Prophet for President?

While listening to some commentary on the radio today, I couldn't help but agree with the host. Essentially, America doesn't want a revivalist preacher to point out sin. You can't knock American exceptionalism and expect to be elected. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah wouldn't campaign for long.
I have to say that I heard mention of good and evil in the Republican speeches in the last couple of days, but no tragic sense of life at all. To me, that is the best legacy of the ancient Greeks--the sense that life is hard and quite often unjust. We recognize the hardness of life, but Americans seem to want to ignore or use technology or laws to overcome the capricious misfortune that characterizes life. This is true of the Democrats too. Blind faith in technology, American "Can-Do"-it-ness, and optimism are benchmarks for both parties.
We need, in my opinion, an American Euripides who can run a country. Even among the political figures I like the most, no one even comes close.

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Worth Quoting

There are but three social arrangements which can replace Capitalism: Slavery, Socialism, and Property. --Hilaire Belloc The Servile State

Good reads of 2009

I haven't made a list like this in a while, and I believe I discussed most of these on the blog as I finished them, but I thought I'd make a handy short-hand list for you and me. These are only in the order I read them and do not indicate any preference. The Open Door * Frederica Mathewes-Green The Children of Hurin * J.R.R. Tolkien The Omnivore's Dilemma * Michael Pollan Agrarianism and the Good Society: Land, Culture, Conflict, and Hope * Eric T. Freyfogle Wonderful Fool * Shusaku Endo Up the Rouge: Paddling Detroit's Hidden River * Joel Thurtell and Patricia Beck Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation * Rodney Clapp (I started the following in December, but I haven't finished them--so far they are excellent: Love and Hate in Jamestown * David A. Price and The Picture of Dorian Gray * Oscar Wilde) Try one of these--let me know.

Independent Women?

During breakfast today I was reading an excerpt from a play in The New York Times Magazine (I know, I was a day behind and read Saturday's edition yesterday) entitled Rust . The play, written by a professor at Grand Valley State University, here in Michigan, is a nonfiction drama about the closing of a GM plant in Wyoming, MI. The play itself sounds interesting and I enjoyed the excerpt, but what caught my eye was something a character said. The character is "Academic" and plays a historian and guide to the playwright, also a character. He is explaining the rise of the automobile factories and the effect of the car on American culture. He says, "Women became independent, they go from producers of food and clothing to consumers of food and clothing." This was meant as an earnest, praiseworthy point. I would counter with "How far we've fallen." To say that a woman (or a man) is independent because she has moved from producer to cons

I Am Not Hamlet

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