On Re-Reading

One of the interesting things about following blogs of several different types is that one ends up running into conversations that wouldn't necessarily occur to you in your primary milieu. I was struck by the conversation that followed when Art Carden posted over at EconTalk on the topic: Which Books Should We Re-Read?

My last entry mentioned a re-reading of Atlas Shrugged, which got me thinking about the books people should not merely "read wholly, and with diligence and attention," but re-read, perhaps several times.

Which books (fiction and non-fiction) fit the bill? Off the top of my head, I'd say Atlas Shrugged, Les Miserables, CS Lewis's The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity, 1984, Animal Farm, The Brothers Karamazov (which I've read once but which I know I'll be re-reading carefully), and obviously a bunch of others I'm forgetting. In economics, I'd put Mises's Human Action and Hayek's Individualism and Economic Order at the top of the list. I'm also planning to read and re-read as much of the collected works of Adam Smith as I can over the next year or so.

I'd mostly pick different re-reading targets, but this is the sort of thing that I'm a sucker for, so I immediately figured I'd write a post on books that I've re-read most often and books I plan to re-read soon. But first I started skimming down the comments, and that's where I ran into the difference between this audience and that of some of the more bibliophilic blogs I normally read. Commenter Hadur writes:

I can understand why some non-fiction books might be objectively worthy of multiple readings, because the ideas contained therein are important and perhaps not obvious the first time around. Of course it is highly arguable whether understanding a non-fiction book itself is actually important, or if what's more important is to understand the ideas therein: why re-read Adam Smith when you can get the same from reading the secondary literature on it?

But are any fiction books truly "important" in the same sense? Seems a lot more subjective: people should re-read the books they think they will derive pleasure from re-reading. Perhaps some novels are so complex that they typically have to be read several time before the reader "gets it" to the full extent the author intended (or even beyond), but it seems like an equally rational response to those books, in the presence of limited time, is to toss them.

F. Lynx Pardinus responded:

I think you get more than just "the same" from reading the secondary literature. I had a conversation a few days ago: A (religious) relative had decided to re-study one of the books in the Bible for the umpteenth time. I suggested that, instead of limiting herself to her own perspective, she grab a few religious and historical commentaries on the text from the local library to open herself to other perspectives. I would imagine it's a similar experience reading a few pieces of secondary literature on, say, Adam Smith.

And Hadur replied:

I am inclined to agree. I think that reading the great books or the "classics" is more or less a form of conspicuous consumption. People do it to appear smart or cultured or what have you.

Literally millions of people have read these books before you. Chances are that at least a few of them are one or more of the following (i) smarter than you; (ii) a more insightful reader than you; (iii) a better writer/summarizer of others than either you or the author of the great book, and a few of them probably left behind secondary literature.

Should we, as people who read a free market blog, not defer to those experts to produce our understanding of great books, much as we would defer to an efficient pin factory for our pin-making, instead of making pins at home?

These bring up some interesting questions about re-reading, or indeed reading, at all -- questions I wouldn't normally even think about because the value of reading and re-reading seems so blindingly obvious to me.

Reading Primary vs. Secondary Sources
I think one can come at this question in terms of information, an approach which might be familiar to the people bringing the question up. Certainly, it makes sense that, if a work is acknowledged as "great" there are probably a lot of people who have read the work before you and written about it. Many of them may be smarter than you or know more about the general topic than you, so it stands to reason that reading their works about the work itself may be of benefit to you. However, you, as an outsider, don't have a good way of knowing which of these people are insightful and which are howlingly wrong-headed, and if you never read the great work itself, you'll have no basis for assessing how well their assessments of the work align with the work itself. It can take often take more expert knowledge to ascertain who is (to your mind) the best expert to read on a great work as simply to read the great work itself.

Arguably, the best balance, if this is a great work you care about a lot, is to read the work, then read several pieces about it by people who are acclaimed as experts, and then read the work again with their commentary in mind. This allows you the chance to benefit from their expertise while grounding it in the reality of the work.

What Do You Read Fiction For?
Underlying these and several other comments, it seemed to me, are varying ideas as to why one would read fiction anyway. Do we read fiction only for entertainment? Can fiction books convey ideas, or do we merely read them to find out what happens?

Arguably, some books are simply pleasure reads. We read them to find out what happens, to escape to another place, to follow some interesting characters. Sometimes we read in order to vicariously experience what it's like to live in some time or place very different from our own. Also, we at times read for the sheer enjoyment of experiencing a good author's prose.

However, I would say the primary reason for reading fiction, to my mind, is that in fiction we experience a distilled and meaningful version of reality. A fiction author takes character, events, and indeed the whole world, and zeros in on the things which he thinks are significant. As such, in a sense, the author, by choosing what to convey, is telling us: This is what things mean. This is how people work. This is how the world works. This is what turns events into a story.

In real life, we are constantly bombarded by events and sensations. Figuring out what things mean and where things are going can be difficult. Fiction seeks to answer these questions by selecting those things that are significant, those things that make experiences a story, and presenting only those.

As such, we read fiction in order to understand something about the world -- or at least, how the author thinks the world is. In this regard the purpose may be very similar to that in reading non-fiction, but the process is very different. In non-fiction, the author tells us "this is what happened" or "this is how the world words" and we, the readers, try to compare that explanation to our experience of life and see if we agree. In fiction, the author shows us the world, but a world filtered down to only those events which are meaningful. We look at that world-in-small and draw conclusions from it. Based on our own beliefs and experiences, those conclusions may or may not be the same as the authors. Thus, fiction is a more wide-open means of communication than non-fiction, though at the same time in some ways a more subtle one. A sufficiently good author can create a world real enough that different people will draw different things from it, and the same person will draw different things from it at different points in his life.

Why Re-Read Fiction?
That last point points toward one of the obvious reasons for re-reading a good book. Re-reading is not simply a matter of refreshing one's mind as to what happens in the story. Coming at a good story again, one notices new things because one's interplay with the reality presented in the story is different. You get new things out of re-reading a novel because you are different than when you read it before.

One way in which you are different is moderately trivial, but it can result in catching meaning and themes you might not have before. When you are re-reading, you already know "what happens" and so you have a certain leisure to look around -- just as when you are diving a familiar route you have more opportunity to look at the scenery than when you are trying to navigate some unfamiliar place for the first time. Thus, you get new things out of a good book when you re-read simply because you are different as a reader.

However, a book can also benefit from re-reading when one is at a different stage of life, when one comes back with different experiences and beliefs. This different background will cause you to notice things and draw conclusions that you might not have before.


The book that I've re-read the most times in my life -- leaving aside the picture books which I've read aloud scores of times for the benefit of various young listeners -- is probably Lord of the Rings. It's been five or six years since I last read it, though, and I'm starting to have the urge to read it again, though I don't know how soon I'll have the chance. Other most re-read novels would include Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time novels, and Tim Powers' Declare and Last Call. I'm sure I've read LotR more than six times, and the others listed at least 3-4 each.

I haven't been re-reading much recently, because I've been trying to get through a very long novel-research reading list as quickly as possible, but the next re-read I have planned is a third pass through War & Peace. Some of Tolstoy's philosophizing about history (and life in general) drove me up the wall, yet overall I think he did a very good job of writing the Big Historical Novel. Since I'm trying to plan a Big Historical Novel myself, I figure it's something I should pass through again with a special eye towards how it's constructed.

In Death, Eternal LIfe

Donald McClarey, whose son died a month ago yesterday, posted a prayer in time of grieving yesterday which all of us will find ourselves in need of at some points in this life:

God of life and death, You have taken a beloved one from me. My heart is very heavy. I recall that Your Son, Jesus Christ, became man in all things except sin and that He groaned in sorrow at the death of His friend, Lazarus. I unite my grief with Yours dear Jesus, as You stood at the tomb of Lazarus.

O Virgin Mother, you know what it was like losing your husband Joseph, and then your child. dying suspended between earth and heaven, with a sword piercing your sweet soul. To you do I come in sorrow, begging strength from your intercession, from you who fully understand what it is like to lose one so dear and close.

Share with me, dear Mother of God, the courage, the strong faith that you had in the future resurrection. Even after Jesus came back to life and ascended into heaven, you knew you were to be left alone for many years before your own assumption into heaven. You comforted the Apostles as their Queen and Mother during those years. Grant comfort to me now as I sorrow in pain at the loss by the separation that has come as a result of the sin of our first parents and my own sins. Wipe away my tears with the merciful love of your Immaculate Heart as you unite me with my loved one through the grace of the Sacred Heart of your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.

He also notes the profound difference that Christianity makes in our understanding of death and of life after death:

Without God my dead son would be nothing, I would be nothing and all that I love would be nothing. With God, this brief life is a mere doorway into splendor unimaginable and a love that surpasses understanding. In the grief I experience now I truly understand, with my heart, as I always have with my mind, my utter and absolute dependence upon the grace, mercy and love of God.

Too often, with the help of a modern world which seeks to hide our mortality, we miss Christ's central message: He came to forgive sins and to offer us eternal life with the Father in heaven. That is what we are made for. When we lose sight of the place of death and eternal life in Christianity, we lose track of the meaning of Christ himself, and turn our faith into a mere social improvement club.

Charles Darwin's Great, Great Great Granddaughter Becomes Catholic Apologist

Laura Keynes is a descendant of both biologist Charles Darwin and economist John Maynard Keynes. She's also now a Catholic apologist. The UK's Catholic Herald has her story:

‘Are you related to the economist?” People sometimes ask when they see my surname. I explain that, yes, John Maynard Keynes is my great-great-uncle – his brother Geoffrey married Margaret Darwin, my great-grandmother. “So you’re related to Darwin too?” Yes, he’s my great-great-great grandfather. Eyes might fall on the cross around my neck: “And you’re a Christian?” Yes, a Catholic. “How does a Darwin end up Catholic?”

The question genuinely seems to puzzle people. After all, Darwin ushered in a new era of doubt with his theory of evolution, and the Bloomsbury Group, of which Keynes was a part, influenced modern attitudes to feminism and sexuality. How can I be a product of this culture, and yet Catholic? The implication is that simple exposure to my ancestors’ life work should have shaken me out of my backwards error.
...
Among my family members religion is seen as an anachronism at best, a pernicious form of tyranny at worst. So where do I get it from?

Mum converted to Catholicism shortly after I was born, having been Anglican prior to that. My parents’ marriage was a mismatch of personalities and values. It was annulled soon after I came along. Mum worked full-time as a single mother, while raising my brother and me in the Faith, attending Mass at Blackfriars in Cambridge. Fortunately, she remained on terms with my father and the extended Keynes family. If there was any sense in which they saw my Catholic upbringing as indoctrination, or “child abuse” in the way Richard Dawkins has characterised it, I had no inkling of that, except perhaps once when my father asked me what sins a 10-year-old could possibly have to confess. He was a near contemporary of Christopher Hitchens at the Leys School, and a product of the same cultural forces that formed Hitchens’s brand of atheism.

By the time I was in my teens Mum had become a Buddhist. My brother rejected any form of organised religion that contravened his ethic of autonomy. My only link to the Church came through school, St Mary’s, Cambridge, which I left at 16 for college. Away from any contact with the Church, secular values prevailed and I drifted into agnosticism. It wasn’t until my mid to late 20s, while studying for a doctorate in philosophy at Oxford University, that life gave me cause to reassess those values. Relationships, feminism, moral relativism, the sanctity and dignity of human life: experience put them all under my scrutiny.

By this point Dawkins had sparked “the God debate” with The God Delusion, and my great-great-great grandfather’s theory of natural selection by evolution was being used to support New Atheism. Aware that Darwin himself said “Agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind” and “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent theist and an evolutionist”, I followed the debate carefully. Did evidence for evolution necessarily imply atheism?
...I read central texts on both sides of the debate and found more to convince me in the thoughtful and measured responses of Alister McGrath and John Cornwell, among others, than in the impassioned prose of Hitchens et al. New Atheism seemed to harbour a germ of intolerance and contempt for people of faith that could only undermine secular Humanist claims to liberalism. Moreover, it could not adequately account for the problem of morality, discussed by C S Lewis in Mere Christianity, without recourse to an inherently contradictory argument.

Read the whole piece here.

I used to blog more about evolution, though I eventually left it off because I felt like I'd said most of what I had to say, and the whole "do Christianity and evolution contradict each other" debate seems to go in circles rather than progress. However, soon-to-be-family-member apparently thought of me first when it came to commenting on the story, and so I ended up doing a brief radio interview the other day for the Son Rise Morning Show on Sacred Heart Radio dealing with Laura Keynes' reversion to the faith. If you have any interest in hearing it, I'm told the interview will play tomorrow (Wednesday June 19th) morning at 6:35AM Eastern. You can hear it online here. The piece may re re-run on Thursday the 20th at 7:45AM Eastern.

Prepping for the discussion, I had occasion to go back over my old evolution posts and realized that since they were mostly written to respond to specific posts or questions, they were kind of spotty and disorganized when it comes to presenting an overall discussion of the issue. Maybe it's time to revisit the topic with a more mature eye.

Contrition as the Pre-requisite for Forgiveness

The gospel from last Sunday struck me with unusual force. The story is the familiar one in which Jesus is dining with a Pharisee and a woman known as a sinner approaches Jesus and washes his feet.

Now there was a sinful woman in the city who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee. Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment, she stood behind him at his feet weeping
and began to bathe his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment.

When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.”

Jesus said to him in reply, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”

“Tell me, teacher, ” he said.

“Two people were in debt to a certain creditor; one owed five hundred days’ wages and the other owed fifty. Since they were unable to repay the debt, he forgave it for both. Which of them will love him more?”

Simon said in reply, “The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was forgiven.”

He said to him, “You have judged rightly.”

Something that strikes me as interesting about the parable that Jesus tells is that both creditors are unable to pay their debts. In that regard, there's an extent to which it's immaterial that one debt is larger than the other. They might as well both be infinite. However, the knowledge that he's been forgiven a larger debt makes the one creditor more grateful than the other.

In the real life situation, Jesus isn't confronted with just one sinner. All the people who he meets are sinners. However, because the Pharisee thinks of himself as righteous, he's not actively seeking forgiveness the way that the woman is. Both will need to be forgiven if they are ever to be with God. No person can win his way into heaven based upon his own virtues. God's grace and forgiveness are gifts. But only one of them fully recognizes this and asks for forgiveness, and she does so because she recognizes herself to be a sinner and thus has contrition.

I think this is also where the "Jesus always seemed to feel most comfortable around people society labeled as sinners" line of thinking goes clearly off the rails. In the gospels, we again and again see people who are widely considered to be sinners turning to Jesus to seek forgiveness, while people who consider themselves righteous often question him or ignore him. Jesus, for his part, requires only that people ask for forgiveness, and immediately grants their requests. However, when we hear the "Jesus hung out with sinners" argument now, it's usually in the context of arguing that what society labels as sin should not be seen as such -- that the people in question don't need to ask for forgiveness.

The sin of the Pharisees was pride. They didn't see themselves as needing Jesus, because they were sure they were pretty good already. In modern society, we seem to have two factions of Pharisees.

On the one hand, there's pharisaical righteousness, in which we identify ourselves as belonging to a group of 'basically good people' and congratulate ourselves on that.

On the other hand, we have pharisaical lowliness, in which we identify ourselves with one of the "out groups" which we imagine Jesus would have felt affinity for, and thus conclude that we are basically good people and congratulate ourselves that we're not like the righteous Pharisees.

Both of these, however, are wrong, because they miss the thing that really drew sinners to Jesus and Jesus to sinners: the fact that they acknowledge that they needed forgiveness and asked Jesus for it, a request that he was and is always ready to grant.

Our Readership

Thanks to all who completed the DarwinCatholic reader poll. The results were as follows:

Roughly 170 readers completed the poll. The site usually has 200-300 visits a day, of which a number appear to be one-time visits directed by Google searches, so I suspect this captures a good portion of our daily readership.


We've been writing since 2006, and our readership isn't huge, so our readership seems to reflect the tenure of the blog:

18% of DarwinCatholic readers have been following the blog for less than a year.
37% for 1-3 years
44% for "Longer than I'd like to admit"

One thing I'd been fairly curious about was how many readers primarily accessed the blog through RSS rather than visiting the site. That breakdown appears to be:

59% visit the site itself
41% follow via RSS
4% follow via Facebook

I'd suspected for a while that we'd shifted to a majority female readership. Come to that, I say shifted, but for all I know we may always have been. The current breakdown is basically 60/40 female to male.

I also figured that we probably had a heavily Catholic readership, though I'm not sure I realized how lopsided the split is. 164 (95%) of respondents were Catholic while 9 were non-Catholic.

That All Should Be Counted

The DarwinCatholic reader demographic polls (seen on the main page above the posts -- if you're reading via RSS click through) are open for another 12 hours. If you haven't already, click on through take thirty seconds to answer the four questions.

So far, there are roughly 140 responses registered. Among other things, I'm curious how many regular reader we actually have here at DarwinCatholic. I know there are about 300 visits a day, but that doesn't count people who read via RSS (thus far, that appears to be about 35% of our readers) and it does count a lot of people who stumble upon one old post or another in the course of researching a topic via Google.

Thanks to all who have participated!

Saturday Review, 1952: Do Women Make Good Poets? by Rumer Godden

Up in the attic I found, in a stack of yellowing magazines, a Saturday Review dated January 5, 1952 which featured a cover article by Rumer Godden: Do Women Make Good Poets? (You can read the complete article online; the first two pages are here, and the third here, page 39.)

There are many women writers who write good prose; in the novel especially women are the equals, if not the betters of men. Why have not more of them written good poetry? 

Woman is emancipated now. She can vote, she can own property, she can work -- though not on equal pay; almost all professions are open to her if she can find the means to follow them. Then why does she so seldom follow that of the poet? The woman poet has always been a rarity; she is still rare today, yet all she needs is a few pieces of paper, a pen... and herself. Is it that last that balks her?

She explains her concept of self as hindrance to women poets:

The womanly woman is beset with little [little has been clarified earlier as meaning personal and intimate - MrsDarwin] visions, and the poet needs a large vision. She is attached, and the poet must be detached. A poet must have the power to inhabit space, to float, to disappear, like Ariel, in an essence of himself; most women are too personal to disappear. Fo all woman's emancipation, for all the professions she may follow, she is still trammeled by herself. Ann [sic] Elliot's cry from the heart is still the cry of most women: "We live at home... (even if we are not there, even if we are out following our bent as lawyer, doctor, economist)... our feelings prey upon us." Ann Elliot is still right; it is, and always will be, very difficult for a woman to free herself, to leave the walls and hedges of her home, to escape whole from her feelings. 

But, surely, feeling is the first essential for a poet? It is the first, but only the first. The rest must follow, and too often a woman can travel no further than the range of her own feelings.

Rumer Godden, a gifted novelist, is no tool of the patriarchy, so as much as phrases like "little vision" may cause a knee-jerk reaction, it's worth parsing out what she is saying. To have a personal or intimate vision is not a sign of inferiority or a mark of weakness, nor is "most women are too personal to disappear" a pejorative statement; often those acclaimed for their large vision have lost sight of essential humanity. If women are responsible for much writing that is sentimental, schlocky, or trite -- "as warm, as sensuous, as easy as theatre organ music, syrupy sweet", as Godden says of the "poetesses" who stand in contrast to the serious woman poet -- it is men who tend towards writing that is impersonal, devoid of human characteristics and feeling, whether action-packed or abstract. As it is, many men who pride themselves on their hard rigorous writing would do well to remember that since God is both Love and Truth, any feats of cold logic which despise mercy as weakness and emotion as pathetic are little more than exercises in intellectual sterility. But such men do not tend to write poetry.

Speaking of Christina Rossetti, for whom she has great admiration, Godden says, "In the end, she married only her poetry, she lived with it, keeping herself for it. It is this, this wholeness of gift, this dedication, that marks the true poet; and I think this is the reason that so few women attain this stature."

A woman, leading a woman's life, can never be whole; she is constantly drained in a way that a man is not.To write a poem is an experience into which the whole of the poet must go; in it he must be reborn and one cannot be born oneself if one is continually giving birth. This is what a womanly woman does; she spends her days creating and re-creating...

Godden does not contend that a woman with a family is necessarily cut off from the poetic muse, but she does believe that

The woman poet is more set apart from other women than the male poet from other men. No doubt women despise her because she is not deft. She is often a little inept, clumsy about the practical things of life... The woman poet has nothing to say to other women, except through her poetry. In proportion to her power she eschews herself with male detachment; she must consent to be unwomanly, she must consent to be apart. She may not like her loneliness, particularly when she is young. Perhaps it is that that gives to the best of her work a power of penetration, a pathos, that is like an inner voice, a voice like light rising from the sound of the poem, from the exquisite shell of its texture and shape.

***

The rest of the magazine is a fascinating glimpse of literary life in mid-century America. The whole can be viewed here, ads and all.  Of course there are many worthwhile articles, but I was particularly intrigued by the quality of the personal ads, compelled by space constraints to assume a Twitter-esque brevity:

ENGINEER, young, naive, moderately sincere, slightly weary only trees and mountains, would eagerly correspond carload lots female correspondence. Box 755-J 

SLICK WRITER needs young man assistant 20-28 years, with serious ambition to write, college and research experience preferable but not necessary. Opportunity for expense-paid travel, independent assignments, U.S.-foreign. Complete resume, photo if possible. Immediate. Box 760-J 

IS THERE mature male seeking feminine and interesting correspondence? Box 765-J
MATURE GENTLEMAN interested in music, theatre, cooking, ordinary pleasures, invites correspondence with lady. Box 792-J 

YOUNG MAN, music lover, avocations audio engineering, furniture design; seeks exhange of ideas and suggestions for better design of audio equipment and furniture with young lady of like enthusiams. Box 784-J 

GENTLEMAN, adventurous, bored, will not answer dull letters. Box 795-J 

WOULD VENTURESOME lassie escape boredom corresponding mature but audacious male with widely diversified interests. Box 796-J

Time Warp, 80s style: C-I-N-C-I-N-N-A-T-I

Lo, more than a quarter-century ago, I went to a slumber party at which we watched, on broadcast TV, a version of Babes in Toyland. I remember almost nothing of this unmemorable drama, besides the fact that early on, it had people in a car, driving in the snow, singing a song about Cincinnati. That was probably the first time I ever heard the name of the city to which my family would move a few years later.

Behold, the power of the internet: here is that strange song, sung by a young Keanu Reeves and and even younger Drew Barrymore.



And here are the lyrics to this forgotten gem:

Jack, Lisa Piper, George, Mary: [singing] C-I-N-C-I-N-N-A-T-I, Cincinnati! The best town in O-H-I-O, Ohio, USA! At first they called it Cincy, but since Cincy is so natty, they named it Cincinnati, so they say. Hey, the girls are really pretty in this pretty little city, the fellas are the feistiest I've seen. And when it comes to ball teams, the Reds and Bengals maul teams, they knock the socks off all the other teams. I mean to argue's indefensible, the facts are common sensible, Cincy is invincible, know what I mean? Cincy's more than merely natty, she's Ohio's Maserati, Cincinnati's at the center of the scene!

I want the world to know: I like Cincinnati and its seven hills, but contra Keanu, it is not known for its skiing. I might grant her the title of "Ohio's Maserati", though, seeing as the chief competition is Columbus, Cleveland, and Chillicothe.

A Poll For the Weekend

The day is stacking up busy here, so I thought I'd try something mildly indulgent for a data monkey like me and post a couple of polls to get a feel for the shape of our readership these days. If you don't normally read via the website itself, the polls are pinned to the top of the page. Please click through to the site and answer a couple questions to satisfy my idle demographic curiosity. There are just a couple questions. It'll only take a moment to fill out.

I'll post a summary of results early next week, though you can see them as they accumulate.

High Class Soap Opera?

There's a class of show which functions as a soap opera for those who like to feel they're above soap operas. Make it a period drama or give it British accents, you see, and its classy. I'm not immune to the charms of this genre. We avidly watched two and a half seasons of Downton Abbey until suddenly we realized we didn't care if we saw any more episodes, and so we didn't.

I'd always had this vague intention of watching Mad Men. But I kept not getting around to it, and then a year or two ago the pieces I read by people who did watch it started sounding odder and odder. The other day I read into this massive spoiler (there's your spoiler warning) on Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog:

To recap: Don's real name is Dick Whitman. His prostitute mother died in childbirth; his dad, her john, beat him. His fundamentalist stepmother called him a "whore's child." Then his father got kicked in the head by a horse, and the stepmother moved in with her sister, herself a prostitute, living in a brothel. The stepmother, heavily pregnant with Don's half brother, prostituted herself to her brother-in-law, as the teen-age Don knelt outside her door. He watched them, through the keyhole, have sex. C'mon, now. This is no longer the backstory of a serial adulterer; it's the backstory of a serial killer.

We haven't even got to the part where Whitman goes to fight in Korea, accidentally blows up his superior officer, Don Draper, steals his identity, forms a secret relationship with his widow (she's motherly, yet also somewhat prostitute-like, since he pays for her upkeep), becomes a greaser, and seduces a model who is also concerned primarily with appearances. Eventually, he gets into advertising, and when his half brother, Adam, finds him, Don rejects him, and Adam hangs himself. It's not that none of this makes sense, or could make sense; it's just too much, overdetermined. None of the other characters has this sort of reverse-engineered psychology, and for good reason: it's a lazy way to impose meaning.

I'm not sure I've ever watched a whole episode of a soap opera, but I can't help wondering if this kind of character backstory manages to take things beyond even where soap operas go. Indeed, when I first read this, I had the idea that it was some sort of extended joke, but given how Coates responds to it, I take it this is actually the exposition which has been provided by the show. Wow.

Risk and Morals

It strikes me that one of the things that people aren't very good at doing is dealing with moral questions that seem to involve risks or probabilities. Some time back (and unfortunately I didn't save the link and can't find it now) I ran across roughly the following argument (this is me giving my fairest shot at expressing the argument I remember):

You all know the concept of Russian roulette. Take a revolver with six chambers, put a bullet in one chamber and leave the rest empty. Spin the chambers. There's a one and six chance that if you put the gun to your head and pull the trigger, you'll die. Would you do it? Almost certainly no. Indeed, we'd say that it's immoral to engage in such a risky activity for no reason.

However, we all engage in risky activities all the time. When you go swimming, you risk drowning. When you go cycling, you risk having a crash (or being hit) and dying. When you drive to work you risk dying in a crash. The list goes on. Even doing nothing carries a risk since a sedentary lifestyle increases your risk of various health problems. And yet everything you could do instead of sitting on the couch carries risk as well.

So, how many chambers does the revolver have to have for you to be willing to play Russian roulette? At what odds does engaging in a dangerous activity just for fun become moral? At what odds does engaging in a dangerous activity for a practical reason become moral? Is there a difference between these two?

Googling around for an example, I find a pair of statistics that you have a 1/2,000,000 chance of a fatal accident for each ride you take on a bike and a 1/2,800,000 chance of a fatal accident for each drive you take I a car. These are activities we feel pretty good about. Would it be moral to play Russian roulette with a two million chamber gun? How about a one million chamber gun? A one thousand chamber gun?

It strikes me that the problem with this line of argument is that it splits off the question of risk from what you are actually doing, and thus acts as if when you choose to do some thing which involves risk, you're simply playing Russian roulette.

When I hop in the car and drive, I'm not doing so with the object of facing down a 1/2,800,000 risk of death, I'm doing so to pick up groceries at the store, or go to work, or visit family. My object is to perform that action. The means by which I perform that action (driving) carries a certain risk, but I consider the risk to be acceptable. If the risk was much different (say, if there were a 1/100 chance of dying every time you drove) I might decide that some of those things weren't worth the risk.

The problem with comparing this to Russian roulette is that there is not, so far as I can tell, any particular purpose to Russian roulette other than to face down a 1 in 6 risk of dying. In this sense, it doesn't even compare well to highly risky activities, because there isn't really any activity involved in Russian roulette other than risking death.

Say that your favorite activity is a really dangerous extreme sport. Let's say your chance of dying each time you participate in this sport is 1/5,000. Is participating in the sport the same as playing Russian roulette with a 5,000 chamber gun? Unless you're participating in the sport solely with the intention of experiencing a 1/5,000 chance of death, I would assume not. You participate in the sport because you enjoy the activity itself.

I'd argue that it's never moral to play Russian roulette no matter how good your odds. Risking your life as an end unto itself is wrong regardless of the degree of the risk. However, that doesn't tell us anything about the morality of doing some particular thing, with a purpose other than risking ones life, which nonetheless carries with it a certain predictable risk to one's life as a foreseen side effect. There it's necessary to make some sort of judgment balancing the purpose one has with the risk one incurs -- and weighting that risk, in turn, against the likely effects of one's death or injury on others as well as on oneself.

Online Privacy and Online Exhibitionism

With various "national conversations" taking place in regards to online privacy in the wake of the NSA revelations, Ross Douthat quotes a writer who argues against the "think twice about what you put online" conventional wisdom:

… we now find not only kids, but adults (especially new adults) getting constantly dinged with the dire warning that Social Media Lasts Forever. I think this is probably patently untrue in a purely physical sense; it strikes me as probable that fifty years from now, the whole electronic record of our era will be largely lost in a sea of forgotten passwords, proprietary systems, faulty hardware, and compatibility issues. But it should also be untrue in, dare I say it, the moral sense. Educators and employers are constantly yelling that you young people have an affirmative responsibility not to post anything where a teacher or principal or, worst of all, boss or potential boss might find it, which gets the ethics of the situation precisely backwards. It isn’t your sister’s obligation to hide her diary; it’s yours not to read it.

I'm not sure that I'm just barely older than the social media generation, or just that I have a stronger sense of reticence than many, but I've definitely been one of those who shakes my head at some of the things slightly younger people write on blogs and on facebook. This reticence is why I blog semi-anonymously. I don't make it the hardest thing in the world to figure out my real name, but I'd rather that this blog was not the first thing to pop up on Google if someone searched my real name.

The thing is, unless one takes a number of precautions, what one writes online is not like a diary. A diary traditionally kept on paper in a book that is kept in a private place and provides through it's appearance some appearance of being not-meant-for-general-consumption. (Until one is dead and famous, at which point the full critical edition of one's every thought can be published. Which is, of course, why the Victorians had a habit of burning their papers late in life.)

When one writes online, however, one generally writes with the specific intention that people read it. Certainly, when I write here, I do so in hopes that people will read it, that reading it will cause them to think and perhaps that they will even respond in some way. Facebook is slightly more private, in that many of one's activities there are (or can be) restricted so that they can be seen only by one's "friends". However, friends lists tend to be rather long, and especially among the young people often don't seem to think very much about who exactly is on that list when they go posting pictures, rants and links.

I would agree that it's rude and inappropriate for a co-worker or boss to try to sneak into areas of one's online life that are intentionally kept private. But one also needs to be aware that when one writes things online under one's own name, people who are simply looking for business-relevant information about you, they may stumble across your public online activities. And if those activities involve posting pictures of roadkills wearing wigs, or your advocacy of white supremacy, or your grisly fantasies about how to kill Sarah Palin, the friendly coworker who stumbles upon the information is not going to think about you the same way in the future.

This isn't something that is unique to the modern world. Anytime we show one persona in some circumstances and another in others, we open ourselves up to the sudden convergence of social sets one had meant to keep separate. So, for instance, if a high school teacher has a sideline as a member of the Chippendales and one day the mothers of several of his students happen to attend his show, these women have not invaded his privacy. He is the person who has chosen to publically engage in activities that perhaps he wouldn't like everyone he knows to be aware of. Similarly, if one is at a party gleefully telling an embarrassing anecdote about another person, only to realize that person is standing behind you, that person is not spying on you. The fault if yours for choosing to say something that you would be uncomfortable having the subject hear.

The online world is similar, except that it's even easier to forget who may be standing behind you, because the space behind your back is large in both space and time. You could write that very satisfying rant about your sister-in-law now, only to have her read it by accident three years hence after your mother has bragged to her, "Did you know that Alfonse writes an incredibly popular blog?"

It's at times frustrating to keep this in mind, because the incredibly enticing thing about the online world is that it allows one to open up and talk with like-minded people (and debate different minded ones) in a way that would often be uncomfortable in person. You all have a pretty good idea what my political opinions are, but most of my coworkers don't, and I generally make no effort to make them aware of my political opinions nor to become aware of theirs. Since I have to work with them on a daily basis, it's a lot easier if they aren't aware of any of my beliefs that they might find reprehensible and vice versa. I probably miss out on some good friendships because of this reticence. Since I avoid bringing up controversial topics in many settings, I probably know people who share my beliefs and yet never realize the commonality. I probably also miss out on conversations and friendships with people who do disagree with my beliefs, but are capable of discussing and respecting them nonetheless. However, given how many people aren't capable of getting along well with those they disagree with (and that I'd really rather not have to know about the offensive beliefs of some of those I deal with daily) I keep this reticence up. The internet is, thus, the area in which I'm able to discuss a much wider array of topics much more openly. It works well for that because people who are offended can easily leave (and those who become offensive can be blocked.)

However, it's precisely because the internet is such a good place to have the kind of conversations we'd be hesitant to have in many of our usual social circles, that you should think twice about what you put out there under your own name in public venues. If you choose to post writing or images extensively under your own name, you had better be prepared for the writer's curse of everyone knowing what you think (or at least what you say you think.)

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug trailer

Watch it here.

Oh. Oh Peter Jackson. Please step away from cinematic adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's work, and go straight to making the video games. Look at those CGI elves chasing the dwarves down the river, whipping out arrows in unnaturally pixelated displays of agility, just like you read it in no Tolkien book ever. Look at the King of the Woodland Elves telling Thorin all about his quest "to reclaim a homeland and slay a dragon", because how does he know about it because Thorin never told him, which was the point of them all being in the dungeons? I'm not going to quibble about Legolas showing up -- it would be almost odd if he didn't; he's the King's son -- but Evangeline Lilly playing a kick-ass lady elf named Tauriel manufactured from such whole cloth that the name appears neither in the indices of LOTR or the Silmarillion? Do we trust Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens to be making up elves now? And where in this section of the book would we be seeing goblins or trolls?

But maybe this time around we'll be spared the turbo-charged rabbits.

Cocktails for Two

Here's a bit of Spike Jones for your Tuesday afternoon. I've heard this for years on Dr. Demento's 20th Anniversary Album, but I never knew that Spike Jones made theatrical shorts.

This and That: Ingratitude, Relativity, Dyseloquence, and Cat Beards

Dyseloquence is a word now.

I have wanted to write lately -- I even have some posts in the works -- but I have felt stupid and heavy of head, too exhausted to say anything coherent. So here are a few random things.

1. Brandon is writing a series on vices; this past week's focus was on ingratitude.

2. The shrinkwrapped brick in front of our door when we arrived home from vacation turned out to be Restoration Hardware's various spring catalogs. Our style overlords have finally allowed that maybe some people like a bit of color in their lives. They have devoted three -- three! -- pages to chairs in colors such as pale spruce and pale amethyst before they drape the remaining catalog full of upholstery in sand linen, sand brushed twill, sand velvet, and sand cotton duck. Of course, this marries well with the fifty shades of neutral decor that the professional designers have so carefully leached of any tone that might suggest life. Because when we have money to spend, we want to buy a room full of depression.

3. Think you know pretentious? Ah, but Restoration Hardware has launched a line of tableware. From the introductory essay at the beginning of the Tableware Catalog:

"The world as we created it is a result of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking." 

Clashing with authorities as a child and writing that the spirit of learning and creative thought was lost in strict rote and repetitive teaching, Albert Einstein went on to challenge conventional wisdom and redefine many of the sacred scientific theories developed and embraced. His great intellectual achievements and originality have made the name Einstein synonymous with genius. 

Einstein refused to let his thoughts be defined by current thinking, often stating his belief that "Imagination is more important that knowledge." His curiosity to look beyong the current realities enabled him to constantly define new ones.  

That is the philosophy we embraced to imagine our new tableware collection. Beginning with a quest to develop the perfect plate, one that would inspire us to replace our existing ones, we reconsidered every aspect - the material, the shape, the size, the weight, and the glaze - developing prototype after prototype until we explored every possibility and exhausted every option. 

...Now, we're not trying to claim that our new tableware collection can be compared to Einstein's theory of relativity; but we do believe that like the bending of light, with a change of thinking, one can re-imagine almost anything, even a plate. Then again, it's all relative. Thank you for teaching us that, Albert.

4. Albert didn't teach us that "it's all relative." That’s called relativism, not relativity.

5. I was tempted to make my only commentary on the tableware pomposity something along the lines of, "I mean!", but I realized that would be playing into one of my current pet peeves: the inability of writers, particularly on the internet, to write like adults. Apropos of nothing I want to discuss, I recently ran across a piece about the puppeteer of Elmo, who was embroiled in a scandal in which a young man accused him of seducing him when he was underage. (The pair were in a relationship; the young man was not underage.)

Some people seem to think Clash should be fired even for the legal age difference alone, that a 45-year-old having sex with an 18/19 year old is sketchy and gross enough. (Others are simply horrified to learn that the voice of Elmo is gay, which: GTFO.) While on the other end of the Internet Commentary Spectrum, there are plenty of folks who don’t think an older, experienced man having sex with a 16 year old is that big of a deal anyway. Which: Also GTFO.

I have nothing to say on the substance of the matter; the quality of Sesame Street has gone so far down since the days when the psychedelic pinball machine counted to twelve that I never turn it on, and Elmo is too annoying to watch anyway. But I do want to say that no matter your opinions on underage relationships or homosexuality, GTFO is neither an argument, an intelligent commentary, or a conversation starter. It is a statement that if you do not agree with the author on these two points, discussion is pointless because she's already stated that your voice should not be heard. And OMG, if we were, like, teenagers who were all,  "When I hear people being intolerant, I just wanna go GTFO, you know? Because, I mean, intolerance sucks!", this might indeed be an understandable, if not an acceptable, means of expressing oneself and one's vast realm of emotional experience that is just soooo hard to capture in mere words. But using words, and using them effectively, are the point of using writing to convey thought, and no amount of typing in ALL CAPS, YO, or being hip to the slang, or #psuedocategorization, or a bit of coding < / sarc >, or a wink and a Tumblr, is a substitute for what we in the biz* call "Using Your Words". Style and substance are not interchangeable. And if any reader thinks that makes me a tight-laced pedantic killjoy: GTFO.

*The biz, that is, of teaching young children to express their thoughts in clear verbal fashion, as opposed to grunting and pointing and playacting and being cutesy to get what they want.

6. If you are one of the many people with whom I've recently started a conversation with the strange juxtaposition of, "I'm thinking about painting my house. I read this article in the Wall Street Journal," here's the article about the creamy color of Paris.

7. Proving that leisure is not the basis of culture: your iPhone has more computing power than NASA in the 1960s, and you use it to look at cat beards.

Amoral False Equivalence

I keep The American Conservative in my RSS feed because they have a number of writers who are thought provoking, though I seldom agree with them. And then they have Pat Buchanan. Buchanan peddles a lot of the sort of writing which I'll read and think, "Responding to this is too cheap a shot. It's so obviously wrong that it's just showing off to point it out."

But then, if everyone thinks that way, the obvious problems never get pointed out. His post today on Americans being tried for undermining the Egyptian government is one of these sort of things.

A Cairo court has convicted 43 men and women of using foreign funds to foment unrest inside Egypt in connection with the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak.

Sixteen of those convicted were Americans. All but one, Robert Becker of the National Democratic Institute, had already departed. Becker fled this week rather than serve two years in an Egyptian prison.

And U.S. interventionists are in an uproar.

...

Yet the questions raised by both the Cairo and Moscow crackdowns on U.S.-funded “democracy” groups cannot be so airily dismissed.

Then comes the false equivalence:

Is it not understandable to patriots of the original “Don’t Tread on Me” republic that foreigners might resent paid U.S. agents operating inside their countries to alter the direction of their politics?

We have a right to advance our democratic values, we say.

But for the United States to push, for example, for freedom of speech, press and assembly in the People’s Republic of China is to promote political action that must lead to the fall of Beijing’s single-party state. Do we not understand why that might be seen by the Chinese Communist Party of Xi Jinping as subversive?

In the Cold War Americans learned that not only was the Communist Party U.S.A. a wholly owned subsidiary of Joseph Stalin’s Comintern, that party had deeply infiltrated the U.S. government and Hollywood. In the late ’40s and early ’50s, America was convulsed over communist penetration of our institutions.
...
If we were apoplectic that Soviet-funded communists were seeking to influence our culture and politics, why ought not other countries, with cultures and institutions far different from our own, react even as we did?

Now, this sort of thing has a sort of superficial fairness to it. "You wouldn't like it if other people messed with your country, so you shouldn't mess with other people's."

But except for the most blind nationalists, people don't tend to object to the introduction of good influences from other nations or cultures. Indeed, in such cases, we don't necessarily see the outside influence as being foreign. We just see it as a good example of what our country should do.

Many Americans objected to communist infiltration of our government not because they reflexively hated the idea of something from Russia influencing the US, the objected because they considered communism pernicious and they didn't want to see it influencing the US regardless of who was doing the influencing. And on the flip side, those Americans who did want to see the US become more communist tended not to object to the fact that the Russians were trying to infiltrate the US government. Indeed, it tended to be Americans who wanted the US to be more communist who were doing the infiltrating on behalf of the Russians.

The real issue at play in Egypt is that the new government no more (and in some ways less) desire than the previous one to allow freedoms of the press, religion, political dissent, etc. That Americans are among those helping to fund movements pushing for these freedoms may be a nice nationalistic peg to hang the objection on, but the real root of the objection is pretty clearly to the freedoms themselves. Home grown demands for them are no more welcome than foreign funded ones, except to the extent they are easier to squash.

Now, this isn't to deny that national and ethnic chauvinism exists. It, of course, does. And there are going to be times and topics on which people do not want to hear their flaws (or potential improvements) discussed by people of some disliked outside group. Americans may well constitute such a group for many nationalities. Among Americans, ethnic, religious and political identifications can cause similar problems. There are criticisms of behavior by Catholics that I am much more open to hearing from other Catholics (who are "in the family") than I am to hearing the same criticisms from "outsiders".

However, while realism necessitates remaining aware of such non-rational responses, there is not a principled objection to members of one group urging changes upon members of another group. And it is precisely this which Buchanan tries to do in his piece:

We may deplore this, but where do we get the right to intervene in the internal affairs of these countries if they do not threaten us?

Keep in mind, the only "intervening" being objected to here is that of American citizens providing support to organizations within Egypt seeking certain basic freedoms. Why, should we, as per Buchanan's earlier example "push... for freedom of speech, press and assembly in the People’s Republic of China"? Because those rights are aspects of human dignity that people should have. Unless we think that what is right in the US is not necessarily right in China or in Egypt or in Saudi Arabia, there is no reason principled why we should not support those seeking these freedoms in other countries. At times there might be cynical reasons for restraining this urge. (For instance, a comparatively "enlightened dictator" in certain cultures might in some ways protect minority religious and ethnic groups from persecution more than a government expressing the will of the people, and so one might wink that the dictator's suppression of political dissent.)

However, the implicit idea that all cases of citizens of one country advocating changes in another country are somehow equal is obviously wrong unless one accepts complete amorality. The comparison of Americans advocating greater freedoms in Egypt to communists attempting to impose communism in the US are completely wrong-headed.

The Diminishing Returns Surveillance State

In the latest abuse-of-government-power scandal, it turns out that the National Security Administration has been collecting data from Verizon on cell phone calls placed by Verizon customers. And we're not talking just a few "persons of interest". The NSA is getting data on all calls placed on the Verizon network. This is data, not "listening" to calls, but nonetheless, if you have a Verizon cell phone, our National Security Administration knows who you called, when, for how long and from where.

This is the sort of situation in which a libertarian take is pretty apropos, and Megan McArdle delivers. One of the big issues here, which I think she correctly identifies, is that there are a lot of potentially "harmless" things that the government can do with the object of "making us safer". After all, it's not as if no one had this phone data before. Verizon had it, and doubtless used it to do research on customer behavior in order to improve their operations and plan changes to the phone plans they offer. So why not let the government have access to the same data in order to make us safer?

The answer, I'd argue, is that all of these seemingly harmless government incursions, from monitoring phone usage to making us take off and x-ray our shoes at the airport, result in more and more acceptance of state intrusion into our lives for less and less real return. The number of lives saved by having everyone take their shoes off at the airport is doubtless so small as to be close to zero. Ditto for tracking phone usage. Sure, I suppose this data is handy to have around when they find themselves tracking a suspected terrorist, but that's what warrants are for. And I think that libertarians are on to something that it's worth keeping the government's nose out of these things just because. We shouldn't have to explain why it's a problem for the government to be getting cell phone usage data. The default should be that they don't get it.

Fr. Barron on Episcopalian Bishop's Bizarre Inclusiveness

A couple weeks ago MrsDarwin found that the best way to read Bishopess Katharine Jefferts Schori's sermon, in which she accused the apostle Paul of intolerance for casting out a demon, was through the filter of Gizoogle. Fr. Barron has a slightly more serious take which is worth reading.

Some years ago, The New Yorker ran a cartoon that perfectly lampooned the loopy ideology of “inclusion” that has come to characterize so much of the Christian world.

It showed a neat and tidy church, filled with an attentive congregation. The pastor was at the podium, introducing a guest speaker. “In accordance with our policy of equal time,” he said, “I would like now to give our friend the opportunity to present an alternative point of view.” Sitting next to him, about to rise to speak, was the devil, dressed perfectly and tapping the pages of his prepared text on his knee.

I was put in mind of that cartoon when I read a sermon delivered recently by Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America. Addressing a congregation in Curaçao, Venezuela, Bishop Jefferts Schori praised the beauty of (what else?) diversity, but lamented the fact that so many people are still frightened by what is other or different: “Human beings have a long history of discounting and devaluing difference, finding it offensive or even evil.” Now I suppose that if one were to make the right distinctions—differentiating between that which is simply unusual and that which is intrinsically bad—one might be able coherently to make this point.

But the Bishop moved, instead, in an astonishing direction, finding an example of the lamentable exclusivity she is talking about in the behavior of the Apostle Paul himself. In the 16th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, we find the story of Paul’s first visit to the Greek town of Philippi. We are told that one day, while on his way to prayer, Paul was accosted by a slave girl “who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling” (Acts. 16:16). This demon-possessed child followed Paul and his companions up and down for several days, shouting, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” Having finally had enough of her, Paul turned to the young woman and addressed the wicked spirit within her, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her” (Acts. 16:18). And the demon, we are told, came out of her instantly.

Up until last month in Venezuela, the entire Christian interpretive tradition read that passage as an account of deliverance, as the story of the liberation of a young woman who had been enslaved both to dark spiritual powers and to the nefarious human beings who had exploited her.

But Bishop Jefferts Schori reads it as a tale of patriarchal oppression and intolerance. She preaches, “But Paul is annoyed, perhaps, for being put in his place, and he responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness. Paul can’t abide something he won’t see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it.”

The Bishop correctly points out that the girl was saying true things about Paul and his friends, but demons say true things all the time in the New Testament. Think of the dark spirits who consistently confess that Jesus is the Holy One of God. That a Christian bishop would characterize the demonic possession of a young girl as something “beautiful and holy” simply beggars belief.

But things get even more bizarre. We are told in Acts that the girl’s owners are furious that Paul has effectively robbed them of their principal source of income and that they therefore stir up controversy and get him thrown in prison. But on the Bishop’s reading, Paul is just getting what he deserved.

Read the rest.

From time to time I've run into interpretations of Biblical events which would seem, similarly, to be utterly at odds with the story itself. (The one that takes the cake, from my point of view, is the school which reads the Book of Ruth as a paean to Lesbian romance and fidelity between Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi, and as such an endorsement of gay relationships.) I can't help wondering if this level of "creativity" in interpretation springs from people reaching a type of belief in which they really don't see Christianity as historical at all, but rather a set of nice and inspiring stories which we can interpret in whatever way we want because, after all, we're far to sophisticated to think about thing like whether or not they are true.

With Praise Like This...

A piece over at The New Republic asks why it is that more people don't love Woodrow Wilson. It's opening seems to answer that question pretty easily:

[W]hy aren’t contemporary liberals bestowing the same praise on Woodrow Wilson as they lavish on Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson? Granted, if he were running today, Woodrow Wilson wouldn’t win a single Democratic primary and would no doubt be heckled out of the race. Raised in the South, he smiled on Jim Crow and did not object when two of his cabinet appointees re-segregated their departments. A crusading Presbyterian, he vowed to “teach the Latin American republics to elect good men” and dispatched troops to Mexico and Haiti when they didn’t follow his advice. During World War I, he enforced new laws that effectively outlawed most dissent from government policy.

Though really, the reasons they list for lauding him seem a little suspect as well:

Yet Wilson, together with his allies on Capitol Hill, also laid the foundation for the 20th century liberal state. He signed bills that created the Federal Reserve and progressive income tax rates, secured humane working conditions for merchant seamen and railroad workers, restricted child labor and curbed the power of large corporations. After the U.S. entered the war in Europe, his administration began operating the railroads, lifting the hopes of leftists who had long advocated public ownership of what was then a rich and vital industry.

In 1916, Wilson accepted renomination with a speech that defined political conflict in terms that remain surprisingly fresh. Our programs, he told his fellow Democrats were “resisted at every step by the interests which the Republican Party … catered to and fostered at the expense of the country, and these same interests are now earnestly praying for a reaction which will save their privileges, for the restoration of their sworn friends to power before it is too late to recover what they have lost.”

How can anyone dislike someone who both nationalized the railroads and was hated by Republicans?

Actually, the rest of the piece is kind of a hoot too, since it then moves on to arguing that liberals should love Wilson more because FDR and LBJ really were pretty flawed too. Overall, I have to wonder if this is the sort of piece that conservatives are destined to enjoy much more than liberals. Which does nothing to answer the question of why TNR ran it.

Rollin' on the River

We are back from an all-too-brief trek to Austin and regions southward -- not that I wanted to be gone from home any longer than we were, but it was far too brief a time to spend among such excellent hobbits, most of whom I like at least half as well as they deserve. My enduring regret was that I didn't really avail myself of the chance to eat real Mexican while in town, because the stuff that passes for "Mexican" in Ohio just ain't in it. 

We found it necessary to take a jaunt over to Baton Rouge to visit some family, so we took a side trip up to historic Woodville, MS, where my grandparents used to live in this here house. 

The tall guy is my brother Nathanael, and the babe with the sunglasses is my operatic sister Anna, who was an angel of helpfulness on our trip.

Alas, we couldn't go in the house, so I couldn't show Darwin the places I always talk about: the huge living room and dining room connected with pocket doors, where all the cousins used to put on plays; the upstairs bedroom with the taxidermy deer head (it scared the daylights out of me as a child); the music room, the front hall, the long screened porch that ran the back length of the house; the guest house and the pool house; the long path on the back property that lead to a statue of St. Francis in the woods.

Then, as a public service to fans of Stillwater, we drove down River Road to the former site of Belle Grove, my model for the Stillwater house. Alas, Belle Grove passed into decay and ruin years ago, but there's a historical marker commemorating the huge plantation.

That's the levee rising up on the left.

Across the road from the historical marker, two huge oaks mark what I'm guessing might have been Belle Grove's entrance. There's a small housing development on the property now. 

Since we couldn't look at Belle Grove, we did the next best thing: we went upriver three miles to her great rival, Nottoway, which is still gloriously extant and now the grandest plantation house on the river.

The double staircase was intended to allow John Randolph's seven daughters to walk up to the house without any men catching glimpses of their ankles.

But Anna, about to be married, doesn't have to worry about such social niceties.

The interior of Nottoway is breathtakingly lavish. The great ballroom was painted white to show off the complexion of the ladies.

Here's the youngest lady looking elegant. The silver pull behind her is the servants' bell.

 Nottoway is on the river, of course, and from the upper balcony one has a fabulous view of the water. It would have been even more striking when the plantation was built -- then the levee was only ten feet; now it's fifty.

Anna is backlit, but the river is in full light. 

The trees on the left are an island in the river, formed by an earthquake in 1813, if I remember correctly. There used to be a road running from the front of the plantation as far as the trees.

Looking at the back of the house, where the wings all joined together, one got a sense of the scale of the place. Here, the main house on the left is joined by the stair galleries leading to one of the side wings, which I believe are all guest rooms now. The Boys' Wing is behind the main house. On the ground floor were storage and service areas and a bowling alley for the children -- now kitchens, restaurants, and a museum.

 For comparison with the remaining oaks at Belle Grove, here is the front yard of Nottoway. River Road is just beyond the white fence.

More photos of Nottoway can be found here.