-
Sounds About Right [W]e are … not going back to a world where there is a set of trusted truth-mediating institutions, core sources of news and information that everyone recognizes and trusts, a “mainstream” of argument and opinion-shaping that sets the parameters of debate. – Ross Douthat, New York Times, 16 Nov. 2024
If true, then we’ll need to learn to think for ourselves. Not that I believe we will. Which is terrifying.
But lets work on it:
Lesson 1: Yes or No: Does hosting a gameshow make a person fit to be the President of the United States of America?
-
What Might This Look Like in America? An imaginative conservatism should see in Scruton’s centring of beauty in architecture and design a natural affinity with the articulation of craft as a political and economic ideal in the likes of William Morris. There is a politics and an economics of conservatism to be forged, but it requires making of itself more than an aesthetic gloss of Reaganism.
Sebastian Milbank, “Don’t Idolise Roger Scruton”, The Critic, 03.Nov.2024
-
RIP, Ted Olsen Executive power is important, and we respect it. But it has to be done the right way. It has to be done in an orderly fashion so that citizens can understand what is being done and people whose lives have depended on a governmental policy aren’t swept away arbitrarily and capriciously.
A principled and gifted lawyer and public servant. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
-
Laura Olin [I keep coming back to] the fundamental text that is “Why must we go on?” / “Because there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”
Is all this cringe? Undoubtedly; but I think we’ve entered a time that requires deep earnestness.
-
True in every era; yet, it’s a smack in the face … the narrative on which many of us grew up no longer applies.
– Joan Didion - (h/t @ayjay)
-
…well, we’ll live right on… From my friend, Dan Wilson:
… whatever the outcome… “well, we will live right on.” We will all go about doing what we do, get the kids off to school, go to work, do the laundry, and go about our lives. And that is as it should be because the greatest impact on our world does not come out of Washington anyway. It never has. Ultimately, it comes from each of us and how we live out our ordinary lives, our good deeds, humility, loving our neighbor, and loving God.
-
Boredom and the Struggle Jonah Goldberg:
I think Fukuyama was right about liberal democratic capitalism being the answer to the questions mooted by Marx, Hegel, Hitler, Tocqueville, and everyone else. And he was right about the problems created by liberalism’s victory. The solution to those problems is not to overthrow liberalism, but to restore the ecosystems of meaning that sustain it.
-
Francine Winham, Photographer Great images and an interesting story. (Though the overwrought prose isn’t my cup of tea.)
Bassist John Lamb
-
Enshittifacator-in-Chief I was talking today with Megan, who’s serving as a poll worker, and I lost it when I thought of how Trump – solely for selfish, vicious purposes – has cast doubt on the honesty of U.S. elections. Liar. There’s no evidence of any significant fraud. Traitor.
-
Jonah Goldberg on certain political types He … [thought] the hand of the state needed simply to impose efficiencies the political process was too dumb, lazy, or corrupt to impose. He wanted a libertarian monarch or national CEO of sorts to cut through the red tape and the political dysfunction.
Nothing in my experience or learning suggests that God (or nature, for that matter) cares much about efficiency.
-
“Let Phil sing!” - RIP Phil Lesh … his lack of experience allowed him to rethink the role of the bass in rock music, drawing inspiration from the harmonics found in works he loved by Bach and the jazz bassist Charles Mingus. NYTimes, 25 Oct 2024
subscribe via RSS