When I read Vital Remnants, an entirely new world opened up to me. And, not merely because I had been so immersed in one aspect of the Founding, but because Vital Remnants made me fully aware just how profoundly deep the Founders were, in their minds and in their souls. Reading “When in the Course of Human Events” strikes any patriot at the heart. But, when one realizes—as is so well expressed in Vital Remnants—that the Founders themselves knew the very course of human events, something seismic in the soul shifts.
Interestingly enough, Dr. Gregg, as editor, follows the mode of the Founders, as Founders. Just as the Founders saw themselves as new Romans, behaving classically, so Dr. Gregg proposed seeing the Founding as the Founders saw it, not as we wish them to have seen it. In this, Dr. Gregg went directly against the reigning historiography of the 1990s and its fetishist obsession with social justice, class, and gender, and instead embraced the Whig and republican philosophy of history as found in Russell Kirk’s John Randolph of Roanoke, Caroline Robbins’s The Commonwealth Men, Douglas Adair’s Fame and the Founding Fathers, and Trevor Colbourn’s Lamp of Experience. Many books from the 1990s have failed to age well, but Vital Remnants has.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/07/gary-gregg-vital-remnants-bradley-birzer.html
All posts by bradbirzer
Friendship Among the Inklings ~ The Imaginative Conservative
To be sure, though, the greater question one should ask is not at what answers did the group arrive, but, rather, what questions did they ask? It was their very questions—and the trust that comes with asking questions—that defined them. As such, they asked about the limits of heroism, the nature of beauty, the connection of the pagan to the Christian, the relationship of holiness and sanctity, the interplay of technology and magic, and the connectedness of flesh and soul. They discussed mythos (story) and logos (idea), and they shared with one another their most intimate thoughts and questions.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/07/friendship-among-inklings-bradley-birzer.html
Justin Amash: Our politics is in a partisan death spiral. That’s why I’m leaving the GOP. – The Washington Post
But we owe it to future generations to stand up for our constitutional republic so that Americans may continue to live free for centuries to come. Preserving liberty means telling the Republican Party and the Democratic Party that we’ll no longer let them play their partisan game at our expense.
Today, I am declaring my independence and leaving the Republican Party. No matter your circumstance, I’m asking you to join me in rejecting the partisan loyalties and rhetoric that divide and dehumanize us. I’m asking you to believe that we can do better than this two-party system — and to work toward it. If we continue to take America for granted, we will lose it.
— Read on www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/justin-amash-our-politics-is-in-a-partisan-death-spiral-thats-why-im-leaving-the-gop/2019/07/04/afbe0480-9e3d-11e9-b27f-ed2942f73d70_story.html
Let’s party like it’s 1399: The story behind Jethro Tull’s Songs From The Wood | Louder
“That book was a very useful gift,” Anderson says now. “But it wasn’t the only one that I read back then on the general topic of Britain’s history of folklore. The countryside too provided me with some influence. Our countryside is quite rich in different traditions and cultures, and elements of fantasy and fable. Songs From The Wood also drew on my background of listening to other kinds of music than rock. I’ve never really been a fan of rock music. I was trying to stick to musical references that arose when classical composers fooled around with the vulgar folk music forms. Beethoven, for one, knew a good folk tune when he heard it.”
— Read on www.loudersound.com/features/lets-party-like-its-1399-the-story-behind-jethro-tulls-songs-from-the-wood
The Roots of Political Correctness ~ The Imaginative Conservative
In graduate school—at Indiana University-Bloomington—I first encountered the dreadfully dull and dreary political correctness of the New Left. Prior to IU, I had encountered a number of left-wing academics, but they had all been interesting, on fire, and ready to listen to a variety of viewpoints. Indeed, they still believed in free exchange and the free and open debate of ideas. At Indiana, though, I found something quite different. There, certain opinions—sometimes explicitly stated and sometimes implicitly—were becoming orthodox. Those students who defended them did so with sincerity but not verve. This became especially obvious when the politically-correct leftist debated an anarchist or a black power supremacist. Usually, the more radical tore apart the PC, recognizing intellectual weakness for what it was. The politically-correct of IU had become so comfortable in their own opinions that they failed to develop them with any serious standards. I found them boring, frankly, but pervasive. Few things can be duller than a number of similarly-minded folks sitting around a table for two-and-a-half hours to agree and disagree upon all of the same things… but to do so with what could only be considered the Scandinavian white sauce of the culinary world!
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/06/roots-of-political-correctness-bradley-birzer.html
Microsoft’s Ebook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM | WIRED
Microsoft made the announcement in April that it would shutter the Microsoft Store’s books section for good. The company had made its foray into ebooks in 2017, as part of a Windows 10 Creators Update that sought to round out the software available to its Surface line. Relegated to Microsoft’s Edge browser, the digital bookstore never took off. As of April 2, it halted all ebook sales. And starting as soon as this week, it’s going to remove all purchased books from the libraries of those who bought them.
Other companies have pulled a similar trick in smaller doses. Amazon, overcome by a fit of irony in 2009, memorably vanished copies of George Orwell’s 1984 from Kindles. The year before that, Walmart shut down its own ill-fated MP3 store, at first suggesting burn their purchases onto CDs to salvage them before offering a download solution. But this is not a tactical strike. There is no backup plan. This is The Langoliers. And because of digital rights management—the mechanism by which platforms retain control over the digital goods they sell—you have no recourse. Microsoft will refund customers in full for what they paid, plus an extra $25 if they made annotations or mark-ups. But that provides only the coldest comfort.
— Read on www.wired.com/story/microsoft-ebook-apocalypse-drm/
Apple iPad mini 2019 review: no competition – The Verge
People really love the iPad mini, so Apple’s updated it with Pencil support and a fast new processor. It’s great.
— Read on www.theverge.com/2019/3/21/18274477/ipad-mini-2019-review-apple-ios-pencil-lightning-specs-price-tablet
N.B. Patel is excellent. Voice and cadence. Enjoy.
Cicero’s Republic: The Duty to Make Whole That Which Is Broken ~ The Imaginative Conservative
Whatever his exact reasons for adopting a more Stoical approach to life, Cicero unwittingly (but perhaps gracefully?) prepared Rome for Christianity in ways that other pagans and paganisms could never have allowed or done. That generation of Stoics, including Virgil and Seneca, expected, amazingly enough, the human incarnation of the God of gods. It is little wonder, then, that so many of the early Church fathers—such as Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose—considered Cicero to be a pagan Christian, more related to Christ and his teachings than not. Most certainly, his martyrdom on December 7, 43 BC, did not hurt his cause among Christians, either.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/06/cicero-republic-on-duties-bradley-birzer.html
Critical Moments: Tolkien’s Mythology, 1914-1937
As some of you might now, I’m in the middle of completing a book manuscript on the history of the Inklings for ISI Books. Here’s my partial list of critical moments in the creation of Tolkien’s larger mythology, from its earliest hints to the publication of The Hobbit.
“Bidding of the Minstrel” (poem) Winter 1914[1]
“Tinfang Warble” (Poem) 1914[2]
On Francis Thompson (paper) 1914[3]
“Earendil” (poem) September 1914[4]
“Kalevala; or Land of Heroes” (paper) November 22, 1914[5]
“The Story of Kullervo,” (story) late 1914
“Qenya Lexicon” (dictionary) 1915[6]
On the Kalevala (paper) February 1915[7]
“Man in the Moon” (poem) March 1915[8]
“Sea Chant of an Elder Day” (poem) March 1915[9]
“Cottage of Lost Play” (Poem) April 27-28, 1915[10]
“Shores of Faery” (poem) July 1915[11]
“The Happy Mariners” (poem) July 1915[12]
“A Song of Aryador” (poem) September 12, 1915
“Kortirion Among the Trees” (Poem) November 21-28, 1915[13]
“Over Old Hills and Far Away” (Poem) December 1915-February 1916[14]
“Habbanan Beneath the Stars” (Poem) December 1915 or June 1916[15]
Prelude, Inward, Sorrowful (poems) March 16-18, 1916[16]
“The Fall of Gondolin” (story) 1916-1917[17]
“Tale of Tinuviel” (story) 1917[18]
“Cottage of Lost Play” (story) February 12, 1917[19]
The Music of the Ainur (story) Between November 1918 and Spring 1920[20]
“Turin Turambar & the Dragon” (story) 1919[21]
“The Fall of Gondolin” (story aloud) Spring 1920[22]
“Lay of the Children of H” (poem) 1920-1925[23]
“The City of the Gods” (poem) 1923[24]
Question if Beren a man or elf 1925-1926[25]
“Lay of Leithian (poem) 1925-September 1931[26]
“The Silmarillion” (story) 1926[27]
“Silmarillion/Sketch” (story) 1926[28]
“Intro to Elder Edda” (paper) November 17, 1926[29]
“Mythopoeia” (poem) September 1931-November 1935[30]
The Hobbit (novel) Late 1928-1936[31]
“The Quenta” (story) 1930[32]
“Earliest Annals of Valinor” 1930[33]
“Annals of Beleriand” 1930[34]
Second version of Silmarillion 1930-1937[35]
“New Lay of Volunga” (poem) early 1930s[36]
“New Lay of Gudrún” (poem) early 1930s[37]
“A Secret Vice” (paper) 1931[38]
“Fall of Arthur” (poem) 1931-1934[39]
“Beowulf: Monsters and Critics” (paper) November 25, 1936[40]
“The Lost Road” (story) 1936-37[41]
“The Fall of Númenor” (story) 1936-37[42]
Draft of Silmarillion to Allen/Unwin November 1937[43]
“On Fairy Stories” (paper) March 8, 1939[44]
Sources
[1] CJRT, HOME 2, 269.
[2] CJRT, HOME 1, 107.
[3]Garth, Tolkien at Exeter, 30.
[4] CJRT, HOME 2, 267; Garth has it on November 27, 1914; see Garth, Tolkien at Exeter, 41.
[5] Flieger, ed., The Story of Kullervo, 63, 91.
[6] Parma Eldalamberon 12 (1998).
[7] Garth, Tolkien at Exeter, 42.
[8] CJRT, HOME 1, 202.
[9] Garth, Tolkien at Exeter, 42.
[10] CJRT, HOME 1, 27.
[11] CJRT, HOME 2, 271.
[12] CJRT, HOME 2, 273.
[13] CJRT, HOME 1, 25.
[14] CJRT, HOME 1, 108.
[15] CJRT, HOME 1, 91.
[16] CJRT, HOME 2, 295.
[17] CJRT, HOME 2, 146; and CJRT, The Children of Húrin, 9.
[18] CJRT, HOME 2, 3.
[19] Edith writes out story for JRRT, HOME 1, 13.
[20] CJRT, HOME 1, 45
[21] CJRT, The Children of Húrin, 9.
[22] To the Exeter College Essay Club, in CJRT, HOME 2, 199.
[23] CJRT, HOME 3, 1.
[24] CJRT, HOME 1, 136
[25] CJRT, HOME 2, 52.
[26] CJRT, HOME 3, 1.
[27] CJRT, HOME 2, 300.
[28] CJRT, HOME 4, 11.
[29] CJRT, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, 16.
[30] CJRT, Tree and Leaf, 7.
[31] “The Hobbit,” in Scull and Hammond, JRRT Companion and Guide, Reader’s Guide 1, 509-522.
[32] CJRT, HOME 4, 76.
[33] CJRT, HOME 4, 1.
[34] CJRT, HOME 4, 1.
[35] CJRT, HOME 5, 107.
[36] CJRT, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, 5.
[37] CJRT, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, 5.
[38] Given for Johnson Society, Pembroke College. See Fimi and Higgins, eds, A Secret Vice, xii.
[39] CJRT, Fall of Arthur, 10-11.
[40] CJRT, The Monsters and the Critics, 1; and Drout, ed., Beowulf and the Critics.
[41] CJRT, HOME 5, 8-9.
[42] CJRT, HOME 5, 7-9.
[43] CJRT, HOME 5, 107
[44] CJRT, The Monsters and the Critics, 3.
ICv2: Brands Live. Brands Die.
Daily coverage of the pop culture products industry, including toys (action figures, models and statues), anime (anime, manga, and Japanese imports), games (collectible card and roleplaying games or ccgs and rpgs), comics (comics and graphic novels), and movie and TV (licensed) merchandise. We feature business news, and in-depth analysis for retailers, publishers, manufacturers, distributors. Trade properties we cover include Star Wars, Star Trek, X-Men, Gundam Wing, Dragonball Z, Pokemon, Akira, Lone Wolf and Cub, Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, Mage Knight, Superman, Spider-man, JLA, Batman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, J.R.R. Tolkien, Sailor Moon, Sandman, Harry Potter. Genres we cover include fantasy, science fiction, horror.
— Read on icv2.com/articles/columns/view/43504/brands-live-brands-die
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