Tasty Tidbits, 7/29/11

1. Not dorky, but banal.
2. No honest line of argument?
3. Bad, bad, bad! That’s why!
4. The new economy.
5. Rick Perry follows the script.
6. Quaker, Calvary Chapel, Vineyard, Calvary Chapel, Orthodox.
7. Anniversaries.
8. Simulating a good time.

1

I said yesterday that the end of vacation would mark a loss of innocence on matters such as, for instance, Anders Breivik. It did, but in a salutary way: The Anchoress confirms that Breivik’s glam photos were prepared so that the police wouldn’t release dorky photos of him.

Got news for you, Breivik, if you were trying not to look “retarded” you succeeded beyond your wildest imaginings. You look like the very model of a modern metrosexual mediocrity.

Only not as smart.

Even worse — if pictures are worth 1000 words, then we should be grateful to you for taking the time to pose, for the rest of us. You’ve provided us with the very illustration of the banality of evil.

Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance. — John Henry Newman

And your substance is so…so…blandly unremarkable — even as hard as you have tried — it is ultimately unmemorable, except in its self-consciousness.

“The banality of evil” is what especially struck me.

2

The New York Times also has an stimulating opinion on the legitimate role of religion in public discussions as we seek overlapping consensus. It’s stimulating enough that I’m tempted to pull this item as I reflect further

I thought I agreed with his main thrust, especially in his penultimate paragraph:

There is no honest line of argument from what the Bible says to substantive conclusions about the size of the United States government, the need for a free enterprise system, the right to bear arms or the proper interpretation of the Constitution.  Family Leader (and many other religious groups with a conservative political agenda) are disguising partisan political positions as religious convictions. This cripples efforts to have meaningful discussions about their political views.

But the more I thought, the more I quibbled. I instinctively avoid Bible-thumping in political debate, and instinctively adopt a vocabulary that I think is informed by Natural Law. In other words, I start where I think the overlapping consensus is, inviting people to recognize it as common ground.

But the rest of his column seemed to say “let everyone fully and freely express their view in their own terms and let’s see where the overlapping consensus is.” That doesn’t work well if one group is told in advance unilaterally to disarm — told that its line of argument is dishonest and will cripple discussion. I think he may be right about that, but it seems a rather different point than the one he started with.

3

Several New York Times readers take a shot in the letters column at explaining, against Jonathan Turley, why polygamy may constitutionally be criminalized.

Legally, the arguments are comically bad, which is partly a function of them being based on a conviction that (in contrast to same-sex marriage?) polygamy is really bad, not just tongue-clucking naughty and titillating.

The first writer’s argument that “Polygamous marriages always … set a terrible example for children” seems a bit two-edged to me. What about the “children of” same-sex couples (that appear through some ineffable process contrary to what I learned in biology class)? I can find people to pound the table about the poor example SSM sets for them.

That’s not to say that polygamy shouldn’t be banned. It is to say that the law, and notably SCOTUS, has built a house of cards so high into the sky that great will be the fall thereof.

4

Speaking of great falls waiting to happen, consider the economy. We can’t manufacture stuff any more, and we’re feeding corn to our cars instead of to people (or even livestock), but we can, by gosh, import Taiwanese paper eyelashes!

5

Having attempted to make a valid point about Federalism and having stirred up some controversy for his trouble, Rick Perry, as I predicted,* has manned up come to heel, clarified his valid point, and begun singing, full throat, the Federal Marriage Amendment song.

I consider the case for a Federal Marriage Amendment to be non-trivial. There really is a litigation strategy to use states like New York as a thin wedge, full faith and credit as the sledgehammer to drive it in. The objectives of that strategy are contrary to Federalism, so either way, Federalism morphs into something different. I’d prefer that it morph my way.

So would Perry, or at least so he now tacitly concedes, where a few days ago he seemed to be hallucinating that the 50 states could live and let live, with wildly disparate notions of what constitutes “marriage.”

(*Hey, I’m right in my predictions too rarely not to gloat.)

6

Mitch Berry, unknown to me, tells a brief and unassuming story of how he and his wife, former Quakers, made their way back and forth between Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard for two decades or so before finding in Orthodoxy what their hearts were longing for.

7

It’s the something-or-otherth(st) Anniversary of Charly and Di’s wedding. It’s also the 46th Anniversary of my motorcycle accident, southbound on 18th at Virginia, 9:03 pm.

I leaned a very important lesson out of it: if three or so weeks into a broken jaw you whine and carry on long enough, your mother will put pork shoulder roast and oven browned potatoes in a blender with enough milk gravy that you can suck the result up a big straw.

My jaw still doesn’t open straight, though.

8

As a recovering Puritan, I probably should be offended that someone’s electronically simulating a good time. (HT Ann Althouse)

Bon appetit!