Liberalism, Beauty

Today's big post was inspired by Do Liberals Want a Beautiful World? from The Point Magazine. It impinges on many ideas I have had about my writing, about constitutional law, and politics. A grab bag, I know.

I generally dislike writing inspired by interviews, and this piece was like an interview, being a symposium. I have quoted what caught my attention, what made me think, and what showed me something I did not know. Please bear with these selections and read the original in full.

The topic is defined, always a good place to start.

I’m going to begin by summarizing the arguments of the piece, and I’m going to conclude by raising a few questions that I’ve been brooding over since it came out, and there will be another Trilling quote. But before I get into the weeds, it’s important to begin with a terminological note. What we on this panel mean by “liberalism” is not what is meant by, say, political commentators in the Opinion section of the New York Times. We do not mean the Democrats. We are referring to a political philosophy that arose in the seventeenth century as an outgrowth of Enlightenment moral philosophy and various Enlightenment-era conceptions of the nature of the self. Its hallmarks are an enthusiasm for autonomy, a propensity for diversity and a commitment to egalitarianism. I’ve offered a vague characterization of liberalism rather than a more concrete definition because the specifics are very much up for debate, and there are as many accounts of liberalism as there are liberal theorists. What matters for our purposes is that what we are talking about here is very much not the historically particular political orientation of the Democratic Party, much less in 2026 when it is peak listless; rather, a much broader political philosophy that has developed over the course of at least two centuries.

When the Republicans railed against liberals, they omitted that in the fuller world of political sides, they were also liberals. Now, it seems that with Trump, they have decided they oppose the ideas of equality of all persons and their inalienable rights.

I never knew of the distinction between perfectionist and non-perfectionist thinkers.

 An important divide among liberal thinkers is this: Some of them are perfectionist—that is to say, they think there is a substantive liberal conception of the good life, of the way that we ought to live. Their aim is to construct a political formation that reflects, protects and gives rise to this privileged form of life. Some liberal thinkers, however, are non-perfectionist. That is to say, in their view, it is the job of a liberal state to enable citizens to devise and realize their own conceptions of the good life. This doctrine, according to which the liberal state should not favor or disfavor a particular conception of the good is called the “doctrine of neutrality.” Here is an example of what I mean. Christianity takes a controversial and substantive stance about the nature of the good life. Christianity asks its adherents to believe certain contentious things about the world, for instance, that Jesus is the son of God, and thus asks his adherents to believe certain controversial things about how humans ought to live. For instance, that we ought to worship Jesus or emulate him. A non-perfectionist liberalism permits its citizenry to be Christian, but it remains neutral only insofar as it does not compel them to be Christian. The most prominent liberal thinker of the past century is my other patron saint, John Rawls, who embraced a non-perfectionist liberalism, as do I.

I side with the non-perfectionist. Work and life left Rawls mostly undread by me. Where I got the most food for thought that made me a non-perfectionist liberal came from studying Article I, Section One of the Indiana Bill of Rights:

WE DECLARE, That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that all power is inherent in the PEOPLE; and that all free governments are, and of right ought to be, founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and well being. For the advancement of these ends, the PEOPLE have, at all times, an indefeasible right to alter and reform their government

What I saw was a space for people to operate as they wanted to fulfill themselves without government interference, so long as their fulfillment did not injure other people. 

Which I think applies to aesthetics. The symposium worried that fascism expresses politics through aesthetics, and with liberalism's laissez-faire attitude toward what people do with their freedom, it was losing to fascism.

To come back to the question of what the good life has to do with aesthetics, one of the things I’ve been asking myself is: What creates a powerful aesthetic? It comes from a very convincing way of seeing the world, a very convicted way of seeing the world. I don’t think it necessarily needs to come from a vision of the good life. It could come out of a vision of how bad life is. We certainly know artists that have had aesthetics that arose from either side. But I think there is a question whether liberalism can provide something like this at all. Even in some of the higher points of what I might call “liberal art,” what you tend to find is a portrayal of society as good enough—not exactly beautiful or deeply meaningful in the sense that we often think of when we think of a strong aesthetic. And this problem is particularly acute at a time when liberalism is challenged by actually possible alternatives. So I think one of the things to discuss is whether we might need to reconnect with the imagination, even if it makes us uncomfortable, at a moment when liberals are being challenged politically.

***

This goes to what Becca just discussed, with regard to the Sontag and Trilling quotes about the great works of liberal society often being illiberal. This was one of the lessons of the 2010s, when progressivism did try to extend into the culture and make liberal art, in a sense: I don’t think the results were impressive. And so I don’t think the answer can be that liberals need to politicize art, but rather to make sure that we provide institutional structures and social arrangements that allow for the free development of art and ideas as much as possible. Another way of putting it would be to say that it is especially important for a society that does not offer a fully substantive vision of the good life politically, to create a public culture where we can work out our ideals and values for ourselves, including through art.

***

There’s one answer, let’s call it the “head’s answer” to Becca’s challenge, which is that liberalism allows for and realizes the aesthetics of freedom, pluralism, separation of powers, democracy and the rule of law. But in the end, the liberal commitments aren’t aesthetic commitments. They say, Everyone in this room, go for it. Whatever your conception of the aesthetic is, liberalism says, that’s yours. Make it yours. Exercise your agency. That’s the head’s answer.

The heart’s answer is that liberalism’s peak aesthetic is when Bob Dylan went electric—do you know this reference, even? This was like the most important moment ever, in the world. He played “Maggie’s Farm”: “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more”—a song of liberty and pluralism. And he also sang “Like a Rolling Stone,” converting the state of rootlessness and of separation and exclusion into a song of freedom, a new national anthem. “How does it feel to be on your own / With no direction home, like a complete unknown? / Like a rolling stone”—sung with joy and celebration. When he was booed in England for not doing folk music, he said to his band, and it’s recorded on tape, “Play It Fucking Loud.” That’s a liberal aesthetic. That’s liberalism’s Riefenstahl. 

I can go along with those ideas. I would add The Clash's Complete Control. But what of the effects of capitalism in centralizing the arts? Maggie's Farm may have had that in mind, too. We have more people creating, more things being written than ever before, but they are all subjected to the rule of the algorithm. 

But the essential idea feels too right. Pluralism need not mean tribalism. In The Rebel, Albert Camus distinguished between unity (good) and totality (bad). Tribalism that communicates between tribes creates a pluralism; tribes that do not communicate lead to a social/political Manicheanism. The former promotes growth, the other dies shivering in a dark bunker.

 I disagree with mandating beauty. Where I prefer Shakespeare, someone else might prefer Edward Albee. If I mandate Shakespeare, have I not imposed upon the Albee fans? Or vice versa. 

But mandating beauty seems too much like mandating religion. Nothing has crippled religion more than mandating a state faith. A legal standard of beauty would be stultifying; I can imagine it dulling any sense of beauty in people.

Becca Rothfeld: I guess the original way you were posing the question made me think that it’s about the relationship between the content of policy and the aesthetic results of policy. And I think that the right-wing has no problem answering, Yeah, we should mandate beauty. We should mandate, like, neocolonial architecture and bad lip filler or whatever. I have strong disagreements with them about what they think is beautiful, but they don’t have a problem with that. A liberal obviously would have a problem with that. You can’t mandate beauty for various reasons, even if justice permitted it, it doesn’t seem like it would be effective. But what I think you can do is have policies that at least permit the pursuit of beauty. Another thing that you can do that Trilling gestures at in various ways, is have policies that are founded on an anthropology that, in turn, is the basis of good art production. What I mean by this is that one of Trilling’s criticisms of what he calls bureaucratic liberalism—what we would call technocratic liberalism—is that it has a really impoverished account of what people are like. He really likes Freud, not necessarily because he thinks that Freud is even correct, but because he thinks that Freud provides us with the resources to create better novels and such. And so I think that you could at least be careful to sort of write policy in a way that doesn’t assume an impoverished anthropology.

I find the thousand-flowers-bloom metaphor congruent with my ideas. It fits within my ideas of pluralism.

So what can be done? One Battle After Another is a liberal cri de coeur. It wasn’t produced by politicians. If politicians tried to produce a movie like that, it would be didactic and wouldn’t be very human. If you look at texts, either literary texts or not, that are part of our culture, they’re frequently liberal in character, and they gave rise to, you know, the civil rights movement, the movement for same sex marriage—a thousand things like that. What I’m saying now has a thousand-flowers-bloom quality, but we find that not exciting only because we’ve heard it so many times. And the challenge, I think, for this generation, is to find a conception of liberalism that celebrates and doesn’t nod bored at the relevant commitments and makes them new and real. Making something new and real is going to make them different.

There is much I found needing unpacked and considered in this paragraph:

To attribute social terribleness to liberalism is reckless. Liberalism isn’t a force in history. It’s not Voldemort. It’s not whispering behind married couples saying, sleep with your neighbor. It’s not telling fathers don’t pay attention to your kids. It’s not saying to people of faith, you should stop believing in God. This is recklessness. And I’d say exactly the same thing, if I may, about capitalism. Capitalism means people get to own things. So you get to own that green shirt and those blue jeans. Some of you probably own laptops; they can’t be taken from you because there’s private property. To believe in capitalism is to believe in something which is an engine of freedom from fear, which is a defining liberal ideal. The idea of post-liberalism, at least in some forms, is a recipe for subjection to fear, because freedom of speech starts to get smaller, and freedom of religion might get smaller too.

Unlike Marxism, liberalism does not think it is ordained by history. It turned out that Marxism was not, either. I consider liberalism to be an environment within which we get to figure out our purposes in this life.

Inducing fear and hate has been the mark of Trumpism. I have a sister who fears the coming of Sharia law. She has not explained to me how this is to occur in a country where Muslims are a distinct minority. The tech bros also seem ready to propagate fear. Musk, with his pro-white supremacy talk, comes to mind here.

Ignorance breeds fear. I did not see anywhere in this article any mention of education. Political education seems to me the balance to ill-liberal thinking. If we are looking for a liberal aesthetic, then education is the tool for its advancement.

The closest approach I found to education was in this paragaraph:

Becca Rothfeld: Can I answer more tyrannically? So I was just thinking like when Jon was talking about how liberalism and criticism have some natural affinity. Actually, I could not disagree more. The greatest tension in my life is that, as a critic, I am constantly making judgments of taste, and it’s a presumption of my vocation that other people should agree with me; I’m inegalitarian. I think that there’s a hierarchy of taste, and I presume to have a kind of authoritarian status when I’m writing a book review. I’m trying to persuade you; I’m trying to get you to agree with me. But I also think that you should think what I think. So, this is only a limited answer about what the good life looks like—I’m not taking a stance about what you should eat or whether you should stay married. (I don’t think you should stay married if your marriage is unhappy.) But my positive view is: beauty is good. The pursuit of beauty is something that you should spend your life doing. You should devote at least some part of your life to the consumption of difficult and important works of art. That’s a substantive commitment about the good life that I have and that I am willing to express. 

Finally, it is up to us to fight for our freedom. Here is one way to fight: create art that springs not from political mandate but from the anarchy of real life.

sch 4/28 

 

 

 

 

Always The Same Old American Song and Dance - Cowardice, Slaves, Fascism

 Last night, I ran across View of Native Fascism: Evansville’s 1948 Wallace Riot by Denise Lynn (Indiana Magazine of History; Vol. 119 No. 3 (2023): September 2023). It might want to give us pause in our thinking.

I read some political writers saying that the consensus formed during the Cold War has ended, that we are returning the fragmentation predating December 7, 1941, and this explains Trumpism as the resurgence  of an older type of American politics.

No asks how we reached the Cold War consensus, the actual mechanics in reaching that consensus. View of Native Fascism exposes an ugliness I was never aware of.

What happened in Evansville on April 6, 1948, was reminiscent of the populist fascist actions in the interwar years, and it served to solidify the fascist commitment to silencing dissent and to criminalizing demands for equality and advocacy of progressive political change. While history has often conflated anti-communist legal harassment with Mccarthyism and national politics, populist fascism—characterized by red-baiting cam-paigns, harassment, and vigilante violence—was often deployed by local organizations  and  individuals  encouraged  by  anti-communist  hysteria.  The Evansville riot demonstrates that anti-communism operated on the local level to suppress political expression and that local veterans’ groups engaged in populist fascism to prevent progressive organization, undermine progressive gains, and, in the process, violate the rights of fellow citizens.

***

...The Progressive Party’s showing was abysmal. At least one historian, Thomas Devine, argues that it was not just anti-communism that doomed the Wallace campaign, but racism within unions, particularly in the South, which lost the labor vote. Many black voters and union voters turned to Truman as the safe vote, allowing him to pull off an upset against Republican Thomas Dewey. More troubling for  progressives  was  that  Strom  Thurmond’s  Dixiecrats,  running  on  a  commitment to segregation, won four states in the electoral college. The Wallace campaign was an early casualty of cold War red-baiting; more than that, the Progressive Party’s message of the dangers to peace from the wedding of the war and civilian economies went unheeded, as the nation continued its march toward a state of permanent war, a path it continues to follow today. 

Out of those Dixiecrats came George Wallace, and from George Wallace came the Southern Strategy of Richard Nixon and the rise of white supremacy that has permeated the Republican Party for generations.

I cannot recall when I first learned of Henry Wallace's run for president in 1948. I may have been in my forties, and it may have come from a Gore Vidal essay. Wallace presents a large question for alternate history. I think this article taught me more of what Wallace and the Progressive Party was about:

The Progressive Party billed itself as a “return to and continuation of” Roosevelt’s New Deal. As christina Pérez Jiménez argues, the party’s platform was progressive even by modern standards: it called for an end to Jim crow segregation, anti-lynching laws, partnership with labor unions, national health care, a more expansive welfare state, and demilitarization. It also counseled a “nonadversarial” relationship with the USSR. Wallace’s policy  statement  on  “Militarization  in  the  US”  argued  that  the  nation’s  growing militarization at the end of the war was a “disease,” caused in part by “military fascism” in service to “monopoly capitalism.” Wallace argued that with Roosevelt’s death, the military had moved to wed its interests to the national government, best seen in the National Security Act of 1947. The bill created the National Security council and the central Intelligence gency, and merged the War and Navy Departments into the Department of Defense. The bill essentially fortified the U.S. military establishment, and, for Wallace, wedded the “civilian economy” to “military requirements.”

Yes, they allowed Communist fellow travelers and even CP members to attach themselves.

 A little more than a decade later, and Eisenhower would warn the country of the military-industrial complex. No one (except maybe the John Birchers?) accused him of being a Communist. It seems Wallace was making the same argument in 1948.

I find in what is described below, Wallace made arguments justified by Eisenhower, by the Vietnam  War, by Nixon's policy of detente, of the failure of trickle down economics, by Trump rejecting alternate energy in favor of oil and coal (which advocacy has always made me wonder in what century is he living). I also see the failure of the peace dividend from the Cold War and the subsizing of Big Tech that has led us into the deserts of disunion and AI.

Wallace told his Evansville supporters that to ensure freedom and justice,  defense  industries  had  to  be  prevented  from  profiteering.  He  noted that the oil industry, to ensure their profits, supported reaction-ary leaders in other countries “under the wings of US Army bombers.” The aircraft industry depended on government contracts for profit, and thus it was no wonder, Wallace claimed, that it was helping to “foment the war hysteria” during the cold War. Aircraft companies had profited handsomely during World War II: the Republic Aviation corporation that operated out of Evansville producing the Thunderbolt had seen a 150 percent increase in profit during the war because, Wallace noted, Americans had subsidized the company through “war bonds and taxes.” but the civilian aviation industry was nowhere near as profitable in post-war 1948—Republic  Aviation  had  ceased  producing  civilian  aircraft—and  thus industry leaders were some of the loudest in calling for war. None were concerned that “air bombardment” led to the “murder of millions of civilians” nor that their profits depended on “capital supplied by the American  taxpayer.”  Even  those  who  supported  an  increased  budget  for military air power, Wallace continued, admitted that there were no weapons in existence that would make the United States vulnerable to attack. The cold War “policy of militarization” was not a good defense but instead a “provocation to war.”42

Wallace argued that few cities had given as much to the war effort as Evansville and thus Evansville had a right to enjoy the peace. He noted that the facilities that had built the Thunderbolt were now refitted for refrigerator manufacturing. What Evansville needed was a federal housing program to help deal with the housing crisis; more houses meant greater need for refrigerators. The people of Evansville wanted, and deserved, higher wages and lower prices. Another war would threaten all of this. Wallace advocated a “peace program”: the U.S. would conclude all of its interventionist policies and programs and instead create an “international aid program through the UN.” but, he added, to ensure peace “we must draw the fangs of the warmakers” and stop subsidizing war profiteers with taxpayer funds. Wallace advocated government ownership of war-time  aircraft  plants  that  would  be  turned  over  to  civilian  production,  estimated to provide millions of new jobs as part of a full-employment program. The cost, he argued, would be minimal given the cost of war. The veterans’ groups clamoring outside the coliseum were, as Minton had divined, too caught up in anti-communist hysteria to be interested in Wallace’s message of peace. At the end of the candidate’s speech, Parker returned  to  the  stage  and  “dismissed  the  audience.”  by  this  point  the  mob had dispersed.43

 But more chilling to me came from Evansville but up the Ohio River in Pittsburgh:

That  same  year,  historian  and  Pittsburgh  Courier  columnist  Joel  Augustus Rogers wrote an editorial arguing that the “spirit of the American people”  was  more  inclined  toward  fascism  than  communism.  After  a  handful of years watching anti-communist hysteria grow, Rogers noted that while there might be 70,000 communists in the United States, there were  potentially  70,000,000  fascists,  and  observed  that  the  South  was  already “largely fascistic.” Anti-communist purges, he wrote, were just a “smoke screen for fascism.” Rogers concluded that, while he did not align with communists and would reject communism as a way of life, if the  American  communist  Party  were  simply  an  “anti-negro”  group  it  would have been left alone.57Rogers articulated a point that others were expressing more quietly at the height of American anti-communism. The U.S. showed definite fascist tendencies, especially in its silencing of progressive voices. Its anti-com-munist foreign policy preferred right-wing dictatorships that shored up corporate  profits  and  secured  American  military  expansion.  Long  after  Wallace  left  Evansville  and  lost  in  that  year’s  election,  populist  fascism  continued, as veterans’ groups and mainstream conservative unions ousted radicals and supported the larger censure of progressives. In Indiana, the American Legion made headlines again in 1953 when it denied the AcLU the right to use its Indianapolis War Memorial as a meeting place. The Legion’s state commander, Roy Amos, argued that the organization was communist and he did not want to provide it “sanctuary.” Historian Erin Kemper has demonstrated that in Indiana, fears about communist conspiracy would continue well into the late twentieth century. The American Legion and other veterans’ groups continued to work with far-right reactionaries, including ProAmerica and the John birch Society, which was founded in Indianapolis. As Kemper argues, in Indiana change is “evolutionary not revolutionary.”

What was clear in 1949 was consternation when Trump won in 2016 and 2024. 

I think fascists are cowards. This has been a long-standing opinion of mine. Today, I have another, that there are those who prefer slavery to freedom. That this country has always had a population of cowards who would want to be slaves.

sch 4/18

 

Culture - Economics -

Alex Nowrasteh's The Culture Crutch (Laissez-Faire, Laissez-Passer w/ Alex Nowrasteh & David Bier Substack) felt important enough to pass along. 

Culture and the problem defined: 

Culture is human behavior that is socially learned and transmitted rather than genetically inherited or individually discovered. In Substack and online debates, culture means whatever the person invoking it needs it to mean. Values. Beliefs. Norms. Attitudes. Customs. Work ethic. Family structure. Trust. Time preference. Cuisine. Music. When someone says “culture explains X,” they’re gesturing at a black box the size of human civilization and calling the gesture a theory.

Keep that definition of culture in mind as I explain how unsatisfying using the word “culture” is as an explanation. You notice a spike in unemployment. Curious what could be causing it, you ask your economist friend why unemployment is rising. He says it’s because of “the economy” and then sits back as if he’s explained something when he has done nothing of the sort. That’s how everybody sounds to me when they say that culture explains a behavior or outcome.

I do not claim to be well read in economics, so this problem is new to me. However, it makes me wonder about the other social sciences.

If you’re going to claim that culture has an effect, you should be able to do four things. First, pinpoint exactly what cultural characteristic you mean. Don’t be vague, be specific by describing the type of behavior. Second, prove that cultural behavior actually exists as a measurable trait. Don’t rely on stereotypes, do the hard work. Third, demonstrate that the cultural behavior differs meaningfully across the groups being compared. Wow, that culture likes food a lot. Which culture doesn’t? Fourth, rule out that the real cultural trait isn’t caused by an exogenous economic force like high real estate prices, rising wages, or different institutions that incentivize behavior. Almost nobody who invokes culture does any of these four things. Culture is endogenous to everything. That’s why you have to do the work to isolate it. That’s also why almost nobody bothers.

The fourth step is the hardest because culture is endogenous to everything. It doesn’t exist outside the institutional, economic, and geographic environment that produces it. The corruption norms in Egypt didn’t fall from the sky. They emerged from decades or centuries of weak rule of law, chaos, and institutional dysfunction. Japanese cooperative norms didn’t spring from the soil of Honshu or grow from their bodies like an appendage. Claiming culture causes an outcome without first ruling out that the outcome’s causes also produced the culture is not an explanation. It is circular reasoning with a dedicated vocabulary.

 I never did anything with my BS in Political Science besides as a springboard to law school. What sticks in my head is more than methods than substance. Maybe anthropology avoids the problem outlined above by keeping cultures sealed off from one another. 

But what of Political Science? It might be saved by its reliance on surveys and empirical data, right? Supposedly, data fuels Economics.

Sociology becomes problematic to me for what it extracts from data is related to culture. 

I think of Economics as a form of history - it looks backward and tries to project forward. Economics' reliance on numbers seemed to put its ability to project forward on a more stable foundation than history. However, history has for a long time recognized that human behavior has its consistencies but that the expression of human nature escapes predictability. 

Not I can let History off the hook here. I recall reading about the German idea of Kultur. Not that I can recall enough to give a detailed explanation; apart from that, it was a generalized explanation. Perhaps Economics imported the concept without understanding what they were doing.

Bottom line, generalized explanations do not really explain everything; we need to be skeptical of culture as explaining everything.

sch 4/27 

4/28: Not Much Shaking Going On

 Another without any accomplishments - least ways of what was planned. I think I slept more than anything else. Posts were added to this blog. A couple of long ones. No church, no traveling about, but I got the laundry done.

I did spend time on Netflix. Finished off Black Monday (a farce that would be annoying without Don Cheadle and Regina King); Wake Up Dead Man(enjoyable, but I am a fan of both Daniel Craig and Rian Johnson); His Three Daughters (a bit rough in the opening, more of a filmed play, but ends wonderfully, but Natasha Lyonne is a weaknes of mine); and watched part of May December. I closed out the night with Bue Moon (is breaking my heart; not a date movie).

I remain appalled - a new sensation, this being appalled - by the mental midgets, the moral degenerates, the delusional crackpots of the  Trump government, and those who voted him into office. Transcript: Trump Press Sec Goes Full Cult in Crazed Tirades at Media (The New Republic) is the current provocation in particular, the WHCD shooter being the general.

Karoline Leavitt (voiceover): Nobody in recent years has faced more bullets and more violence than President Trump. This political violence stems from a systemic demonization of him and his supporters by commentators, yes, by elected members of the Democrat Party and even some in the media. This hateful and constant and violent rhetoric directed at President Trump day after day after day for 11 years has helped to legitimize this violence and bring us to this dark moment.

Sargent: Note that Leavitt appeals for calm and then immediately throws it all away by insisting that the primary cause of political violence in this country comes only from Democrats. Matt, you want to respond to that?

Gertz: This is the cynical, pathetic, cry-bully nonsense that we’ve come to expect from people like Leavitt. If the White House is really concerned that the rhetoric has gotten out of control, then they could do something about how the president of the United States has referred to Democrats as traitors seven times in one week. It was last week.

This is the rhetoric that we’ve come to expect from the president of the United States. The idea here appears to be that the president can say whatever he wants and that all of his critics can say whatever he wants as well.

Sargent: There’s another imbalance that we should home in on for a second, and the media is uncomfortable with saying this. It’s this: Trump and Republicans just don’t condemn political violence when it comes from their side with anything close to the vehemence that Democrats do when it comes from their side.

Trump and Republicans have a history of excusing political violence against Democrats and even at times joking about it. We all remember January 6—Trump pardoned hundreds and hundreds of people, many of whom committed serious political violence against the United States. Matt, can you talk about that history of Trump and Republicans essentially hand-waving away political violence when it’s directed at Democrats and liberals?

Death of the Co-Author: How Betrayal and Alienation Shaped The Last Movie ( CrimeReads). I am a Dennis Hopper fan but have never seen The Last Movie, only having heard of it as a failure. This article put a dent in my admiration for Hopper until this paragraph:

Dennis Hopper expounds even further on this urge to create, beyond just the joy of doing it. “Making things is agony. I hate to make movies. But I’ve got to do it. It justifies my existence. If I couldn’t, I’d destroy myself.”

 

Orthodox Christianity Videos I Watched During Lent, And An Essay

 This recurring illness kept me fairly lethargic during Lent. This was the most erratic period of posting on this blog in 5 years. Take them or leave. I give them to Orthodox Christian readers to enjoy. Others, I hope get an education.

 Does the Church support human rights?

 The fallacy of Pascal's Wager; I highly recommend this one. Nietzsche attacked Pacal's Wager. It does not apply (cannot apply) to Orthodoxy.

 Why a Protestant idea is heresy:

 Response to Protestant Arguments Against Orthodoxy

 Orthodox Priest responds to Jay Dyer

 What to wear to an Orthodox Church

 The differences between the Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants

 

A reading list: 

Salvation:

 How it is growing in America:

 The essay: Holy Orthodoxy: “To Do Justice, to Love Mercy, to Walk Humbly with Your God”

A fair legal system, effective law enforcement, secure borders, and a robust military are necessary East of Eden, in this our fallen human community. Nevertheless, the Orthodox theological tradition gives primacy to the fundamental dignity and worth of every human being—because, as one of our funeral hymns puts it, “even though I bear the scars of my sins, I am an image of Your ineffable glory.” Most importantly, the Gospel teaches that Christ will judge us by how we will have treated the bearers of the divine Image, whom he calls “the least of my brothers”: the poor, the hungry, the stranger, and the imprisoned (Mat 25:31–46).

Patriotism—that is, working for the spiritual, cultural, and material prosperity of our nation and for its good name abroad—is natural and good; and all those to whom we, the people, entrust limited and temporary civil authority, should be held to that standard. But Christians answer to a higher calling: above all, they are “citizens of heaven” (Phil 3:20) having “no abiding city” in this age (Heb 13:14), and “dwelling in their own countries, but simply as sojourners,” with “every foreign land as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers” (Epistle to Diognetus, 5). Paraphrasing the greeting of St Clement of Rome’s Epistle to the Corinthians, our identity is that of “the Church of God sojourning (ἡ ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ παροικοῦσα)” in 21st-century America: Orthodoxy is not an ornamental addition to whatever one construes as “American identity.”

 

sch 4/27

Muncie Life: 4/26 - 4/27; Ringo Starr Back and So Is Political Violence.

 Yesterday started off both as a mess and something good. I missed my ride - got the time he was coming completely screwed up in my head. However, I felt well enough to go to church, so I started walking. Just to prove that I could. 

The problems erupted in the evening. After a nap and a light dinner. I did not get to sleep until around 4 AM. I got some reading done. The email attended, but mostly it was a lot of hot baths. All I can say of that is that I got started on the introduction to Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. 

The best thing was a long chat on the telephone with J. I like to think I amuse her.

Trump's trip to the correspondent's dinner got interrupted; he seems to have never been in danger. He is reaping what he sowed - hatred breeds violence. Can we survive his ugliness?

Up at nine this morning, a trip to the convenience store, and finishing off this blog post. I also did one for the new writing blog. 

Son of Nobody by Yann Martel review – Life of Pi author discovers a long-lost poem from Troy (The Guardian). Let me know what Martel was doing after Life of Pi.

Latest Ringo Starr album review. I had already heard the single and thought it was great. But who can dislike Ringo? This is the single:

 Also from The Guardian: To see or not to see? Every single Shakespeare play – ranked! Proving I love lists, and this one supports Allan Bloom's opinion of what are the greatest plays of Shakespeare.

WXRT - the Chicago station I listened to in law school and what supplied the music for yesterday.

What a Muslim folk trickster can teach us about the danger of holding a single worldview. Being ignorant of this character, I read the essay. It is the trickster character archetype, but maybe a little more funny than the usual. A good reminder that right makes might; also, that the canny beat the arrogant.

History is full of powerful actors who believed the world’s complexity could be overcome by will and might. Hoja has been subverting confident authorities for at least seven centuries, while refusing to be pinned down, even as a hero. If his tales can be said to have an overall lesson, it is against the comfort of easy answers.

Declaring hard power as all that matters, as Miller has done, doesn’t just mean ignoring others’ humanity – it also means ignoring our own human capacity for curiosity and intellectual humility. 

Another reminder:

Latest attack threatening President Trump reflects rising political violence in US (The Conversation)

There are several important drivers of political violence at work in the U.S. today, according to my own research and research by other scholars. The United States is currently very politically polarized, meaning that Americans are sharply divided against one another along partisan lines. They are suspicious and hostile toward one another, and this produces a tense and volatile environment for politics and public life. This has produced a “zero-sum” environment in which every election and political contest is a “do or die” moment.

What stands out to me is the moral dimension of polarization in the U.S. Each side views members of the other party not as merely having a different view on politics but rather as evil or immoral. The polarized environment has made political violence more normalized. It has also dampened public backlash against political violence when it occurs. This makes political violence more likely.

Political rhetoric has become much more divisive and violent in nature. This works hand in hand with polarization and helps to further normalize political violence. In particular, when politicians use demonizing or dehumanizing rhetoric to attack their opponents – for example, using words that depict their opponents as subhuman – this fosters extremism and helps motivate extremists to hurt their opponents physically.

Disinformation is also an important driver of political violence. A number of people who have engaged in recent acts of political violence seem to have been motivated by conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation, often gleaned from social media. Disinformation plays a particularly important role in the context of social media communities, where people are exposed to large amounts of disinformation and are hermetically sealed off from other sources that might challenge their worldview. This facilitates radicalization and has been shown to fuel political violence in some cases.

Finally, I think an important factor is also the current assault on democratic norms and democratic institutions in the United States. U.S. democracy is experiencing pressures that are unprecedented in the modern era. This has had a very damaging effect on Americans’ trust in government, confidence in democratic institutions and value for democratic rule itself.

My work shows that individuals who are skeptical about democracy are much more likely to express support or tolerance for political violence. 

 Chuck Todd posted a video this morning with an indictment of the health of our political life and a plea for a better America. I agree with him, but I doubt if either of us will get the result we want.

 No Violence. No Demagoguery. No Kings. (The Bulwark) points out what MAGA is doing with Saturday's incident already.

And we should be proud to be part of a movement that will not be cowed by attempts at intimidation. The pro-democracy movement will resist efforts by this administration and its MAGA minions to use Saturday night as an excuse to criminalize political dissent, silence legitimate criticism, and curtail our civil liberties.

Such efforts got underway within hours of the shooting at the Washington Hilton.

On Sunday morning, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said, “I don’t think this should be lost on anyone . . . that we have a third assassination attempt on President Trump—in that same week we learn that the Southern Poverty Law Center has been paying and generating hate.”

I’d say in response that I don’t think it should be lost on anyone that this is mere demagoguery in defense of the baseless indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and in defense of using Congress’s investigative powers, as Jordan intends to do, to abet DOJ. Of course Jordan doesn’t quite say that there is any connection between the shooter and the SPLC. But he implies one that should not “be lost on anyone.” This is pretty classic McCarthyism—or, for that matter, Trumpism.

Meanwhile, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) tried to use Saturday night’s incident as an excuse not just to get new funding for the Department of Homeland Security but to increase the power of the Senate Republican majority: “At a moment of national danger, if Democrats refuse to fund DHS, I would say this would be the time to nuke the filibuster for good.”

In fact, Democrats are refusing to provide new funds not for the whole of DHS but merely for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, neither of which has anything to do with Saturday’s shooting, but which have a lot to do with the administration intimidating opponents. But Trump wants more money for those agencies, and he wants to get rid of the filibuster. This fake “moment of national emergency” is the excuse.

And Speaker Mike Johnson intends to try once again this week to move legislation in the House reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without any real civil liberties safeguards.1 Expect to see him and his lieutenants use this “moment of national danger” to try to overcome opposition to the bill, even though there’s no connection between Section 702 and the events of Saturday night.

More broadly, we should expect a sustained effort in the days and weeks to come to intimidate and silence critics of the Trump administration in the same vein as the notorious National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” issued after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. There will be attempts to justify further investigation, chilling, and criminalizing of speech as part of a crackdown on “domestic terrorism.” According to NSPM-7, one of the “common threads animating this violent conduct” is “anti-Christianity.” So President Trump has already called Cole Tomas Allen “anti-Christian”—though as it happens he was active in a Christian group at college, and spends considerable time in his manifesto trying to justify his actions by appealing to scripture. 

The plan is that I am going to the grocery and then to a movie. Trying to break things up today. I want to work ont he blogs today and tomorrow. 

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Indiana Filmmakers Have Support & Muncie Has Ink Drinkers

 

Lift 

LIFT aims to support Indiana filmmakers in telling powerful, uplifting stories of inspirational Hoosiers. We will offer $5,000 grants to five filmmakers to produce five-minute short films that effectively capture these stories. If selected, filmmakers or filmmaking teams have two months (April 15 - June 15) to complete their films. In addition to the financial support, Hoodox and Indiana Humanities will provide mentorship opportunities throughout the process. 

Ink Drinkers Anonymous 

Ink Drinkers Anonymous is a small, independent bookstore located in Muncie, Indiana. We have a deep love for books and passion for representation. You can find books by a variety of authors of different backgrounds, but we love to highlight diverse and underrepresented authors.

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Store Hours

Sunday: Closed
Monday: Closed
Tuesday: 1:00pm - 6:00pm
Wednesday: 1:00pm - 6:00pm
Thursday: 1:00pm - 6:00pm
Friday: 1:00pm - 6:00pm
Saturday: 1:00pm - 6:00pm

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