The irony, Dawson noted, is that the allies, ostensibly at least, waged their war against fascism. What is this thing the enemy propagated through extreme violence? It is, Dawson stated, “an attempt to transform the modern society into a purely dynamic organism, and to fuse community, party and state as a unitary mass driven by the aggressive will to power.” Dawson cautioned against the identification of fascism with authority. Instead, he claimed, one must identify fascism with power. Authority, as opposed to power, was the proper acquiescence every society (and its members) gave to those who ordered and secured a healthy society. Thus, as examples, a judge had authority because he decided things with wisdom; a teacher had authority because she taught her students the good, the true, and the beautiful; a policeman had authority because he upheld the law. Authority, as properly understood, was vital to a free society as were natural rights, Dawson argued. Authority, when used well, protected social freedoms, justice, and law. When violated, though, authority easily became power, a “poison” that seeps through societies, destroying all that it cannot corrupt. Power is, in essence, raw and naked force.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/08/becoming-enemy-world-war-ii-christopher-dawson-bradley-birzer.html

I’ve been interested in the 50,000 foot view of what has been going on in the last several years politically and culturally with respect to things like the election of Trump, Brexit, the populist surge sweeping across Europe, an so on.  Also, I am a podcast junkie, and listen to quite a number of them on a regular basis – arguably too many.  Although I need to add yet another podcast to my list just slightly less than I need a really bad case of malaria, I have nevertheless stumbled across one that is particularly suitable for the interests discussed above – The Realignment, which you can find at the link.  The first and only episode (so far) is an absolutely fascinating interview with JD Vance, who was the author of the equally fascinating Hillbilly Elegy from 2016.  If you are into podcasts and into understanding what’s going on in the world right now, then this is one you won’t want to miss.

Our beloved Cecilia Rose would’ve been twelve today. It’s not hard to imagine a curly, brown haired, blue-eyed girl being the delightful middle child of the family, just on the verge of teenagedom. 

I imagine she would still love all the things of childhood—her dolls, her princesses, her games, her costumes—just on the eve of thinking about grownup things. She would be, at age 12, the embodiment of that tug we once all felt, between past and present, between what we love and what we think we should love.

She would love to snuggle with me (a real love, past, present, and future), and she would adore her older siblings, while always counseling her younger ones. Her favorite color, I think, would be a hue of violet, and she would cherish the princess stories of George MacDonald. Her imagination would be her joy.

No matter how I might feel on August 7 or August 9, I never feel quite right on August 8. Even if I didn’t have a calendar in front of me, I know that my soul and my body would know that it’s August 8. 

August 8 is a world between worlds, a twilight existence.

Though I never knew Cecilia Rose well in person, the painful hole, the tearing pit, the deep abyss in my heart reminds me that I knew her completely—at least as a child of Christ. It’s a hole that never goes away, and, I suppose, never will. 

At least not until she (please, God!) greets me at the gates of heaven, grabs my hand, and asks me for a dance.

Happy birthday, my Cecilia Rose (b. and d. August 8, 2007).

I am not a professional economist. Nor have I played one on TV. My own academic background is in literature, philosophy, and then theology, where I earned my doctorate writing about soon-to-be-saint John Henry Newman and the threat of Hell. My knowledge of economics has come out of interest and necessity. My interest is because my own liberal education, no matter how flawed it may have been or dilatory I was in study, convinced me that all knowledge is one, and that to truly have a view of the world, one must have a sense of the importance and place of all subjects. Though economists have often overstated the importance of their discipline, I have nevertheless been impressed with the ways in which economists, though often dismissed with Macaulay’s gibe about being a “dismal science,” have often come, as William McGurn has observed, to the same practical conclusions about freedom and human dignity that theologians and moral philosophers have.

The necessity in my interest in economics is because I am married and have seven children. Though the sums needed to raise them are often overstated, my experience is that they do cost money. “Economy” comes from two Greek words, oikos (home) and nomos (rule). While many of us tend to think of economics as involving titans of industry, IPOs, international deals, and world-scale decisions and players, economics in its original sense is all home economics.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/08/writing-economics-david-deavel.html

My required reading list, H301, Autumn 2019.

Most available at: http://oll.libertyfund.org

Documents to read before midterm: 

John Adams, Dissertation on Feudal and Canon Law

Cato’s Letters: 15, 17, 18, 25, 27, 31, 35, 42, 59, 62, 66, 84, 94, 106, 114, 115

Thomas Gordon, “A Discourse of Standing Armies”

Demophilus, “The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon, or English Constitution”

Addison, Cato: A Tragedy

Hamilton, “Remarks on the Quebec Bill”

Dickinson, Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer: 1, 3, 8-10, 12

Edmund Burke, “Speech on American Taxation”

Edmund Burke, “Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies”

Samuel Sherwood, “The Church’s Flight into the Wilderness”

CX Letters (will be emailed to you)

Articles of Confederation 

Declaration of Independence (Jefferson’s version; will be emailed to you)

Documents to read before the final:

George Washington, “Circular to the States”(1783)

Northwest Ordinance, Articles 1-6

Farrand, ed., Records of the Federal Convention: May 29-June 8, June 18, June 26, June 28-29, July 26, August 7-9, August 13-14, August 21-22, August 30-31, September 17

Federalist Papers: 1, 10, 39, 45-51, 63, 70, 78, 84-85

Anti-Federalist Papers: 

James Wilson, “Speech to the Pennsylvania Convention”(December 1787)

John Dickinson as “Fabius,”letters 10-3

Noah Webster, “A Citizen of America”

Tench Coxe, “An American Citizen”

James Wilson, “Of the Law of Nature”

James Wilson, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals”

Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France,”pp. 87-176

Burke, “Further Reflections on the Revolution in France,”(1791), pp. 75-124, 160-201

George Washington, First Inaugural Address

George Washington, “To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport”

George Washington, “To the Roman Catholics”

George Washington, Farewell Address

As with all of Tolkien’s great tales of the First Age, the story of Beren and Lúthien transformed dramatically over sixty years from its first imagining and version in 1916 and 1917 to its relatively finalized version in 1977’s The Silmarillion. During those six decades, it appeared as a long tale of the Lost Tales, as a summary in the 1926 Sketch of the Mythology (written for Tolkien’s beloved professor from King Edward’s, R.W. Reynolds), as a radically ambitious poetic lay, The Lay of Leithian (1925-1931), and as an essential story within the various versions, including the final version, of The Silmarillion.

Yet, the essence of the story has remained the same in all of its many versions. Or, as Christopher so wisely put it, “The fluidity should not be exaggerated: there were nonetheless great, essential, permanences.”
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/08/jrr-tolkien-beren-and-luthien-bradley-birzer.html

All of this is understandable, of course, given that Barfield lived in London, not Oxford, and he joined his father’s law firm in 1929.[8] Though he continued to write, often prolifically and always brilliantly, he had to earn his living as a solicitor, not as an amateur philosopher. At best, Barfield claimed, he attended fewer than ten percent of the total meetings, and even this seems an overly generous number, especially given that he could not name the beginning or the end of the group.[9]

And, third, to be sure, any right-thinking individual, then or now, would want to have Owen Barfield as a vital and central member of the Inklings. The man was, simply put, genius and, equally important, generous and charitable. His insights into the Inklings, frankly, are beyond compare. In a 1969 lecture, Barfield claimed correctly that the Inklings had stood for and advanced four ideas: a longing for the Infinite and the western desires of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful; that every person is endowed with dignity, especially as he or she moves toward sanctification; “the idealization of love between the sexes”; and, finally, that the truest stories end in joy, not sorrow.[10]
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/07/was-owen-barfield-inkling-bradley-birzer.html

My new cartoon series with Michael Malice
— Read on mailchi.mp/tomwoods/malice

But conservatives recognize that it is possible to admire flawed human beings. We do not expect our heroes to be saints. We understand that though good and evil most definitely exist, men themselves are neither black nor white but rather some shade of gray. We have the sense to look up to men despite their sins. It would be churlish, for example, to condemn in toto the Washingtons of our past for the blinders society as a whole wore.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/07/hungry-souls-brave-hearts-heroism-history-myth-stephen-klugewicz-timeless.html

“It would be very interesting to speculate on what the human imagination is going to do with a frontierless world where it must seek its inspiration in uniformity rather than variety, in sameness rather than contrast, in safety rather than peril, in probing the harmless nuances of the known rather than the thundering uncertainties of unknown seas or continents. The dreamers, the poets, and the philosophers are after all but instruments which make vocal and articulate the hopes and aspirations and the fears of a people.

The people are going to miss the frontier more than words can express. For four centuries they heard its call, listened to its promises, and bet their lives and fortunes on its outcome.  It calls no more” – Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Frontier

Webb’s prediction was correct, just as he feared.

We do miss the frontier more than words can express.  We miss it so much that few can even contemplate its absence.  But clearly, something is amiss.  The political earthquakes presently rumbling across the planet are just symptoms of something bigger.  Sure, we can validly attribute a multitude of causes to the present day state of the world.  But undoubtedly, we miss the frontier.  Man, do we ever.

Fifty years ago this July 20th, a five year old boy (yours truly) stood ossified in front of a black and white television in a living room in Lewiston, Idaho.  While he didn’t fully appreciate the significance of what was happening, he knew it was a big deal.  The cues from the adults in the room were ample evidence of that.

What the moment led to was a lifelong interest in space exploration, which included the devouring of one book after another on the topic, building plastic models of spacecraft, flying model rockets, and anything else that could satiate my appetite for all things space.  More than that though, it created a hopeful anticipation for a certain future, a future of unlimited possibilities.  Unfortunately, that future has yet to arrive.  As Andy Tillison of the British progressive rock band The Tangent stated, the future was not as good as the book.  Or, as venture capitalist Peter Thiel surmised, “we were promised flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”  Queue the golf clap.

What happened to us since that glorious day 50 years ago?

Continue reading Apollo 11 and The Lost Frontier →