As election season approaches, I'm thinking about changing my party affiliation to Independent.
I realize that this means I don't get to vote in a party primary. But I am so disgusted by party politics and the way these machines are run, I am in conscience driven to flee. Political parties, at least in the present two-party system, seem to me to be the enemy of the people.
What am I missing?
As I have remarked throughout the book, American exceptionalism is not just something that Americans claim for themselves. Historically, Americans have been different as a people, even peculiar, and everyone around the world has recognized it. I am thinking of qualities such as American industriousness and neighborliness discussed in earlier chapters, but also American optimism even when there doesnβt seem to be any good reason for it, our striking lack of class envy, and the assumption by most Americans that they are in control of their own destinies. Finally, there is the most lovable of exceptional American qualities: our tradition of insisting that we are part of the middle class, even if we arenβt, and of interacting with our fellow citizens as if we were all middle class.
The exceptionalism has not been a figment of anyoneβs imagination, and it has been wonderful. But nothing in the water has made us that way. We have been the product of the cultural capital bequeathed to us by the system the founders laid down: a system that says people must be free to live life as they see fit and to be responsible for the consequences of their actions; that it is not the governmentβs job to protect people from themselves; that it is not the governmentβs job to stage-manage how people interact with one another. Discard the system that created the cultural capital, and the qualities we have loved about Americans will go away.
--Charles Murray, COMING APART
The so highly acclaimed βdominion of man over natureβ turned out to be merely an enormous capability to kill.
--NicolΓ‘s GΓ³mez DΓ‘vila
To face the elements is, to be sure, no light matter when the sea is in its grandest mood. You must then know the sea, and know that you know it, and not forget that it was made to be sailed over.
--Joshua Slocum, SAILING ALONE AROUND THE WORLD
M. Gillenormand, who was full of life in the year 1831, was one of those persons who have become interesting simply because they have lived a long time, and peculiar because whereas they were once like everyone else they are now like no one else.
--Victor Hugo, LES MISERABLES
Remember your absent friends when you are with those who are present, that they may hear and know you do not forget them either.
--Eugene Vodohlazkin, LAURUS
Learn what you can, but cultivate Christian skepticism. It will keep you freeβnot free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects of those around you.
--Flannery O'Connor, in a letter to Alfred Corn, 30 May 1962
To the affirmation that one has a duty to follow oneβs conscience is unduly added the affirmation that oneβs moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in the conscience. But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity, and βbeing at peace with oneself,β so much so that some have come to adopt a radically subjectivistic conception of moral judgment . . . .
Such an outlook is quite congenial to an individualistic ethic, wherein each individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others. Taken to its extreme consequences, this individualism leads to a denial of the very idea of human nature.
--Pope Saint John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor
There are those who, while they recognize the glory of God as well as the importance of man and the call addressed to him in general, believe in false humility, that the call is meant for all others but not for their own person. They deem their own person too wretched to dare assume that they may refer the divine call to themselves. They would hide in a corner and play the part of mere onlookers. The sight of their wretchedness impels them to exclude themselves from the great dialogue between God and man. This ostensible excess of humility, for all the diffidence it involves, is not free of an element of pride. For here, once more, man presumes to decide himself where he stands, instead of leaving that decision to God. Yet, this is precisely the test of true humility, that one no longer presumes to judge whether or not one is too miserable to be included in the call to sanctity but simply answers the merciful love of God by sinking down in adoration.
--Dietrich von Hildebrand
The Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.
--Flannery O'Connor
I learned last week that Netflix is discontinuing its DVD by mail service after 25 years.
I have seen no commentary or chatter online about this. No surprise there--it is a legacy service to a dying form of media consumption. Sending a disc through the mail a few times a month seems ridiculous given the easy access to streaming platforms.
But I am sorry to lose this service. The limitations were its greatest strength. Having to think about what film I wanted to see days in advance meant that I only chose films I really wanted to see. I never killed time with one of those choices in the way I am tempted to with streaming services. Plus, the wide variety of little known films was unmatchable--films that were impossible to find on platforms that emphasized popularity over quality. And if the film was not to my liking, I was only out a couple bucks and didn't have to deal with a growing stack of DVDs I'd never watch again.
I'm sure Netflix has been losing money on that service for years and has to tighten its belt. Fine, business is business. I certainly didn't contribute much to the bottom line with my $5 a month (though sometimes that disc sat by the TV for months--I'm sure my average expenditure for a rental was close to just purchasing the disc). But I won't be signing up for their streaming service, or any other. I'll be waiting for something that doesn't pander to the impulse of the moment.
[All] are taught some simple truths as children, only to discover as teenagers or young adults that those truths were far too simple and that they themselves were embarrassingly simple to have accepted them. They strike off on their own, leaving the comfortable mental world of their childhood to find a wider and stranger world of ideas. They may experience this world as disturbing or as liberating, but in any event it is more exciting. If they are fortunate, however, they may come to rediscover for themselves the truths they were taught as children. They may return home, as T.S. Eliot put it, and know it for the first time. If so, they may see that, although they first learned these truths as simple children, neither the truths themselves nor the people who taught them were quite as simple as they supposed.
This requires, however, the difficult feat of questioning twice in oneβs lifeβof undergoing two revolutions in oneβs thinking. It requires being critical even of the ideas that one encountered in the first flush of critical thinking in oneβs youth.
--Stephen Barr, Modern Physics, Ancient Faith
It is commonly affirmed, again, that religion grew in a very slow and evolutionary manner; and even that it grew not from one cause; but from a combination that might be called a coincidence. Generally speaking, the three chief elements in the combination are, first, the fear of the chief of the tribe... second, the phenomena of dreams, and third, the sacrificial associations of the harvest and the resurrection symbolized in the growing corn. I may remark in passing that it seems to me very doubtful psychology to refer one living and single spirit to three dead and disconnected causes, if they were merely dead and disconnected causes. Suppose Mr. Wells, in one of his fascinating novels of the future, were to tell us that there would arise among men a new and as yet nameless passion, of which men will dream as they dream of first love, for which they will die as they die for a flag and a fatherland. I think we should be a little puzzled if he told us that this singular sentiment would be a combination of the habit of smoking Woodbines, the increase of the income tax, and the pleasure of a motorist in exceeding the speed limit. We could not easily imagine this, because we could not imagine any connection between the three or any common feeling that could include them all. Nor could anyone imagine any connection between corn and dreams and an old chief with a spear, unless there was already a common feeling to include them all. But if there was such a common feeling it could only be the religious feeling; and these things could not be the beginnings of a religious feeling that existed already. I think anybodyβs common sense will tell him that it is far more likely that this sort of mystical sentiment did exist already; and that in the light of it dreams and kings and corn-fields could appear mystical then, as they can appear mystical now.
--G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
Usually even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn... If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe our books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow or their wiser brethren... To defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture, β¦ although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.
--Saint Augustine, On the Literal Meaning of Genesis
Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all their panaceas, potable gold, and philosopherβs stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases. A good vomit, I confess, a virtuous herb, if it be well qualified and opportunely taken, and medicinally used, but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, βtis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health; hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul. Here, however, it is medicinally taken.
--Patrick O'Brian, The Mauritius Command
