I Am Not Hamlet

Phillip Blond is talking about Britain, but his point could be taken here in America. In essence, the left needs a conservative account of society in order to create the vibrant civic space through which its goals can be most ably achieved.  At the same time, true conservatism needs to recognise crushing economic inequality and its harmful effects on precisely those institutions which conservatives instinctively cherish.  This requires dedication to equity and fairness, to distributed wealth and asset ownership, as much as to inherited culture and ethical traditions.  Social harmony does not flow from centrally enforced unity, and social justice does not spring unaided from libertarian indifference.  If the health of society is the common goal, then society itself must be valued higher than both state and market. --From Red Tory 

"What kind of king is Jesus?"                                              --Ken Meyers, Mars Hill Audio Journal I find this to be very relevant on Memorial Day.  What sort of model do we have for creation, for politics, relationships, whatever?  How far have we fallen short?  Discuss.

      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 m...

Robert Penn Warren on Milton: His long probings into the theme, the arduous discipline of his studies, his observations of men and affairs, his service to a revolutionary state, were undertaken not for "literary" purposes, not to "gather material" or to achieve "a point of view," but to fulfill what he thought to be his duty to God, to society, and to himself, himself not as a poet, but as a man.  He conceived of himself--so one eminent scholar contends--as a "normal" person, as a person "representative," in the best sense, of society, not as an artist set off against society.  Being an artist was but one way of serving God.                                    from "Literature as a Symptom" in Who Owns America?

I'm reading Gary Holthaus' (mostly) excellent From the Farm to the Table: What All Americans Need to Know About Agriculture and find myself burning with anger at stuff I already kinda sorta knew.  "Studies show that each year of rising agricultural exports has shown a corresponding net decline in U.S and Canadian farm prosperity" and "The traders and the corporations make more from it [farming] than the farmer does" (128-29). That, of course, is only the beginning, he goes in to treatment of migrant workers, GMOs, and the joke that is NAFTA, WTO, and other puppet master organizations.  "Of all the grain that goes down the Mississippi on barges from the Midwest, only a tiny fraction goes to least developed countries, where hunger is the greatest...These grains are shipped to those who can best afford them, not to those most in need" (158). "What can a layperson make of all this?  At least this: as farmers or consumers, we have to take with ...

I found this quote on the web today-- Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio challenges Christians to consider the following thought experiment: “What would happen if theologically conservative Christians were noted for their commitment to improving arts education in public schools more than for their opposition to the teaching of evolution? Is it possible that a commitment to a well-trained imagination is a necessary asset in properly apprehending the kind of thing Creation is?” Why that's down-right un-Jesusy isn't it? Look, I have trouble with the story of macro-evolution too, especially the materialism it engenders, but I'd say we have a larger crisis of a poverty of the imagination, both in the larger culture and in the Church. What does it mean to have a baptized imagination anyway? Why do so many (myself included) find themselves in battles that have little meaning (I don't mean to imply that the battle for creation metanarratives is trivial, it isn't) and can't fi...