Advice to a teenager

I can't teach you to write, Clara. I can only encourage you to read as a writer reads. And a reader who reads as a writer reads doesn't read for reading's sake but rather for the sake of reading writing. Got it?

Homo Insanus

Universities (and to a certain extent university towns) are theme parks ... plasticated palaces of ego. Sometimes these palaces are populated by persons so eager to avoid the lethargy of custom that they adopt a commercially expedient form of un-reason. And sometimes, as is the case with Sunstein and Nussbaum, these people go on to advise the President of the united States:

“We could even grant animals a right to bring suit without insisting that animals are
persons, or that they are not property. A state could certainly confer rights on a pristine
area, or a painting, and allow people to bring suit on its behalf, without therefore saying
that that area and that painting may not be owned. It might, in these circumstances, seem
puzzling that so many people are focusing on the question of whether animals are
property. We could retain the idea of property but also give animals far more protection
against injury or neglect of their interests.”

--Cass R. Sunstein, Martha C. Nussbaum. Animal Rights: Current Debates and
New Directions. (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004). P. 11

Questions for the so-called GOP debates

1. Candidate Santorum,
Please comment on the following statement by Orestes Brownson. Do you agree with Brownson or disagree? And please prove the audience with a brief rationale for your response.

"That the great commercial nations have been and are civilized nations, and that they have extended the area of civilization by establishing colonies of emigrants from their own bosom, is undoubtedly true; but the point is, has commerce ever civilized a nation it found on opening trade with it uncivilized? I recollect no instance of the kind. As far as my historical reading goes, the only force that has ever civilized a savage, barbarous, or semi-barbarous tribe or people is religion. Commerce brings civilized and uncivilized nations in contact, no doubt, but as a rule the uncivilized are broken, as the earthen pot that comes in contact with the iron pot. What has the commerce of Great Britain done for India, where civilization was once far superior to what it is now? Great Britain and perhaps other Christian nations have gained by it, but India herself has lost her autonomy and been impoverished by it. The people of India are poorer today, find it harder to live, than when the English East-India Company was formed. England, to obtain a market for her own wares, broke up the native manufacturers and reduced the poor people to abject dependence. The same process has begun with China and Japan, though it may not be so successful there as it has been in India, where the natives have thus far deteriorated and in no sense advanced in civilization. Commerce has only one principle – "to buy cheap and sell dear;" it does not concern itself with civilization." (Vol. 13, pp. 19, 20.)

2. Candidate Bachman,

Could you please comment on which of Russell Kirk's Ten Conservative Principles you find to be most compelling, and why?

3. Candidate Perry,

With regard specifically to this nation's education policy, please explain to the audience how you as President would apply the Doctrine of Subsidiarity.

4. Candidate Gingrich,
Keeping in mind the daily responsibilities of the President of the United States, please rate the following concepts in ascending order of significance: (a) Thomas Molnar’s advice to the counter-revolutionary, (b) Charles Maurras’ theory of “natural inequality” and (c) St. Augustine’s cautionary statements about the “libido dominandi.”

Evils Posed by the Climate-Controlled Home

Amelia: Dad, will you turn up the heat?

Dad: Amelia, it’s time you understand that the greatest paradox of modern centralized heat is that there is nothing centralizing about it. Centralized heat acts as a human centrifuge that launches family members to the remotest regions of the home where they are then seduced by technologized warmth and perfidious solitary distractions. A healthy family is a cold family, and the most authentic form of conviviality involves involuntary shivering around an inefficient wood stove. Now, go and put another sweater on and join us around the fire. We’re going to sing camp songs!

Amelia: Uh, Ok … but I’m running out of sweaters.

Christmas forbearance ...

The heavily pierced and self-consciously lumpen hoards mocking the nativity should remind us that when reason is liberated entirely from tradition it becomes something rancorous, hubristic, and irrational. And it is the transcendent quality of tradition that places proper limits on the aspirations of reason. Leskek Kolakowski had this in mind when he wrote, “… culture when it loses its sacred sense, loses all sense.” And so we are left this Christmas season to endure patiently the obscurantist complaints about “religion in the public sector” that are disgorged like beer-soaked flatulence from the mouths of secularist elites who remain committed to building a society in which all things are possible and nothing is true.
And so we pray for the gift of forbearance …