All posts by bradbirzer

By day, I'm a father of seven and husband of one. By night, I'm an author, a biographer, and a prog rocker. Interests: Rush, progressive rock, cultural criticisms, the Rocky Mountains, individual liberty, history, hiking, and science fiction.

Faith, Family, and the Future of Europe ~ The Imaginative Conservative

“Hungarians are family-oriented,” she says, “and they love their families, their culture and their traditions. We’ve been given this direction by the Hungarian people. We want to strengthen families, women and young people. We want to provide security, and we want to protect our Christian culture.”

In the light of such heart-kindling wisdom from the peoples and governments of Poland and Hungary, rooted in faith and family and the future they offer, we are seeing the sun rising in Europe’s East, even as we see it setting in its decadent West.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/05/faith-family-europe-joseph-pearce.html

Seeking the Humane: Big Big Train’s “Grand Tour” ~ (Birzer’s Second Review)

If all of this sounds too intelligent and too good to be a part of popular culture, it’s because it is! No, no, no. This is not pop. This is art. True, good, real, and beautiful. Imagine, for a moment, how many other manifestations of secular culture take seriously a Christian saint, let alone analyze the very stones used in the art of Byzantium? Truly, what this band offers us is a precious gem. And, while the members of the band (at least as far as I know) are not religious, they certainly take the religion of the past quite seriously. Not just Theodora, but the band has also written gorgeously on its previous releases about St. Edith, the granddaughter of King Alfred, the first great English king, the first to codify Anglo-Saxon common law, and the blessed recipient of Marian visions.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/05/big-big-train-grand-tour-bradley-birzer.html

What Hath the train Wrought, Part II

Part II of our symposium. A second indepth look at the philosophy and emotions behind Big Big Train’s latest album, GRAND TOUR.

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Beginning with genteel blushings and awed whispers, David Longdon’s vocals—so plaintive and so earnest and so full of wonder—begin Grand Tour by sharing hard-earned wisdom.

After all, this story begins far from home, and the craft in question flies along shadowed paths beyond all human sight, but never beyond human imagination. By whatever measure of success or failure, the craft made the attempt. And, by necessity, so did those who launched it in the first place.

Whatever the fate of that craft, it was made by human hands, and those hands should be celebrated. And, thus we should celebrate not just the act of creation but the very life that gave the very intelligence to act.

We are, after all, ALIVE!

And thus begins Big Big Train’s latest album, Grand Tour, a masterpiece even among masterpieces. Ostensibly, this hook—which catches onto the eighteenth-century ideal of English travel throughout the European continent and, especially, into and around the Mediterranean and Aegean—ties the latest album together. By employing such a story, the band can travel not only across space but also back through time. The album explores ideas and as well as biographies.

This is, simply put, an album for the intelligent and meaningful person.

With track three, “The Florentine,” the band looks at the very core of the Italian Renaissance and one of its four greatest figures, Leonardo.

On track four, “Roman Stone,” the band digs deep back into western civilization, finding the very stones that created the Roman Republic and the various Mediterranean powers of the ancient world. There is both regret at the loss and admiration at the gain. See what we once were, the band claims. See what we could’ve been, the band asks. After all, things that have broken have often been made whole again. Sometimes even with the very material that had fallen into ruin becomes the cornerstone.

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What Hath the Train Wrought, Part I

Given that this site’s patron is also the patron saint of music, it seems meet and just to review our favorite music. Thus, I give you the awesome Tad Wert’s first entry into the symposium, “What Hath the Train Wrought,” a deep look at Big Big Train’s GRAND TOUR.–Brad, editor

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“GRAND TOUR” by Tad Wert

There are and can exist but two ways of investigating and discovering truth. The one hurries on rapidly from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from them, as principles and their supposed indisputable truth, derives and discovers the intermediate axioms. This is the way now in use. The other constructs its axioms from the senses and particulars, by ascending continually and gradually, till it finally arrives at the most general axioms, which is the true but unattempted way. 
–Francis Bacon, Novum Organum

Never let it be said that Big Big Train doesn’t think big. Their latest opus, Grand Tour, is a massive undertaking, taking the listener on a voyage from the cliffs of Dover to Italy, Constantinople, and out to interstellar space. Along the way, we pay our respects to Leonardo da Vinci, Saints Theodora and Justinian, exiled Prospero and Ariel, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Oh, and we mustn’t forget to say hello to Francis Bacon, the first “modern” thinker.

If this project were attempted by any other artist, they would be ridiculed for their pretentiousness. To BBT’s credit, they have done their research, and every song on this amazing album is filled with respect, appreciation, and love for their subjects. In the 18th and 19th centuries, every well-educated European took a “Grand Tour”, which included visits to famous cultural and religious sites, such as Rome, Florence, Paris, etc. Thanks to BBT, we can embark upon our own grand tour via their artistry.

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An Ode to Progressive Rock | The American Conservative

Its most famous member is Dave Gregory, formerly the lead guitarist for XTC. Like every member of the band, Gregory is an extraordinary musician pursuing a high art. He is also, I’m happy to note, a true gentleman and, like everyone in the band, a perfectionist. From the beginning of its existence, BBT has honed its complex song structures, riveting melodies, and gorgeous historical, poetic, and mythic lyrics. Almost all of the band’s songs celebrate excellence, innovation, and struggle. Typical themes include World War I and II ace fighters, beekeepers, medieval saints, architects, and survivors of trauma. Lyrically, the band is levels above almost anything being written in popular culture today, and, in the rock-pop world, certainly well beyond Elvis, Madonna, and Lady Gaga.
— Read on www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/an-ode-to-progressive-rock/

Leviathan, Inc.: Robert Nisbet & the Modern Nation-State ~ The Imaginative Conservative

By the end of his formal academic career, in the late 1970s, Nisbet considered this chance encounter with The Servile State in 1936 to be one of the most significant turning points in his professional life. Indeed, he counted The Servile State one of the five most important books he had read in his life, ranking it alongside Tocqueville’s Democracy in America; James Fitzjames Stephen’s Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; Frank Teggarts’s Processes of History; and Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. “Suffice it here to say that never again, after reading Belloc’s work, did I imagine that there could be genuine individual freedom apart from individual ownership of property.”[3] Equally important, Nisbet noted, it forced him to realize that the liberals of the twentieth-century had profoundly corrupted the vision of their nineteenth-century ancestors. Additionally, at least in the mind of Nisbet, The Servile State, along with Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Thomas More’s Utopia, Smith’s Wealth of Nations, William Graham Sumner’s The Forgotten Man, and Albert Jay Nock’s Our Enemy The State as one of the most important anti-government books of the modern West.[4]
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/05/leviathan-inc-robert-nisbet-modern-nation-state-bradley-birzer.html

America’s Urban Nightmare: Gotham City ~ The Imaginative Conservative

To create a unique atmosphere for his Gotham City, Timm’s team drew all of Gotham on black paper. Traditionally, animators use white, allowing for light to flourish somewhat naturally. That Mr. Timm and company tried, for the first time, black paper was revolutionary in terms of technology and art, but also quite successful. Even the cleanest corners of Gotham possess a brooding darkness, perfect for the entrance of a Dark Knight.“There was an architectural visionary named Hugh Ferris, who did these elaborate, futuristic cityscape architectural renderings,” Mr. Timm explains. “They were just gorgeous—these massive deco buildings rendered very moodily. That was one of our prime influences on the look of Batman: The Animated Series.“[9] One of the most innovative things the Batman: The Animated Series did, in its first feature animated movie, The Mask of the Phantasm, was an opening, computer generated at the very beginning of the use of CGI in any film, of a camera slowly making its way in reverse through the Gotham skyline as the magisterial music of the tragically unsung but brilliant composer Shirley Walker plays.[10] Walker’s soundtrack employs music from the late classical to early romantic period while incorporating faux medieval chant. As bizarre as this combination sounds, it works beautifully, especially as the camera crosses the Gotham City skyline.[11] Nothing in the comics or the movies made, before or after, has done so much to demonstrate the sheer and inhumane scope and scale of Gotham.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/05/americas-urban-nightmare-gotham-city-bradley-birzer.html

The Dynamic Duo: The Controversy Over Batman’s Creators ~ The Imaginative Conservative

While there is no excuse for Kane having lied in his 1965 open letter or for having fudged the truth in his 1989 autobiography, there is some defense of his using his name exclusively when dealing with Batman in publications. Sadly, such a muddled state of recognizing who created who and what was a central feature of the earliest comic superheroes. In a world of pseudonyms, artistic entrepreneurship, and personal studios, one person might well serve as the public name for three or four others. And, one person might even write under a variety of names, thus keeping interest in his work intense rather than overwhelming. Writers trying to make a career in New York City were legion because of the intense competition in the pulps as well as in the slicks (magazines), while good artists were relatively rare. New York, of course, housed innumerable fine artists and an equally uncountable number of commercial artists, but comics demanded artists who not only understood the limits and physics of the human (and extra-human) form, but who could produce a huge quantity of art with relatively acceptable and consistent quality. The same was even more true of editors, who more often than not served as vital figures in the creation and maintenance of publications. During the 1930s, strong editors made, thwarted, and broke writing careers. When Superman appeared, pulp editors were in a strong position, writers in a weak one, and artists in a new and precarious one.[23] While in a relatively good position to capitalize on the new super-hero comics market, pulp publishers, editors, and writers still had to create and then navigate the new market, one that demanded consistency.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/04/dynamic-duo-controversy-over-batmans-creators-bradley-birzer.html

Father Aidan Nichols Signs Open Letter Charging Pope Francis With Heresy

The present Open letter to the bishops of the Catholic Church goes a stage further in claiming that Pope Francis is guilty of the crime of heresy. This crime is committed when a Catholic knowingly and persistently denies something which he knows that the Church teaches to be revealed by God. Taken together, the words and actions of Pope Francis amount to a comprehensive rejection of Catholic teaching on marriage and sexual activity, on the moral law, and on grace and the forgiveness of sins. 
— Read on www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/father-aidan-nichols-signs-open-letter-charging-pope-francis-with-heresy

Not a Democracy ~ The Imaginative Conservative

How often has one read or watched the news, only to be told that America, as the leading democratic power, must do this or that because it is in the interest of all free peoples to promote democracy? Democracy has become so overused as to become a synonym for all that is good in the world, especially identified as rainbow-headed unicorns with the wings of a Pegasus, flying unhesitatingly from imagined world to imagined world, the latest one progressing ever more and more toward all that is holy. Democracy, it seems, is freedom, goodness, truth, dignity, and beauty.

This is the absurdity that now surrounds us. Honestly, the unicorns would be preferable. One only has to watch the tumultuous and tenebrous storms of emotion that brew and blow on Twitter to see how well the democratic impulse tends toward goodness.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/04/not-democracy-bradley-birzer.html