When I hear the harpsichord in Vivaldi or Bach, if I picture anything, it would be rococo drawing rooms—George Washington asking Jane Austen for the pleasure of a dance. When I hear it in pop, perhaps thanks to Peanuts and the great Vince Guaraldi , I picture green lawns and white . . . . Continue Reading »
So you haven’t yet arranged the dinner music for tonight? Well, never fear, postmodern conservative is here. Nothing says romance more than the crickle-crackle of an old 78, preferably from the swing era. 1.) If Dreams Come True , Ella Fitzgerald w/ the Chick Webb Orchestra. The younger Ella, . . . . Continue Reading »
The Songbook was analyzing a set of songs about Loneliness and Individualism, such as Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence,” before it got side-tracked into laying out my theory of modernity’s sociological stages. It’s time to return to the first task, which brings me . . . . Continue Reading »
Ross Douthat’s Op-ed The Future of Gay Marriage discusses Dan Savage’s call for Open Marriage . Savage’s suggestion that we legitimate infidelity poses the following question for Sophisticated Americans: If the Judeo-Christian understanding of marriage as heterosexual is . . . . Continue Reading »
Freddie has written a post that forces me into the odd position of defending Sam Harris; the crux of which is the claim that once we accept the human mind as being a contingent accident of evolution, we necessarily must abandon any faith in the intellectual edifices constructed by such minds: For . . . . Continue Reading »
Via Julian , I see that Yglesias has spun a narrative : For the past 65-70 years—and especially for the past 30 years since the end of the civil rights argument—American politics has been dominated by controversy over the size and scope of the welfare state. Today, that argument is . . . . Continue Reading »
I want to sidestep the brief, silly article running in Esquire about the increasing number of “kaleidoscopically shifting arrangements” we honor with the name family, but I also want to use it to frame what I think ought to emerge as a new vein to be mined in the sometimes . . . . Continue Reading »
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” John 1:1,2. Following Edith Stein in her discussion of Essential and Eternal Being we see that all “meaningful” existents are enclosed by the “divine . . . . Continue Reading »
Peter’s review of Avatar is a must-read: Avatar isn’t much a movie: Instead, Cameron’s cooked up a derivative, overlong pastiche of anti-corporate clichés and quasi-mystical eco-nonsense. It’s not that the film’s politics make it bad, it’s that . . . . Continue Reading »
Always illuminating, Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. is a philosopher/priest who like Justin the Martyr might find wisdom in Eric Voegelin’s comment that “ . . . Christianity is not an alternative to philosophy, it is philosophy itself in its state of perfection; the history of the . . . . Continue Reading »
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