Author: Andrew Sullivan

Morgantown, West Virginia, 9.30 am

A reader writes:

How much do I love this blog? Incisive examination of pressing issues and considered, sideways musings about pig nipples, all on the same page.

Another writes:

ENOUGH with the FUCKING pig already!!

To Weigel. Money quote:

By being here I have learned things, and I've gotten an insight into her character, into her ability to incite hatred, that before I only knew about in the abstract.

A reader after my own heart writes:

Six years ago I got into a heated argument with a group of Iowan evangelicals who were, like me, visiting Northern Ireland (Cushendall, to be precise).  Having just graduated from an extremely lefty college with a literature degree, flush with Guinness, and being a burgeoning anti-theist to boot, I got into a spirited debate with them over the use of irony in Frost's poetry.  They insisted that I was "thinking too much" about the poem and that I needed to "read it from the heart."  Then they formed a prayer circle and asked that I be forgiven for my sins (they didn't enumerate my sins, but I'm guessing hubris and intoxication were among them).  No joke.

In my years back home in the American South, I have grown increasingly unsurprised at the tendency of evangelicals, nativists, and "true patriots," to read Frost in an unserious manner.  We need not make a conclusion if the poem is definitely of the opinion that walls separate neighbors or instead create useful boundaries.  At the very least, it is a poem that begs us to question the premise — something which Palin et al. clearly don't understand.  Much like a kitschy framed needlepoint "I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference," a superficial reading of Frost may seem nice — but it is still kitschy.  Nothing in "The Road Not Taken" actually allows us to determine which road is, in fact, the one less traveled by, or whether the difference made was a positive one or not.  It simply says that we make choices not knowing the future, must make our own decisions, and we cannot know what the alternate future could have been.  It is a short poem, easily read as a statement of individuality and independence, but it is fraught with doubt and possible regret.

Mending wall is hardly even ironic on it's face.  Most of the poem is devoted to questioning the premise — without it the poem wouldn't be anything other than that one line, "Good fences make good neighbors." There is nature that does not love a wall, the neighbor who "will not go behind his father's saying," and the narrator, who says:

"Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder 

If I could put a notion in his head: 

'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it 

Where there are cows? 

But here there are no cows. 

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know 

What I was walling in or walling out, 

And to whom I was like to give offence. 

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 

That wants it down.'"

What is difficult about this?  We don't have to say that Frost or the poem takes a definite stance on the value of a wall, fine — but it is obviously at least about the separations that walls make between relationships, and at least questions the common wisdom of "good fences make good neighbors."  It is clearly not a poem that is just about how good fences make good neighbors.  Much like the rest of the Christianist mindset, simple and superficial readings of layered meaning prevail.  A poem can be simply wrought while not being simple, and that is one of the things that makes Frost's work so beautiful.  It's their loss if they choose not to appreciate this, but wholly unsurprising — it is a reflection of how they engage everything about the world.

Joel Wing worries about the plight of Iraqi refugees and the displaced:

Although accurate numbers are hard to come by approximately 2/3 of Iraq’s refugees and displaced are still without their homes. Although the process of return has begun, it has happened at an up and down pace. Those that come back still face difficulties, and the government, United Nations, and NGOs do not have the capabilities to adequately assist them. This has led some to speculate that the majority of Iraq’s refugees and many displaced that left their provinces may never come back.

That means the Iraqi government, aid agencies, and the international community needs to come up with a comprehensive campaign to deal with this large population. The displaced need to get more assistance, and be integrated into their new provinces or countries. The problem is that planning is often shortsighted, and lacks adequate funding because Iraq is a fading issue for many in the world. If things don’t change, Iraqis could become the new Palestinians without the media attention, causing social, political, and economic problems in their host countries, and within Iraq itself.

Contra Dreher, Joe Klein approves of building a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center:

It is an instant, international symbol that mocks the closed, vicious religious insanity of the terrorists who took the buildings down. Dreher worries about the families of those who lost their lives that day; I would expect that they will accept this, among the many other memorials on the site, as part of their loved ones' legacy–a renewed national sense of what this country stands for, and what it stands against.

A reader writes:

Anyone who’s ever lived in Texas knows there are many pigs that swim, but only one diving pig, and he’s named Ralph – Ralph the Diving Pig.

Perhaps my best New Year’s Eve ever was spent at a bar in Austin, Texas. Joe Ely was the main musical event (and no matter what anyone else says, Joe Ely was then the best live rock-and-roll show in the world. And he’s still going.)  But the centerpiece of the evening was Ralph, who scaled a ladder and plunged from about 20 feet into a pool in the middle of the bar at midnight.  It looks like Ralph’s still going, too.

Thanks for all your attention to this important matter.

Our pleasure. Have a great weekend.

Theresa May, a member of the British coalition government, says that she has changed her mind on gay adoption. Burke's Corner applauds:

The social revolutionaries of liberal- and not-so-liberal left and the reactionary Christian Right share a hostility to the temperate, measured modesty of the Burkean tradition. Having observed the love, the domesticity, the ordinariness of same-sex couples, the Burkean will affirm them, recognising in their experience the virtues seen in other manifestations of the little platoon. Theresa May was being authentically conservative in her confession. A conservatism without the means of change, after all, is without the means of its conservation.