Tag: classical education

Tax Day

Last Branch Standing

When you go see an argument, you’ve been on the opposite side, you know that this court is an extremely well-prepared court, that the justices have read the briefs, that the justices know the case. And I think our conversation in conference reflects that. It’s substantive. It’s a conversation that only people who have really done the reading and done the thinking could have. And again, I think if you were a fly on the wall, you would be pretty proud of the institution.

Justice Elena Kagan (2019), via SCOTUSblog.

Yesterday was the release date of Sarah Isgur’s first book, Last Branch Standing.

Abandoning the modern altars

When Hurricane Hugo tore through Charleston in 1989, damaging 80% of the city’s homes and businesses, local leaders discovered that there were not enough traditional artisans in the nation, let alone the state, to make necessary repairs to historic properties. Industrialization, combined with a cultural shift toward white-collar work, had almost entirely erased the craft of building. As a result, efforts to reconstruct the city were delayed. Desperate homeowners commissioned tradesmen from outside the United States or otherwise relied on contractors who used modern construction methods that undermined the historic integrity of the buildings.

Farahn Morgan, Inside Charleston’s craft renaissance, about Charleston’s American College of Building Arts, which grew out of this 1989 wake-up call.

I’m handy (or at least used to be) at fixing things, but not “artistic,” so I don’t know what a young me would have made of the ACBA, which seems to require artistry in many or most of the crafts it teaches. Old me can hardly get enough of it. Maybe we’re repenting after a long haul of worshipping at the altars of growth and efficiency.

It’s over

Damon Linker, “raised as a secular Jew deeply attached to the state of Israel,” thinks that the “days when a unification of American and Israeli interests was even partially convincing are over and done”:

On Twitter/X, I’ve taken to calling events over the past five weeks Israel’s fantasy war. What I mean is that Israel appears to have concluded that the best (or only) way for it to protect itself (“re-establish deterrence”) is to “settle all family business” in the manner of Michael Corleone knocking off the heads of the competing mafia crime families in a series of bloody assassinations, even if those actions kill a bunch of innocent bystanders as collateral damage. So they spent roughly two years flattening much of Gaza, killing untold tens of thousands of civilians in the process, with the goal of ending Hamas’ control of the territory. (Measured by that standard, the operation has been a failure, since a greatly weakened Hamas continues to govern those parts of the strip Israel does not directly occupy.) It pulled off an impressive operation in September 2024, simultaneously blowing up thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by members of Hezbollah across Lebanon. (Twelve people died and thousands were injured, but since then missiles have continued to bombard the north of Israel.) In the so-called 12-Day War between Israel and Iran last June, the U.S. contributed to bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. (This was so unsuccessful, or insufficient, that the current, longer, and vastly more ruinous war apparently became necessary just eight months later. Or so the Netanyahu government insisted.)

This war—or this succession of wars—is a fantasy because it seeks to enact the longstanding dream of securing the conditions for Jewish safety and security through brute force and the infliction of suffering alone …

…

Israel today is a country lashing out in multiple directions in often murderous rage at its enemies.

That even includes the largely powerless Palestinians of the West Bank, who increasingly endure pogroms at the hands of settlers apparently intent on enacting a barbaric policy of slow-motion ethnic cleansing that will eventually make it possible to establish Greater Israel stretching from the river to the sea. (Yes, that’s the slogan advocates for a Palestinian state recite when they want to express a desire to wipe Israel off the map. When Israeli settlers direct it at Palestinians, the intent is no less genocidal.)

I have no particular horse in this race — yet, but I’m not sure my “having an opinion” matters much — but when someone like Linker counsels “divorce,” it carries some weight as an sort of declaration against interest.

The true scholar

Greek and Latin should not be taught in all schools; but it is important that those who by their natural disposition or their fortune are destined to cultivate letters or prepared to relish them, should find schools where a complete knowledge of ancient literature may be acquired, and where the true scholar may be formed.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Abandoned (not banned) Books

Christine Norvell at Front Porch Republic writes about Why We Abandon Books. It may be worth your while, but my abandonment tends these days to involve just one decision:

You are 77 years old, sir, with no guarantee of hitting even 78 let alone getting through hundreds of backlogged books. Forget sunk costs. Is this book really worth the X days it looks as if it will take, or should you cut your losses and move on?

  • I slogged through Middlemarch for 22 days because of the voice of the narrator (though I did like Dorothea and eventually decided that Will and Fred were okay; I never did figure out the Doctor).
  • I abandoned A Box of Matches, even though it was 2-3 days tops.
  • If I still have an unread David Bentley Hart, I’ll give it to the library “used” book sale without cracking it. Fool me once (The Beauty of the Infinite), shame on you. Fool me twice, nah.
  • I may get back to The Matter With Things, of which I’ve finished one major section, but I kinda feel like I’ve either gotten McGilchrist’s gist or else I need more time to digest what I’ve gotten.

Introducing the Gentlemanosphere

As noted, I’m a geezer, feeling the cold breath on my neck all too often. I tend to reject some new things, especially if they remind me somehow of fads in my lifetime, like, for a non-random instance, “servant leadership.”

And the Gentlemanosphere is new to me. And it did evoke a sigh of “oh, servant leadership again!” But I guess there probably is a need in every generation to counter idjits Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes with something more wholesome. So here’s a table and a link if you’re interested. I’m probably too old for this.

AspectManosphereGentlemanosphere
Core BeliefsMen should dominate socially and control women; traditional gender roles enforced strictly.Men should protect, provide, procreate with kindness and strength; masculinity is positive and diverse.
View on WomenWomen belong in traditional roles (e.g., kitchen); often hostile or dismissive toward women’s advancement.Women’s advancement and men’s well-being are mutually reinforcing; equality supported alongside healthy masculinity.
Ideological ToneOften aggressive, hostile, sometimes racist, antisemitic, and exclusionary.Empathetic, inclusive, encourages emotional expression and community building.
Political AlignmentFar-right, reactionary, anti-feminist.Centrist or mainstream; bipartisan engagement, policy-driven advocacy.
Prominent FiguresAndrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, Myron GainesScott Galloway, Richard Reeves, David French, Arthur Brooks, Chris Williamson, Jocko Willink
Approach to MasculinityDefined by dominance signals: physical strength, control, aggression.Defined by responsibility, emotional openness, personal growth, and legacy-building.
Communication StyleProvocative, confrontational, uses social media to spread ideology rapidly.Thoughtful, gentle messaging; uses podcasts, books, mainstream media for nuanced discussion.
Target AudienceYoung men attracted to clear dominance narratives and rebellion against modern social norms.Boys and men seeking practical advice, emotional support, and sustainable self-improvement.
View on Male StrugglesOften blames external forces (feminism, society) but offers simplistic “take back control” solutions.Recognizes complex causes of male struggles; advocates for empathy, new solutions beyond blame or pathologizing masculinity.
Gender PoliticsZero-sum: men’s gain seen as women’s loss; often opposes feminist progress.Non-zero-sum: advancing men’s well-being promotes stronger families and societies benefiting all genders.
Cultural ImpactPolarizing; often results in backlash and social division.Gaining mainstream attention; influencing policymakers and public discourse constructively.
Criticism FacedAccused of promoting toxic masculinity, misogyny, extremism.Criticized for being vague or “soft,” sometimes accused unfairly of aligning with far-right views.
Mental and Emotional HealthOften dismissive of emotional vulnerability; promotes toughness at all costs.Encourages emotional expression and seeking help; supports mental health awareness for men.
Economic and Social AdviceFocuses on reclaiming traditional male roles; sometimes promotes controversial or harmful behavior (e.g., pickup artistry).Emphasizes economic security, community building, responsible fatherhood, and healthy relationships.

Shorts

  • Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion. (Francis Bacon via Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).
  • [I]t’s just not true that destroying a lot of Iranian bridges and power plants would kill Iranian civilization. It would do enormous economic and physical damage, to be sure. But it takes a real estate guy to think a civilization is no more than a collection of bridges and buildings. (Jonah Goldberg)
  • “I don’t know about you,” he wrote earlier this week, “but I think that if one of our war aims is to literally erase a civilization from the face of planet Earth, it probably qualifies as a ‘war,’ and that Congress, which has already signaled its willingness to spend lots of money on this, should have the decency to call it such, and give that dignity to our soldiers, sailors, and airmen. The people dying in this are dying in a war.” (Michael Brendan Dougherty via Jonah Goldberg)
  • I don’t play with betting markets, but if I did, I’d bet a tidy sum that Trump (with the help of J.D. Vance’s negotiating acumen) will deliver us a souped-up version of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal by a different name. Sort of like how Trump basically kept NAFTA in his first term but gave it a new name, we might get the JCPOA but rebranded as the MIRGA (Make Iran Great Again) deal. (Jonah Goldberg)
  • Damn, it’s expensive to steal oil. (P.J. O’Rourke via Kevin D. Williamson

Elsewhere in Tipsyworld

Three shorts

Our society has attached a meaning to greatness that is not as far away from Hitler’s as it would like to believe, despite our cant about democracy and freedom. Our idols today are economic conquest, unending ‘growth’ built on turning all life into ‘resources’ for human consumption, scientism disguised as objective inquiry, manic forward-motion, and the same old quest for perfectability.

…

We in the West invented this thing called ‘modernity’, and then we took it out into the world, whether the world wanted it or not. Once we called this process ‘the white man’s burden’ and exported it with dreadnoughts. Now we call it ‘development’ and export it via the World Bank. But – and here is the point so often missed, especially by the ‘progressives’ currently leading the charge in the culture wars – before we could eat the world, we first had to eat ourselves. Or rather: our states, our elites, our ideologues and power-mongers, had to dispossess their own people before they could venture out to dispossess others. We were the prototype; the guinea pigs in a giant global experiment. Now we find ourselves rootless, rudderless, unmoored in a great sea of chaos; angry, confused, shouting at the world and each other. We have made of our world a nihil. We are both perpetrators and victims of a Great Unsettling.

…

[P]eople don’t tend to talk much about their ‘identity’ unless it is under threat. The louder you have to talk about it, the more you have lost. Once an entire country is talking about nothing else, that’s a pretty good sign that the Machine has sprayed the roots of its people with Roundup and ploughed the remains into the field.

Paul Kingsnorth, The Great Unsettling (The Abbey of Misrule)

[T]he most remarkable thing about Great Hearts’ college-admissions culture is its lack of emphasis on elite universities. Kathryn LeTrent, a drama and poetry teacher at Glendale Prep, reflects: “We ask our students to reflect and write on the connection between virtue and happiness. If we emphasized that they needed to attend an elite college, that would be very hypocritical.”

Max Eden, Great Hearts Academies Charter School Network Gets Results

Nobody is going to cancel a Christian for his or her traditional beliefs and practices regarding luxury, avarice, gluttony, or any of the other so-called “deadly sins”. But resist the world’s view on lust, and you find yourself in a world of trouble.

… [T]he fundamental materialism of our consumerist, hedonistic society is profoundly anti-Christian. This challenge to fidelity would exist even if the Sexual Revolution had never happened.

…

The ugly truth is that far too many of us conservatives — Christian and otherwise — are not really conservatives, but anti-liberals.

Rod Dreher, What’s The Source Of The Church’s Problems

I enjoy David French quite a lot on legal analysis, but the more he writes about religion, the more I recognize a gulf between his version of Calvinism and Orthodox Christianity. Rod Dreher apparently noticed something like that, too.

If I were to summarize, I’d make up a quote and put it in French’s mouth: "Original sin! Total depravity! Now what’s your question?"

(Inspired by this misfire).

You can read most of my more impromptu stuff at here. It should work in your RSS aggregator, like Feedly, should you want to make a habit of it.

Friday, 9/7/18

1

Evelyn Waugh’s gently satirical Scott-King’s Modern Europe follows the declining career of a classics teacher at Granchester, a fictional English public school. Granchester is “entirely respectable” but in need of a bit of modernizing, at least in the opinion of its pragmatic headmaster, who is attuned to consumer demands. The story ends with a poignant conversation between Scott-King and the headmaster:

“You know,” [the headmaster] said, “we are starting this year with fifteen fewer classical specialists than we had last term?”

“I thought that would be about the number.”

“As you know I’m an old Greats man myself. I deplore it as much as you do. But what are we to do? Parents are not interested in producing the ‘complete man’ any more. They want to qualify their boys for jobs in the modern world. You can hardly blame them, can you?”

“Oh yes,” said Scott-King. “I can and do.”

“I always say you are a much more important man here than I am. One couldn’t conceive of Granchester without Scott-King. But has it ever occurred to you that a time may come when there will be no more classical boys at all?”

“Oh yes. Often.”

“What I was going to suggest was—I wonder if you will consider taking some other subject as well as the classics? History, for example, preferably economic history?”

“No, headmaster.”

“But, you know, there may be something of a crisis ahead.”

“Yes, headmaster.”

“Then what do you intend to do?”

“If you approve, headmaster, I will stay as I am here as long as any boy wants to read the classics. I think it would be very wicked indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world.”

“It’s a short-sighted view, Scott-King.”

“There, headmaster, with all respect, I differ from you profoundly. I think it the most long-sighted view it is possible to take.”

Richard Gamble, To Be Unfit for the Modern World.

2

Midway through Revelation, John sees a pantomime of the Gospel’s beginning, enacted in the sky (Rev. 12). There’s a woman clothed with the sun, standing on the moon, crowned with twelve stars, laboring to bring a boy into the world. Near her is a dragon, ready to devour the infant …

We’ve seen plenty of sea monsters over the past few centuries, from the de-Christianization purge of the French Revolution to the personality cult of today’s North Korea. Even cuddly liberal house pets can turn into monsters. But oppressive political regimes aren’t the only threat. The dragon always calls monsters from the sea and monsters from the land, monsters of the state and monsters of the church.

Easy examples come to mind: Compromised German churches under the Nazis; Orthodox priests double-timing as KGB agents. But there are land beasts closer to home: Churches that support the fascism of the new sexual regime and persecute traditionalists; churches that cheer on every American war without asking whether it’s just or unjust; churches that serve as court prophets of humanistic internationalism; churches that serve as court prophets of humanistic nationalism.

Revelation unmasks the satanic monsters that lurk behind the veil of power, and it reminds us that sea monsters are never alone. Whenever a thuggish state tramples on the faithful, there will be thuggish pseudo-saints nearby, piously cheering it on.

Peter J. Leithart

3

Any discussion of the family must presuppose that it can be defined. That definition until recent times has always been accepted to be the natural or traditional family. It’s not possible to talk about alternative families, different kinds of families without first having a primary model.

Family First (New Zealand) board member Bruce Logan, quoted by Carolyn Moynihan.

Family First faces loss of charitable status because it advocates for the traditional family, whereas New Zealand now has thrown open “family,” which means that Family First advocates (drum roll) discriminaaaaaation! How could that possibly be a permissible charitable purpose.

QED

4

Someone wrote the other day:

Unlike the many, many online commentators who are extremely performative in their iconoclasm (yet somehow always managing to comfort the powerful), [Fredrik] deBoer is truly orthogonal to established ideologies.

That packs in quite a lot, and it seems like a good description of why many folks want to encounter deBoer.

Thursday, he did it again, in self-care is just another set of expectations you’ll never realize. It defies my summarization, but it seems to me that we’d miss a lot if we thought only about self-care when we read it. It applies to more than that, as I assume he intended.

5

We sang many hymns together. For the most part, our hymns served collectively to frame what would prove to be the centerpiece of our Sunday services: the sermon that—I now recognize—replaced centuries-old liturgical worship with something akin to a classroom whose lessons were punctuated by a soundtrack.

The hymns employed within that frame, by and large, fell into two categories: preparation for the sermon and altar call. Most were sentimental and didactic, speaking to the choir—as it were—while pretending to speak to God. That is also how most of our public prayer worked—with the pastor overtly addressing God while more pointedly admonishing the flock.

In any case, one hymn stood profoundly apart from the others, as it seemed to me more like prayer than any other utterance we made; it was, moreover, a prayer that I found myself praying as I sang the words. That hymn, “Be Thou My Vision,” therefore has always moved me.

Poet Scott Cairns, in Image Journal.

6

Deneen said he lead at Notre Dame a class on the idea of utopia, from ancient days until now. At the end, he polled the class to ask them which society of those he presented would they least want to live in, and which they would most want to live in. They all said 1984 is the one they wouldn’t want to live in. But which would they choose? A handful chose the world Wendell Berry presents in Hannah Coulter. But about half the class said Brave New World.

“It was stunning that they saw it as a utopia,” Deneen said. “That’s liberalism succeeding, and that’s liberalism failing.”

Rod Dreher (emphasis in original).

Notre Dame (My emphasis).

This came to mind as I read Nicholas Zinos, Erotic Love and the Totalitarian State, which agrees with me that Huxley got sex in dystopia better than Orwell, and who introduced me to One Evening in 2217, a 1906 classic available as part of a collection of Red Star Tales: A Century of Russian and Soviet Science Fiction, in English translation.

I find Brave New World scarily prophetic — so far, more so every time I read it.

7

It is perfectly necessary and routine for hired and appointed officials to give advice that runs contrary to a president’s wishes and instincts. It is perfectly legitimate to try to guard any president against his worst defects of judgment and character, and such stories are the stuff of all White House memoirs. And it is necessary for advisers and attorneys to warn a president about the constitutional and moral limits that should restrain his ambitions.

What is disturbing about the Times op-ed author is that he or she admits not to doing the above, but to actively subverting the agenda of the president on policy questions that were hotly debated and thrashed out publicly in the campaign, questions on which this adviser’s side arguably lost the popular debate.

…

And yet, one shouldn’t feel too bad for Trump. It is President Trump’s inability to hire and staff his campaign and his administration with competent and ethical people willing and able to translate the ideologically heterodox promises of his campaign into workable policy that gives this resistance staying power, and that constantly humiliates him in the press. Trump has not hired enough of the best people. He’s hired too many self-flatterers, grifters, and people who proudly identify with the swamp. If he can’t get out of his own way, no one else will either.

Kevin D. Williamson

8

If you prick him, does he not explode? If you stroke him, does he not purr?

…

The testimony of the tell-alls is remarkably consistent. Some around Trump are completely corrupted by the access to power. But others — who might have served in any Republican administration — spend much of their time preventing the president from doing stupid and dangerous things.

Michael Gerson, We are a superpower run by a simpleton.

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