I do not find much to argue with in Mr. Bellow’s essay, but I would add this: The most profoundly conservative works of popular culture in recent memory were not produced by conservatives and certainly were not conceived of as conservative projects. In fact, many of them were produced by people one assumes are hostile to conservative views.

(source: Mayhem Is Everywhere | National Review Online)

In a recent exchange with Greg, I had occasion to mention my view that Christians interested in the arts “will need to evolve a manner of speaking that (1) retrenches within the Christian tradition and (2) sees whatever is real, whatever is True and Beautiful and Good that is *actually* presented, even in fiction, even in secular work, for our appreciation. That will be the Second Innocence of Christendom.”  I think this article hints us in that direction (see also the essay Greg links, and the Adam Bellow essay Williamson refers to; I approve the direction Williamson is extending Bellow).

Incidentally, Williamson is simply repeating post-Romantic ideology, and not any real canon of aesthetics or cultural excellence, when he says that “Didacticism is an enemy of art, and as such it should be in artistic matters rejected by conservatives, whose allegiance should be to aesthetic standards rather than to narrow political and cultural agendas.”  The supplement “narrow” is the giveaway. 

Eh, even Homer nods.

I find it important to note that Greg issued a royalty-check reality check to Os Guinness, recently.

I agree wholeheartedly with Williamson, here. His punchline is a great summary of why becoming increasingly conservative (over against my strong libertarian baseline) has made me less, not more, Republican:

If the so-called party of free enterprise cannot figure out a way to run against this kind of pillaging, then they do not deserve to win.

(source: Uncle Stupid’s Sugar Buzz | National Review Online)

It’s really too bad there’s only one party in American politics that doesn’t cheer mass murder and use mob tactics to ensure that it can be performed without even minimal health standards.

Note the essential similarity between the logic of Sartre (as discussed in a previous post) and the logic of Chesterton in the following two passages.

Sartre:

when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men. [… I]n choosing for himself he chooses for all men. For in effect, of all the actions a man may take in order to create himself as he wills to be, there is not one which is not creative, at the same time, of an image of man such as he believes he ought to be.

(source: Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sarte 1946)

Chesterton:

Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.

If then, I repeat, there is to be mental advance, it must be mental advance in the construction of a definite philosophy of life. And that philosophy of life must be right and the other philosophies wrong. Now of all, or nearly all, the able modern writers whom I have briefly studied in this book, this is especially and pleasingly true, that they do each of them have a constructive and affirmative view, and that they do take it seriously and ask us to take it seriously. There is nothing merely sceptically progressive about Mr. Rudyard Kipling. There is nothing in the least broad minded about Mr. Bernard Shaw. The paganism of Mr. Lowes Dickinson is more grave than any Christianity. Even the opportunism of Mr. H.G. Wells is more dogmatic than the idealism of anybody else. Somebody complained, I think, to Matthew Arnold that he was getting as dogmatic as Carlyle. He replied, “That may be true; but you overlook an obvious difference. I am dogmatic and right, and Carlyle is dogmatic and wrong.” The strong humour of the remark ought not to disguise from us its everlasting seriousness and common sense; no man ought to write at all, or even to speak at all, unless he thinks that he is in truth and the other man in error. In similar style, I hold that I am dogmatic and right, while Mr. Shaw is dogmatic and wrong. But my main point, at present, is to notice that the chief among these writers I have discussed do most sanely and courageously offer themselves as dogmatists, as founders of a system. It may be true that the thing in Mr. Shaw most interesting to me, is the fact that Mr. Shaw is wrong. But it is equally true that the thing in Mr. Shaw most interesting to himself, is the fact that Mr. Shaw is right. Mr. Shaw may have none with him but himself; but it is not for himself he cares. It is for the vast and universal church, of which he is the only member.

(source: Heretics – Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

I suggest that it is worth meditating on how such a similarity comes to be.

As some readers will doubtless know, the last week has been eventful in the Oklahoma City area.  Not, I urge, eventful in the same register as Ferguson, Missouri, or the ever-churning region from the border of Egypt to the edges of Turkey and the foothills of the Hindu Kush range.  In a manner not one whit less real, though, there has been an important conflict playing out.

I will continue my Nihilism case study series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), which I think was made exigent by these circumstances, and in that I will explain the responses I could see as justified, and why, including the genius of this legal response.

For now, though, I want to provide some links to give fuller understanding and background information to those who may be interested.  I am, of course, a committed partisan in this matter–but I hope that all people of good will can see something of interest and of use in this confrontation with reality.

Let there be peace.  Let us make peace.  Let us understand what makes peace possible.

• Archbishop Coakley’s initial response to the civic assent to a sacrilegious outburst.
• Archbishop Coakley’s call for a united response of prayer, penance, and reparation.
• The lawsuit to recover the stolen Host (read the pleading for yourself–it’s worth while!)
• The shockingly quick response.
• Archbishop Coakley’s continuing call for prayer, penance, and reparation.

All in all, a most instructive episode.  Thanks be to God that the worst seems to have been averted!  And let us be concerned that it can so easily come to this, these days.