When my wife is out of town, I often watch old movies. Tonight it’s Only Angels Have Wings with Cary Grant and Jean Arthur (plus Sig Ruman, Rita Hayworth, and others). They’re excellent – as one would expect. But I want to praise Thomas Mitchell, who was great in several Capra films and this one too.đż
From 1854 to 1950: Wonderfulness from The Public Domain Review
I don’t want people to kill insurance executives, and I don’t want insurance executives to kill people. But I am unsurprised that this happened. Indeed, I’m surprised that it took so long. It should not be controversial to note that if you run an institution that makes people furious, they will eventually become furious with you.
Suffice to say, however, being furious is not justification for gunning someone down.
We say, âMerry Christmas and Happy New Yearâ in one breath, and commonly refer to this time of year as the âHoliday Seasonâ, as if it were all one singular event. There is an interesting irony in lumping the two celebrations together …
In the tender compassion of our God
  the dawn from on high will break upon us
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death,
    and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
One of the worldviews that seems to appeal to the folks who are so excited about ChatGPT is âlong-termism,â which assumes that humankind as a whole has a destiny, and that our tools will help us to reach it somewhat faster. What that destiny is, nobody knows. But work and education are hindrances to it, and, to the extent that they are necessary, should be sped through as quickly as possible. Since no real account is usually given of the thing that we are speeding to â it will involve space travel, algorithms, asteroid mining, and spreadsheets, but thereâs a great nothing at its center â this worldview functions like nihilism. To me, work and education â like rest, love, worship, culture, strange hobbies, village pantomimes, dumb mistakes, chants that children jump rope to, heartbreaking last-quarter fumblings of the ball, graffiti on ugly bridges, all of it â are things we do because it is our job to be people.
As impersonal systems play increasing roles in information-gathering and decision-making, the personal element can be summed up as âhuman error.â … [T]hen of course the fields concerned with human natureâspecifically, all the ways it is not predictableâare unseated, too…
[I]t is simply better to be a human when a personal God is at the heart of the universe. Human lives are easier to defend. Human joys have cosmic significance. Human foibles are âa feature, not a bug.â Human creativity is more arresting. Human language can be savored. Human stories must be told.
Malcolm Guite is posting poems he’s collected in his Advent Anthology, Waiting on the Word. I love to hear Malcolm read (and speak). Today’s offerings, a poem by Robert Hayden, and art by Linda Richardson, are particularly lovely.
I’ve posted about Trump’s unfitness for… well, anything. But how awful is Biden’s statement pardoning Hunter? I understand how, as a father, he might have been compelled to save his son. But to (1) throw his own DOJ under the bus and (2) make the pardon so broad? Nope. It stinks.
is the assaults on the truth of truth. The roots run deep – as deep as the modernism? Certainly, deeper than Trump.
But he’s stormed the battlements, and the breach is wide.
Helping repair it may be the work of my Third Act.
Tottenham Hotspur have stormed into the palace of the champions and turned over the furniture!
COYS(!) â˝ď¸
For 27 years, I took photographs as I waved good-bye and drove away from visiting my parents at their home in Sioux City, Iowa.
[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 âmainstreamâ 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?
An imaginative conservatism should see in Scrutonâs 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
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 arenât swept away arbitrarily and capriciously.
A principled and gifted lawyer and public servant. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Say, kids! Remember that old holiday, I think it was called Thanksgiving? It was a personal favorite. So extraordinary to observe a national day of gratitude. Of course, Capitalismmas (i.e., not Christmas) erased that tired old giving-thanks day long ago.
