But How Will Nicholas Turn Out in the End?

Tagged by Daniel Larison 

1. One book that changed your life?

G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man

I read this book in England during my senior year of high school, in tandem with C.S. Lewis' Letters to Malcom - basically I became a believing Catholic again, for the first time in years. I suppose that is a changed life.  

2. One book that you have read more than once?

George Plimpton's Open Net

Probably Plimpton's least celebrated "participatory journalism" experiment in sports - but one very dear to me. Hockey is a great sport. Football gets too much credit for being tough. And basketball gets too much credit for being graceful or fluid. Hockey has them beat in both categories. 

3. One book you would want on a desert island?

Flannery O'Conner's Collected Stories

The more I think about this, the more I really wonder if I'd like to be marooned with a bunch of defective and deformed Southern Protestants - but basically, I'd try to figure out what makes her so great.  

4. One book that made you cry?

Bret Easton Ellis' Lunar Park (I know!)

I'm sure there are other books that have made me cry, but this is the most recent. Everyone has gripes with Ellis - but I thoroughly enjoyed this book of horror. 

5. One book that made you laugh?

Scott Dikkers' You are Worthless

This book is amazing and came out at the peak of the self-help book craze. It is crude, offensive and at times, blasphemous.  It's great

6. One book you wish had been written?

Bernard Henri Levi Wrong All Along: An Autobiography.

Levi has the flimsiest intellectual credentials I've ever seen. Basically - a semi-literate guy with a half decent zeitgeist detection system. 

7. One book you wish had never been written?

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

Without this book Protestantism would have gone the way of past heresies.

8. One book you are reading currently?

Dominic Lieven, Nicholas II: Twilight of the Empire

One of the first major revisionist histories of Nicholas II, written after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Very even-handed.  

9. One book you have been meaning to read?

Evelyn Waugh, The Sword of Honour Trilogy

I cant' say much about it because I haven't read them yet.  

10. Pass it on

Peter Suderman and Kevin Michael Grace

Get Rich QuickOr so they are now saying. The problem with this article is that it confuses the real social benefits of friendship and conviviality with the idea of "networking." People who can be found drinking socially are likely to be more gregarious and less creepy than people who, for all we know, hide in their mother's basement and play World of Warcraft between 5:30 p.m. and 8 the next morning.

"Drinkers typically tend to be more social than abstainers."

The researchers said their empirical survey backed up the theory, and said the most likely explanation is that drinkers have a wider range of social contacts that help provide better job and business opportunities.

"Drinkers may be able to socialize more with clients and co-workers, giving drinkers an advantage in important relationships," the researchers said. - Weird Article

You don't say? 

Do I really want to be thinking about the amount of contacts per hour I put in my blackberry (I don't have a blackberry) during times I'm out social drinking? Do I then come up with a formula based on a projected mount that my new contacts make in per annum income to determine 'how I'm doing' socially?

How about drinking to get sozzled, and letting the dry humor fly for a bit?  How about learning dirt on everyone in my office or seeing someone make a fool of themselves. I'm tired of trying to live an efficient life. It seems like we're trying to march expeditiously to our graves when there is beer to pour in our gullets and over our cheeks and into our shirt collars. There are drunk challenges to be made about who can run around the bar the fastest or who can drink the most Marker's Mark.

Po, a packed romantic place in the Village.The other night I was thinking of an old friends birthday party which we celebrated at the excellent Cornelia Street restaurant Po when I was 19. It was raining then and my ladyfriend, two of her friends and I were navigating the village in the downpour. Our nice clothes getting drenched. By the time the last of the wine was poured into our below-legal-age glasses, the rain began to clear up and we met a friend and listened to live jazz in an underground club which only served juice. I've wanted to get back into that restaurant ever since. I remember someone taking a scandalous picture of the ladyfriend and I who were induced (under the influence) to take a picture like a magazine ad for perfume. Where is this picture?

These memories were brought back to me as I drove into New York City while on my way to my new pavement city err Northern Virginian home. The rain and fog lay thick over the Harlem River and as I crossed from the Bronx into northern Manhattan over the Henry Hudson bridge I looked to my left and I could have sworn that all of New York was lit by warm candle light. I went to my friend's improv show and we retreated to the Triple Crown - a nearby sports bar. I sat at the bar in order to enjoy some food and a gin and tonic as my friends talked and joked with each other at a table behind me. Think about this: Watching highlights of the Mets game (they won that night), eating some innutritious bar junk, drinking gin, avoiding the rain, my sport jacket fetching looks from the only two single women in the bar, and hearing my friends laughing (without having to actually interact with them). I could have ruined my good mood if I had stayed with the thought too long but something drifted into my mind.

"I turned me to another thing, and I saw that under the sun, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the learned, nor favour to the skillful: but time and chance in all. " - Ecclesiastes

And the rain falls on the just and unjust alike. Even in New York City. My friend Tommy would buy the next round.

 

This is A Gin InduceI'm not kidding when I say this was written at 2 a.m. under the influence of Gin. Of course that gin followed the Woodford Reserve (the bar in Clarendon was out of Maker's Mark).   My fingers feel heavy. But I took a look at the usual suspects and have rendered judgement.

Everyone is dead wrong. I have to get this out before the influence of the gin fades away. Guys DO NOT want the indie girl - the "manic depressive, without the depressive part." They do want the girl who will save them from themselves but it boils down to this: Any man worth his salt wants a woman who will lift him up when he has cast himself too far down, and  who will put him down when he is on cloud nine. Men do not want our women to be nerds. Men want women to redeem us from our nerd-dom. Instinctively we know that women are emotional on the outside; they want "connection",  and "to be on the same wavelength" - etc etc... But at their core - women are calculating. First and foremost, they have to protect themselves and their children from men who are stronger than they are. When all the lovely trappings of civility are stripped away:  when the man has lost his job and seems unwilling to find work, when he can't pay the bills, when he proves himself a third or fourth time to be irresponsible with the resources needed to maintain the lives of the woman and the children  - she will make the cold rational decision to leave. Men, on the other hand can survive, as Dave Chapelle wisely noted, in a cardboard box. The only reason we get dressed, the only reason we shave, or buy furniture from Crate and Barrel; the only reason we love wine, or learn about sports, or politics and philosophy is to impress you. It may be indirectly. You may not care about philosophy. But you care that we took the trouble to learn about Descartes and Kant; that we can out duel each other in our ability to explain these things - and on and on. The only thing we do for ourselves and our own enjoyment is start and maintain blogs. Men appear to be rational and calculating on the outside - but it is only (I cannot emphasize this enough) because we are entirely at the mercy of women. Because men are hardwired to "have dominion" - to control, to rule over, to dominate - and because modernity presents us with so many structures, processes and institutions which we depend on but do not control - we often seem distant, or calculating. We become "players" because we are afraid you will reject us. But at our core - we absolutely need you. I'm sorry it turned out this way. Men buy into the late medieval idea of man absolutely abdicating his will (his life)to the mere whims of our beloved. At least, we buy into it more than women do.

If a man has treated you badly it is most likely because you betrayed the idealized version of yourself to him. You slept with him, when he believed you to be so pure that you could redeem him from his lust. You gave into his will, when he knew his will to be disordered. I've said too much already.

A note on Indie Girls: Indie Girls, that is to say, girls who study, with Jesuitical fervor, fine distinctions in rock genres, who take time to browse through vintage clothing shops to find the perfectly alluring mix of "old fashion" and contemporary fashion to make themselves (what I call) "archetypal strangers", are attractive. Without subordinate clauses: Indie girls are attractive. Guys in their thrall will spend hours thinking of the "perfection" that is their red shoes. Red shoes, under well fit jeans and a well tailored shirt, with distinctive shoulders. Her sable-made hair with a group or strands that gets in her eyes just so. Her walk. Her professed liberalism but instinctive conservatism.  The way she casually talks about her friends' casual use of drugs. When you mention the bass line to Beck's song "Paper Tiger" she tells you: "I knew you were going to say that." She looks at you and makes a gesture and mentions her "Spidey sense." 

If you fall for the Indie girl for any one of these reasons, she will begin to disrespect you. I'm too tired to explain it now - but it is true. 

Another note: If you do fall for an indie girl, at least keep one bit of self respect: Never, ever pretend that you like Ani DiFranco. EVER.  

Relevant links: Ross and Peter.  

 

Scotch in my Belly. Men of taste know what they like to drink, what impression their drink gives others, and what effect it has on their loins. For those of you who can't navigate a social scene anymore than you can the amazons - I've jotted down some observations. You don't want to be a loser.  First, become familiar with the differences between Scotch, Bourbon, Single Malt and Blended whiskey. Then swear never to wear a white polo shirt to a bar or anywhere else ever again. Now learn to politely remove yourself from any situation in which a friend has an Ani Difranco CD. Stop reading G.K. Chesterton so much and read some Hilaire Belloc. Remember also that balding is not a choice, bald is. Oh yeah- the whiskey:

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Have a Drink and Relax PleaseI've been bothered by the tone of some comments in the recent past and so have instituted a comments policy - a link to which can be found in the Navigation area to the right of your screen.

I copy it here to allow you to comment on it:

Comments are welcome, sort of.  This blog is an ongoing cocktail party - or at least with some help it will be.  I host this party. I bought these drinks. And soon you'll see the decorations I bought. John Murphy is a VIP guest.

1) Comments must not dispirit other readers.

Would anyone attend a party at which the guests were humorlessly competing with each other over who could make the most bleak comment possible about the state of civilization? No. You were not invited here to be a drag. You can be angry but you must shape that anger with wit. You can be depressed but not depressing.

2) Comments ought to be interesting, funny or the product of drunkeness.

If they are none of the above and furthermore do not at least constitute "making a scene" they will be deleted.

3) Comments are to conform to standards defined as "Not Crazy"

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So- occasionally it's good to remind ourselves how and why we started things. So here- to force people who just look to see the updated journal is the "about this site" blurb that hardly anyone clicks on anymore:

Surfeited with Dainties is an artful phrase coined by some 16th century French heretic. As much as one can gather, it seems he thought that the enjoyment of refined pleasures could imperil a man's soul by setting him to be indifferent to his spiritual condition. The "good life" may prevent a man from living a life that is good.

But wouldn't this fustian preacher feel differently if he while walking on the Upper West Side garbed in (say) shirts from Turnbull and Asser, cuffed in Dunhill's links, wrapped in bespoke Saville road suits, shod in Ferragamo, keeping time with Gucci? (The button down to be traded in the evening for a cashmere Marc Jacobs sweater). Add to this a smoky blonde woman in (from bottom to top this time) Jimmy Choo, a "modest" (no logos) Coach bag, Moschino evening dress, Anna Sui neck wrap, and hair made silk by Alterna White Truffle Private Reserve Luxury shampoo.

Add to this an endless list of other benefits non sartorial, the Central Park West apartment, the plasma screen TV, the 6.1 surround sound stereo, the library bought foot by leather bound foot from The Strand bookstore, remote controlled German coffee machine, congenial Hispanic help, home gym, home spa, home office, Sub-Zero refrigerator stocked with gourmet and organic foods (delivered), the chemically enhanced libido.

Considering only the dentistry of the 16th century (excluding the other unthinkable material conditions), thoughts would surely turn to paradise for comfort and solace.

However in an age where such earthly bliss is even thinkable, who could possibly question the political, material and cultural regime that has produced this paradise for the hardworking meritocrat? Who wouldn't submit to it, on a pyre, their superstitions, their religious scruples, ethnic particularities, ancient traditions, or (if it exists) their own soul? Isn't sacrifice of these things a rather light demand? What gainful exchange! Unburdened now in the beatific vision of a consumer lifestyle heaven.

A bliss that we deserve.

 

I'm taking this July 3rd to write a few longer pieces (for other forums I hope) and to reorganize my books. I've also just updated my "Currently Reading" list. First, Tom Wolfe's novel A Man in Full is the best conceived novel by any contemporary writer, period. In some ways the execution is equally superb. I try to explain to my girlfriend that I just read the most exciting chapter of a novel in my life. "What's it about?" - A meeting between a lending bank and a real estate developer where they discussed the state of his financial holdings and how to recoup the principle on their loan.

Could anything sound more boring for a novel? Yet Wolfe makes this scene a titanic conflict between two beasts. Amazing! That said, could anything mar this work more than Wolfe's churlish (and not THAT funny) names for law firms: Wringer, Fleasom & Tick or  Paddet, Skynnham & Glote. This reminds me of the names J.K. Rowling invents for her fantastic Harry Potter novels - yet in Wolfe's hyper-realistic novel of Atlanta politics, football, sex and real estate - he includes these cartoonish flourishes. Less annoying, but notable is Wolfe's taste for somewhat bizzare references to a young woman's "loamy loins."

Thomas Fleming's book on WWI, The Illusions of Victory, is not quite as revisionist as his history of WWII in which FDR is a manipulative, bulying, lying jerk. Fleming's particular talent is in demonstrating what the characters in history thought they were doing, and thought about their historical situation  - rather than treating history as a neat story of rational players and events (which is the very Illusion time forces on the present). Of course I am reading this in part to understand the history of American foreign policy and our "noble wars". Bush is compared to Wilson as frequently as he is to Reagan - so what is it about America that produces leaders who set about to "make the world safe for democracy"?

I've not dipped too deep into the two volume series The House of Rothschild. Understanding economics, banking and its history is so vital to understanding the politics of our time. Niall Ferguson is a fascinating character by himself - but the breadth and depth of the footnotes in these volumes has earned my trust. I can't wait to pay them proper attention.

I've been "tagged" with the book tag - despite having written almost only about books for weeks.

1) Number of Books I Own?

Somewhere around 1200 I would guess- heavily leaning towards non-fiction- and almost all of them bought myself- much to the disapointment of every girlfriend I've ever had.

2) Last Book I Bought?

This may come as a surprise to one of the members of my blogroll- who witnessed me buying Tom Wolfe's, Hooking Up and Commodify Your Dissent (both currently featured to your left) - just last week. However, the last book I bought was actually A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe - which I bought Friday. The chapter where Charlie, the Real Estate Developer meets with his cheif lending bank is frankly one of the most riveting things I've ever read - despite the fact that the characters are talking about coprorate mismangement, and loan structures. The way Tom Wolfe writes it- it is the clash of beasts in the wild. While I have not read I Am Charlotte Simmons yet - I can only imagine that the complaints about it stemmed from the nature of 2004 - Red vs. Blue - and Wolfe was releasing a novel that seemed to dramatize the rape of the Red states at the hands of the blue. However - from what I can gather - it seems Charlotte Simmons is not about Red culture meeting blue reality - but rather the clash of human responsibility- cirtue and vice - with the theorizing coming out of socio-biology.

3) Last Book I read?

I haven't finished A Man in Full yet - so this answer I will split in two. Non-Fiction: The New American Militarism - featured at the left again. Fiction: Lullabye by Chuck Palahniuk - a briskly written book about modern degenerates who happen upon a deadly spell. This was the author who brought us Fight Club.

4) Five books that are important to me?

Very tough. I'd just recently listed the twelve most influential books- (click on the Influences - to discover more of them - as I have no patience to hyperlink them now) -

1) Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
- took me through and eventually out of the infant fundamentalist Christianity I had embraced at age 14 or so- it helped me to replace my intutional acceptance of Christianity with an intellectual one - however meager.

2) The American Pageant by Thomas Bailey, Kennedy- etc.
- this was my American History AP textbook when I was a junior in high school. Honestly, even though it is not a perfect book of history- it taught me alot of the facts, got me interested in history, and a 5 on the AP exam. I never had a better class - 8 boys and 4 girls. The boys at least felt like an "elite" in the high school. It was our history teacher's last year teaching - and his first teaching AP in a long time. He knew everything. We felt like we knew everything. We spent the night before the AP (the boys at least) piled in my living room - fotunately going over the exact political cartoon that was presented in the DBQ (Document Based Question) the next day. You could hear the chuckling when one of us turned to that page in the exam. We spilled out of my house to play "AP American Basketball" and screamed the most obscure facts in American History before we passed or shot the ball.

3) Left Hooks, Right Crosses
 the best political writing of the 1990s. Essays by Thomas Frank from the Baffler, Thoams Flemming of Chronicles, a hilarious piece on telemarketers by Tucker Carlson. This collection of Clinton years writings - on everything from the Bell Curve, to Bosnia, to Monica edited by Christopher Caldwell and Christopher Hitchens is exactly what made me want to write about politics. It is here that I discovered that essay on Dorothy Day by Bill Kauffman- recently mentioned.

4) Collected Poems by Dylan Thomas
The person whose style and subject matter in poetry - most resembled what I though I could turn my work into if I dedicated my life to it.

5) Collected Stories by Flannery O'Connor
The South is haunted and also full of grace. Though I can't even claim that my own short stories have ever, even come anywhere near approaching the mastery of hers. Dead kids, retarded people, rascists, fools - all of them belong to God in these stories.

5) Tag Five people.

Some may find this sort of blogging tedious- but here goes. I'll inform them- soon as I can.

Paul Cella of Cellas Review
Steve Skojec of e-skojec
Daniel Larison of Eunomia ( he'll have a tough time of it)
Mark Riebling - of Atlas Shagged
and- (though he may never return) Adam Fiero of Weighing Anchor

I realized that trying to write extended write-ups of the most influential books was getting tedious and distracting me from some other good blogging.  But I'm going to jump ahead temporarily and mention one of the most influential articles I've ever read: The Way of Love, Dorothy Day and the American Right by Bill Kauffman.

If Buckley and Kissinger were the sum of the American right, mine would be a very brief article indeed. But there is another American right--or is it a left, for praise be the ambidextrous--in which Miss Day fits quite nicely. Indeed, I think she is more at home with these people than she ever was with Manhattan socialists. They are the Agrarians, the Distributists, the heirs to the Jeffersonian tradition. The keener of them--particularly the Catholics--understood their kinship with Day. Allen Tate, the Southern man of letters and contributor to the 1930 Southern Agrarian manifesto, I'll Take My Stand, wrote his fellow Dixie poet Donald Davidson in 1936:

I also enclose a copy of a remarkable monthly paper, The Catholic Worker. The editor, Dorothy Day, has been here, and is greatly excited by our whole program. Just three months ago she discovered I'll Take My Stand, and has been commenting on it editorially. She is ready to hammer away in behalf of the new book. Listen to this: The Catholic Worker now has a paid circulation of 100,000! [Tate neglects to say that the price is a penny a copy] ... She offers her entire mailing list to Houghton-Mifflin; I've just written to Linscott about it. Miss Day may come by Nashville with us if the conference falls next weekend. She has been speaking all over the country in Catholic schools and colleges. A very remarkable woman. Terrific energy, much practical sense, and a fanatical devotion to the cause of the land

G.K. Chesterton once answered the objection of many, when confronted with a truly reactionary propositon. They say "You can't turn back the clock." - Chesterton's reply was "Of, course you can."- if the clock is wrong, you set it right. A clock, like a civilization is a thing made by humans.

Chesterton may have answered too quickly - but the spirit is right.

Sorry folks, only one book tonight.

The Great Betrayal by Patrick J. Buchanan

Many people remember Buchanan’s “Culture War” Speech at Houston at the 1992 Republican Convention. In fact, it was probably the most memorable convention speech since Barry Goldwater in 1964. We remember the jibes about which side of the Sexual Revolution stood the Clintons, we remember the imagery of the L.A> Riots invoked to symbolize the cultural struggle, the call to “take our country back.” What few remember was the touching call to a “conservatism of the heart” (8 years before compassionate conservatism). This conservatism of the heart meant shaking the hands of factory workers, with tears in their eyes- pleading for Pat to “Save our Jobs”.

Pat was formerly a free trader. Like many Cold War conservatives he had read Milton Friedman and believed. However, after seeing the blue-collar middle class being gutted by free trade policies Pat began to question the morality and utility of a global economy that reduced Americans to mere consumers. He also questioned the wisdom of Free-Traders who thought it “made no difference” whether a nation manufactured “computer chips or potato chips.” Buchanan’s response is that we don’t build our smart bombs with potato chips. Trade can mean dependence.

Pat also shows that Free Traders, like Cobden sell utopian dream along with their free trade bills. The history of the British Empire is enough to dispel such notions. The U.K. went to war with its largest continental trading partner: Germany. Buchanan also proves that protectionism was a part of the American economic policy from the days of Hamilton until WWII - making us one of the most powerful nations on earth. He also, using libertarian sources dispels the myth that the Hawley-Smoot Tariff caused the Great Depression.

It is impossible to summarize all the charts and graphs and anecdotes that Buchanan uses to illustrate that “Free trade isn’t free” – that we are not a “consumerist commune” and that there is more to economics than cheap goods at the mall.

On the fallacy that what is best for the consumer is best for the country:

George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, entrusted with leadership of the infant republic rejected the idea of letting consumer preferences shape the national destiny. ‘A free people… should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent on others for essential, particularly military supplies,” said Washington. Nor was James Madison content to entrust America’s destiny to consumer whims when he discovered British ships dumping goods in U.S. ports to kill the industries begun during the War of 1812. Madison imposed a protective tariff. The economic nationalists who built America did not permit alien ideologies to prevent them from doing what was best for the nation…

Small nations like Austria or Singapore may never again be self-sufficient. but great nations like America, blessed by Providence with virtually all it needs to stand alone, have no excuse for allowing dependency to grow to the degree it has.

Putting consumption first goes against the grain of common sense, as well as inherited wisdom. Before consumption comes production. Before production, investment. Before investment, savings. And before savings, income - the reward for work. Before a family consumes bread, a farmer must plow the ground, sow the seed, till the field, wait and watch. Before an athlete becomes a champion, he must exercise, train discipline and deny himself. No athlete ever consumed his way to an Olympic medal; and no nation every consumed its way to greatness or prosperity. As Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper teaches: he who puts consumption first has put his foot on the road to ruin

On the fallacy that peace follows trade:

The great trading nations of history also seem to have been the most warlike. Free-trade Britain in the nineteenth century was involved in more wars than any other nation, and the nineteenth century’s bloodiest war was fought inside the world’s greatest free-trade zone- the United States of America.

In August 1914 Germany attacked Russia, to whom she sold more goods than to any other nation, and Britain declared war on a Germany that was Britain’s greatest Continental customer.

In the thirties Japan’s principal overseas trade was with China and the United States. Tokyo attacked both,. And when Hitler turned on and invaded Stalin’s Russia in 1941, he was attacking German’s principal source of food, oil, and raw materials.

“Free trade! What is it? Why breaking down the barriers that separate nations; those barriers behind which nestle the feelings of pride, revenge hatred, and jealousy, which every now and then burst their bounds and deluge whole countries with blood.”

 So said Cobden. History says otherwise.

The last words of the book:

The ideas in this book have to do with closing the divisions and easing the tensions in society that emanate from the economic order. They do not address the stresses rooted in the divisions of religion, culture and race. But re-creation of a just economic order is a pre-requisite of the restoration of the moral order. When all the members of society prosper together, when property and wealth are more equitably shared, when a man can raise a family again on the sweat of his own labor, when Americans begin anew to put their own country and countrymen first – as natural law teaches we must- those tensions will ease as well.

There are many who say there is no turning back, that the Global Economy is inevitable, that the death warrant of the nation-state has been signed, and that there is to be no reprieve. I do not believe this. It is vital that we not surrender this fortress of freedom, liberty and human dignity that our ancestors died creating. I do not want to live in their brave new world; if it is coming, let us stand our post. And if indeed, as James Fitzjames Stephens wrote, “The waters are out and no human fore can turn them back.. I do not see why as we go with the stream we need sign Hallelujah to the river god.” We can take our country back; and God willing, we shall.

As promised in this post - I am adding two books on my list of twelve influential books. Two fiction authors. One from the North, Edith Wharton, and another from the South, Flannery O'Conner. The libertarians who were writing about their influences often skipped fiction- or included the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Fiction influences a mind by sensitizing it to moods, tones and character - it provides a foundation for thinking intuitively. Bad fiction may even ruin good minds

Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton

I read this as an optional book during my “summer reading” for my junior year in high school. It is Edith Wharton’s bruising satire of modern life in New York City. It is filled with all the great things: jazz, sex, drugs new-age religious eccentricity, liberal do-gooding. We really view this world through the withering gaze of Nona Manford, daughter of New York socialite Pauline Manford. I was, and remain in love with the "Nona" pictured on the cover of the book. She is "Surfeited With Dainties" for sure.

Her mother is a do-gooder and fancies herself enlightened. Though she abhors the crimes of the Roman Church, she, being conscious of status and vigilant for the advance of Enlightenment wishes to invite him to dinner to meet her spiritual guide, the Mahatma.  She dreams of his excellence, wide-eyed,  thanking her for meeting "that man." This is only the beginning of her delusions. In one scene Pauline  is giving an address to the Mother’s Day Association. In her haste she accidentally read the beginning of her planned address to the Birth Control Banquet.

“Personality, room to develop in : not only elbow-room but body-room and soul-room and plenty of both … No more effaced wives, no more drudging mothers, mo more human slaves crushed by the eternal round of house-keeping and child-bearing-“

She realizes where she is, an inward panic ensues, yet she saves herself, “That’s what our antagonists say…-“

To be Chairman of the Mothers’ Day Association, and a speaker at the Birth Control Banquet! It did not need her daughter’s derisive chuckle to giver her the measure of her inconsequence. Yet to reconcile these contradictions had seemed as simple as to invite the Chief Rabbi and the Bishop of New York to meet Amalasuntha’s Cardinal. Did not the Mahatma teach that, to the initiated, all discords were resolved into a higher harmony? When her hurried attention had been turned for a moment on the seeming inconsistency of encouraging natality and teaching how to restrict it, she had felt it was sufficient answer to say that the two categories of people appealed to were entirely different, and could not be “reached” in the same way. In ethics as in advertising, the main thing was to get at your public. Hitherto this argument had satisfied her. Feeling there was much to be said on both sides, she had thrown herself with equal zeal into the propagation of both doctrines, but now, surveying her attempt with a chastened eye, she doubted its expediency.

I mentioned this book in my essay "How I Became a Paleo-Conservative". This novel, though written about the 1920s was as relevant as ever in the mid 1990's. This was well before I was anywhere near a conservative- and although I spoke too much for my fourteen years of age, I began to practice that "look" on the cover of the book - a look of disbelief in modern pieties, of sarcastic remarks held behind my lips, of satisfaction in a private world of common sense.
Flannery'Conner after the break.

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Updated on 5/20/2005 03:14 PM by Michael Brendan Dougherty

What are the twelve books that most influenced your thinking? That is the question I found some libertarians struggling to answer in this post at LewRockwell.com.

I thought a good reactionary should add to the chorus. My entries are a bit long and so here is the rough draft of the entire list. Each Friday, I will feature two of the books in a blog post and I will flesh out the entries with pictures, more biographical details  and quotations until the project is tidy and complete. I will then follow it up with a list of the twelve articles that have been most important in forming my thinking. First week: religion

The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton
I bought this book in Blackwell's bookstore in Oxford. I read it in England. I read it again during my only Saturday detention in high school (my senior year). There was in a sense no bigger discovery than that which I found in this book. I discovered that there was a movement to history, even a direction. It was not inevitable or irresistible such as the history of “scientific progress” or the materialist history of the Marxists – but it was real. I found also my religion in this book which is the thing that gives character to a mind, not only dogmatics, but a spirit, a taste for certain symbols, a dramatic angle as it were.

A quotation and Belloc after the jump.

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Harold O.J. Brown wrote a piece in Chronicles "No Graven Images" which was the partial inspiration for this blog.  I'm very pleased to see it online.

Today, the Christian Church that survived war and persecution is in an unanticipated danger, the danger of being “surfeited with dainties,” to use Calvin’s colorful expression. Having withstood the lash, She is suffocating under toys and delicacies. Idols of the past were often cruel; today, they are sweet. It has been centuries since those of us in what used to be called Western Christendom have been tempted to worship graven images. Today, however, millions of us have bowed down and served other idols of human making.

And later:

When Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters . . . Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24), that false god had not yet taken on the dimensions that he has today. Nazism and Marxism detested Christianity but failed to destroy it, much less to bury it. Successful free-market capitalism does not detest Christianity, but it is defeating it nonetheless. It is not burning it in the ovens of the Kazetts or burying it in the mass graves of the Gulag. Instead, it smothers believers under the mass of the goods that they cannot resist acquiring. It would be a bizarre turn of world history if the system that produced the dangerous weapons to defeat the aggressive foes of Christianity ends by producing the enticing goods that will smother the surviving Christians.

Powerful words. The article should be read by all people serious about "the good life" or a life that is good.

Really, what I've been trying to get at in this blog, every once in a while, is the tension (sometimes outright conflict) between capitalism and traditionalism.  The American and European right, for political expediency only, in the face of Communism combined the partisans of free market liberalism with traditionalists and Christian rightists. It's long since time to re-examine this alliance.

There is nothing wrong with prosperity, per se. It is a gift from God. There is nothing wrong even with "dainties" in themselves. Our duty is to honor God and his Church. All these beautiful things we lay up on earth, will one day pass as dust through our cold dead bones.  The bounty laid up for those who do not grasp too tightly to these dainties can't even be speculated by the gods of Wall Street.

 

Forbes has an excellent article on the emergence of Australia as a great place for wine. I found, while those that have seen Sideways may be dumping their Merlot for overpriced Pinot, I'm content with low priced Madfish Shiraz.  That's good for everyday, but now long to sup The Armagh 2001. As a matter of fact, I long for any occasion on which expensive wine is appropriate.