Soon to finish one year of homeschooling...

Anne Marie asked for an update.

I posted about a year ago when we realized that no local private school could educate our daughter in the Catholic way we envision. I posted again last fall after we started with the Classical Liberal Arts Academy ("CLAA"). This winter I posted on my daughter's studies in some detail and discussed CLAA.

As we get to the end of this first year, here is what we have accomplished:

1. We have taken personal responsibility for our daughter's education instead of contracting out the task. Educare means "to lead." Each day we make things happen. Usually she is working through lessons she downloads from CLAA and taking tests and quizzes online, yet we are regulars at the public library. She reads voraciously. We take field trips to museums and other attractions. We watch movies and educational films.

2. We are a Catholic family. We read Magnificat together. We read the Old Testament together. We pray novenas and rosaries together. My wife takes my daughter to weekday Mass often, and sometimes I join them. The CLAA Catechism course is refreshingly content-oriented. We take my daughter to catechism classes at our parish (taught by an able friend), and she also attends sacramental preparation classes I offer to older kids and to adults. We close the day with Catholic prayers.

3. She is learning Latin. She is very able in languages, and CLAA is teaching her the basics of grammar: the declensions, the cases, parts of speech, etc. We are pleased with her Latin program. We are also pleased that her memory work so far has been from John's Gospel.

4. She is learning to use mathematics to organize the universe. Her arithmetic curriculum is geared not towards engineering, but towards the study of logic and philosophy. Our utilitarian culture struggles to justify the teaching of mathematics for any other reason but to balance a checkbook or construct a bridge. Saint Augustine never designed a ship, but he understood higher mathematics for its greatest good.

5. She can already discuss the history of the world from the ancients to the classical Greeks and Romans to Medieval Europe to modern times. The World Chronology course traces the threads of Western culture and the Church back to the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Romans in a way which would please John Henry Newman. The course begins by discussing the great epics and subdivides the epics into grand events and lives.

6. She can find places by latitude and longitude. Thus, World Geography serves as an introduction to Geometry. She is learning physical geography, but I can see how it will develop into lessons in cultural geography.

7. This year she has read C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, L.M. Alcott, L. Frank Baum, Jules Verne, Charles Dickins, Jack London, Mark Twain, Bernard Evslin, Walter Lord, James McPherson, and others in addition to her Trivium and Quadrivium. Her reading lists are not made by a committee or some curriculum supervisor whose literacy we doubt, but by us. She is imagining through the authors who taught us to imagine. When I want to make a point, I can use our common readings as a reference.

8. She has an excellent play group of homeschoolers and has made two close friends. These girls are healthy and wholesome, as are their parents. My wife enjoys the mothers and their children.

9. She continues to study piano and art, and she does gymnastics, shoots BB guns, and plays softball. (We will get her back to swimming and tennis this summer. Because she is a one and only child and we live in town, we sign her up for lots of activities.) Art remains her favorite. We try to teach her art history through tours of churches and old houses, and we also like those pieces on art history in the back of the monthly Magnificat.

10. We give her a rich life with boundaries and order. I used to ride my bicycle all over my neighborhood. My mother hired babysitters she did not personally know. I spent nights at homes of people my parents scarcely knew. That was before the very idea of propriety was abolished by the inmates who now run the asylum. I will be frank: We don't trust our own baby-boomer generation with our child. The institutions which the counter-culture claimed were corrupt in 1970 are now "reformed" and almost worthless. We have forgotten the Permanent Things, and until we quit suppressing them and their echoes, our children will not be safe from many of their neighbors. In the meantime, we will have to look to the Benedictines and others to teach us how to live within boundaries, a loving order, and a sacramental lifestyle.

So what is for next year?

We want to build on what we have started. We believe we have the foundation for the sort of education we hoped to give her within the family life we wanted to share when we married.

We will continue with CLAA. There is no perfect curriculum, just as there is no perfect preparation for war. We believe Latin is fundamental to a proper education, yet cannot adequately teach it ourselves. CLAA is the solution. We have good educational resources and experience in the other subjects, but so far we are happy with CLAA.

CLAA is growing and will get increasing attention and scrutiny. William Michael, the founder, writes about dozens of topics from classical education to parenting to organic farming and is willing to draw fire and return fire. I do not know him and have never met him. In substance, I agree with most things he writes, though I come from a school of diplomatic Southern Episcopalians. He says things in ways I would not, but he has his vocation, and I have mine. He is active in his parish and diocese and with the Missionaries of the Poor. He just announced he is pursuing a vocation as a deacon. We pray for him because he wants to be a warrior for the Church. He has a great desire to serve and to rear a holy family.

When our daughter has completed this first homeschool year in a few weeks, we will look carefully and critically at each part of her learning. We desire two things: that she be grounded in the sacramental life and history of the Church, and that she be prepared to rebuild Western civilization as those advance who seek to destroy our patrimony.

[Picture above of Saint Augustine of Hippo, 354-430.]

"Last Missions"

Blackfive remembers Maj. Mathew Earl Schram, who gave his life on Memorial Day in 2003.

"Why So Few Medals?"

Bureaucracy might be trumping valor, at least in the rear echelon.

Here are the results if you search this blog for "Medal of Honor." I will soon take my daughter to our town square and remember those who gave their tomorrows that we could enjoy today.

Thinking about dropping out?

CNN reports in a piece called "Christians Unplugged" about those who are separating themselves from our culture. The piece is not completely flattering. Afterall, CNN is for people who want to know what is "new" 24 hours a day.

As someone who did not have a television set for more than a decade, owns only one television set, and disconnected Dish Network a year ago (and missed most of a Crimson Tide championship), I do not believe the price of keeping up with current whims, tastes, and obsessions as televised is worth much time or money. I connect to the world on the web and choose my own filters. I avoid many sources because they are too predictable. I like it when someone expresses a conservative thought in The Boston Globe or a concession to liberalism in The National Review. I like my blogging friends. I also like a well-edited magazine, though such has become an endangered species.

We do not embrace modern culture. I don't like seeing people show up to Mass dressed for the beach, even if beachwear is supposedly acceptable to your mother's funeral these days. I don't want my daughter to see movies I enjoyed such as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and Animal House. I don't want her to like the bands I liked. I don't pretend that my late baby-boomer tastes are worth preserving.

We steer her away from the main fear of the American middle class, which is best defined as the fear of falling. Fortunately, she seems largely indifferent to popular sensations. She picks out many of her clothes, though my wife helps with the selections. She plays the piano more than she listens to recorded music at home (though we listen to XM Radio in the car). She creates much of what she uses to decorate. She loves doing art.

We live in this world, but we do not want to be "of it." It is hard, so hard that I can understand why a person would move his family to an isolated place, plant a garden, raise chickens, and barter his way to independence. We live on a 1/4 acre lot, and I owe too much money to try to make it as a subsistence farmer. But moving on and moving out is as American as Daniel Boone.

UPDATE: Dennis Hopper was not an icon for me, though he was a good actor. Here is the "Ballad of Easy Rider," which expresses a longing older than the movie.

"He Was Supposed To Be Competent"

Peggy Noonan discusses the grumbling which is turning into rumbling against Barack Obama.

President Obama created the expectations which are stewing him now:

'This is what happened with Katrina, and Katrina did at least two big things politically. The first was draw together everything people didn't like about the Bush administration, everything it didn't like about two wars and high spending and illegal immigration, and brought those strands into a heavy knot that just sat there, soggily, and came to symbolize Bushism. The second was illustrate that even though the federal government in our time has continually taken on new missions and responsibilities, the more it took on, the less it seemed capable of performing even its most essential jobs. Conservatives got this point—they know it without being told—but liberals and progressives did not. They thought Katrina was the result only of George W. Bush's incompetence and conservatives' failure to "believe in government." But Mr. Obama was supposed to be competent.'

Ms. Noonan does not rejoice. We are facing major crises in several parts of the world, and we need a president who is respected for his deeds and team not just his rhetoric.

"The Rise of Consumer Driven Care"

Is consumer choice in healthcare and health insurance compatible with the new regulations?

Deflation is still possible

Pumping money into insolvent or at least illiquid banks does not increase the money supply or stimulate growth; it simply saves a particular set of bankers for a day.

M3 appears to be falling.

Pentecost, Subjective Religious Experience, and the Church

Fr. Dwight Longenecker articulates well my own beliefs and experience in this post.

Congratulations to the Keynesians... for now

Perhaps I am a product of my own generation, a bunch of cocky economics majors led in the early 1980s by the only economist who seemed to have figured out the "stagflation" of our formative years, but I do not believe that stimulating this economy and bailing out the dumbest risktakers, whether the big banks or Greece, is going bring us back to prosperity, growth, and healthy investment.

Giving stimulants to a heroin addict does not solve his problems. A heroin addict needs to live a life of good diet, real friends, normal excitements such as children and sports, engaging activities, and constructive work. Spengler agrees, and he outlines the problems of the Greek bailout and the economic history of the past thirty years.

"Will you still love me tomorrow?"

The Anchoress has a great post on Obama and the press.

Carole King comments.

Priesthood of All Believers?

Not exclusive of the sacramental Petrine priesthood notes Fr. Longenecker.

Is Henry VIII in Hell?

A humorous post by Fr. Dwight Longenecker.

What happened to the "girl in the picture?"

She is alive, though she lives with daily pain.

Liberalism v. Zionism

Today it is largely forgotten that modern Israel was founded by secular Jews, Enlightenment liberals, Romantic nationalists, and socialists who dreamed of an earthly paradise. Religious Jews distrusted them immensely and feared that Zionism would result in a political Judaism corrupted by its worldly goals. Only when the Nazis succeeded in exterminating half of Europe's Jews did many religious Jews in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East see a need for a Jewish political entity, though always with reservations. Only after Israel recaptured the Temple Mount in 1967 and won the admiration of much of the world through their grit and determination did religious Jews (and many Christian believers around the world) fully embrace the Jewish state. In the 1970s, the Likud Party, a center-right party built upon Israel's traditional, Levantine, and religious Jews, defeated the Labor Party, Israel's equivalent of the British Labour Party (secular, European, and socialistic), for the first time.

In the years since, the religious Jews who were the most reluctant Zionists have become believers in the Levantine Jewish republic, while the founders of the Israel, the liberal Western Jews who often immigrated to Israel to build a secular republic, have become critical of and sometimes bitterly opposed to the entire Zionist enterprise. Peter Beinart writes in "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment":

'Among American Jews today, there are a great many Zionists, especially in the Orthodox world, people deeply devoted to the State of Israel. And there are a great many liberals, especially in the secular Jewish world, people deeply devoted to human rights for all people, Palestinians included. But the two groups are increasingly distinct. Particularly in the younger generations, fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal. One reason is that the leading institutions of American Jewry have refused to foster—indeed, have actively opposed—a Zionism that challenges Israel’s behavior in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and toward its own Arab citizens. For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.

'Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral. If the leaders of groups like AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations do not change course, they will wake up one day to find a younger, Orthodox-dominated, Zionist leadership whose naked hostility to Arabs and Palestinians scares even them, and a mass of secular American Jews who range from apathetic to appalled. Saving liberal Zionism in the United States—so that American Jews can help save liberal Zionism in Israel—is the great American Jewish challenge of our age.'

I question whether secular liberalism, a worldview which is based not on a belief in man's sinfulness but in his perfectability, can recover its Zionism. The secular Zionists are now those most disillusioned with living in a hostile world of Arabs and having to use military force to kill off real threats. A faith in the perfectability of man is not likely to grow in the contested soils of the contankerous province the Romans once called Palestine.

In "The Paradox of the Jewish Mind," David Solway sees Israel's brilliant Jewish critics as the world's biggest fools:

'Of all the peoples of the world, Jews can least afford to be stupid, or merely selectively brilliant. What is the point of excelling at chemistry, or jurisprudence, or music, or philosophy, or literature or any other subject if there is not much gi behind it, if the Jewish mind is incapable of coming to grips with a complex, unforgiving, belligerent and actual world that has never fully accepted the Jew as a fellow human being and has often moved to humiliate, oppress and, indeed, exterminate him. Such smart-stupid Jews are the affliction of their people and, in the last analysis, their own worst enemies. For in the event of another anti-Semitic rampage or genocide — which by their indifference, complicity, or quixotic utopianism they would have helped to bring about — they too, just like their targeted ancestors and regardless of their achievements, would be flung into the ditches of history.'

Thus, the two pieces show the worldviews of the secular Jews who founded Israel and now question if not loathe it, and the Orthodox Jews whose love for Israel was largely fostered by the capture of the Western Wall and who now make up Israel's most zealous defenders.

[Photo of David Ben-Gurion.]

"The Story of an Angry Voter"

I am no fan of the incoherent and muddled political middle, yet I am big believer in it. The U.S. Constitution was born of compromise, and our civil war came in 1861 when we forgot how to compromise.

As a lesson to all, the shrinking into insignificance of the muddled middle made Nazi Germany possible. The Communists looked so strong and malevolent that the middle middle despaired and voted for the other bullying totalitarians, the National Socialists. A healthy middle class, politically involved but largely non-ideological, is essential for the survival of any republic, but by 1932, the Weimar Republic was "a republic without republicans."

David Brooks writes about the decline of the muddled American middle:

'Once there was a group in the political center that would have understood Ben’s outrage. Moderates like Abraham Lincoln believed in the free labor ideology. Their entire governing system was built around encouraging labor and rewarding labor.

'But these days, the political center is a feckless shell. It has no governing philosophy. Its paragons seem from the outside opportunistic, like Arlen Specter, or caught in some wishy-washy middle, like Blanche Lincoln. The right and left have organized, but the center hasn’t bothered to. The right and left have media outlets and think tanks, but the centrists are content to complain about polarization and go home. By their genteel passivity, moderates have ceded power to the extremes.'


I do not think we are as close to extremism as Brooks believes. The Tea Party movement is not a party committed to centralizing power, but a herd of cats which opposes central power, whether financial or political. Because the Tea Party movement rejects the Progressive creed of "Hamiltonian means for Jeffersonian ends," it has become an anathema to our political class and elites.

The Tea Party movement is no more capable of dismantling the modern state than it is of bringing back the Big Band Era, but by creating a critical mass of legislators who distrust central power, the Tea Party movement could very well arrest the drift towards European social democracy. The supposed fascist tendencies of the Tea Party movement are the fantasies of its enemies.

In contrast to the Tea Party movement, Weimar Germany's strongest parties in 1932 stridently rejected the past for an ideological future. They believed in central power, comprehensive legislation, party discipline, the liquidation of their enemies' assets (if not their enemies too), and the subordination of private liberty to public interests.


Long before the Tea Party movement, I flew a Gadsden flag in my classroom as symbol of our conservative revolution of 1776, a revolution not to create an ideological state by legislation, but to preserve our chartered rights as Englishmen from the encroachments of a centralizing Parliament. So here it is.

"Marinestan"

I must first state my family's conflicts in the services: My father enlisted in the Navy in 1943, was honorably discharged in 1946, and received a commission as an Army officer in 1949. He always says that the Marines, if you ask them, have won every war with little help from the other services. He will admit the Marines are good, but he will tell you their bravado and self-promotion are even better.

However, his brother joined the Marine Reserve while in college, received a commission during WWII, and fought at Saipan and Tinian in 1944. He was recalled to active duty during the Korean War. He loved the Marines and talked about the Marines his whole life. He is buried at Quantico, Virginia with his Semper Fi comrades.

Victor Davis Hanson discusses the history of the Marine Corps and their current deployment in Afghanistan.

'We are once again seeing one of those periodic re-examinations of the Corps. This time, the old stereotype of the lone-ranger, gung-ho Marines supposedly doesn't fit too well with fighting sophisticated urban counterinsurgency under an integrated, international command.

'After all, America is fighting wars in which we rarely hear of the number of enemy dead, but a great deal about the need to rebuild cities and infrastructure. In Afghanistan, there have been rumors about a new medal for "courageous restraint" that would honor soldiers who hesitated pulling the trigger against the enemy out of concern about harming civilians.

'The Marines are now starting to redeploy to Afghanistan from Iraq and are building a huge base in Delaram. They plan to win over southern Afghanistan's remote, wild Nimruz province that heretofore has been mostly a no-go Taliban stronghold. While NATO forces concentrate on Afghanistan's major cities, the Marines think they can win over local populations their way, take on and defeat the Taliban, and bring all of Nimruz back from the brink - with their trademark warning "no better friend, no worse enemy."

'So once again, the Marines are convinced that their own ingenuity and audacity can succeed where others have failed. And once again, not everyone agrees.'

Hanson is a very fine military historian. We are at a crossroads in Afghanistan, and the President scheduled our withdrawal on the same day he announced his long-term plans. That means the Army is going into self-preservation mode; its institutional inertia is already moving towards the postwar and the next war. The Marines also know how to fight for self-preservation, but they do so differently. Marine officers generally do not have long futures in peacetime empire building.

If Michael Yon says Gen. Stanley McChrystal is over his head, then I think it quite likely that the Army does not want the Marines in Afghanistan to start kicking Taliban asses. My instinct is that the Marines, who know how to fight better than sing Kum-bah-yah, are the best force to make a difference in the short horizen of the Afghan war.

[Photo from Captains Journal.]

"The Academies' March Toward Mediocrity"

Bruce Fleming, an English professor Annapolis, says:

'With the rise after World War II of the Reserve Officer Training Corps programs at universities around the country, the academies now produce 20 percent or less of the officers in each service, at an average cost to taxpayers of nearly half a million dollars per student, more than four times what an R.O.T.C.-trained officer costs.

'The institutions are set on doing things their own way, yet I know of nobody in the Navy or other services who would argue that graduates of Annapolis or West Point are, as a group, better than those who become officers through other programs. A student can go to a civilian school like Vanderbilt, major in art history (which we don’t offer), have the usual college social experience and nightlife (which we forbid), be commissioned through R.O.T.C. — and apparently be just as good an officer as a Naval Academy product.'

This blog is always concerned with the status of the professions. Our service academies produce the cream of military leadership. If they are weak, then we might wake up as the French did in 1940 and find ourselves on the losing side of a war. I will have to reflect on this article for a while. How do we select promising young people and train them to lead legions in war?

"The Eyes Have It"

Peggy Noonan on postmodern privacy, or better said, the abolition of privacy:

'When we lose our privacy, we lose some of our humanity; we lose things that are particular to us, that make us separate and distinctive as souls, as, actually, children of God. We also lose trust, not only in each other but in our institutions, which we come to fear. People who now have no faith in the security of their medical and financial records, for instance, will have even less faith in their government. If progressives were sensitive to this, they'd have more power. They always think the answer is a new Internet Privacy Act. But everyone else thinks that's just a new system to hack.'

[Above- Omar Shariff as Dr. Zhivago learning the unprivate realities of Bolshevik Russia.]

"Moral Theologian and Me"

A thoughtful piece by Pentimento.

UPDATE: The Anchoress discusses the same issues here.

Embracing the Eucharist

My late aunt loved the Eucharist and attended Mass often. Over the course of time, her piety brought great holiness, and I can see now how she shared freely with those in need. She made plenty of mistakes, but the mistakes brought her humility, the desire for redemption, and a commitment to prayer.

I am rethinking my life in light of hers and asking God how I can focus on the Eucharist and allow Him to take care of everything I tend to worry about.

Muhammad and Facebook

I try to show respect for everyone's religious beliefs, but Pakistan's shutting down of Facebook because of a page urging users to draw Muhammad clearly demonstrates that the fascists rule the roost in many Muslim countries and they are incapable of respecting free speech. Moreover, they have defined blasphemy so broadly as to require the execution of millions of people who fortunately live out of their jurisdictions.

Muhammad has been portrayed in art for centuries, and there is an online archive here. The ban on images of Muhammad, though not of Allah, is a later invention, and images of Muhammad were common until recently, though sometimes his face was blank.

On another Islamic issue, should the burqa be banned? I say no because I do not want anyone banning my religious practices either. Nonetheless, I have to agree with Phyllis Chesler that forcing women to blunt their five senses at the insistence of men who can wear comfortable clothes is demeaning to say the least.

How to reawaken German nationalism...

Yoke the German taxpayer to people who do not work half as hard or save any money, and commit to paying for their early retirements. Link the German currency to governments that spend and promise.

Nice piece here by Theodore Dalrymple.

Would you lie, cheat, and steal to get into Harvard University?

One guy got caught after he had fabricated everything and been enrolled for two years.

Better read the logo.

Very sad...

We buried my aunt this weekend. She lived a full life of adventure, fun, service, sacraments, joy, sorrow, redemption, and love. She is one of the major reasons I became a Catholic. She was mourned by many.

My sadness is in not having her here. That might be selfish, it might also show an inkling of doubt about the resurrection of the dead and the power of the Holy Spirit. If so, God forgive me as I say, "Lord, I believe; help me in my unbelief." (Mark 9:24.) Nonetheless, I hate seeing my parents' generation go. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Pope John Paul II, pray for us.

Mount St. Helens- May 18, 1980

There is plenty to read.

"The Other Side of Paradise: Glimpsing Slavery in the University's Utopian Landscapes"

Mark Auslander is an historian of Emory University, in particular, the conflicts of Methodism and slavery.

'But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.' I Cor. 1:27.

We can have little confidence in where we stand in the hierarchy of the Kingdom of God.

"It's sex o'clock in America"

Thoughts on the contraception culture from one of the most famous icons of the 1960s:

'Seriously, folks, if an aging sex symbol like me starts waving the red flag of caution over how low moral standards have plummeted, you know it's gotta be pretty bad. In fact, it's precisely because of the sexy image I've had that it's important for me to speak up and say: Come on girls! Time to pull up our socks! We're capable of so much better.'


Hat tip to Fr. Dw. Longenecker.

The Supreme Court nomination process

Since the Bork nomination more than twenty years ago, these confirmation hearings have been about showmanship rather than real debate on constitutional issues. We are now reaping what we sowed: credentialed nominees whose souls seem deliberately concealed.

Peggy Noonan comments:

'We know little of the inner workings of Ms. Kagan’s mind, her views and opinions, beliefs and stands. The blank-slate problem is the post-Robert Bork problem. The Senate Judiciary Committee in 1987 took everything Judge Bork had ever said or written, ripped it from context, wove it into a rope, and flung it across his shoulders like a hangman’s noose. Ambitious young lawyers watched and rethought their old assumption that it would help them in their rise to be interesting and quotable. In fact, they’d have to be bland and indecipherable. Court nominees are mysteries now.

'Which raises a question: After 30 years of grimly enforced discretion, are you a mystery to yourself? If you spend a lifetime being a leftist or rightist thinker but censoring yourself and acting out, day by day, a bland and judicious pondering of all sides, will you, when you get your heart’s desire and reach the high court, rip off your suit like Superman in the phone booth and fully reveal who you are? Or, having played the part of the bland, vague centrist for so long, will you find that you have actually become a bland, vague centrist? One always wonders this with nominees now.'


Senators of both parties should be ashamed of themselves, but they are too busy primping for the cameras.

"The Flight of the Intellectuals"

Michael Totten interviews Paul Berman, who says that the title of his book is not about physical flight, but of intellectual and moral blindness (if not cowardice). The interview is worth reading in its entirety.

"What It Takes"

David Brooks on Elena Kagan.

Though I am critical of the "Organization Kids" as Brooks describes them, it sounds in his column as if we might be getting a liberal on the Court who is so cautious by nature that she will not likely try to rewrite the Constitution from the bench. Or at least so we can hope.

My biggest problem is that our ruling class (in both parties) does not know anyone qualified for the U.S. Supreme Court who did not go to Harvard or Yale. That is a poverty within our leadership, not a lack of qualifications among barristers and judges from Hawaii to Maine. Our ruling class to a large extent cannot imagine America being governed by people who do not know Cambridge or New Haven. That is more parochial than a country song.

Mourning

A loss for me and my cousin Atarip. Prayers needed.

When satirists become smart asses...

If you are going to be habitually irreverent, you'd better have guts. The Australian discusses how the owners of South Park, after mocking those who won't fight back for years, now refuse to mock Muhammad out of fear of violent Muslims.

"Lessons From the Long War"

Peggy Noonan on British grit during the IRA terror.

Recent activity

I don't gravitate towards noise, but I would go to the Blue Angels show again.

Mothers' Day at the Botanical Gardens

More about the gardens here.

Her priest said on Sunday morning, "We can never thank our parents enough for giving us life."

Good scriptures for today

Paul and Silas convert the jailed and their jailer, and Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit.

Ernie Harwell, requiescat in pace

He was one of the greatest sports broadcasters of the 20th century, and his soul was just as kind as his voice.

Here is his induction speech to the Hall of Fame on YouTube. Here are quotations of Harwell and about Harwell. Here is a substantial piece on his retirement in Salon. And The Detroit Free Press published the last substantial interview.

Where is an Israeli welcome?

Phyllis Chesler reports that the scheduled graduation speech of Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., is controversial at...

Brandeis University! You know that the looney left has taken over Jewish academia when an Israeli ambassador is considered a political liability:

'Indeed, the times are diabolically Orwellian. In the name of anti-racism, Jews are the only group whom it is fashionable, even necessary, to critique, even to “hate.” If you stereotype Jews and believe that the Jewish state should be destroyed or abolished, you are exercising free, politically correct speech. Thus, you will be funded and you will not lose your politically progressive reputation and friends. If, on the other hand, you support Jews and the Jewish state, you are deemed a racist and a fascist (except in insular Jewish groups). You will lose your friends and funding. And you will be heckled and menaced on campuses coast to coast and all across Europe, assuming that you are still invited to speak.

'In February of 2010, political science professor Martin Sherman found himself “disinvited” by the Israel Studies Program. Apparently, they feared that Sherman might be (gasp!) too much of an advocate for Israel and not enough of a harsh critic. Sherman is academic director of the Jerusalem Summit and research fellow in Security Studies Program at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of The Politics of Water in the Middle East and Despots, Democrats and the Determinants of International Conflict, as well as articles in journals such as the Middle East Quarterly, The Journal of Strategic Studies, The Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence, The Journal of Theoretical Politics, Nations and Nationalism, and Nationalism & Ethnic Politics. Like Professor Sherman, many others have also been disinvited or never invited.'

I support Israel without hesitation and have since I was a kid during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Of course, no respectable college would invite me to speak at graduation.

Compromise on immigration?

Mary Kate Cary suggests one in USN&WR:

'I like the idea of granting citizenship to anyone who spends two years willing to give their life for our country, and as law enforcement officers--who also either know or are themselves people who are willing to sacrifice their lives as Army reservists, National Guardsmen, and first responders in their communities--they felt the same way. We soon realized that all three of us seated in the same row were either first- or second-generation descendants of immigrants. Our parents or grandparents all came to this country legally, and at considerable delay and difficulty. My grandparents already spoke English, but theirs did not and they had to learn the language before they could become citizens--something that has become controversial these days. “They had to go to some trouble to become citizens, and that’s all we’re asking now,” said one guy. “Just put forth some effort, and come in legally, like our families did. That’s all we’re asking.”'


George Will had a nice piece on the subject last week:

'It is passing strange for federal officials, including the president, to accuse Arizona of irresponsibility while the federal government is refusing to fulfill its responsibility to control the nation's borders. Such control is an essential attribute of national sovereignty. America is the only developed nation that has a 2,000-mile border with a developing nation, and the government's refusal to control that border is why there are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona and why the nation, sensibly insisting on first things first, resists "comprehensive" immigration reform.'

We will get immigration reform. It will not be pretty; it often comes when fears of job losses and of foreign events and intrusions merge. The Democrats, like the Republicans for six years, have an opportunity in Congress to pass a decent law, if they can get their base to accept what the base considers unacceptable.

Mary and the Protestants

The topic rarely comes up. Protestants who knew me before I became a Catholic do not often mention the Blessed Virgin and her veneration by the Church. It is perhaps because I am not only a Catholic convert but a teacher, catechist, and lawyer, so arguing with me is not easy. (That does not mean I am good at any of the above, only that I am a tough customer.)

Fr. Dwight Longenecker discusses his experience with Mary as a Catholic, and I agree with him that intellectual understanding of the Mother of God is extremely difficult unless you experience her integral role in the Church.

What is a "good age" to marry?

The people who seem to think about it the most seem the most narcissistic. When we confuse professional security with vocation, we get the long schooling in meaninglessness that we call "education" today.

Nice post by Darwin Catholic.

Powdered milk as a penance

A post by Fallen Sparrow.

"The Irishman leaves his home in order to find it."

This was said by a commentator about the Irish diaspora on a program called "The Irish Empire." My wife and I looked at each other and nodded. We have moved five times in seventeen years of marriage. We don't live in the states in which we were born. We look at every new town in our travels as an opportunity to find paradise. I have checked out the bar-admission requirements in a dozen states as well as Guam, Ireland, England, Panama, and Jamaica. Yet, I am pretty sure I want to be buried with four generations of my family in Alabama. That is home, yet I do not live there, and every time I try to engineer a homecoming, I am thwarted by circumstance.

Pentimento has a good piece on her home, NYC, and what it's like not to be there... and to be there. It is called "Beautiful City: We Must Part." As Thucydides understood, no one loves his country as much as the exile. She writes candidly, humbly, and well:

'Oh, that beautiful city, where you can find your heart's love and the dearest, most intimate friends imaginable, where you can breathe freely even if oppressed by poverty and care, where you can traverse whole nations on the subway and visit the Cloisters for a penny, where you can walk and walk for hours and find something beautiful even on the ugliest corners, where you can go to the Conservatory Garden in Central Park, where you can get a doctorate for spare change....

'After my conversion in 2002, I had to go on living in the city that had been the site of great sorrow, vice, and folly. This wasn't as hard as it might have been if I had had to keep frequenting the precincts that had become associated in my mind with sorrow, vice, and folly; shortly after my conversion I began my doctoral studies, which took me on a new route through the city, and brought me new colleagues, friends, and pursuits. Marriage and, soon after, motherhood effected this translation still more, and I saw that it was in some way possible to attempt a new life in the same place where the old life had run to ground. But, even if possible, it is hard. To live a new life, one must separate from one's old companions and one's old thoughts, and New York, the capitol of longing and loss -- is it just that for me? it not such for every New Yorker? -- hits you upside the head with the old thoughts, the old yearnings, just by virtue of making it necessary for you to pass certain buildings or to wait for the bus at certain corners.'


I know what she is talking about, though I grew up a thousand miles away in a place that cannot be confused for New York City. It is a universal longing echoed by Anuna singing "Home and the Heartland." The song tells me that if I can just make it to County Carlow...

UPDATE: Few comment whenever I link to music. Perhaps if I had taken Pentimento's music appreciation class I'd have better taste.

What a true teacher does...

I have linked to her before: Pentimento.

Heroic love as learned by Fr. Walter Ciszek

What a life! Hat tip to the Anchoress for this lovely story of a Jesuit priest lived for God and died to self through five years at Lubianka Prison in Moscow and more than a decade in the Siberian gulag.


Here is "The Priest Who Died Three Times."

Kinky Friedman and the Tea Party Movement

What a country! We can produce a Jewish country singer from Texas!

Unlike his Democratic brethren on the coasts, the Kinkster knows that Americans in the heartland are worried about big government that has nothing to do with the well-being of real people and everything to do with constituency politics.

"The coming melt-down in higher education (as seen by a marketer)"

The colleges, like so many other institutions, operate under a business plan that might be obsolete.

Russell Kirk's work

Scott McLemee writes how Wes McDonald's book on Russell Kirk and conservative thought raises some important issues:

'His approach to analyzing Kirk's ideas, says Mr. McDonald, "is dialectical. You only understand what something is by defining it in terms of its opposite." At this point, one might well expect him to begin contrasting Kirk with any of dozens of Marxist thinkers studied in the humanities. But Mr. McDonald seems less interested in that sort of ideological distinction than in the way Kirk's thought differs from the worldview of what he calls "movement conservatives" -- activists who pepper their speeches with references to Kirk, but ignore his work.

'"One of the main purposes of my book is to rescue Russell Kirk from the ghetto of movement conservatism," says Mr. McDonald. "My argument is that he's an intellectual worthy of consideration apart from current politics. Conservative thought is really suffering because it lacks substance and direction. Kirk has much greater significance than what these people are giving to him."

'Mr. McDonald is not alone in his frustration: Scholars who call themselves "Kirkians" or "traditionalist conservatives" tend to have severe reservations not only about the present Republican administration but also about some of the dominant strains in conservative policymaking, whether libertarian or neoconservative.'


Dr. Kirk himself was far more concerned about what young people were reading than he was about the present manifestations of conservative thought in politics. The true conservative is distinguished from others in his lack of awe and worship for political power.

Greece looks very bad for them and for us...

Megan McArdle is worried.

UPDATE: Reflecting on my cousin's comment below: If you knew that by working nine hours per day for ten years and paying roughly $5,000 more each year in taxes under the condition that state and local spending would freeze at current levels or decrease and that federal spending would decrease 10% per year for five consecutive years, you could keep your children out of bankruptcy, insolvency, servitude to creditors, conquest, anarchy, and slavery, would you do it?

Of course. But we are going to have to change the way governments on all levels conduct public business lest our hard work for our children be in vain.

It's not open season on Israel yet, at least in the USA...

But it is almost everywhere else.

Caroline Glick discusses how the Democrats in Congress are afraid to criticize the President and Secretary of State even though the country is far more pro-Israeli than the administration.

Ms. Glick's bio is more than interesting. She grew up in Chicago's Hyde Park, emigrated to Israel after college at Columbia, served as an officer in the IDF, and attended Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The military experience filled in a blank for me. She has the frankness of a military officer regarding the security of Israel. She never has her head in a cloud. There is an old saying, "If the Arabs drop their arms, there will be peace in Israel. If the Israelis drop their arms, there will be no more Israelis."

Which is more ethical: Killing a man in a foreign land using a drone, or detaining him at G-mo for months or years?

Michael Totten asks the question. The Obama administration claims to despise Bush administration's detention policies, but it has replaced it with a string of robotic assassinations.

Showing weakness towards Iran...

If anyone thinks Iran can be persuaded to stop its nuclear program with anything but the credible threat of force, think again.

Michael Totten does not hope for war, but being passive before a belligerant power is bad for everyone. We set ourselves up for violent reaction when our enemies push us too far.

"The Art of Obama Worship"

Michael J. Lewis in Commentary discusses how after a half-century of abstract art, artists are again making dramatic pieces which are for the purpose of popular elective politics. This is a nice essay on the tensions and occasional mergers of art and politics.

"Church of the Times" [The New York Times]

Kenneth Woodward in Commonweal makes the case that The New York Times is its own religion and church.

"10 Ways to Become a Famous Blogger"

Good advice, but my chances of becoming a famous blogger are next to nil.