World War II—especially the European theatre—intrigued Robert A. Nisbet (1913-1996) throughout his life. A staff sergeant in the Pacific Theatre during the Second World War, 1943-1945, he desired to understand the Cold War and how it had come about. After writing an article for a conservative academic journal, Modern Age, in 1986, on the friendship of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin, he decided to write a book exploring the topic. The result, Roosevelt and Stalin: The Failed Courtship, offered a penetrating examination of a dark period in world history. For Nisbet, America went from isolationist to accommodationist almost entirely because of Roosevelt’s wrong-headedness and misunderstanding. Though he never accuses Roosevelt of homosexual feelings for Stalin, he does accuse him of treating the Soviet dictator as a lover and himself, at times, as the spurned lover. Certainly, from the beginning of their friendship, Roosevelt could not see Stalin as anything other than an ally, an anti-imperialist and proto-democrat.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2021/01/roosevelt-folly-robert-nisbet-second-world-war-bradley-birzer.html
Category Archives: Philosophy
Nietzsche: A Primer
I suppose we all have guilty pleasures.
One of mine (one of several, actually) is reading the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. I can pretty much sit down, day or night, with any one of his works and be rather—at least intellectually, if not spiritually—a happy man.
Yes, I very much know he was somewhat crazy, descending into a greater and greater madness until his death, so symbolically in the last year of the nineteenth century, 1900. I also know how much he loathed republicanism, liberalism, Stoicism, and Christianity (well, really just Catholicism) and things that matter most to me. Still. . . .
In many ways, though, he was the greatest of all nineteenth-century men. Think about his competition for even a moment or two. Of the five most influential thinkers of the western world in the nineteenth century—Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Sigmund Freud, and Nietzsche—he was the most interesting, the most-well rounded, and the one with the most depth.
Certainly, some of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century—such as Paul Elmer More, Eric Voegelin, and Henri de Lubac—respected and feared the ideas of Nietzsche, recognizing their significance for the modern and post-modern world.
He also, for better or worse, will continue to influence cultures, individuals, and peoples for centuries to come, in ways the other important thinkers of the nineteenth century probably will not. In many ways, the entire modern and post-modern obsession with power comes from Nietzsche, whether those tools who espouse theories of power (race, class, gender) realize this or not.
For the purposes of this post, here are three of Nietzsche’s most important ideas.
First, the mad philosopher claimed that all modern drama in western civilization stemmed from the conflict found in the mythology of Apollo (order) and Dionysius (chaos).
We shall have gained much for the science of aesthetics were we have succeeded in perceiving directly, and not only through logical reasoning, that art derives its continuous development from the duality of the Apolline and Dionysiac; just as the reproduction of species depends on the duality of the sexes, with its constant conflicts and only periodically intervening reconciliations. These terms are borrowed from the Greeks, who revealed the profound mysteries of their artistic doctrines to the discerning mind, not in concepts but in the vividly clear forms of their deities. To the two gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus, we owe our recognition that in the Greek world there is a tremendous opposition, as regards both origins and aims, between the Apollo arts of the sculptor and the non-visual Dionysius art of music. These two very different tendencies walk side-by-side, usually in violent opposition to one another, inciting one another to ever more powerful birds, perpetuating the struggle of the opposition only apparently bridged by the word “art”; until, finally, by a metaphysical miracle of the Hellenic “will” will, the two seem to be coupled. [Source: Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy]
While this is too extreme and Manichean, Nietzsche makes a fine point, and it’s difficult to dismiss our own modern Hollywood culture without, at least to some degree, realizing that he understood a fundamental aspect of who and what we were to become in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Second, Nietzsche considered Catholicism to be the greatest enemy yet invented and imposed upon the nobility of man. It’s most important representative, he feared, was Pascal.
Faith, as early Christianity desired, and not infrequently achieved in the midst of a skeptical and southerly free–spirit world, which had centuries of struggle between philosophical schools behind it and in it, counting besides the education intolerance for which the imperium Romanum—this faith is not that sincere, austere slave–faith by which perhaps a Luther or a Cromwell, or some other northern barbarian of the spirit remained attached to his God and Christianity; it is much rather the faith of Pascal, which resembles in a terrible manner a continuous suicide of reason—eight to half, long–lived, wormlike reason, which is not to be slain at once and with a single blow. The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self–confidence of spirit; it is at the same time’s objection, self–derision, and self–mutilation. [Source: Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil]
His father had been a Lutheran pastor, but Friedrich had rejected not only the faith of his father, but he also rejected all Protestantism because it was insufficiently pagan. Catholicism, he believed, represented the only true Christianity. Lutheranism and Protestantism were merely halfway houses between Catholicism and full-blown paganism.
At one very powerful point in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche imagines what an Epicurean god might do if he gazed long enough upon 1,900 years of Catholicism.
If one could observe the strangely painful, equally course and refined comedy of European Christianity with the derisive and impartial eye of an Epicurean god, I should think one would never cease marveling and laughing; does it not actually seem that some single will has ruled over Europe for eighteen centuries in order to make a sublime abortion of man? He, however, who, with opposite requirements (no longer Epicurean) and with some divine hammer in his hand, could approach this almost voluntary degeneration and stunting of mankind, as exemplified in the European Christian (Pascal, for instance), would he not have to cry aloud with rage, pity, and horror: ‘Oh, you bunglers, presumptuous pitiful bunglers, what have you done! Was that a work for your hands? How you have hacked and botched my finest stone! What have you presumed to do!’ –I should say that Christianity has hitherto been the most portentous of presumptions. Men, not great enough, not hard enough, to be entitled as artists to take part in fashioning man; men, not sufficiently strong and far-sighted to allow, with sublime self-constraint, the obvious law of the thousandfold failures and perishings to prevail; men, not sufficiently noble to see the radically different grades of rank and intervals of rank that separate man from man:–such men, with their ‘equality before God,’ have hitherto swayed the destiny of Europe; until at least a dwarfed, almost ludicrous species has been produced, a gregarious animal, something obliging, sickly, mediocre, the European of the present day.
Finally, Nietzsche himself believed that his ideas had taken him, mystically, into another universe or plane of existence, confirmed later, at least as he believed it, by a vision of Zarathustra, a pre-Christian Persian priest and prophet, within and next to him. Henri de Lubac has done the best job of exploring this side of Nietzsche in his Drama of Atheist Humanism. And though he despised Catholicism, Nietzsche even believed his collected writings to be a fifth Gospel, obviating those of Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He, Nietzsche, then, believed he would serve as a “rival and successor to Jesus,” espousing the myth of the Overman, and transcending the limitations of good and evil.
Well, nobody’s perfect. . . .
My Freewrite and Me
[This piece first appeared four years ago. I love my Freewrite (and the Traveler) even more than I did then.]
As far back as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer. Professionally.
Much of this desire came from my mom (an extremely well-read and gifted person, now age 80), but it also came from several different authors who inspired me. Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien. These three moved me beyond–ironically–mere words.
It wasn’t until I read some political and social criticism in 9th grade, however, that I realized that as much as I liked writing fiction, I absolutely loved writing non-fiction. As early as fifth grade, I had actually begged my teacher to let me write a research paper. I don’t remember a year of my life after that (up to my current age, 49) during which I didn’t write a research paper or papers or the equivalent. Weird, I know.
I forced myself to learn typing on my maternal grandfather’s typewriter sometime in the eighth grade. Then, when in high school, I took typing. Weirdly enough, this might have been the single most important class I took prior to college! Almost immediately after learning how to type on manual and electric typewriters, I learned how to type on my Commodore 64 and, then, in 1984, on my Mac.
A month or so ago–after agonizing over the price–I decided to take the plunge and order the Astrohaus FREEWRITE.
I had read all the reviews I could find on the internet, and, while generally positive, a few were downright hostile and mocking. According to one review, I might actually be a “hipster” for purchasing the FREEWRITE. If a hipster can have 7 kids, go to Sunday Mass, obsess over progressive rock, and have grey hair, then I’m a hipster.
For those of you who have yet to see a picture of the FREEWRITE, it is a thing of intense beauty. From its weight to its feel to its lines to its keyboard to its screen to its off/on switch, this is simply a piece of humane and perfectly crafted technology.
The great German-Italian philosopher and man of letters, Romano Guardini, argued that technology could always be judged by one question and one standard. Does the technology make us more or make us less human?
After using the FREEWRITE for a month, I can state that it makes us more human and grandly so. I actually look forward to using it. Not only does it feel great, but I can type much faster on it than I can with my Mac keyboard and, even my specialized DAS KEYBOARD.
For those of you who have yet to see it, the FREEWRITE is only a keyboard and screen. It has internet capabilities, but only to send things to the cloud, not to receive them. Thus, it’s 100% distraction free. The company calls it a “smart typewriter,” and this seems to me more than good marketing. It seems quite accurate. There’s no Facebook, no twitter, no anger, no hatred, no politics, no trolls, and no spewing of the spleen–just a human (in this case, the 49-year old variety), a keyboard, and a screen.
Imagination, fly, be free!
I only have one complaint with my FREEWRITE, and it’s a minor complaint. When I hit the space bar, there’s a strange echo and reverb as if a spring is about to give. Should this actually happen in the realm beyond the realm of sound, I assume that Astrohaus will fix it. The keyboard itself isn’t quiet, but the space key has its own unique and weird sound, quite different from the other keys. Overall, though, I love the keyboard–its feel as well as its sound. It’s not quiet, but it is satisfying.
Very satisfying.
I realize that for many writers out there, the ca. $500 price tag will serve as a preventative. Let me assure you, though, given the quality of the FREEWRITE as well as the distraction-free aspects of it, it’s more than worth the price. Far more than worth it. I was able to recoup my costs in just a few weeks of blog submissions. Granted, I could’ve spent that money in other ways, but I can’t think of any other ways that would’ve increased both my creativity and my (much) freer imagination than the FREEWRITE.
The Gray Eminence of Christopher Dawson
To put it simply (and perhaps a bit “simplistically”—but I prefer to think of it as putting it “with fervor”), Christopher Dawson was one of the greatest historians of the twentieth century, certainly one of its greatest men of letters, and perhaps one of the most respected Catholic scholars in the English speaking world. I’ve have had the opportunity and privilege to argue this elsewhere, including here at the majestic The Imaginative Conservative. I would even go so far as to claim that Dawson was THE historian of the past 100 years.
Without going deeply into Dawson’s thought—or any aspect of it—in this post, it is worthwhile cataloguing how many of his contemporaries claimed him important and his scholarship and ideas for their own. This means, consequently, that while most Americans—Catholic or otherwise—no longer remember Christopher Dawson, they do often remember affectionately those he profoundly (one might even state indelibly) influenced. The list includes well known personalities such as T.S. Eliot, Thomas Merton, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis.
In the world of humane learning and scholarship in the twentieth century, Dawson was a sort of John Coltrane. Just as few non musicians listen to Coltrane, but EVERY serious musician does, the same was essentially true of Dawson. And, yet, as with Coltrane, Dawson did enjoy long periods of widespread popularity and support in his own lifetime.
“For Dawson is more like a movement than a man,” his publisher and friend, Frank Sheed, wrote of him in 1938. “His influence with the non-Catholic world is of a kind that no modern Catholic has yet had, both for the great number of fields in which it is felt and for the intellectual quality of those who feel it.”[1] As evidence, Sheed could cite much. By the early 1930s, while Dawson was still in his early 40s, American Catholic colleges began teaching courses on his thought, tying him to the larger Catholic literary movement of the day.[2] In 1933, the American Catholic journal Commonweal stated that “the writings of Christopher Dawson demand the thoughtful attention of all educated men.”[3] Six years later, the Jesuit journal, The Month, claimed that to “commend Mr. Dawson’s work is unnecessary; nothing that he writes could be unimportant.”[4] In 1949, Waldemar Gurian, a refugee from the Nazis and a professor at the University of Notre Dame, wrote, Dawson’s “very ability to make brilliant understatements and to display without pride, as something self-evident, his extraordinary broad knowledge make his synthesis particularly impressive.”[5] In 1950, the English Dominican journal, Blackfriars, claimed “that Mr. Dawson is an educator; perhaps the greatest that Heaven has sent us English Catholics since Newman.”[6]
Maisie Ward, the famous biographer and co-founder of the Sheed and Ward publishing house, admitted to Dawson in 1961, “You were, as I said on Sunday, truly the spear-head of our publishing venture.”[7] Ward put it into greater context in her autobiography, Unfinished Business. “Looking back at the beginnings of such intellectual life as I have had, I feel indebted to three men of genius: Browning, Newman, and Chesterton,” she admitted. “But in my middle age, while we owed much as publishers to many men and women, foreign and English, the most powerful influence on the thinking of both myself and my husband was certainly Christopher Dawson.”[8] Even among the clergy, none held the reputation that Dawson did by the 1950s. Again, as Ward noted rather bluntly in a letter to Dawson, “There is no question in my mind that no priest exists at the moment whose name carries anything like the weight in or outside the church that yours does.”[9] This is an impressive claim, especially when one recalls the intellect and influence of a Martin D’Arcy, a John Courtney Murray, or a J. Fulton Sheen, all eminent priests.
Neo-Thomist historian and philosopher Etienne Gilson also acknowledged his profound admiration for Dawson in a 1950 letter to Frank Sheed. Gilson especially appreciated Dawson’s Making of Europe (1932) and Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (1950).[10] The latter “provided me with what I had needed during forty years without being able to find it anywhere: an intelligent and reliable background for a history of mediaeval philosophy,” Gilson admitted. “Had I been fortunate in having such a book before writing my [Spirit of the Middle Ages,] my own work would have been other and better than it is.”[11] High praise, indeed.
American Trappist Monk and author Thomas Merton claimed to have found his purpose in life while reading Dawson’s 1952 book, Understanding Europe. “Whether or not [Dawson] came too late, who can say?” Merton worried. “In any case I have a clear obligation to participate, as long as I can, and to the extent of my abilities, in every effort to help a spiritual and cultural renewal of our time. This is the task that has been given me, and hitherto I have not been clear about it, in all its aspects and dimensions.”[12]
As Eliot’s best biographer, Russell Kirk, wrote, “Of social thinkers in his own time, none influenced Eliot more than Dawson.”[13] For three decades, Eliot was quite taken with Dawson’s views, and it would be difficult if not impossible to find a scholar who influenced Eliot more. In the early 1930s, Eliot told an American audience that Dawson was the foremost thinker of his generation in England.[14] He explicitly acknowledged his debt to Dawson in the introductions to his two most politically- and culturally-oriented books, The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture.[15] One can also find Dawson’s influence in two of Eliot’s most important writings of the moral imagination, “Murder in the Cathedral” and “The Four Quartets.”[16] Eliot continued to acknowledge a debt to Dawson after World War II. In a speech to the London Conservative Union in 1955, Eliot told his fellow conservatives that they should understand conservatism as Dawson does, not as political, but as ante-political and anti-ideological. Only then, Eliot argued, could English conservatives truly and effectively shape society.[17]
One cannot imagine C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man without Dawson’s scholarship in his 1929 book, Progress and Religion. The same is true of J.R.R. Tolkien’s best academic essay, “On Fairie-Stories,” delivered at the University of St. Andrews in 1939. While the essay in its thought is purely Tolkienian, the English philologist and fantasist relies on the scholarship of Dawson very openly. All three knew each other well, and Tolkien and Dawson even attended the same parish in Oxford.
There are so many lessons to be learned from all of this. First, we should never take the influence of Christopher Dawson for granted. Second, it should also give each person hope. We should, of course, do our best in whatever we do. What others do with it is beyond our will, but we put it out there, nonetheless, and we hope. Dawson’s story—at least this aspect of it—makes us realize that we can play a vital role in the times, even if our own individual ego has not been soothed.
[1] F.J. Sheed, “Christopher Dawson,” The Sign (June 1938), 661.
[2] Arnold Sparr, To Promote, Defend, and Redeem: The Catholic Literary Revival and the Cultural Transformation of American Catholicism, 1920-1960 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), 24, 103
[3] T. Lawrason Riggs, “A Voice of Power,” Commonweal (August 4, 1933), 330.
[4] Thomas Corbishly, “Our Present Discontents,” The Month 173 (1939): 440.
[5] Waldemar Gurian, “Dawson’s Leitmotif,” Commonweal (June 3, 1949).
[6] Kenelm Foster, O.P., “Mr Dawson and Chistendom,” Blackfriars 31 (1950): 423.
[7] Maisie Ward, New York, to Dawson, Harvard, 1961, in the Christopher H. Dawson Collection, Box 11, Folder 25, “Frank Sheed 1960,” Department of Special Collections, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota (hereafter UST/CDC)
[8] Maisie Ward, Unfinished Business (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), 117.
[9] Maisie Sheed, London, to Dawson, October 1953, Box 11, Folder 18, “Frank Sheed 1953” in UST/CDC.
[10] Sheed to Dawson, 1936, in Box 11 (Sheed and Ward Papers), Folder 2, “Frank Sheed, 1936”, in UST/CDC.
[11] Etienne Gilson to Frank Sheed, 22 August 1950, in Box 11, Folder 16 “Frank Sheed 1950”, in UST/CDC.
[12] Thomas Merton, journal entry for August 22, 1961, Turning Toward the World: The Pivotal Year, ed. by Victor A. Kramer (San Francisco, Calif.: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 155. See also Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Image Books, 1966), 55, 194-94; and Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo, eds., The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals (San Francisco, Calif.: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), 190.
[13] Russell Kirk, Eliot and His Age: T.S. Eliot’s Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century (Peru, Ill.: Sherwood Sugden, 1988), 300. On Dawson’s influence on Eliot, see also Bernard Wall, “Giant Individualists and Orthodoxy,” Twentieth Century (January 1954): 59.
[14] Christina Scott, A Historian and His World, 210.
[15] The two have been republished together as T.S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture (San Diego, Calif.: Harvest, 1967).
[16] Kirk, Eliot and His Age, 231-2, 299-300; and Joseph Schwartz, “The Theology of History in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets,” Logos 2 (Winter 1999): 34.
[17] T.S. Eliot, “The Literature of Politics,” Time and Tide (23 April 1955), 524.
I Want My MTV Mixtape
I don’t think I’m alone in finding music in the streaming era frustrating. As a musician, even though it is easier and less expensive than ever to make your music available, it very difficult to get your music heard. When I was growing up, if you made it on to MTV – you made it. If you made it onto mixtapes, you were at least cool. I’ve resolved to make an extra effort to look for other artists making high quality music and help to bring them some attention. I learned about the first three bands on Time Hinely’s Dagger Zine.
Also, consider this a mix tape from a friend. A short mix tape because who has 60 or 90 minutes anymore? If you like it, there will be more.
Swansea Sound – Corporate Indie Band If Swansea Sound reminds you of something you heard on college radio in the late 80s or early 90s, you are correct. It could have very well been one of Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey’s early bands Talulah Gosh or Heavenly.
The Bats – Beneath The Visor From New Zealand, they have been around since 1982. (Hey Mark, Don’t these guys remind you of The Vulgar Boatmen? Yes. I can’t help myself.)
Louis Philippe & The Night Mail – Living On Borrowed Time Just check out the walking bass line. (I’ve listened to this song five times in a row writing this post.)
To the Music World Unknown – The Mixus Brothers A band from Pittsburgh that is much, much artier than it may appear on the surface, as this video shows.
The Deep Roots – Over Our Heads Rather than shameless self-promotion, I’d like to consider this as a credibility check. It also fits with the theme.
Mark Sullivan is the guitarist in The Deep Roots
WHAT CARE FOR THE ELDERLY REALLY COSTS US
In Henri Nouwen’s book Aging: The Fulfillment of Life, he tells this anecdote:
Not too long ago a thirty-two-year-old, good-looking, intelligent man, full of desire to live a creative life, was asked: “Jim, what are your plans for the future?” And when he answered: I want to work with the elderly and I am reading and studying to make myself ready for that task,” they looked at him with amazement and puzzlement. Someone said, “But Jim, don’t you have anything else to do?” Another suggested, “Why don’t you work with the young? You’ll really be great with them.” Another excused him more or less, saying: “Well, I guess you have a problem which prevents you from pursuing your own career.” Reflecting on these responses, Jim said: “Some people make me feel as if I have become interested in a lost cause, but I wonder if my interest and concern do not touch off in others a fear they are not ready to confront, the fear of becoming an old stranger themselves.”
Commenting on this, Nouwen expounds, “Thus care for the elderly means, first of all, to make ourselves available to the experience of becoming old.” And, in another place he asks, “How can we be fully present to the elderly when we are hiding from our own aging? How can we listen to their pains when their stories open wounds in us that we are trying to cover up?”
This, Nouwen diagnoses, is the true cost to caring for the elderly – that we embrace the vulnerability of our own aging selves.
Are we prepared to dispense with “the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not a gift to be shared”?
Care for the elderly, insists Nouwen, does not only consist in practical acts of service that, in fact, “are often offered in order to keep distance rather than to allow closeness.” Instead, caring costs us our entire aging selves.
“Only as we enter into solidarity with the aging and speak out of common experience, can we help others to discover the freedom of old age,” says Nouwen.
Only by awakening to the realization that we are all aging can we begin to shift our culture from one of segregation to one of solidarity.
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Quoted: The Federalists and Anti-Federalists
During times of national crisis, turmoil, and dissatisfaction, we should always return to first principles and right reason.
Some of my favorite quotes from the Federalists and Anti-Federalists:
The Federalists
“We may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people; and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behaviour. It is essential to such a government, that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favoured class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honourable title of republic.” (Fed 39)
“A handful of tyrannical nobles” controlled the states, and the federal government could intervene to protect the rights of the citizens of those states. And yet, Madison continued in Federalist 39, “federal” did not mean the same thing as “national,” for the ratification demanded the “assent and ratification of the several states, derived from the supreme authority in each state,” the citizens of the respective state. In deciding whether or not to ratify the Constitution, each state “is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act.” (Fed 39)
“Justice is the end of government,” Madison stated bluntly in Federalist 51, following Plato and Aristotle. “It is the end of civil society.”
In discussing the need for a strong executive branch in Federalist 70, Hamilton explained: “A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution: and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.” Arguments for energy applied to more than just the executive branch.
“Energy in government is essential to that security against external and internal danger, and to that prompt and salutary execution of the laws, which enter into the very definition of good government. Stability in government is essential to national character, and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society.” (Fed 37)
The Anti-Federalists
Though never the cohesive force the Federalists proved to be, the Anti-Federalists feared what they considered to be the objective of the Constitution: a consolidated, national government. Such a desire, the Federal Farmer, a leading Anti-Federalist, argued, mostly likely came from “those who expect employments under the new constitution; as to those weak and ardent men who always expected to be gainers by revolutions, and whose lot it generally is to get out of one difficulty into another.” Federalists merely played on the fears of the people, promoting the notion that the current government is fully in a crisis. The result, the Federal Farmer claimed, is predictable. “Instead of being thirteen republics under a federal head, it is clearly designed to make us one consolidated government,” he wrote. “This consolidation of the states has been the object of several men in this country for some time past.”
Another Anti-Federalist, Brutus, claimed the constitution would render the states obsolete through the “necessary and proper clause” of Article I, Section 8. Though the Federalists might write in placating tones regarding the status of states prior to the ratification of the Constitution, the tone would necessarily change once the Constitution was implemented. “It will be found that the power retained by individual states, small as it is, will be a clog upon the wheels of the government of the United States,” Brutus wrote. This will follow the law of nature, as “every body of men, invested with power, are ever disposed to increase it, and to acquire a superiority over every thing that stands in their way.”
Old Whig: “Before all this labyrinth can be traced to a conclusion, ages will revolve, and perhaps the great principles upon which our late glorious revolution was founded, will be totally forgotten. If the principles of liberty are not firmly fixed and established in the present constitution, in vain may we hope for retrieving them hereafter. People once possessed of power are always loth to part with it. . . . The legislatures of the states will be but forms and shadows, and it will be the height of arrogance and presumption in them, to turn their thoughts to such high subjects. . . . The great, and the wise, and the mighty will be in possession of places and offices; they will oppose all changes in favor of liberty, they will steadily pursue the acquisition of more and more power to themselves and their adherents. The cause of liberty, if it be now forgotten, will be forgotten forever.”
Old Whig: “But yet we find that men in all ages have abused power, and that it has been the study of patriots and virtuous legislators at all times to restrain power, so as to prevent the abuse of it.”
Brutus: “The nations around us, sir, are already enslaved, and have been enslaved by those very means; by means of their standing armies they have every one lost their liberties; it is indeed impossible that the liberties of the people in any country can be preserved where a numerous standing army is kept up.”
Ray Bradbury’s Last Interview by Sam Weller
A review of Sam Weller, ed., Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, December 2014), xii + 93 pp.
One of the hardest things I’ve had to assess in my professional life as a historian and a biographer is just how much to take seriously in a person’s life. I consider, pass, and render judgments on a moment-by-moment basis! Judge not, lest you be judged. Oh boy. I’m in trouble. I must always ask, how much do I credit something said on day X vs. day Y? I can assure you, it’s not easy. One of the many things I love about biographers such as Joseph Pearce and Steve Hayward and David McCulloch is that they take chances. The biographer is not a mere antiquarian, but an observer who has to place his own being within the soul, eyes, and brain of his subject. It was very difficult with Kirk. He had a great fondness for self-proclaimed individualists such as Albert Jay Nock and Isabel Paterson, but he despised individualism as an ideology. How does one take all of this in? And, Kirk was much more skeptical in his younger years of government than in his later years? As a biographer and scholar, do I claim the later attitude destroys the younger? Surely, there must be a continuity rather than a breach?
And, then, sometimes, we can only go on what evidence we have. We barely know person A, but she left a diary that covered three months of her life in 1778. Do we extrapolate a life from three months of intimate revelations? Sometimes, it is all we can do, and we have to make the best of it.
With Ray Bradbury, the problem is not too little information, but too much. And, not just “too much,” but an avalanche, a tidal wave, a flood, an F5 tornado just having passed through the feed lot. . . well, you get the idea. And, yet, with Bradbury, more is never enough. Amazing that God just makes a few of those in His image so endlessly fascinating. Bradbury is one of those. What was God thinking when he made Ray? The man just overflowed with creativity, life, imagination, and everything else that matters in our whirligig of existence.
Melville House, a publisher on the move, has recently published a series of “Last Interviews” with great authors. Thus far, the series includes Kurt Vonnegut, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, and a few others. Sam Weller, who spent that last dozen years with Bradbury, put together this book. Weller, it should be noted, does incredible work, and he does not take the trust that Bradbury showed in him lightly. At the very end of his life, Bradbury admitted that Weller probably understood him better than he, himself, did. And, very touchingly, during their very last meeting, Bradbury admitted that he considered Weller the son he’d never had.
I don’t want to give too much away, but here are a few tidbits from the book to give you a sense of its beauty and why you should own a copy and treasure it.
The secret of life:
The secret of life is being in love. By being in love, you predict yourself. Whatever you want is whatever you get. You don’t predict things. You make them. You’ve gotta bee a Zen Buddhist like me. Don’t think about things. Just do them. Don’t predict them. Just make them (4).
On comic strips and books:
Because I’ve been collecting comic strips all of my life. I have all of Prince Valiant put away. I have thirty years of Prince Valiant Sunday illustrations put away. I have all of Buck Rogers put away, too. I put those away starting when I was nineteen years old. So my background in becoming a writer was falling in love with comic strips. (8)
On the moment:
Every single moment. Every single moment of my life has been incredible. I’ve loved it. I’ve savored it. It was beautiful. Because I’ve remained a boy. The man you see here tonight is not a man, he’s a twelve-year-old boy, and this boy is till having fun. And I will remain a boy forever. (10)
On science fiction vs. fantasy
I had a hell of a lot of fun writing [Fahrenheit 451]. It just came with its own spirit. But now that it’s everywhere, I’m so happy that so many people love it. I love that book too. Remember this—I am not a science fiction writer. All of my books are fantasy writings. All my books are fantasies. But the one book that I’ve written that pure science fiction is Fahrenheit 451. So I’m glad that I wrote it, and I’m glad that you feel that way about it, too (20).
Let me also state—especially in this world of intangibles and ebooks and other bizarrenesses—this is a beautiful book. A nice cardboardish cover with fine paper, Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview is a joy to hold. It’s also delightfully short. I mean this in the best way. It’s the kind of book you can spend a later afternoon and evening enjoying. Frankly, serious publishers need to offer such diversity in length and topic more often. There are nights that demand serious reading and full immersion. Other nights call out for a sprinkling and thoughts of goodness but not of life-or-death import. Bradbury was a truly wise man, a gifted artist, and Weller captures and conveys that Bradbury that we all want to know and love perfectly.
Ray Bradbury was a national treasure—indeed a treasure of western civilization—and Weller’s work on and with the great author is a Godsend. There is not a page, let alone a paragraph, in which Bradbury does not share a thought worthy of reflection and meditation.
Like Russell Kirk, Bradbury despised modern technology and especially automobiles. Unlike Kirk, however, Bradbury got to pilot the Mars rover from the Jet Propulsion Laboratories. “So while he hasn’t driven on the 405 Freeway, he’s driven across the sand dunes of Mars—and they actually gave him a little Mars driver’s license” (19).
How fitting.
Decorum and the Conservative Soul
[This piece is originally from 2015]
While my memories might verge on the edge of fuzzy nostalgia from time to time, I remember quite clearly what the women and men of the 1970s did in small-town neighborhoods. In those years, I absolutely loved reading (and researching and writing—though, this would be another post), but I also loved running, biking, and exploring. I could be. . . rather. . . well. . . hyper. When I got too hyper and misbehaved, neighbors (usually women, as the men were at work) corrected me. I don’t ever remember being spanked by a neighbor, but I certainly remember receiving stern “talking to”s. The worst, of course, came if the neighbor decided to call my mom and let me know that I’d misbehaved. If it went that far, I’d embarrassed not just myself but my entire family.
Regardless, in the 1970s, it was not just the right but the actual duty of the neighbor to discipline when necessary. I certainly never questioned this, though I did sometimes fear it.
I also remember eating at a good but not excellent restaurant in my hometown of Hutchinson, Kansas, when I was in fourth or fifth grade. A man at another table cussed. When he did, heads turned, but everyone let is slide, presuming it was a one-time outburst. When he continued to offer foul language at full volume, however, the other men in the restaurant became agitated, formed a small group, and approached the offender, letting him know in no uncertain terms that he had crossed a line and needed to cease such behavior. My memory is that he needed no more persuasion after the others approached him. Most likely, the men who approached the offender didn’t know each other, but they had a common purpose once he disrupted the atmosphere. They knew it, and so did everyone else in the restaurant.
Why these autobiographical stories? Because, in 2015, I’m lucky if I can get out of a Wal-Mart without overhearing another shopper dropping the f-bomb, usually at her or his own kids. What happened between 1975 and 2015? A lot, apparently. But, it’s not just Wal-Mart. It’s in nearly every airport (once distinguished by some class—in dress as well as language), in nearly every shop, and certainly at every gas station. But, if course, such horrific language is not just in person to person to communication. TV shows—at least the science fiction ones I like—use sh*t without even the pretense of restraint, and podcasts about culture drop the f-bomb without any semblance of discrimination.
[To continue reading, please scroll down a bit to hit page 2]
The room in which you die
One thing I found interesting while travelling throughout Europe was the various occasions on which I would behold the room in which a notable person had died or, at least, a reproduction of it.
Nowadays, it is so common for people to die in hospitals but just imagine if you died in your own room and then it became a tourist attraction for centuries to come…
Spirit of Cecilia 
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