Attitude adjustment accomplished...

We went to the beach at Hilton Head. I went to a conference, but the price of the resort hotel for two or three days was enough so that we decided to rent a pet-friendly condo and stay all week. We took my father with us, napped in the afternoons, ate well, rode bicycles, and visited the beach most mornings at sunrise at low tide and every evening for the moonrise and the construction of sandcastles. One sandcastle, reinforced with large amounts of wet sand, survived high tide. I will soon be an officer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Here is my favorite beach song as sung by Linda Ronstadt and written by Roy Orbison. Cheers! More posts soon.

Blogging burn out

It happens about once or twice a year. Sometimes I have little confidence that I have anything to contribute to the blogosphere. I'll get it back.

Sharron Angle

A nice piece by Stephen Moore about the lady running against Harry Reid:

'Sharron Angle's first foray into activism was when her son was held back in kindergarten in 1983 and "the poor little guy was made to feel like a failure. He hated school." She wanted to home school him, but the school system and the courts said no. Her response was to open a one-room school with a Christian-based curriculum. It soon had 24 students.

'"I didn't realize how many other parents were angry with the school system," she recalls. She charged $125 a month to cover the cost of supplies but taught for free. (Mrs. Angle has a degree in education from the University of Nevada, Reno.)

'In 1985 she rallied hundreds of parents behind her successful effort to pass a bill through the Nevada legislature allowing parents to home school anywhere in the state. The result of her effort is that in Nevada home schooling has become a popular alternative to the public schools, and Mrs. Angle is referred to as the "home school heroine."'

Needed among us baby-boomers...

A few grown-ups:

'This is a nation—a world—badly in need of adult supervision. In the 50th anniversary commentary this week of Harper Lee's masterpiece, To Kill A Mockingbird, a book long derided as middlebrow by middlebrows, no one fully noted the centrality, the cosmic force, that propelled the book, and that is the idea of the father. Of the human longing to be safe and watched over by one stronger. And so we have the wise and grounded Atticus Finch, who understands the world and pursues justice anyway, and who can be relied upon. "He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning." That's the last sentence. Ms. Lee was some kind of genius to throw the ball that soft, and that hard.'


Thus, I must agree with the assessments of both Flannery O'Connor and Peggy Noonan.

What is Jeffersonianism?

Is it opportunity for betterment or egalitarian results? "Hamiltonian means for Jeffersonian ends" does not have the mandate claimed. Michael Barone has a nice column.

Bastille Day...

Causes me to link to Elena Maria Vidal, whose understanding of history remains unclouded by revolutionary sentiment substituting for thought.

The spoken word is an art...

And there were few masters greater than Bob Sheppard, who just died at 99.

More here from ESPN.

"What They Are Doing After Harvard"

Wendy Kopp might be doing more for public schools than anyone, largely by exposing the bankruptcy of teaching certification as a means of qualifying teachers. Teach for America is now one of the most popular programs among the high achievers at fine colleges; new graduates, after intensive training, get to teach in the country's worst schools, yet they get great results. Because Teach for America does not match the agenda of either party, it is not as vast a program as it should be. Naomi Schaefer Riley reports:

'Oddly, the other obstacle is finding districts that will take the teachers. Why wouldn't any superintendent trip over himself to hire young people with these qualifications?

'The answer lies in the opposition to TFA by teachers unions and education schools. Though Ms. Kopp attributes any hard feelings to "some misunderstanding about the way Teach for America works," it is clear what the union interests are. If TFA corps members can do a better job in two years than many longtime veterans, what do public-school systems need with job protections like tenure? And if they can do it without education school courses, why do we need those institutions?'

"Elana Kagan's Science Problem and Ours"

Ross Douthat discusses science and politics and how they mix:

'The culture of science has a bias toward action — if something can be done, scientists almost always want to do it, or at least want the right to do it, without any interference from the civil authorities. This bias is natural enough, and even salutary, so long as we recognize that it is a bias, and don’t allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that it’s some sort of scientific law or testable hypothesis.

'But such bullying is commonplace: Throughout the stem cell debate, for instance, supporters of embryo-destructive research have consistently invoked the mantle of capital-S Science to close off what debate on what are ultimately moral and political questions, better settled in a legislature than a laboratory. In such controversies — and there will be more and more of them, as our technological capabilities advance — the problem isn’t exactly that scientific findings are being “spun” by one side or another. It’s that the prerogatives of science are being invoked on questions that science has no special competence to answer.'

"The Town Hall Revolt, One Year Later"

In the 2006 and 2008 elections, it was obvious that the voters did not like the politicians in power. It has been just as obvious for more than a year that the voters still do not like the politicians in power. Peggy Noonan asks: Is either party capable of creating a popular governing coalition?

Thoughts on the World Cup...

I am listening to the finals on XM Radio. In just a little while, one country will be champion for the first time. The teams are playing their hearts out in a scoreless tie so far. I am rooting for the Dutch. (Yes, it is a rare thing for me to be rooting for any team in orange.)

I played soccer as a teenager. I love its chaotic nature. It is relentless. The fittest squad usually wins. My brother and I note the irony of the world's most popular sport being played largely without the benefit our handy reversible thumb. Soccer is the world's way of blowing off Darwin.

As this game goes into extra time, here is a link to past winners.

Only seven countries have won the previous eighteen tournaments. Being that I am firm believer in theories of sports victories such as Mike Royko's "ex-Cub factor" in choosing the loser of the World Series, here is my theory of how likely a team is to win the World Cup:

Nine winners were from countries that have harbored Nazi war criminals. Eight winners surrendered in World War II, either to the Axis or to the Allies. One winner accepted the surrender of the Germans in both world wars. (Don't hold your breath for any English-speaking country to win again.) Today, a nation that harbored Nazi war criminals is battling a nation that surrendered to the Germans. Paul the Octopus, who has selected all the winners so far, predicted victory for Spain.


UPDATE: Spain has scored.

UPDATE 2: Spain has won.

Prohibition and the Law of Unintended Consequences

George Will writes about the government's attempt to change habit, ethos, and behavior by the most comprehensive of legislation.

IVF and adoption...

Thoughts of Pentimento:

'It occurred to me recently that most Americans (and also most New Yorkers) in our position do IVF, and, indeed, IVF seems like a typically American-positivist response to an intractable problem. I'm quite sure, however, that even if I had not had a dramatic reconversion to the Catholic faith, IVF is not something I would have ever undertaken. It's not just the ethical problems that give me the creeps about it, but also the philosophy of positivism on which it's based -- the philosophy of everything-will-be-all-right-and-I-deserve-to-be-happy -- that I reject all the way down to my bones. IVF strikes me as a salient example of the American tendency to marshal all the resources at one's disposal to try to force a desired outcome, and, even if I weren't a Catholic revert, I would think (and in fact know from bitter experience) that to base one's actions on this shaky philosophy can only lead to bad ends.'



She links to good post on the sacrificial love of motherhood by Karen Edmisten.

Ève Lavallière

A beautiful post by Pentimento.

Harper Lee v. Flannery O'Connor

Allen Barra writes about the most assigned piece of American fiction.

David Horowitz on Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens is a conflicted soul, sure of his atheism but unable to accept the nihilism that often becomes atheism without some sort of secular utopianism.

David Horowitz, the ex-leftist now a pariah to the left, reviews Hitch 22:

'Although he has heroically abandoned his “antiwar” stance and “internationalist” faith, a part of Hitchens prefers to live in this fantasy and continue the dream. For this Hitchens, the engine of history is still steaming ahead: “The names of real heroes like [the socialists] Jean Jaures and Karl Liebknecht make the figures of Asquith and Churchill seem like pygmies.” And why would this be so? Because (in this fantasy vision) if an international socialist revolution had taken place in 1919, it would have precluded all the subsequent nightmares of the 20th century, including the ones that faux socialists and Marxists created: “The violence and disruption of a socialist transformation in those years would have been infinitely less than the insane sacrifice of culture to barbarism, and the Nazism and Stalinism that ensued from it.”'


Thus, Hitchens believes that the great failure of the millennium was from 1917 to 1940 when the socialists of Europe were defeated by various counter-revolutionaries. He is entitled to his opinion, but I will stick with Alexander Solzhenitsyn's. Solzhenitsyn went to the Gulag during the Second World War believing that communism was good but that Stalin had corrupted it. In the Gulag he found quite a number of similarly minded zeks. Over the course of time, however, the absurdity of proclaiming the righteousness of a secular and materialistic cause led by thugs who would lock up and exile their comrades for years in the name of revolution became apparent to almost all but never all the zeks. The die-hards rotted away in the Gulag never doubting that men without love or mercy were truly leading a revolution to transform the world into a secular utopia.

[Photos of Leon Trotsky and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.]

More about Ernie Harwell

In my surfing today, I found a jewel of a column by Mitch Albom about Ernie Harwell written last fall before Mr. Harwell died. It is called "Harwell A True Gentleman In the Booth and In Life."

An excerpt:

'Ernie Harwell is 91 years old and he has long since learned to make the best of things. He did it as a young broadcaster on away games when he stayed in the studio, read the ticker, then waited for the sound effect of a smacked bat. He did it for decades in the cramped bird's nest booth in old Tiger Stadium, where your spine surrendered to inhuman angles.

'He learned it from his father, who suffered an illness in his later years that cost him his eyesight. Radio was how his father followed baseball after that, and for every game in his 55 years of broadcasting, through the Dodgers, Giants, Orioles and Tigers, Ernie never forgot that, never forgot how he might be the eyes and ears for someone like his father, who was making the best of it.'


What a grace! To broadcast a baseball game knowing that you truly are the eyes of your listening. In this way, Ernie Harwell turned broadcasting from a job in entertainment to a corporal act of mercy.

Grateful that NASA is now committed to...

Muslim self esteem.

Church Music

I have my opinions on this subject, namely that after 2,000 years of Christendom, we should have better hymns selected for us than just those of the St. Louis Jesuits. Liturgical music is to Christians what training is to soldiers. We serve as well as we train. Nonetheless, I am a weepy Irishman and can be brought to tears at Mass by hymns which are deplored by my favorite bloggers.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker reflects on hymns as follows:

What makes a good hymn?

What should the hymns be about?

What music is good for congregational singing?

Should we have hymns at Mass at all?

How are secular and sacred music different?

The Anchoress links to Joe Carter's 10 Worst Hymns of All Time. I must agree with some of the selections. "All Time", however, is a bit much. We are fortunate that the Church forgets most musical mistakes within three generations. The Church, including her best parishes, can almost always do better, but God speaks, even sings, through leaky vessels.

[Portrait of Antonio Vivaldi above.]

"Is free will becoming extinct?"

Of course not, but there will never be a shortage of people who wish to abolish free will, first in respectable circles, and then by legislation.

Helen Smith has a nice post here.

Presuming you believe in Determinism, if you are randomly shot by a stray bullet from the gun, does that mean that gun control might have changed your eternal destiny? If so, it appears that today's favorite recipe for global improvements- comprehensive legislation- might be the best way to control the history of mankind.

If this appears absurd, it is because it is! Determinism is absurd because no one who does not know the future but presumes it is predetermined can afford not to live as if he had free will (perhaps with some assistance of omens, tea leaves, entrails, and horoscope).

G.K. Chesterton said:

'You cannot act for twenty-four hours without deciding either to hold people responsible or not to hold them responsible. Theology is a product far more practical than chemistry.

'Some Determinists fancy that Christianity invented a dogma like free will for fun -a mere contradiction. This is absurd. You have the contradiction whatever you are. Determinists tell me, with a degree of truth, that Determinism makes no difference to daily life. That means - that although the Determinist knows men have no free will, yet he goes on treating them as if they had.

'The difference then is very simple. The Christian puts the contradiction into his philosophy. The Determinist puts it into his daily habits. The Christian states as an avowed mystery what the Determinist calls nonsense. The Determinist has the same nonsense for breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper every day of his life.'


As the old joke goes, What did the Calvinist say when he fell down the stairs and broke his leg? I'm glad that's over!

Not so flattering look at the "New Age" movement

Here.

Spirituality without doctrine- It is certainly attractive to have all the benefits of religion yet get to make up your morality according to whatever you feel.

Al Gore's troubles

I have posted on him before. He is a classic example of a soul twisted by a life of politics.

Happy Fourth of July!

Peggy Noonan's latest column is linked below, but first, here are her two prior columns: "The Snakebit President" and "McChrystal Forces Us to Focus."

Her topic for the Fourth of July is on a phrase that was edited out of the Declaration of Independence after a brutal day of cutting: "We might have been a free and great people together." Here is a little excerpt:

'"To write is to think, and to write well is to think well," David McCullough once said in conversation. Jefferson was thinking of the abrupt end of old ties, of self-defining ties, and, I suspect, that the pain of this had to be acknowledged. It is one thing to declare the case for freedom, and to make a fiery denunciation of abusive, autocratic and high-handed governance. But it is another thing, and an equally important one, to acknowledge the human implications of the break. These were our friends, our old relations; we were leaving them, ending the particular facts of our long relationship forever. We would feel it. Seventeen seventy-six was the beginning of a dream. But it was the end of one too. "We might have been a free and great people together."'

To acknowledge that no great change, even for the good, comes without some loss, is to think like a conservative. Thomas Jefferson, despite his quasi-egalitarian and sometimes levelling spirit, was, in his Virginia bones, a conservative. Our revolution, rather than to reinvent the human race, was an attempt to restore the English constitution from the encroachments of royal prerogative and consolidated government upon liberty.

From our vision of liberty, later reunited with the British tradition and practice of liberty, much good came about for the world, in particular, the defense of liberty. (And the "defence" of liberty too!) We Americans spend a lot of time beating ourselves up, but this weekend, on our country's 234th birthday, let us celebrate liberty. Cheers!

Martin Ginsburg, Requiescat in pace.

His wife seldom authors a Supreme Court opinion I agree with, but by all accounts, Marty Ginsburg was a bright light in every room. Here is an obituary which includes his faculty bio at Georgetown Law School. In it, he admited he was a New Yorker who moved "to Washington in 1980 when his wife got a good job here." (That was a seat on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.)

Jamie Moyer is about my age and still pitches in the major leagues.

That in itself is worth celebrating, but he just set a new record. He has given up 506 home runs! That 506 dingers, homers, long balls, taters, or whatever you want to call them.

Let's put this in perspective: There are about 25 players who have hit 500 homers, but there are only two pitchers to give up 500 homers. That means they were so good for so long that managers kept giving them the ball year after year even though they served up big blasts. You can only be great if you risk it all.

Rick Reilly has this great story.

Agnostics...

There might not be any atheists in foxholes, but there are agnostics everywhere. It is a remarkable believer in the modern world who does not fight doubt.

Here is an article in Slate about agnosticism. What it says about religious belief is predictable, but the question it asks atheists could derail a train:

'Faced with the fundamental question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" atheists have faith that science will tell us eventually. Most seem never to consider that it may well be a philosophic, logical impossibility for something to create itself from nothing. But the question presents a fundamental mystery that has bedeviled (so to speak) philosophers and theologians from Aristotle to Aquinas. Recently scientists have tried to answer it with theories of "multiverses" and "vacuums filled with quantum potentialities," none of which strikes me as persuasive....

'Let me make clear that I accept most of the New Atheist's criticism of religious bad behavior over the centuries, and of theology itself. I just don't accept turning science into a new religion until it can show it has all the answers, which it hasn't, and probably never will.

'Atheists have no evidence—and certainly no proof!—that science will ever solve the question of why there is something rather than nothing.'

Rediscovering Georgie Anne Geyer

I liked her writing for years until she turned into a one-note blast against George W. Bush for most of this decade. Now that her pariah president is retired, she is back to being her level-headed self.

Here she writes on immigration:

'From one end of the country to the other, individuals, states and cities are coming forward to support, and in some cases repeat, Arizona's law. According to polls, Sixty percent of Americans approve the law, as well as 70 percent of Arizonans.

'The Democrats in the Senate illustrate the passion of this policy question by the fact that they have now come up with a legislative "framework" that would expand the Border Patrol considerably, triple fines against U.S. employers that hire illegals, and even require all American workers to get new Social Security cards linked to fingerprints for work eligibility. This Democratic "answer" compares very closely to Republican John McCain's.'

Here are recent pieces on
Afghanistan, South Africa, and Turkey.

I don't always agree with her, but she is refreshing in that she can turn the conventional wisdom on its head in order to make a good point.