Month: February 2010

Alex Rehding, Professor of Music at Harvard, emails Jonah Lehrer:

If we derive pleasure from anticipating potential connections – and especially being surprised by thwarted expectations – then it becomes difficult to explain why we would want to listen to a piece more than once: the novelty factor wears off, the uncertainty factor becomes less pronounced. In principle, the piece should get less interesting each time we hear it. Experience, however, shows that this is not the case: we greatly enjoy re-hearing familiar pieces. The whole recording industry makes a lot of money on the basis of this phenomenon.

Newsweek interviews Richard Cizik, an evangelical leader pushed out of the National Association of Evangelicals after saying in an interview that he supported civil unions and had voted for Obama in the Virginia primary:

After a year of keeping a low profile, Cizik is “making a comeback,” as he puts it. This week he announces the formation of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, a group devoted to developing Christian responses to global and political issues such as environmentalism, nuclear disarmament, human rights, and dialogue with the Muslim world. Cizik’s partners in this effort are David Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University who has written extensively on torture, and Steven D. Martin, a pastor and filmmaker. For years, Cizik has been saying that the evangelical right needs to reframe its politics, to walk away from divisive name calling and find common ground with opponents, even on hot-button issues like abortion and gay marriage.

The core of Palin's politics and increasingly the core of the Republican party, as she put it last night:

"I think, kind of tougher to, um, put our arms around, but allowing America's spirit to rise again by not being afraid to kind of go back to some of our roots as a God fearing nation where we're not afraid to say, especially in times of potential trouble in the future here, where we're not afraid to say, you know, we don't have all the answers as fallible men and women so it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country, so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again. To have people involved in government who aren't afraid to go that route, not so afraid of the political correctness that you know — they have to be afraid of what the media said about them if they were to proclaim their alliance on our creator."

If the context, meaning and implications of this sort of conservatism still befuddle you, if you still think of yourself as a conservative but do not fathom how a former beauty queen sportscaster is now most likely the future of the GOP, please read my prediction and analysis of this development in "The Conservative Soul: Fundamentalism, Freedom and the Future Of The Right."

I know this is a shameless plug, but the money will all go to Harper Collins, not me. And I wrote that book not for the money, but for the message. But I do not believe you can understand contemporary conservatism as a political entity. It is a religious entity. And until more Americans understand its true nature, they will keep getting surprised by the virulence of its message and the power of its momentum.

She now confirms it on Fox, the only channel on which she will now appear. Remember the last campaign? The MSM was shut out as far as humanly possible – and they colluded in the McCain strategy. Some, like the Washington Post's Howie Kurtz, even joined forces with the campaign to intimidate and smear other journalists trying to seek the truth. Now that they have built an entire propaganda media complex that channels directly into the bloodstream of what O'Reilly calls "the folks", the idea that the last dregs of the independent press can challenge or really expose her is becoming more and more remote.

The Washington media had their chance in the last campaign. They didn't have the nerve. Now they won't have the chance.

It's her divine mission, as she sees it. And it would be a function of "divine intervention" as she explicitly said last night.

Ambers, previously a skeptic, comes around. Given the complete lack of talent among GOP ranks and their universal fear of taking on Palin supporters, it seems obvious to me she will likely be the next GOP nominee. My hope, of course, is that this a) forces what was once a serious governing party to nominate a responsible fiscal conservative in the primaries and fight back against the madness; or b) drives every last sane conservative to realize they have no choice but to back Obama; or c) that Palin so alienates the GOP elites by primary challenges that they somehow manage to quash her and she runs as a "rogue" third party George Wallace style candidate, and helps re-elect Obama by an electoral college landslide.

This is so far into the future, of course, that it's pure speculation.

She may also implode as more scrutiny exposes who she  and her dangerous, radical and clearly controlling husband really are. But I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything in her past, any lie or scandal, that could at this point deter her supporters. If she were found guilty of a Watergate-level iniquity, they'd see it as a frame-up by the liberal elites (as many, remember, did Nixon). And those elites, out of cowardice and fear, never nipped this in the bud when they could have; and that bitter old cynic, McCain, gave her the platform she needed. 

So we have here a truly Coughlinite movement, headed by an Eva Peron figure, eager to use the Dolchstoss card to bring out the kind of voters Rove always believed could eventually crush even the most mobilized democratic GOTV operation.

Know fear.

A World War II vet receives a belated Bronze Star and reflects on his service:

“[A]s we sat in those holes, praying that God would save us, I thought about the fact that the other side was doing the same thing. And then I wondered if God is just playing some kind of game with us. Pretty much I decided at that point there was no God,” [Milton] Christian said. “For the rest of my life, I’ve tried to do the right thing. I raised a beautiful bunch of kids — and they truly are my greatest accomplishment. So I’m not worried about what’s next. If there is a God, I think he’ll know that I just did the best I could. That’s all a man can do."

I was too busy tapping away at my laptop to notice this little high-school trick. Having mocked president Obama for using a TelePrompter – not long after he made mincemeat of Republicans with no such TelePrompter at their retreat – she had to scribble down her priorities as president on her palm for the truly tough-as-nails Q and A she had to endure for ten minutes or so last night.

Written on her hand:

"Energy"

"Budget [crossed out] (Cuts)"

"Tax"

"Lift American spirits"

My favorite detail is "[Budget] Cuts". Which just about sums up the real Tea Party agenda on spending. But it also suggests that she was told in advance of the questions she would be asked, one of which was what would be you priorities if you were elected president? Now think about this: she had to write on her hand her priorities as president.

I stand by my belief that none of this matters to the people who support her, and that she remains a very potent, content-free and destructive force in American politics.

But remember too that even before her Glenn Beck interview, she was furiously Googling the Empire State Building in case she was asked any obvious universally known facts about it, and before her debate with Biden, she was buried in little post-card notes on factual basics that most Americans know – but she, of course, didn't.

My live-blogging of this riveting event – and a brilliantly delivered speech full of nothing but slogans, pandering and zero policy specifics – can be read here, here and here.

(Hat tip: MR)

Nige reviews Sarah Bakewell's How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer:

The title of this post is the title of one of the chapters (one of the attempts at an answer), which explores Montaigne's reading, and his claims to extreme forgetfulness and slow wits. It is consoling to think that reading a lot, forgetting most of it and being slow-witted might add up to a good way of living. Maybe, as my memory becomes ever more sieve-like and my wits ever slower, I am making a virtue out of necessity here – or is there something in it? Do forgetfulness and slow wits (and, of course, extensive reading) save us from worse things? Probably they do.

Sadly, it does not appear to have been published in the US. The best secondary book I have read on Montaigne's genius is Jean Starobinski's Montaigne In Motion. Montaigne – apart from the Gospels – is the biggest influence on my own extended essay on friendship, "If Love Were All," the third part of "Love Undetectable", and central to the definition of conservatism I offer in "The Conservative Soul".

Reading him changed my life.

A reader writes:

I found Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry's characterization of your view regarding women and Christianity rather comical.  He makes it seem that it's the entire Roman Catholic Church vs. Andrew Sullivan (complete with the dismissive italicization of your name).  In fact, mainline Protestants in the West had this debate years ago when deciding whether to ordain women, and they all came down on your side.  This is in fact a disagreement within Christendom, not between one blogger and Christendom, as Gobry portrays it.

The justification for excluding women from the priesthood rests mainly on the Pastoral Epistles, which are pseudo-Pauline, i.e. written under Paul's name, but not by Paul.  From Wikipedia:

The vocabulary and phraseology used in the Pastorals is often at variance with that of the other epistles. Over 1/3 of the vocabulary is not used anywhere else in the Pauline epistles, and over 1/5 is not used anywhere else in the New Testament, while 2/3 of the non-Pauline vocabulary are used by second century Christian writers.

Many mainline Protestant biblical scholars believe one of the reasons these epistles were written was to claw back the egalitarianism instituted by Paul in the church.  These epistles have some of the most misogynist verses regarding women found in the New Testament.  The Catholic church has largely based their ecclesiology upon the Pastor Epistles.  Mainline Protestantism, having gone through these debates in the 70s and 80s over the ordination of women, look largely to Acts and the authentic Pauline epistles for their ecclesiology.

Gobry would like to make you out to be the isolated critic of anti-women policies as un-Christian.  Rest assured, you have a huge portion of western Christianity standing with you.

Another writes:

What is tellingly blind in Pascal Emmanuel-Gobry’s response is his premise that “The Catholic Church” is equivalent with the teachings of the Roman Magisterium. He asserts that even non-Catholics would acknowledge that the Catholic Church knows more about Christianity than Andrew Sullivan. Certainly. But this is true only when we understand that the Catholic Church is more than the pope or the Vatican bureaucracy or the clergy as a whole. Emmanuel-Gobry has no business pretending he can speak for this Catholic Church in its entirely; no more so does Benedict XVI. The church is not and has never been univocal, and that is precisely why it is imperative for all Christians, including Andrew Sullivan, to be in ongoing debate over what it means to be Christian today. Truth is not determined by polls or human authorities.