotional meeting. Yes, Medvid told Helms, he had been trying to escape -- that was why he joined the Merchant Marine in the first place. When he was returned to the Soviet Union, he said, he was incarcerated in a mental hospital for the criminally insane. The KGB tried to drug him, but a sympathetic nurse injected the drugs into his mattress. Eventually he was released; today he is a parish priest in his native village in Ukraine.

In the course of dozens of interrogations, he told Helms, "the KGB didn't fulfill its desire about what they wanted to do with me. They were afraid of something," he said, "and now I know what they were afraid of." They were afraid of Jesse Helms.

Pixar Turns Dystopian

Posted by Bryce

The Abolition of Man, in my opinion one of C. S. Lewis’s most important works, begins thus: “I doubt whether we are sufficiently attentive to the importance of elementary text books.” The same may be said, in our day, of children’s movies. While Lewis proceeded to challenge and refute the particular elementary text book he had in mind, my aim in calling attention to children’s movies is rather to commend one of the latest: Pixar’s WALL-E.

Apparently a number of “conservatives” have decried WALL-E as leftist or environmentalist propaganda. I find this rather misguided. For one thing, conservatives should maintain a healthy concern for the environment. We should conserve not only our heritage and traditions, but also our natural resources.

At a deeper level, though, I see WALL-E as a penetrating social critique in the manner of Huxley’s Brave New World. It’s like Brave New World light, projected onto the big screen and dispensing with the Shakespeare references. A couple of key differences: WALL-E’s dystopian future society seems to consist of people who are less vigorous and (consequently?) less obsessed with sexual pleasure than those in Brave New World. This may have something to do with the nature of the film’s target audience (children). Whatever the case, I think that judging from the direction our present-day society is headed—the direction the West in general is headed—Huxley’s dystopia is more plausible in this regard. With respect to another key difference, however, WALL-E seems closer to the mark. Whereas in Brave New World there is a rigidly defined caste system, the future society in WALL-E appears to embody egalitarianism (although it is difficult to tell, owing to the film’s focus on robots as opposed to humans—at any rate, the only effective distinction between humans that I picked up on was that between the captain of the spaceship and the others). Everyone wears the same clothes, drinks the same meals (they have progressed beyond eating), uses the same technology, etc., etc. Equality of conditions has been achieved, greatness has been extinguished. In this regard, WALL-E is more in tune with current trends and leanings than Brave New World. (For a futuristic story focused especially on radical egalitarianism and where it may lead us if unchecked, see Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron.)

As in Brave New World, the people in WALL-E are radically dependent upon technology. They are constantly carried around by hovering armchairs, constantly occupied and entertained by virtual screens, constantly pampered by gadgets and robots, nearly to the point at which they need not move their bodies at all. Thus they have all of them become obese—this should ring a bell. But even more unsettling than the shape of their bodies is their utter dependency on machines. They can do nothing without them. Creator has become subject to creation, and inventor to invented. One may be reminded of a certain dialogue in The Matrix Reloaded between Neo and some other guy:

Councillor Hamann: . . . when I look at these machines I can't help thinking that in a way we are plugged into them.
Neo: But we control these machines; they don't control us.
Councillor Hamann: Of course not. How could they? The idea is pure nonsense. But it does make one wonder . . . just what is control?
Neo: If we wanted, we could shut these machines down.
Councillor Hamann: Of course. That's it. You hit it. That's control, isn't it? If we wanted we could smash them to bits. Although, if we did, we'd have to consider what would happen to our lights, our heat, our air . . .

Dependency aside, what is perhaps most disturbing in WALL-E, as in Brave New World, is the state of the people’s souls. Their souls possess a certain flatness, a lack of interest and vitality. They are spiritually “impoverished” in the way of the students Allan Bloom describes in the first part of The Closing of the American Mind. Passion, love, risk, sacrifice, intellectual endeavor—these things have been almost entirely forgotten. We cannot help but feel disgust with the people’s complacency, their incomprehensible ability to be satisfied by lives spent on hovering armchairs. Yet there are those, like Mr. Bloom, who feel the same disgust (something reminiscent of Nietzsche’s nausea) in view of the average American’s acceptance of comfort, entertainment, and petty material pursuits as the ends—the mock telos—of life. Like Faust in the beginning of Goethe’s play, we have not touched the heights and depths of human experience. Unlike Faust, we don’t even know there are heights and depths to be touched. We resemble those in WALL-E more than we would like to admit.

The principal aim of dystopia, as I see it, is to shock and appall a society by projecting its prospective future in vivid detail and to spur it thereby to change its course accordingly. I do hope that we heed the warnings of WALL-E, along with Brave New World, “Harrison Bergeron” and the like, before it is too late.

Punting on Immigration

Posted by Matt

The talented Helen Rittelmeyer of Cigarette Smoking Blog has also been writing some great columns for TakiMag, and her latest is no exception. Pointing out the benefits of making immigration policies on the local level, she makes a compelling case that such a policy is right for the short term.

I find Helen's call for localism personally appealing because I remain torn on the issue. I agree with many religious conservatives that certain anti-illegal immigrant measures are inhumane while remaining skeptical of those conservatives who claim that programs like New Haven's Elm City ID card can draw immigrants into the community and breed respect for the law.

A New York Times article on the Elm City ID card from last fall sums up my qualms nicely in quoting a supposedly legal immigrant who was applying for one of the cards.

"And if I’m stopped by the cops, I’ll have something to show them," he said in Spanish through an interpreter.

God Isn't Dead Yet?

Posted by Bryce

Philosophers apply life support.

Matt adds: I tend to think that many of the new secularists are simply being intellectually dishonest, so I'm not sure about Craig's discussion of postmodernism in this article. But this part certainly deserves a quote:

Properly understanding our culture is important because the gospel is never heard in isolation. It is always heard against the background of the current cultural milieu. A person raised in a cultural milieu in which Christianity is still seen as an intellectually viable option will display an openness to the gospel. But you may as well tell the secularist to believe in fairies or leprechauns as in Jesus Christ!

Christians who depreciate natural theology because "no one comes to faith through intellectual arguments" are therefore tragically shortsighted.

Should a conservative blog?

Posted by Matt

Yale conservatives are a strange brood. Debates amongst us are as likely to be about the merits of monarchy as they are about the upcoming elections, and a discussion about the Middle Ages is as welcome as one touching on yesterday’s news. But perhaps the most striking thing that I noticed when I arrived on campus in the fall is that Yale conservatives, in defiance of the egalitarian yet individualistic influences of modern America, recognize the importance of aesthetics, and adjust much of their lives accordingly.

If only to preserve consistency with our often ancient ideas, the latest fashion in such circles hasn’t changed in years – among the gentlemen, bowties and tweed jackets are encouraged. Ask us about rap music, a new television show, or weblogs, and you might well be told that we’ve never heard of such newfangled oddities. Fail to hold a door open for a lady? Fear our wrath.

To quote a New Haven local who once had the good fortune to be confronted with a conservative gentleman clad in a three piece suit, a bowtie, and a gold-chained pocket watch complete with pipe, “are you serious?!”

Yes. Yes we are.

But these niceties we hold dear, while gloriously chivalric and ultimately harmless, are nevertheless dishonest. As conservatives, we recognize the limits that our times and our location place on us. We can no more avoid the awful din of popular culture than could a knight of old avoid chivalry. But our white lies serve a lofty purpose in reminding us of the ideals we seek to uphold and helping us to keep something sacred in times that demand the breakdown of all barriers. Thus the conservative can take neither his quaint mannerisms nor the environment in which he finds himself lightly.

Blogs, then, and the internet as a whole, seem to put the conservative in a sort of conundrum. How shall we proceed? Neither abandoning his cherished heritage nor bowing to modern pressures, the modern day conservative must follow a tradition, and deal with the often hollow internet culture as conservatives have long dealt with such cultural problems: sigh, think, and write.

A Note on the Name

Posted by Bryce

Sorry to disappoint, but this is not a blog about actual spelunking. It is, however, a blog about metaphorical spelunking, which will (we hope) prove to be nearly as exciting.

A cave it was in which the first extant instances of human artistic creation were exhibited. The giant gap between man and the lower animals was made manifest in art, “the signature of man.”

A cave it was which Socrates employed in his famous allegory concerning ignorance, knowledge, and the levels of reality. We are born in chains, he said, inhabiting a dark cave from which only a very few will ever escape. Those who escape will be the true philosophers, who are able to break free from their chains through dialectic, to look beyond the shadows and listen beyond the echoes so as to perceive the reality above the cave.

A cave it was in which Aeneas felt the delights of love and the temptation to abandon his solemn destiny. Reminded of his duty by a messenger from the gods, pious Aeneas forsook Dido and led his companions to the Italian peninsula, fulfilling his destiny as the great ancestor of the Romans.

A cave it was, functioning as a stable, in which God became a baby in a supreme act of divine humility. It is a paradox which boggles even the most acute of human minds. He would return to the cave some years later, this time bloody and lifeless. He would leave the cave in glory.

The cave, it is clear, has become a symbol with numerous resonances in our Western heritage. It is a haven for artistic expression, a starting point for philosophical enquiry, an expression of the tension between desire and duty, a site for divine birth, burial, and resurrection. But these resonances are waning in Western consciousness. There is little regard these days for the savoring of art, the dialectic of philosophy, the realization of duty, or the marvels of religion. Our awareness of the world has become flat with the ascendency of materialism, hedonism, utilitarianism, scientism, and the rest. The age of chivalry is gone. The world has become disenchanted.

The great Don Quixote of La Mancha defied the dawning age of disenchantment. He refused to see the windmills merely as windmills, the inns merely as inns, the sheep merely as sheep. He saw giants and castles and heroic soldiers in combat. His descent into the Cave of Montesinos represents a valiant quest for romance, beauty, and truth in its highest form.

We join Don Quixote in that quest. It is in this sense, primarily, that we may be called “quixotic.” To be sure, we do not aspire to see castles where there are only inns. We suspect, however, that some of the things ordinarily taken these days to be but ramshackle inns will turn out to be majestic castles in the end.