Category: Culture

Globalization + the Pill = Culture Wars

A very interesting post at FPR clued me in to a Jonathan Rauch article in National Journal, which in turn discusses a new book that essentially publishes a Grand Unification Theory of the origins of “Red” and “Blue” America.

I hesitate to summarize. Read either the Front Porch Republic piece or Rauch’s for a summary instead.

What this leaves me with is a couple of intuitions, none of which I’m remotely prepared to defend to the death:

  1. I have taken some solace that “Red America” is growing demographically while “Blue America” is at NPG. This new theory makes me think that teeming Red America will continue to work for Blue America and will continue to be relatively ineffectual in carrying out any red agenda.
  2. Any red agenda is already in trouble. Red America, relatively speaking, tramples on the values they profess and which, in their pulpits, they literally preach. Why? They’re spitting into a very, very strong headwind of sexuality and lower wages, and their early marriages, plus the newish necessity of both parents working, make musical beds a far more popular game in Red American than in Blue.
  3. What happens when the Trillion Dollar Ponzi Scheme collapses? Red America knows more about the practical arts like gardening, homebuilding, etc. than Blue America knows. Will Blue America be picking Red America’s asparagus in a few Springs?


Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House

I have written before of the very, very serious business of glamor and glamorization. After its blog feed seemingly went dead for a while (it may have been my error – who knows?), Virginia Postrel is back online and, today, on dead tree with a Wall Street Journal review of “Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House,” by Meghan Daum, who has followed the maxim “write what you know” in this book that, as Postrel notes, needs no subtitle.

Postrel helpfully introduces her WSJ essay at her blog as well. Here are the key links:

Watchers of HGTV, Food Channel and such take note.

Interlochen Center for the Arts

I need to think on good, kind, pure and “of good report” things after my last rant. An incident this evening makes that easy.

A few hours ago, the phone rang. My wife, upstairs, answered and directly called my name down the stairs that it was for me.

I knew it was going to be a charity or a “would you hold for an important recorded message  Grand Poobah Sen. Slicksy from Southern North Dakota?” political pitch. Indiana’s no-call law has reduced to naught the commercial cold-calls, but charities and politicians are bidding to fill the gap. Continue reading “Interlochen Center for the Arts” →

Honk if you love irony

I started a month and a half ago to try to write a very trenchant post taking this music video as its point of departure.

Maybe someday I’ll get around to it, but to say what I wrote wasn’t ready for prime time would be a great understatement.

So just enjoy the video, chuckle at human folly, and then say a few “Lord have mercies” for us all.

The high cost of living “simply”

There’s a provocative column and thoughtful responses shaping up at In Character: A Journal of Everyday Virtues, about living simply.

We have been here and done this before:

  • Weekend hippies
  • Limousine liberals
  • Bobos in Paradise

Ah, the human capacity for self-delusion! I do not exempt myself by any means.

In the Orthodox “Trisagion Prayers” we ask:

All-holy Trinity have mercy on us. Lord, cleanse us from our sins. Master, pardon our iniquities. Holy God, visit and heal our infirmities for Thy Name’s sake.

I think of this not just as repetition, of which Orthodox piety has abundant supply, but of subtle distinctions among sin, iniquity and infirmity.

Our delusional lapses like consumerist simplicity strike me more as sinful (Greek amartia, “missing the mark”) or infirm than as iniquitous. Still, for those we implore cleansing and healing, respectively.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même. There’s no doubt in my mind that the Catholic Church gets extra scrutiny because it’s not 100% cool with modern prejudices and vices.

The Orthodox Church will get the same treatment as we grow and become better known. Orthodoxen: get used to it.

Yes, I just “compared” today’s sexual revolutionaries — i.e., about 90% now (or so it seems sometimes) — to Nazis, if you’re looking for merde to throw. No, I don’t think sexual revolution is Nazi or Nazi-inspired.

CLS/Hastings update

The arguments were had before the Supremes yesterday, after my post and bold-if-not-foolish prediction.

Gordon Crovitz of the Wall Street Journal summarizes nicely here:

Presumably Gays & Lesbians for Individual Liberty do not share the CLS view of human sexuality. But they understand exactly where Dean Martinez’s logic is taking us.

“[U]nder Hastings’ forced membership policy, only majority viewpoints (or those viewpoints too banal to interest the majority) are actually assured a voice in Hastings’ forum,” argues their brief. “That is a patently unreasonable way to ‘promote a diversity of viewpoints.'”

Sadly, it appears that this is shaping up in the popular press as a case about the legal status anti-gay bigotry if religiously motivated. Few in the press note that the CLS sexuality standards bar from office unrepentant straight fornicators as well as unrepentant gay fornicators.

As well it should: so far, the sexual revolution and no-fault divorce have done a heckuva lot more damage to the formation of Christian consciences and the institution of marriage than has the gay rights movement.