The Fool's Progress

One more from the active ‘to read’ shelf picked up at a now forgotten bookstore outing, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, & Kafka is a short analysis of a fun bunch of guys. The book treats each writer in turn, with short biographies and a treatment of their work, but for the most part the author assumes a certain level of familiarity. The meat of this short paperback comes in two short closing essays. The Four Apocalyptic Horsemen draws them together as a group, noting their many similarities such as lack of success, loneliness, woman problems, and the like. The most striking comparison is that each felt they were at the end of a great tradition, screaming into an uncaring or complacent wilderness, and each presaged the coming apocalypse of 20th Century Europe. The copyright on the inside cover of this book is 1952, but I have no idea when the original essays were written. The Angel’s Finger calls into clear sight the existential crises present at the outset of the Cold War, and is a great sense of the European pulse at that time. The essay also sorts the 19th Century writers into helpful roles for a present that is now over fifty years past. This little book was a great read on several levels.

I tore through The Gate, a riveting memoir, three or four years after I first read a review, somewhere. Accused of being a spy, Francois Bizot is the only known Westerner that the Khmer Rouge released from political prison in the chaos of Cambodia’s civil war. The details of his interactions with his Grand Inquisitor are unforgettable. Amazingly, after that ordeal Bizot stayed on in the country long enough to witness the fall of Phnom Penh to the rebels and accompany the remnant caravan from the French Embassy to the Thai border. As always in any ‘humanity at the edges’ experience, Bizot witnessed the best and worst we are all capable of and tells a tale that will haunt its readers.

The column ran Saturday, with some minor editing that was mostly for the better. The Star cut a few lines, as the essay I submitted was about fifty words long. The only complaint I have is a sentence omitted that justifies Harris' theory in a Darwinian sense:

“Children seek their socialization cues from a group wider than their immediate family, for good evolutionary reasons. Harris estimates that due to shortened life expectancies, a Paleolithic child had a one in three chance of having both parents alive at age ten.”

The editors cut the second sentence. Bummer, as it is a key point to her theory. As is, the reader is left hanging as to what the 'good evolutionary reasons' are.

The Essential Peirce, Volume 1 is a fantastic introduction to eminent American Philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce is both approachable and difficult, depending on the subject and audience he was writing for. He wrote enough ‘popular’ essays for periodicals of the time that a cogent yet clear picture emerges of his philosophy. His work on logic is more elusive, at least for me, but that is probably more a reflection on my lack of proper education. The Fixation of Belief, written in 1877, may warrant an entire Midwest Voices piece from yours truly. Briefly, Peirce argues that belief is our brain’s natural state, and that any period of uncertainty is uncomfortable and this irritation will be avoided at all costs. The method of filling in the blank, of ‘fixing belief’, is what is interesting. Peirce gives us four options, in increasing order of complexity.

The first is the method of tenacity, of simply clinging at all costs to the beliefs we already have. Peirce argues this method is ultimately untenable, as constant erosion of doubt will undermine the fixing of beliefs. The second method is for the individual to yield to the will of the state, or of the state imposing itself on its citizens. This could be religious or political oppression, and Peirce notes this method of inquiry is capable of immense works such as the Pyramids. A doctrinal approach fails, however, to regulate every subject. This means an opening will exist in any system for an inquiring, impious mind. The third method of settling belief is the a priori method or common sense in modern parlance. This method of inquiry seeks explanations that are naturally agreeable to reason. The problem, of course, is that we do not live in a common-sense world. Heavier objects do not fall faster than lighter ones. Euclid geometry and Newtonian physics break down upon further review. Further, what is reasonable today may not be tomorrow, and any method of seeking answers that waivers, subject to popular opinion will not be long lasting.

Peirce traces the failures of these methods in involving the inquirer. Peirce thought proper reasoning would not be dependent on the observer, that there is a reality independent of what humans would like to think. Peirce is arguing for the scientific method, that independent observers, performing repeatable tests, will arrive at the same conclusion. The answer may not be the one we sought, but exists nonetheless. I still have 300 words to go; this might be an article in June.

Gilead is the second novel by Marilynne Robinson, and is a very satisfying read. I keep circling round faith like moth to a porch light. Set in 1956, an old preacher who knows the end is coming writes to the man his young son will become, passing on such insights a well-lived life yields. The family history is fascinating, as Mr. Ames’ grandfather may have aided John Brown in an abolitionist raid. The book eases into a summer full of filial odysseys, questions of faith, and gentle admonishment as Mr. Ames winds down. In addition, Ms. Robinson has blessed us with susurrus, in the murmuring mid-summer leaves of an oak. This novel hits all of my buttons, history, family, and faith. The book is masterfully written and a pleasure to read.

In the end, Dennett didn’t go as far as I feared he would in Breaking the Spell. He merely asks the religious to lead considered lives, to grapple with the tough questions with the benefit of post-Enlightenment thinking. If a religious person is comfortable with belief as a natural phenomenon than that is good enough, because it is impossible to prove otherwise. A considered skepticism is the best we can do for knowledge, after that the William James Will to Believe still applies. According to James, there are times when a leap of faith is required to make any philosophical move, and in these instances, any faith will do. James includes the scientific method in faith in these instances. Unfortunately, those who have found Truth with a capital T are usually uninterested in philosophical arguments of why they must be wrong. Certainty is not in our cards, we are not to know in this life, regardless of how bitter a pill that is to swallow.

Dennett closes this way:

So, in the end, my central policy recommendation is that we gently, firmly educate the people of the world, so that they can make truly informed choices about their lives. Ignorance is nothing shameful; imposing ignorance is shameful. Most people are not to blame for their own ignorance, but if they willfully pass it on, they are to blame. One might think this is so obvious that it hardly needs proposing, but in many quarters there is substantial resistance to it. People are afraid of being more ignorant than their children – especially, apparently, their daughters. We are going to have to persuade them that there are few pleasures more honorable and joyful than being instructed by your own children. It will be fascinating to see what institutions and projects our children will devise, building on the foundations earlier generations have built and preserved for them, to carry us all safely into the future.

It is a pity this was written a good year before the Danish Mohammed cartoon riots, they fit right in to Dennett’s arguments. Religious-based ignorance is not somehow immune to polite scrutiny. In fact, as the riots show, there is no better place to start.

Housekeeping is a bleak little novel I picked up to read before Ms. Robinson’s second book, Gilead. It is a youthful angst novel, bleak, and ultimately unsatisfying, like life itself – at least according to an existentialist. 'Not all my songs are sad. Some are hopeless.' - my new favorite Townes Van Zandt quote. Anyway, the few people who strive and try stick out and are pathetic for their efforts. Those who ease into the buffeting stream of life with low or no expectations are pathetic too, but at least they have nothing at stake, and expect no better.

I picked this up and started reading it will ill with the flu in February, and then set it aside before finishing. The oddity of family relations, the roles assumed that become all encompassing, rings true. Who the heck are the strangers I’m intimate with, anyway? Not an unsettling read, unfortunately, but all too familiar. I wish it wasn’t.

I am failing in my life’s balancing act – reading, writing, husbanding, fathering. As you will see by the spate of little reviews about to appear, when in doubt I read and writing suffers. Perhaps I need to take a more active stance, but I was able to procrastinate effectively with the forthcoming article due. It is also harder to fail at reading than writing; I am a chicken at heart.

I just observed the amazing moment when the falling sky turns to snow. One of the most mesmerizing experiences of my life was experiencing a cold heavy rain switch over to huge, wet snowflakes while hiking in California redwoods. Earlier this morning, in the barely graying Kansas dawn, I heard the first tiny impacts of sleet on the windows. A resolute, or desperate, meadowlark was calling outside my backdoor but, as the sleet grew heavier, he gave up.

This is a magical morning; the reason why I came home to Kansas, as the boys and I watch and listen to the storm hit on the first day of spring, their eyes full of wonder, and mine, contentment.

Now that I am done with these paragraphs, the snow has given way to heavy sleet and the boys came and hid behind my legs as a type, hiding from the sleet pounding on the windows.

There is much ‘heavy-lifting’ in reading Peirce, but much of what he wrote, including his celebrated Popular Science Monthly pieces were for the common reader, and in these he is very accessible. I’ve also found out that his name is pronounced ‘purse’, not ‘pierce’, from a Peirce-dedicated website. Pronunciation is the scourge of the autodidact.

The beginning of The Order of Nature:

Any proposition whatever concerning the order of Nature must touch more or less on religion. In our day, belief, even in these matters, depends more and more upon the observation of facts. If a remarkable and universal orderliness be found in the universe, there must be some cause for this regularity, and science has to consider what hypotheses might account for the phenomenon. One way of accounting for it, certainly, would be to suppose that the world is ordered by a superior power. But it there is nothing in the universal subjection of phenomena of laws, nor in the character of those laws themselves (as being benevolent, beautiful, economical, etc.), which goes to prove the existence of a governor of the universe, it is hardly to be anticipated that any other sort of evidence will be found to weigh very much with minds emancipated from the tyranny of tradition.

Later on, in what could be right out of Dennett:

It seems incontestable, therefore, that the mind of man is strongly adapted to the comprehension of the world; at least, so far as this goes, that certain conceptions, highly important for such a comprehension, naturally arise in his mind; and, without such a tendency, the mind could never have had any development at all.

The closing page could be mistaken for Dennett’s Breaking the Spell:

There are minds to whom every prejudice, every presumption, seems unfair. It is easy to say what minds these are. They are those who never have known what it is to draw a well-grounded induction, and who imagine that other people’s knowledge is as nebulous as their own. That all science rolls upon presumption (not of a formal but of a real kind) is no argument with them, because they cannot imagine that there is anything solid in human knowledge. These are the people who waste their time and money upon perpetual motions and other such rubbish.

But there are better minds who take up mystical theories (by which I mean all those which have no possibility of being mechanically explained). These are persons who are strongly prejudiced in favor of such theories. We all have natural tendencies to believe in such things; our education often strengthens this tendency; and the result is, that to many minds nothing so antecedently probable as a theory of this kind. Such persons find evidence enough in favor of their views, and in the absence of any recognized logic of induction they cannot be driven from their belief.

But to the mind of a physicist there ought to be a strong presumption against every mystical theory; and therefore it seems to me that those scientific men who have sought to make out that science was not hostile to theology have not been so clear-sighted as their opponents.

It would be extravagant to say that science can at present disprove religion; but it does seem to me that the spirit of science is hostile to any religion except such a one as that of M. Vacherot. Our appointed teachers inform us that Buddhism is a miserable and atheistical faith, shorn of the most glorious and needful attributes of a religion; that its priests can be of no use to agriculture for praying for rain, nor to war by commanding the sun to stand still. We also hear the remonstrances of those who warn us that to shake the general belief in the living God would be to shake the general morals, public and private. This, too, must be admitted; such a revolution of thought could no more be accomplished without waste and desolation than a plantation of trees could be transferred to new ground, however wholesome in itself, without all of them languishing for a time, and many of them dying. Nor is it, by-the-way, a thing to be presumed that a man would have taken part in a movement having a possible atheistical issue without having taken serious and adequate counsel in regard to that responsibility. But, let the consequences of such a belief be as dire as they may, one thing is certain: that the state of facts, whatever it may be, will surely get found out, and no human prudence can long arrest the triumphal car of truth – no not if the discovery were such as to drive every individual of our race to suicide!

But it would be folly to suppose that any metaphysical theory in regard to the mode of being of the perfect is to destroy that aspiration toward the perfect which constitutes the essence of religion. It is true that, if the priests of any particular form of religion succeed in making it generally believed that religion cannot exist without the acceptance of certain formulas, or if they succeed in so interweaving certain dogmas with the popular religion that the people can see no essential analogy between a religion which accepts these points of faith and one which rejects them, the results may very well be to render those who cannot believe these things irreligious. Nor can we ever hope that any body of priests should consider themselves more teachers of religion in general than of any particular system of theology advocated by their own party. But no man need be excluded from participation in the common feelings, nor from so much of the public expression of them as is open to all the laity, by the unphilosophical narrowness of those who guard the mysteries of worship. Am I to be prevented from joining in that common joy at the revelation of enlightened principles of religion, which we celebrate at Easter and Christmas, because I think that certain scientific, logical, and metaphysical ideas which have been mixed up with these principles are untenable? No; to do so would be to estimate those errors as of more consequence than the truth – an opinion which few would admit. People who do not believe what are really the fundamental principles of Christianity are rare to find, and all but these few ought to feel at home in the churches.

I’ve also stumbled upon a fabulous word here, cerebration. According to my two volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, cerebrate is a verb, defined as subject to or produced by brain action, cogitate. Cerebration is the working of the brain, especially (in full unconscious cerebration) the action of the brain in producing results without conscious thought. In other words, cerebration occurs when a fully formed idea ‘pops’ into one’s head. I get my best writing ideas this way; connections not thought of seem clear, or paths suddenly certain. Thanks, Charles.

I have finished Breaking the Spell and am now working on Charles Sanders Peirce. The first essay is still fuzzy after two readings, but the writing is livelier than I expected. This excerpt is from Some Consequences of Four Incapacities (1868):

"… It is sufficient to say there is no element whatever of man’s consciousness which has not something corresponding to it in the word; and the reason is obvious. It is that the word or sign which man uses is the man himself. For, as the fact that every thought is a sign, taken in conjunction with the fact that life is a train of thought, proves that man is a sign; so, that every thought is an external sign, proves that man is an external sign. That is to say, the man and the external sign are identical, in the same sense in which the words homo and man are identical. Thus my language is the sum total of myself; for the man is the thought.
It is hard for man to understand this, because he persists in identifying himself with his will, his power over the animal organism, with brute force. Now the organism is only an instrument of thought. But the identity of a man consists in the consistency of what he does and thinks, and consistency is the intellectual character of a thing; that is, is its expressing something. "

All italics from the original. Speak carefully.

Hey Poncho, nice outfit, are you going to eat that chicken?

The Faith section of last Saturday’s Kansas City Star had a puff-piece on the importance of faith in the life of Danni Boatwright, Tonganoxie native and Survivor winner.

I am not a theologian, but it is apparent Ms. Boatwright enjoys an easy faith. She believes in a loving, fatherly God that directly intervenes in our lives, and answers prayers. It is difficult to square these beliefs with any kind of introspection, but easy to spread the word to others with a million bucks in one’s pocket. How hard is it to give God credit when things go right?

In analyzing her win, Boatwright, a sportscaster and former international model, said she is convinced God was in the plan because her plan didn’t work.
“I had to get rid of my strategy and let the Lord lead me in the right direction and let God take control.”

The problem with a God that intervenes directly in human affairs on a daily basis is that we lose Free Will in the deal. If ‘Everything happens for a reason’ than that reason is not ours, but belongs to something else, a higher power. If humans cede the ability to cause the outcome of any event, then we no longer have self-agency, or any abilities to act. A God that holds us into account for our shortcomings while denying us the will to act otherwise is a monster. Ms. Boatwright needs to think her suppositions through. Christianity relies upon a believer’s Free Will, conscious choices good or bad. The thieves on the crosses next to Jesus had to be there because of their own agency, or the fatherly image of God loses some of its luster. One could argue God allows us to fail if we give in to various urges, but why would an omnipotent being do that, to be cruel? If He is our ultimate designer, than who is responsible for our faults? Likewise, we fallible humans attempt to excuse God his shortcomings:

That’s not to say her life has been rosy. Her birth father was shot while on the job as a police officer, schoolmates teased her for being “tall and skinny, and she has had to overcome attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia and a divorce after four years of marriage.

Why is there a rush to credit God for winning a million bucks, but a willingness to allow Ms. Boatwright credit for overcoming the bad breaks in her own life? Isn’t it also God’s will that she lost her father, stuck out among other kids, had a learning disability, and failed in her first marriage? Can I divorce my wife tomorrow and call that adversity two years from now? Why does she get credit in the article for challenging the will of God, who apparently wanted her fatherless, friendless, unlearned, and single?

In one episode Boatwright and two of the remaining four finalists ate a chicken that Mayan Indians had sacrificed to their gods. Boatwright said she didn’t see eating the meat as being disrespectful to their faith. . She said that was a practical matter of survival because the only food the group had was maggot-infested corn.

This quote is most galling. My wife and I wheeled out the TV cart and watched the penultimate episode, because of the local ties – we live a few miles from Tonganoxie. I could not believe it when they ate the sacrificed chicken. This came after an elaborate ceremony at the temple the contestants camped, complete with costumed priests and feathered waving of incense smoke. After the ceremony, three of the four Survivors left ate the bird despite a priest warning them not to. A thunderstorm followed, so to follow Ms. Boatwright’s lead, the Mayan Gods were not amused. It should also be noted, contrary to Ms. Boatwright’s defense, that one contestant, the red haired guy she ultimately dumped for the finals (Raef?) did not eat the chicken. It was humanly possible to resist that temptation, and survive. I guess God did not want Raef to have any chicken that day, since Ms. Boatwright apparently can read His mind. This ignorance and disrespect of other faiths runs rampant through Christianity, Islam, and probably every other monotheistic faith. Why should we, in an article on faith, take Ms. Boatwright seriously when it is obvious she doesn’t give a lick about other people’s faith? The irony is mind-bending. It is probably too much to expect the Star to call her on her obtuseness, and instead the article is a how-not-to guide to faith.

I am certain Ms. Boatwright is sincere in her beliefs, inconsistent as they are. Sincerity does not trump reality, however much we may wish it otherwise.

God's Grace is an odd little novel I’ve had on my ‘active shelf’ for a while. I no longer remember why I picked it up, if it was due to a chance encounter or from a review.

The shortest possible review is Lord of the Flies with apes. A nuclear exchange and resulting flood again kills humanity for God, but He misses one. A Jewish research scientist deep under the Pacific in a submersible during the exchange survives (What about the rest of the underwater denizens? Oh well…) When he comes up, God speaks to Calvin and apologizes for the error but refuses to reconsider. This time humanity is done in for good, no rainbows, or olive branches. The only other living entity on the vessel is a colleague’s pet chimp. It comes about that the chimp can talk, and they find an island on which to wash ashore. More chimps show up, and a gorilla. The other chimps also learn to talk. There is one breeding-age female to go with all the males, so of course she is the major point of contention. The Jewish guy attempts to educate the chimps on where humanity went wrong, trying to reinvent and perfect man via chimp. When the female first comes into estrus, she hides from all the pursuing males, waiting for her Romeo, who turns out to be the human (He had read Romeo and Juliet to the chimps). He convinces himself he is reinventing men in more ways than one. The other chimps turn on him, killing a half-breed infant and eventually sacrificing the man as Isaac, Abraham’s son: an offering to God. Thus imperfection continues.

As with my earlier review of Moby Dick, the trick for this reader is to feel moved by the author while willing to grant the central premise, that absent civilization, we humans are mere nasty little brutes. Using chimpanzees to help illustrate the point is a nifty move. I think the greatest error Malamud makes is that chimps are even nastier than we are, and Calvin the human would not have lasted nearly as long as he does in the novel.

Law in America is a short history that is introductory. Precocious high schoolers who paid attention in Government class will not learn anything here. Friedman charts the changes in society that led to changes in legal interpretations. The book has odd, repetitive moments where notes or ghostwriters were confused. The author never notes that his interpretation of Constitutional history is, especially in our present political moment, highly controversial in some circles. Robert Bork or the Heritage Foundation would not be amused and in fact have their own constitutional histories out. The fact that I don’t share their points of view does not mean they do not exist.
There is an entire series of these introductory pieces, the Modern Library Chronicles. Several look interesting, but I have read too much for this example to be appealing. No stars.

Follow the link for a chuckle.

I'm dialed in to the first Royals spring training broadcast, tossing down leftover peanuts from last year, and enjoying the fine work of the Boston Beer Company. The three-year old and I are taking turns drawing tractors, and the 20 month old is napping.

Ahhh, I can feel it in my veins now. If my wife wanted to do an intervention, I'd go along with it.

Two funny things about the game so far 1) the (idiot) announcers went on and on in the top of the first about how greatly improved the Royals defense was going to be this year. New 2B Grudzielanek has two errors in the first three innings.
2) In the bottom of the first David Dellucci left early on a hit-and-run, and Mark Redman threw to first. Denny Matthews, the Royals play-by-play guy since their inception, called it thusly: "Dellucci is picked off and breaks for second! Mienkiewicz throws to Grudzielanek who tosses it back to Mienkiewicz for the out. Well, I'm loose."

That is a perfect example of Denny Matthews humor. Understated, and if you are not listening, you miss it.

As I alternate between reading Dennett and Dawkins, getting the evolutionary full press, I see that Judith Rich Harris has a new book coming: No Two Alike. I found The Nuture Assumption via a review in The Wilson Quarterly. It was a book I read with my jaw dropped in amazement from front to back. Ms. Harris pointed out that nearly every parenting and educating study did not control for heredity. That is, the so-called educational and and psychological experts assigned 'nuture' 100% of human behavior and 'nature' 0%, by default, for decades. Most still do. A quote from the new book in a review in the New York Sun puts the point nicely:

The developmentalists found that the children's behavior was correlated with the parent's behavior and attributed the correlation to the effects of the home environment. Though they realized that heredity might account for some of the correlation, they never considered the possibility that heredity might account for all of it. But that is exactly how it turned out. Once the effects of genetic similarities were estimated and skimmed off, the correlation declined to zero. The putative effects of the home environment disappeared.

The new book looks at the obvious test case, identical twins. Identical twins raised in the same household have the same nuture and nature inputs. Do they have identical personalities? Of course not, but why? Ms. Harris answers decisively: peers. We find a role amongst our friends, and assume it.

Fascinating stuff, I can't wait to read the book.

Being Logical is subtitled ‘A guide to good thinking.’ How quaint in this era of truthiness. The author sets out his task early, by explicitly seeking to emulate The Elements of Style, but for logic.

That may be setting the bar a bit high, but this is a good book nonetheless. The first chapter relates general terms to logic, and is an introduction to logical thought. The second and third chapters are the meat and potatoes of logical thinking, including notation and arguments. Most interesting to me were the last two chapters, which are guides to avoid illogical arguments. The fourth chapter explores sources of illogical thinking, and the last chapter the illogical arguments themselves. Somewhere I have a copy of The Art of Always Being Rights (from the UK) by Schopenhauer; perhaps I should bookend the logic with some jawboning rhetoric.

Seriously, the chapters on illogic are worth the purchase price of this slim little volume alone. Anyone wanting to write seriously should read and re-read those chapters.

I wrote this two weeks ago. I'm trying to get back into the habit.



Like geese moving north, or Maypoles and baskets, there are cues we look to for the changing seasons. One of the cues for fall is the line of old people on the local news waiting for their flu shots. I have always been hostile to the idea of flu shots, no doubt thanks to the US Navy. I received flu shots every year without fail, as a healthy young male lion aged 19 and 20, in flu hotspots like Orlando and Honolulu. I was more likely to see a mermaid then a baby or old person, in the prime of my life, yet the Navy still saw to it that I’d feel lousy for an afternoon after receiving one of their blankety-blank shots. I turned them down with a sneer when offered by my doctor and sons’ pediatrician.

Until I got the flu. If you are a person who believes in an old-testament style angry and vengeful God, then rest assured He didn’t like the KC Star column last week, as I came down sick the Thurs before it appeared and am still suffering now. I first went to the doctor Monday and was two quarts low, receiving two liters of fluids right in his office. I was too late for Tamiflu or anything that would do me any good however. Now I’m just sick, for perhaps another week. Thank goodness for sick time. And grandparents, who have been helping my wife and I immensely as we are both sick.

There was no insurgency in occupied Germany or Japan following World War II. Why do you think that is? We had an occupying army of over a million troops in each defeated country. Post-war Japan and Germany were not lawless or dangerous places. We have never even had 200,000 troops in Iraq, allowing the insurgency to take root and thrive. To fix the problem we need to take our duty as occupier seriously; we broke Iraq and we need to fix it.

Next week we need to rotate every soldier and marine, reserve and National Guard, who has not been in Iraq the past six months there. That should get us to 300,000 troops or so. Once in place, we must quell the Sunnis. Place a gun emplacement and tank on every corner anywhere not secure throughout the country. Work with the Shia and Kurds to identify Baathist leftovers, and kill them. This will be messy and dangerous, but necessary to win. Seal the borders with Iran and Syria. Warn Syria one time about our seriousness, and then take action as so they quit being a problem, including further military attacks.

Back home, we need to reinstitute a draft. Three-year enlistments, 21 to 26 year olds or so, whatever it takes to raise a half-million troops. They begin to rotate into Iraq in nine to twelve months, with experienced regular army volunteer non-coms and volunteers sprinkled in. Once the new Army secures Iraq, we can begin rebuilding an infrastructure that Saddam decimated before we even arrived on the scene. The world, and Americans, will know we are serious about these threats.

These measures would require some pain for the American people. Based on our history I think we can take it. If we fail to take our obligations seriously, we will be staring at a fundamental Islamic state by 2010.

I realize my descriptions do not apply to every boomer, or maybe even to most of them. I am specifically addressing those that were tossing around Frisbees and roach clips during the summer of love, but are now security moms and dads. They made it under the stars on the beach then, but are now outraged that Janet Jackson bares a breast during the Super Bowl. We have Ms. Roe, of Roe vs. Wade, who is now anti-abortion. In addition, our commander-in-chief, who was born again at forty? I guess that means I have seven more years to be a hedonist and no one would mind.

Boomers have reinvented what it means to be an American, for the worse. Sacrifice has disappeared from our civic vocabulary. Boomers have reinvented what it means to be an individual, for the worse. Instant gratification, what I want, right now. Everything they have touched has degenerated: our culture and politics are now infantile.

The greatest threat to our way of life in this century is religious fundamentalism and the terror it fuels. Our President is not addressing this problem seriously, but as a Boomer, with no pain or duty involved for all, but only those who choose it by joining the military. This transcendental approach will not result in victory for our country. We need to grow up, and face our duty as a people. We need to pay for what the government spends, not run bigger and bigger deficits. The President talking tough while focusing on mid-term elections will not help us win our war.

This is the argument agains our Manichean President, coupled with Angelo Codevilla in No Victory No Peace. One can be with him and against him, for a sane if more costly approach to the war Bush is attempting to execute on the cheap with no sacrifice from ordinary Americans. World War II was hard. A future war with China would be hard. A real campaign against Islamic Fundamentalism would be hard, mainly due to our oil problem.

The article in the Weekly Standard points out that we are not taking suicide bombers seriously enough, and that they are the perfect smart weapons. They are motivated by the gaining of paradise in a way that Westerners cannot comprehend. Nor are we even attempting to.

The article even approaches a Dennettian point:

What if Darwin was right conceptually, but failed to grasp that homo sapiens' most powerful evolutionary strategy is faith?

I wonder if the author knows that fertile ground has been well trod by the 'evolutionists', and is the subject of Dennett's forthcoming book.

The missing point in the piece, however, is that the way to win the war on religious extremism is to continue our materialist expansion. Air-dropping Maxim Mags and Islam Barbie dolls across the Middle East would be a good place to start. A materialist approach to life offers no paradise for murder. There are no athiest suicide bombers. Religion, in any flavor, is the ultimate problem of the 21st Century. Enjoy the world, this is it.

Last night marked the first time this century that I didn’t listen to a President’s State of the Union Address. I was finishing a drink at Teller’s in downtown Lawrence, recovering from a difficult day being the dad, and an offer falling through on the house we have for sale. Anyway, I distinctly remember watching the Clintonian mea culpa address while in Hawaii, and a later Slick Willy edition from a bar in Kansas City while home on leave. Have I reached the age where I no longer care how they posture, or are the immediate world of diapers and being the dad more important? In any event, I really didn’t care what he said, but was intrigued to hear that he acknowledged our ‘addiction’ to oil without muttering ANWR in the same breath.

Anything that calls attention to my country’s ridiculous practice of paying massive amounts of our GDP to people who want to kill us so we can all drive Hummers to Wal-Mart is a good thing. Maybe that will be my Earth Day piece for the KC Star.

The littlest guy is sick, happiness is holding a puking toddler over the nearest sink. As a good old friend of mine recently told me, 'you procreated, that changes everything.' You can say that again Carl.

On Sunday, my wife and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. The missus whisked me away from work several hours early and delivered me to a Bed and Breakfast near our house, the Circle S. It was fabulous and heartily recommended. The 29th is a special day, as it is Kansas day, my late grandmother’s birthday, and her anniversary with my grandfather, as well as the wedding anniversary of a dear Aunt and Uncle. We exchanged vows in front of the John Brown mural in the Capitol in Topeka. Two boys and two moves later things seem to be good. Thanks love!

I read this to approach Peirce and as an overview of pragmatism in general. The book seems to meet these goals. I do not yet know enough to form an opinion on the author’s stance, but he seemed to be more favorable to Peirce and Haack and against Rorty. Being dependent on the opinion of your peers or culture to determine how to act is bleak indeed. If truth is ethnocentric, then how does societal change happen?

The author writes well and conversationally. The claims attributed to Peirce seem incontestable; it is only as other writers work them over in later chapters that they become objectionable. Immediately James seems to stretch the ‘pragmatic maxim’ further than it can bear by introducing nominalism. Peirce’s pragmatic maxim is:

Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

James and Peirce differ in what they had in mind with these ‘effects’. “James… is more explicit than Peirce… The effects are the sensations we are to expect and the reactions we must prepare. Here, too, there is a crucial difference between Peirce and James. Whereas Peirce aims to relate the meaning of an idea with the habits to which the idea gives rise (which are generals, not particulars), James relates the meaning of an idea strictly to particulars; i. e., sensations and reactions… Peirce rejects nominalism, which is the view that only particulars are real, in favor of realism, which is the view that some generals are real also.”

The idea that nothing can result from our ‘particulars’ doesn’t seem to work, but I guess I still need to read more. The rest of the chapters fall into line with distinction built upon distinction and philosophers surveyed put their own ideas on display. Dewey still seems daffy, and the source of much ill in education today. Eugenics rears its ugly head in Schiller, and some Italian intellectual bomb-throwers are detailed. Haack seems interesting, while Rorty terribly misguided. If he is right than there is no reason to study philosophy or anything else. Cornelis De Waal also has a book in the same series On Peirce that I should probably seek out.

I have a few other short books and one long tome I am midway through before I plan to start some serious Peirce. Daniel Dennett’s latest leaps to the front of the line once it appears in February.

The boys are down, hopefully for the night. We spent the afternoon with Grandpa Buffalo (my dad), and they should be tuckered out.

On Monday, the missus transitioned from part-time to full-time at her new job, leaving the boys and dad with much more time together. I am attempting to feel my way to a new schedule that will work for all of us.

How does anyone balance the endless household chores, while supporting my two new people as the explore this great big world, a marriage, two jobs between us, reading, writing, trying to sell the house as well, am I missing anything? The decision to read or write in my free time looms. When I do write, do I fill up space on the blog or work on something more serious? Somewhere here is a happy medium. I work weekends so on Mondays I like to catch up the kitchen chores and start laundry. Perhaps I can read and write on alternating days. All of us this will become easier (right, right?) as the boys age and become more independent.

Tomorrow we get to put new tires on the Family Truckster, there goes an afternoon and $500 down the drain. The workweek begins anew Friday.

I read No Victory, No Peace quickly once I got my hands on it last September. I had been following Angelo Codevilla’s essays closely and was looking forward to this collection. It does not disappoint. There is tension between the author and some of his critics in the essays that are not explained in the text, but readily apparent to the reader. The author explains his purpose and timing:

“I began these essays in the fall of 2001 because it seemed to me that the George W. Bush team’s failure to formulate a plan for victory was contrary to the principles of warfare. Its collective mind was muddled. After the murder of some 3,000 Americans, it would surely do something. But what? Against whom? To what end? All too soon it was clear that the team had no idea, or too many ideas, and that the result would be incompetence.”

The author goes on to note that he waited to publish the book after the 2004 elections to prevent it from coming across as partisan. Competence and incompetence are nonpartisan. The author makes the case that the Bush team never established what they were after, or how they would get it. Terrorism is bad and democracy is good, but how do we get the peace we desire?

Really, I would like to simply copy and paste the book. It is a classical take on the prosecution of war, our war, and our current failings on these scores. The author repeats, again and again, that war has two outcomes: victory or defeat.

“Common sense does not mistake the difference between victory and defeat: the losers weep and cower, while the winners strut and rejoice. The losers have to change their ways, the winners feel more secure than ever in theirs. On September 12th, 2001, retiring Texas Senator Phil Gramm encapsulated this common sense: “I don’t want to change the way I live. I want to change the way they live.”

Codevilla pulls no punches, and his criticisms all strike true: “The U. S. governments’ ‘War on Terror’ has three parts: ‘Homeland Security’, more intelligence, and bringing al-Qaeda ‘to justice’. The first is impotent, counter-productive, and silly. The second is impossible, the third is misconceived and a diversion from reality.”

Throughout, Codevilla emphasizes the importance of regimes, and destroying those that would wish us harm, the enemy. We won’t even identify the enemy regimes, such as the Wahhabis or the Baathists. The Saudi royalty are not devout and live non-Muslim lives. Codevilla recommends letting other Muslims destroy them, and most provocatively revoking the property rights over the Saudi oil fields.

Codevilla decisively highlights a path to lasting peace, if we can only stomach the price of the war. Victory does not come on the cheap, despite whatever the President attempts to sell us.

This book was a disappointment. I knew Santayana wrote widely and developed a theory of aesthetics, but the man who wrote and knew the nature of things so forcefully intrigued me. The very questions of aesthetics seem dubious to me, and unable to advance beyond the various eyes of the beholder. An interest in aesthetics presupposes an interest in the opinions of other people, while the artist is only expressing a self as they can. There is an underlying current of humor to this book. Is it really a good idea to consult a life-long bachelor hermit who finished his days closeted in a monastery in post-war Italy, as an expert on love and the good life?

The story of lonely man at home everywhere and nowhere, certain of his atheism and creed, and uncomfortable with earnestness or duty, certainly resonates with this reader. I was prepared to be sympathetic but discussions of various theories of love were uninteresting to me.

I am still wondering at the rift between Harvard and Santayana. The Claremont piece by Algis Valiunas includes this quote:

“In ‘A Brief History of my Opinions” Santayana recalls the distress that James’s Pragmatism caused him: “I could not stomach that way of speaking about the truth…” What makes Santayana’s gorge rise is the way in which the idiom and the ethos of the marketplace, of American go-getterism, have insinuated themselves into James’s discourse. Here is James ‘s characteristic mode, in which he disowns the notion that truth is one and incontrovertible, and endorses a multiplicity of truths that remain true only so long as they prove useful: “Our account of truth is an account of truths in the plural, or processes of leading, realized in rebus, and having only this quality in common, that they pay.” The proof of James’s truths is their ability to deliver the goods. The American small change of unconsidered common opinion, the medium of everyday traffic, come to pass as hard philosophical currency. The pragmatic “account of truths” underwrites the promise of a future that pays big time. Hence the hopeful ring of so much of James’s prose, which anticipates the clattering avalanche of the jackpot sure to follow the next yank on the lever, or the one after that.”

The essay is worth quoting in its entirety. One more nugget:

“Santayana writes for those strong enough to accept without yelping the harsh terms that nature imposes on those it has brought into being. “There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.” The weightiest matters can be handled lightly, with a decorously murmuring quip.

I can’t help it, the closing paragraph:

“Rarer even than the richness and subtlety of Santayana’s mind is the humility which acknowledges that his most cherished thoughts might have missed the mark on the question that matters most. Having pressed reason as far as it can go, he reasonably recognizes that reason alone might be insufficient to understand the human place in the universe. Philosophical brilliance may not be the one thing needful, as ordinary men tend to realize more readily than those possessed of extraordinary intellect; not often does one find a philosopher saying, even if just in passing, that there could be human powers more crucial to understanding than those of pure mind. It is a measure of Santayana’s reverence for the truth that he allows that his own thought might never have grasped it. To borrow a phrase from his favorite James brother, Henry, Santayana was one of those on whom nothing is lost; and the shows more fully than any other 20th-century philosopher what man might be, although by his own admission he may not have the last word on what man is.”

That’s the man I was after, not an aesthetician. It may be eventually possible to merge neo-Platonism and moral philosophy with evolutionary biology to reach a materialist plateau of understanding our numerous plights, but his book doesn’t help get us there.

I usually seek out the faith column on Saturdays, though it often doesn't pertain to me. A recent Saturday edition prompted the following exchange with the columnist, who has his own blog.

Dear Mr. Tammeus,

I have read your columns with interest for several years, since moving back to the Kansas City area in 1999. I am a non-theist, but am greatly interested in reading about the faith I lack. The writing you did following September 11, 2001 and the loss of your nephew was very powerful.

Your latest column, though, is a real stinker. I know next to nothing about theology, but I do know Darwin never says, "everything that dies somehow is inferior to what survives." Natural selection describes a mechanism or event like the tide or erosion. For example, the shrew-like mammals that were running around the feet of dinosaurs 65 million years ago were not superior to the thunder lizards. They were, however, able to survive the effects of a cosmic impact near the present-day Yucatan Peninsula. It does not matter why. Darwin provides a mechanism for what happened next. That's all. That now, millions of years later, you can provide a value judgment to the occasion can have no bearing on what happened then. It is as if you are arguing against the rising tide instead of merely taking a few steps back.

Similarly, Professor Hanby's fitness paradox exists only in human minds, not in the world we are struggling to understand. We inject 'fitness' into explanations after the fact. That this may threaten what we like to believe about ourselves does not make it less so. I think the basic difference between those who possess faith and those who do not is the expectation of an explanation from the universe. In some ways, the hubris of those of faith is astounding. Gravity is less well understood to scientists than evolution by natural selection (gravity breaks down when examined at the molecular level), but I have yet to encounter anyone threatened by a non-biblical explanation of what happens when you drop your car keys. The world owes you no explanation of your existence and if that leaves you feeling bleak it is your problem. Denying reality as we perceive it to preserve a self-image serves no purpose but ignorance.

KC:

Thanks for your interesting note.

I think that when Hanby was talking about what dies and what survives, he was referring to what becomes extinct and what doesn't (because obviously everything living eventually dies). And I think his concern there (and mine) has to do not so much with what Darwin himself said or didn't say but with where people after Darwin have taken his thinking. One of the dangerous places people have gone is toward what's called social Darwinism, with its descent into eugenics. That, of course, cannot be laid directly at Darwin's feet, but it's helpful to understand where some of the assumptions behind natural selection can lead and how those assumptions may conflict at least with the spirit of the doctrine of creation.

Anyway, if you have read me for quite some time and I'm only now upsetting you, I'd say you were overdue.

I’ve deleted the second exchange, but I pointed out that hopefully the horrors of Nazi Germany discredited social Darwinism for all time. Meanwhile, if modern-day materialists are on the hook for implications of their ideas repudiated sixty years ago, then modern day Christians must answer for Pat Robertson and his outbursts regarding Ariel Sharon, Hugo Chavez, and the Dover PA school board elections.

I also pointed out that with a government of democratic pluralism; the problem isn’t which ideology rules but any ideology that has complete power. Pluralism requires we leave ultimate questions unanswered in the public sphere, thus the current culture war.

Mr. Tammeus responded by asking whom to surrender to re: the culture war, which I thought was funny.

I have on my ‘to-read’ shelf bothThe Life of Reason and Scepticism and Animal Faith. I have fondled The Last Puritan in numerous bookstores but have never committed to an overnight. Occasionally I stumble across a reference, a passing note, and think to myself ‘someday.’ Today is the day. I also at some point acquired George Santayana, Literary Philosopher and I am diving in.

The same issue of the Claremont Review has homage to the man and philosopher over several pages, despite his atheism and lack of overarching narrative answer. I am about to reread the original piece, and then dive into the book. Wish me luck with the keys to the good life. May I live as long, write something worthwhile, and die as certain.

The Claremont Review of books is indispensable. As I stated earlier, I disagree with many of their socially conservative views. On balance, however, it explores books and topics that otherwise I would miss. The editors do not limit themselves to the usual right-wing echo chamber ideas either. In the current issue, once you get past the opening editorial, explores the battle over whether social conservatives or libertarian republicans can lay claim to Barry Goldwater. A review urges social conservatives to consider the possible alternatives before committing to unthinking opposition of a Giuliani presidential bid.

I first read Angelo Codevilla in the Claremont Review in 2003, and he has consistently been the clearest and sanest voice in opposition to the administration’s ongoing Monty Python skit that passes for foreign policy. I am writing a quick review of Mr. Codevilla’s 2005 book No Victory, No Peace that I will post soon. The current essay calls the administration to task being clueless as usual, and for consistently picking the wrong side in Iraq’s ongoing civil war.

There is an interesting back and forth between Harry Jaffa and Ralph Rossum over degrees of originalism in constitutional interpretation. The also disagree over the place for a natural law reading of the constitution, such as whether the Declaration of Independence has any bearing on the matter. Somewhere eventually I’ll summarize my own understanding of the topic, based on spending the past six months rereading bits of Hobbes, Locke, and Machiavelli, followed by The Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu, followed by Madison’s notes of the Constitutional Convention, the two Library of America volumes on the subject, and the Federalist. Suffice it to say whatever the accomplishments of the proponent, the idea that the Declaration has anything but an ancillary role, if any, in understanding what the founders were doing is silly. They were politicians, haggling over their interests, not deities walking the earth. The only political argument the founders dealt with that is settled is slavery, and that took a Civil War and hundreds of thousands of lives. The rest is pure politics, up to and including the Supreme Court. Any other view is utopian and dangerous.

There is a review of a book by a noted theologian, Interpreting the Bible and the Constitution, which sounds fascinating. Note that the editors examine the book despite the reviewer ultimately disagreeing with the author:

One may perhaps attribute Pelikan’s suspicion of originalism, and his amenability to the idea of developmental interpretation, to his long and fruitful study of Christian history. The Bible, after all, is vastly more complex than the Constitution. Its internal narratives, its lyrical poetry and thundering prophecy, its layers upon layers of meaning, all serve to distance it from the Constitution. If the latter expresses the structure of government resulting from the reflection and choice of ‘we the people’, the former attempts to bear faithful witness to man’s encounter with an ineffably mysterious reality. Moreover, as Pelikan acknowledges, the Christian scripture are widely thought to consist of both letter and spirit, law and gospel, whereas the letter of the Constitution is incomplete without being animated by the spirit of the Declaration.

… Alternatively, the spirit of those of us now alive could animate the Constitution. That is the central argument: which has precedence, dead guys with wigs or modern a modern understanding of American rights?

A reviewer from the Naval War College explores a modern interpretation of responsibility:

The four cardinal virtues of modernity turn out to be ‘niceness’, tolerance, industry, and responsibility. Blitz’s respectful yet ultimately merciless probing of the contemporary manifestations of these various qualities rings many bells; but it is also apt to leave readers with the depressing feeling that modern virtue is a long way from the real thing, and to make them wonder whether such thin gruel can really sustain liberal democratic societies in the face of the many challenges confronting them today.

As the Love and Logic people might say, whose problem is it if the reviewer thinks the gruel is too thin? That’s right; THE REVIEWER has the problem - someone else upset the world doesn’t explain itself clearly.

A review of Renaissance art explains how Roman artists felt free to use Greek myths to prove their own points freely, often using the Greek Gods in ways that would horrify Greeks. Included is this stunning sentence:

The ancient Greeks looked to their myths for an explanation of why the world was as it was; why justice came slowly if ever; why humans died; why people so often got things wrong.

Can you imagine the lack of self-knowledge it takes to chastise those silly Greeks for their crazy, improbable beliefs: are we were any different, except alive?

The closing shot takes issue with the President promoting democracy for its own sake.

The President believes and often states, as if it were a self-evident truth, that, “Democracies are peaceful countries.”

It is heartening to read anything sane regarding our foreign policy, especially in a conservative publication. Mark Helprin goes on to note various democracies that have instigated or participated in wars.

An Instinct for War may have just butted its way to front of my ‘to do’ list. This interview is a must read for every voter, if they can’t be bothered to track down the book.

War continues to rage in Iraq. President Bush recently declared that America is winning. Knowing what you do as a military historian, do you think anyone, at this point, can make this statement with certainty?

Not in my opinion. It is just too soon to tell. I can’t say that I’m particularly optimistic. There is a kind of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle operating when you go to war. You go to war for one set of reasons, and you may be deluding yourself or not. But then the war changes out from under you. And if you start off with a kind of reality deficit, you fall farther and farther behind. I’m not sure we’re keeping up with reality.

Reality has never been a part of this administration's plans. Attack, attack, attack, spin, spin, spin, we're winning, if you're not for us you're against us, repeat.

Do you think we started out realistically?

No. I think the war began with a whole lot of preconceived notions about what the future held in the Middle East. Way back in the early ’90s, Paul Wolfowitz (former deputy secretary of defense) wrote an article essentially criticizing the administration for not having gone far enough in Desert Storm. In some ways, that was a kind of a starting point, a preconception that Iraq could be a democratic bellwether in the Middle East. I think it had more to do with a set of beliefs than any sort of knowledge about Iraq. Paul Fussell, the terrific literary historian and critic, said that the precondition for understanding war is a keen sense of irony: the difference between what you expect and what you get.

Never mind that even if we get what we want, a democratic islamic republic, it has never been argued that it will be good for the United States. Going to war so people who hate us can vote freely for people that hate us would have made a better Monty Python skit than foreign policy.

I'm working on links to amazon.com, until then read the interview.

So, you know the story. A fellow, despite all the ominous warnings and foreshadowing, joins up with whaler, sails the seas, discourses on whales, men, and fate, and then everyone else dies. While you are reading, keep an eye out for the trinity. It is everywhere, three masts on the Pequod, three mates, three harpooners, and three days to hunt the whale, three legs for Ahab.

“The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust his heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch.”

-- Letter from Herman Melville to Nathanial Hawthorne, June 1851.

“A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.”

-- Letter from Herman Melville to Nathanial Hawthorne, November 1851.

The peg-legged Ahab is ultimately impotent in the face of natural fury, despite his maniacal approach. For instance, on the first day of the hunt, after Ahab repositions the boat and the harpooner in anticipation of the rising whale: “But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that malicious intelligence ascribed to him, as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated head lengthwise beneath the boat (italics added).”

We are all marked by a head-to-toe birthmark – our mortality, and the curse of self-awareness in an indifferent world. In fact, Ahab usually celebrates the lack of a will, his state of being fated and determined to hunt his nemesis.

“Like a truly myth-making poet’s, Melville’s imagination was obsessed by the spectacle of a natural and human scene in which the instinctive need for order and meaning seems mainly to be confronted by meaninglessness and disorder; in which the human will seems sometimes to be sustained but oftener to be thwarted by the forces of physical nature, and even by agencies that lie behind it; in which goodness and evil, beneficence and destructiveness, light and darkness, seem bafflingly intermixed. In none of the great formulations that were available to him, neither Calvinist Christianity nor in romantic optimism, could Melville discover a myth that for him was adequate to the lighting up of these obscurities. Moby Dick is his endeavor to construct his own myth.”

-- From _Herman Melville_, Newton Arvin, New York: William Sloane Associates, 1950, and my Bantam Classic paperback edition.

The challenge for me and many modern readers is to be moved by Melville while willing to accept his central premise from the start. I am on Ahab’s side, doomed and thwarted, at least to the point where you make an ass of yourself attacking the universe. This reading renders Starbuck the believing hero, carrying on as if he can return home safe. Starbuck is Patel from _Life of Pi_. When you are in a lifeboat with a tiger, you can either make a deal with it (Pi), or attack (Ahab). Again and again we learn Pi has the nicer story, but it bears repeating. What kind of person, given the choice, would choose the void, even if true?

Perth the carpenter and blacksmith became my favorite character. He destroyed his life, his family, and his future with the bottle. Yet he toils on hammering, creating and fitting legs for crazy whaling captains, writing, reading, living like us all, as we can and must.

If you haven’t yet finished, toil on through the cetology, blubber gore, and ‘savages’ to reach the last third of this book. Ishmael did.

I am surprised we haven’t had the President Bush as Ahab adoption, chasing after evildoers while ignoring all other sage advice. How would the rest of the crew stack up: Colin Powell as Starbuck, with Cheney and Rumsfeld as Flask and Stubb? Who is the sole survivor Ishmael, Condaleeza Rice?

The Claremont Review of Books is a publication of the Claremont Institute, and is supposed to be an answer to liberal book reviews such as the New York Review of Books and the New York Times Book Review. I subscribed to read the different viewpoint, and have not been disappointed, though I disagree with much of the material. Most galling are the fund raising appeals against gay marriage or activist judges from the Institute. THIS EDITORIAL from the current issue is typical.

I have trouble mustering outrage for the poor, persecuted Christians in the United States. They control every branch of national and local office, after all. It is astounding to me that they have the gall to attempt to dictate how other people greet them in December. Can pagans receive a happy solstice greeting at Hobby Lobby, or Jews a Happy Hanukkah at Chick-Fil-A? To think they typically accuse liberals of being overly concerned about their feelings!

The third paragraph fails utterly:

As a question of etiquette, the issue invites thought. To wish someone the joy of the holiday is not automatically to presume that he shares it. For example, it's not impolite to say "Happy St. Patrick's Day" to someone who isn't Irish. By the same token, one can wish a Frenchman "Happy Bastille Day" without being a Frenchman, or even approving of the French Revolution. The important thing is that, in saying it, you wish him well; imagining yourself in his shoes is a gracious part of such friendliness.

It is not that upset Jews or Pagans are demanding Christians cease expressing their religion, though some no doubt are and that is where the sensitivity arises, but that Christians are not receiving the greeting of their choice! Oh, the outrage!

The fifth paragraph conflates a public or government act of religion, and a private, market-based one:

This season's dustup over "Happy Holidays" is thus a mild case of a more serious disorder. The cutting edge of aggressive secularism reveals itself in efforts to banish Biblical religion altogether from public life: to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, to abrade the Ten Commandments from public buildings, to discourage schoolchildren from filling their moments of silence with a joyful noise unto the Lord. In effect, the secularists demand that the tone of public life must be made to conform to atheistic standards. Everyone must be taught to behave as "practical atheists," in John Paul II's wonderful phrase. Even believers—especially believers—must learn to speak and act, outside the sanctuary of their churches and synagogues, as though God doesn't exist. Anything else would amount to persecution of non-believers.

If Target thought handing out baby fetus Christmas ornaments would increase business, they would.

The final paragraph strikes the right note, and notes that Christians gave the holiday away all by themselves:

Finally, religion dignified civil society by making it the home of man's highest purpose, to know and worship God. Yet civil society was also the site of man's lower but urgent purpose, economic exchange and moneymaking. The two were connected, so G. K. Chesterton observed, by such merry occasions as holy days. "Rationally," he wrote, "there appears no reason why we should not sing and give each other presents in honour of anything—the birth of Michael Angelo or the opening of Euston Station. But it does not work. As a fact, men only become greedily and gloriously material about something spiritualistic." In other words, if you want to keep complaining about the commercialization of Christmas, don't turn it into a mere happy holiday.

Non-Christians did not act to subvert the holiday over the years by replacing Jesus with Santa Claus, but many Christians did. Christians who are upset about this are reaping the crop of making a public display of faith in the first place. Once the horse is out of the barn it is not very likely to graze where the farmer would want it.

I just finished Moby Dick, reading it for the first time. I’m writing up that review now. This weekend I am plowing through some periodicals. The New Republic, Wilson Quarterly, The Claremont Review, and Granta all arrived this past week. Thus far I have finished NR and WQ. I am also plowing ahead on a Richard Dawkins book that I am not enjoying much. I received several books in December for my birthday and Christmas, and they are looming on the horizon (Thanks Mom!)

The world needs one more blog, or three. One will be a general-purpose discussion, fueled for and by my Midwest Voices column in the Kansas City Star. I have a few ideas, and will be flexing and working on them here. I’m also a dad and husband and will be blogging those experiences. I also will maintain a separate blog for book reviews, and a third one on my Kansas City Royals. Read away, and note that comments are welcome.

Thomas the Tank Engine to the rescue! Once the second boy arrived seventeen months after his brother, all those pre-parenthood ideas - no fast food, no eating in the car, no television babysitter - went out the window. My fourth child will probably be eating cold hotdogs off of the floor...

It is 1837 on a Wed. night, both boys are fed, and are demanding stories be read so this is going to be short. My first ever blog post. More to follow.