What Happens When Mark Shea Links to Your Blog

How to Gawk

A Duck-Billed Platypus

George Weigel on Caritas in Veritate and "the revenge of Justice and Peace":

Now comes Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), Benedict XVI’s long-awaited and much-delayed social encyclical. It seems to be a hybrid, blending the pope’s own insightful thinking on the social order with elements of the Justice and Peace approach to Catholic social doctrine, which imagines that doctrine beginning anew at Populorum Progressio. Indeed, those with advanced degrees in Vaticanology could easily go through the text of Caritas in Veritate, highlighting those passages that are obviously Benedictine with a gold marker and those that reflect current Justice and Peace default positions with a red marker. The net result is, with respect, an encyclical that resembles a duck-billed platypus.

Angels with Dirty Faces

In Kierkegaardian terms, the priest in Angels with Dirty Faces represents not so much the religious sphere as the ethical. This is not a movie of ultimate concerns or the paradoxes of faith, but of the either/or dichotomy of esthetic damnation (represented by the gangster milieu) versus "being good" and creating a good and wholesome community--characterized by rec centers and young men playing basketball rather than engaging in vandalism and petty larceny. Pat O'Brien, as the priest and former teenage hoodlum, cuts a pretty good figure. He's a sensitive, intelligent priest, but also a dude who is capable of (a) decking some jerk in a barroom altercation and (b) taking on organized crime and enlisting the support of the media in order to create a place where young men have a fighting chance to grow into upstanding citizens. His childhood pal, Rocky, played by James Cagney, upstages him of course, and is the life force of the movie; but Fr. Jerry proves a powerful influence on Rocky. Aside from Cagney's dynamic performance, the film has a lot to recommend it--including an outstanding performance by a young Humphrey Bogart as a slick and subtly sleazy lawyer who gets [spoiler alert] righteously capped by Rocky in due course. Cagney's Rocky is a charismatic character and there is a running motif in scene after scene that highlights how his genius as a gangster is not unlike the genius of an actor playing roles. At the end, that acting motif rises to a new level, being enlisted by Fr. Jerry in the cause of the ethical--and it is quite a stunning finish. Does it have anything to do with faith? Well, maybe not, although Cagney's charisma and verve, and the brilliance of Rocky's own performances, perhaps indicate a trajectory in the direction of the religious sphere where we might assume Fr. Jerry ultimately dwells.

Priest portrayal grade: C+
Overall grade: A-

[Return to 52 Movies for the Year of the Priest home page.]

Kickstart Alphonse

Don't Wanna Hear about No National Debt

San Francisco (1936) on YouTube

My library's copy of San Francisco--the first movie on our list of 52 for the Year of the Priest--turned up missing. So I went ahead and grabbed Angels with Dirty Faces and watched it this morning. (More on that in another post.) In looking for clips on YouTube just now, however, I discovered that both films (possibly in their entirety, although I haven't verified it) have been posted there in multiple ten-minute chunks.

Here are the links for San Francisco:

San Francisco -- 1
San Francisco -- 2
San Francisco -- 3
San Francisco -- 4
San Francisco -- 5 (?)
San Francisco -- 6
San Francisco -- 7
San Francisco -- 8
San Francisco -- 9
San Francisco -- 10
San Francisco -- 11
San Francisco -- 12
San Francisco -- 13
San Francisco -- final scene

Red Ink VIII

52 Movies for the Year of the Priest: It's a Wrap

Korrektiv and Transcendental Musings are celebrating the Year for Priests (or the Year of the Priest, if you please) by launching an entirely unofficial 52-week (beginning last week) festival of films about priests.

What follows is our list -- hammered out over a bunch of Twitter posts and blog comments, a few beers and prayers -- of 52 movies in which a priest or priests take center stage or at least play a pivotal role in the development of the films' concerns.

I've arranged our selections chronologically, with the notion that it might be interesting to thus trace the evolution of filmmaking over the past seventy years while at the same time considering how perceptions of the priesthood, as reflected in these cinematic images, may have changed over that same period.

1. San Francisco (1936) [view the week of 6/19/09*]
2. Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) [6/26/09]
3. Boys Town (1938) [7/3/09]
4. The Fighting 69th (1940) [7/10/09]
5. The Devil at 4 O’Clock (1941) [7/17/09]
6. The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) [7/24/09]
7. Going My Way (1944) [7/31/09]
8. The Bells of St Mary's (1945) [8/7/09]
9. The Fugitive (1947) [8/14/09]
10. Monsieur Vincent (1947) [8/21/09]
11. Fighting Father Dunne (1948) [8/28/09]
12. The Miracle of the Bells (1948) [9/4/09]
13. Diary of a Country Priest (1951) [9/11/09]
14. I Confess (1953) [9/18/09]
15. Father Brown (1954) [9/25/09]
16. On the Waterfront (1954) [10/2/09]
17. The Left Hand of God (1955) [10/9/09]
18. The Miracle of Marcelino (1955) [10/16/09]
19. The Prisoner (1955) [10/23/09]
20. Seven Cities of Gold (1955) [10/30/09]
21. Nazarin (1959) [11/6/09]
22. Hoodlum Priest (1961) [11/13/09]
23. The Cardinal (1963) [11/20/09]
24. Becket (1964) [11/27/09]
25. The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) [12/4/09]
26. The Exorcist (1973) [12/11/09]
27. The Massacre in Rome (1973) [12/18/09]
28. Hounds of Notre Dame (1980) [12/25/09]
29. True Confessions (1981) [1/1/10]
30. The Scarlet and the Black (1983) [1/8/10]
31. Mass Appeal (1984) [1/15/10]
32. The Assisi Underground (1985) [1/22/10]
33. The Mission (1986) [1/29/10]
34. Au Revoir les Enfant (1987) [2/5/10]
35. The Fr. Clements Story (1987) [2/12/10]
36. Under Satan’s Sun (1987) [2/19/10]
37. Don Bosco (1988) [2/26/10]
38. Francesco (1989) [3/5/10]
39. Black Robe (1991) [3/12/10]
40. Zycie za Zycie (Life for Life) (1991) [3/19/10]
41. Sleepers (1996) [3/26/10]
42. Molokai: The Story of Fr. Damian (1999) [4/2/10]
43. The Third Miracle (1999) [4/9/10]
44. Keeping the Faith (2000) [4/16/10]
45. The Confessor (The Good Shepherd) (2004) [4/23/10]
46. The Ninth Day (2004) [4/30/10]
47. Saint Ralph (2004) [5/7/10]
48. The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) [5/14/10]
49. Pope John Paul II (2005) [5/21/10]
50. The Novice (aka Crossroads) (2006) [5/28/10]
51. Doubt (2008) [6/2/10]
52. Gran Torino (2008) [6/9/10]

Alternate Selections

· La passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928)
· Francis of Assisi (1961)
· The Reluctant Saint (1962)
· A Man for All Seasons (1966)
· Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)
· The Juggler of Notre Dame (1984)
· Jesus of Montreal (1989)
· Romero (1989)
· Stigmata (1999)
· St. Patrick: The Irish Legend (2000)
· Papa Giovanni John XXIII (2002)
· The Order (2003)
· Twist of Faith (2004)
· Into Great Silence (2005)
· Karol: The Man Who Became Pope (2005)

From the YouTube Music Video Archives: Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

On the other hand, when you have had enough, by all means do stop. Anyway, here is Michael Jackson at his best. I like to think that between the royally screwed-up childhood he never chose and ... all that other stuff, there were a few years in which he lived a life instead of a nightmare. R.I.P.

On Le Feu Follet

Le Feu Follet is another movie directed by Louis Malle, from 1963. It's an interesting time-capsule of a film: America is referred to as "Kennedy land", and newspaper clippings of Marilyn Monroe are taped up all over the room of the main character. Alain Leroy, an alcoholic is "taking the cure" at a rehab center in Versailles - actually, the cure has taken and he hasn't had a drink in three months. His doctor strongly hints that it's time to move on. The trouble is that Leroy's wife is now living in New York and isn't convinced that Leroy won't start drinking again. Leroy himself is convinced he will if he leaves the hospital, and in this stand-off with himself he has spiralled into a depression that he can't pull himself out of. One strength of this movie is Malle's mostly realistic portrayal of a kind of relentless indolence that accompanies clinical depression, and indeed the grim determination that accompanies suicide. On the other hand, all those Marilyn Monroe clippings (like the music of Brahms in Les Amants) struck me as much too obvious. If we're supposed to notice these signs, shouldn't we expect that the doctor would, too?

Red Ink VII

No point getting mad at Obama. I've come to the conclusion that he is a force of nature like a category 5 hurricane or a major earthquake.

We will all be spiritually better people when he's done.

52 Movies for The Year of the Priest

By way of celebrating the Year for Priests (or The Year of the Priest, if you will) the Korrektiv and Transcendental Musings blogs are co-sponsoring a 52-week film festival. The list of 52 films is still being formulated, but here is the latest stab at it. What follows is a chronological list of films in which a priest or priests take center stage (or at least appear as a main character or characters):

1. Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
2. Boys Town (1938)
3. San Francisco (1938)
4. The Fighting 69th (1940)
5. The Devil at 4 O’Clock (1941)
6. The Keys of the Kingdom (1944)
7. Going My Way (1944)
8. The Bells of St Mary's (1945)
9. The Fugitive (1947)
10. Monsieur Vincent (1947)
11. Fighting Father Dunne (1948)
12. Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
13. I Confess (1953)
14. Father Brown (1954)
15. On the Waterfront (1954)
16. The Left Hand of God (1955)
17. The Miracle of Marcelino (1955)
18. The Prisoner (1955)
19. Seven Cities of Gold (1955)
20. Nazarin (1959)
21. Francis of Assisi (1961)
22. Hoodlum Priest (1961)
23. The Cardinal (1963)
24. Becket (1964)
25. The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968)
26. Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)
27. The Exorcist (1973)
28. The Massacre in Rome (1973)
29. Hounds of Notre Dame (1980)
30. The Scarlet and the Black (1983)
31. Mass Appeal (1984)
32. The Assisi Underground (1985)
33. The Mission (1986)
34. Au Revoir les Enfant (1987)
35. The Fr. Clements Story (1987)
36. Don Bosco (1988)
37. Jesus of Montreal 1989
38. Francesco (1989)
39. Black Robe (1991)
40. Zycie za Zycie (Life for Life) (1991)
41. Sleepers (1996)
42. Molokai: The Story of Fr. Damian (1999)
43. The Third Miracle (1999)
44. Keeping the Faith (2000)
45. The Confessor (The Good Shepherd) (2004)
46. The Ninth Day (2004)
47. Twist of Faith (2004)
48. Karol: The Man Who Became Pope (2005)
49. Pope John Paul II (2005)
50. The Novice (aka Crossroads) (2006)
51. Doubt (2008)
52. Gran Torino (2008)

Thanks to Quin and cnb for contributing to the list. We now have 52 films here, but this is still a rough draft. Let us know if there are other films out there that you think are worthier than any of the films listed here -- and we will consider swapping them out. In any case, the list will be fine-tuned by festival organizers Angelmeg and Rufus before we finalize it in the next day or two. Meanwhile, go check out Transcendental Musings for Angelmeg's version of the list which includes hyperlinks to the films' listings at IMDB.com.

Movies for The Year of the Priest

Angelmeg and I got into a twitteresque brainstorming session this morning about doing a Year of the Priest Film Festival. (Yeah, I know, it's the Year for Priests, but doesn't that just make your lameness bells go off? Year of the Priest, now that has some gravity.) So we're trying to come up with 52 movies that have a priest as a main character. That's one movie per week for the duration of this Year of the Priest.

Here is what we've got so far, in chronological order by year of release:

1. Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
2. Boys Town (1938)
3. The Keys of the Kingdom (1944)
4. Going My Way (1944)
5. The Bells of St Mary's (1945)
6. The Fugitive (1947)
7. Fighting Father Dunne (1948)
8. Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
9. I Confess (1953)
10. The Cardinal (1963)
11. The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968)
12. The Exorcist (1973)
13. The Massacre in Rome (1973)
14. The Scarlet and the Black (1983)
15. Mass Appeal (1984)
16. The Assisi Underground (1985)
17. The Mission (1986)
18. The Fr. Clements Story (1987)
19. Black Robe (1991)
20. Molokai: The Story of Fr. Damian (1999)
21. The Third Miracle (1999)
22. Keeping the Faith (2000)
23. The Confessor (The Good Shepherd) (2004)
24. Doubt (2008)
25. Gran Torino (2008)

Help us out in the comments!

On Les Amants

Les Amants is a very good film made by Louis Malle in 1958. I have only one major criticism to make, and that is the use of Brahms's music at various points in the movie. I like Brahms's music a lot, but it's simply too, too much to accompany scenes in a movie.

Jeanne Moreau is excellent in the lead role, and the anxiety felt by her character in the wake of extraordinary climactic decisions was ominous. The entire movie might be mistaken for a rather one dimensional take on a woman's sexual awakening, were it not for the darker moments of introspection she is unable to avoid. There are several scenes in which Moreau looks into a mirror and doesn't seem to understand what she sees. The moments pass, but they are terrifying.

Here's some interesting trivia from imdb:

After screening this film, Nico Jacobellis, manager of the Heights Art Theater in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was charged with and convicted of possessing and exhibiting an obscene film. He appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court, which overturned the convictions, ruling that the film was not obscene. In a concurring opinion, Justice Potter Stewart made his famous pronouncement concerning what was pornography: "I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964) (Stewart, J., concurring).

Incredible.

Amazing Video from Iran

Red Ink VI

Cash for Gold.com

"Head to Trader Joe's and buy anything made or grown in Israel. I hear the Israeli couscous goes well with grilled scapegoat, by the way."

From There Is No God but Politics by Theodore Dalrymple

This is an excellent essay on similarities between Marxism and Islam, or at least Islam according to Sayyid Qutb, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the 20th century. Here is a selection that epitomizes, I think, the way many of in the West view Islam:

During my reading, I found myself swinging like a pendulum between taking Islam as a threat very seriously indeed, and not taking it seriously at all. The reasons for taking it seriously were that a large proportion of humanity was Muslim, that an aggressive and violent minority had emerged within that population with apparently very widespread, if largely passive, approval, and that the leadership of western countries was very weak and vacillating in the face of this, or any other, challenge. The reasons for not taking Islam seriously were that, in the modern world, it was intellectually nugatory, that the disproportion in power between the rest of the world and the Islamic world appeared to be growing rather than contracting, and that behind all the bluster about the certain possession of the unique, universal and divinely ordained truth for man was an anxiety that the whole edifice of Islam, while strong, was extremely brittle, which explained why free enquiry was so limited in Islamic countries. There was a subliminal awareness - and perhaps not always subliminal - that free philosophical and historical debate could quickly and fatally undermine the hold of Islam on various societies. Fundamentalism was therefore a manifestation of weakness and not of strength.

re: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Great title, decent movie. Probably one of the most indecent openings I've ever seen, and the entire movie is depressing as hell. Marissa Tomei steals the show in a scene where she confronts her husband, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman over her infidelity. The scene pictured to the left, in which she confronts somebody else, is a real shocker. Hoffman is also pretty good as the successful banker with an upscale heroin problem. Ethan Hawke plays his brother as one of the most pitiful saps around (His daughter yells into the phone at him, "How am I going to face all my friends when they know what a loser you are?!"). Painful.

It certainly goes against the current trend of glamourizing the life of continual crime. The Bank Job, all those Soderbergh Ocean movies, The Italian Job, The Thomas Crown Affair - the criminals are always one step ahead of everybody else, including the audience. But the movies themselves seem a little dumb - we all have to pretend this kind of dramatic irony is possible for all of us. For the dumb-ass Hoffman and Hawke characters, Life becomes a series of the worst decisions they could possibly make. And yet the movie is pretty good. Go figure.

Pan Africa Market

In sort of colloquy to close out the Summit, Rufus and I, along with R., C., B. and T., had dinner at the Pan Africa Market (read: restaurant) last night. Excellent, affordable food and great service in a nice location: the post alley near Pike Place Market. Which makes for some enjoyable walking around time before and after dinner. I had the "Vegetable Tibs", which as far as we were able to figure out simply means "bits", spelled backward. Come to think of it, that would be "Stib", but stib is a lot less appetizing than tibs. My fellow diners had different versions of "wott", which also made for great fun: "Wott have we got here? Lamb!"

Enjoy a meal there when you get the chance.

re: Poker Face by Lady Gaga

Speaking of poker and guys bluffing their way through life, Rufus and I were down at Daniel's Broiler last night and ran into some trouble with a lovely young woman named Rachel. We'd had a few Jameson's, so it's hard to say exactly how it all started to go badly, but when I mentioned this song, Rachel (24 years old, has a boyfriend) perked up considerably.

"Oh yeah, she's here to stay."

I think Rachel is right. When I first heard this techno dance electronica thing, or whatever it's called, I thought, well, this voice is a little bigger than most. The woman has some serious talent. And the song, which she wrote, is infectious.

I wanna roll with him a hard pair we will be
A little gambling is fun when you're with me (I love it)
Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun
And baby when it's love if it's not rough it isn't fun...

Yikes. Then there's this:

I won't tell you that I love you
Kiss or hug you
Cause I'm bluffin' with my muffin
I'm not lying I'm just stunnin' with my love-glue-gunning...

What in the world? Am I missing the irony here? Does music and art have a moral? Can it be amoral? What do we need all those morals for, anyway?

Because at some point it just turns silly. Just watch the video. What's with the Barbarella swimsuit? Although I would like a pair of those reader-board sunglasses. Those are pretty cool.

Korrektiv Summit VIII

re: He's Just Not That Into You

There are about half a dozen hollywood endings for this movie. I did say I'd log everything I watched or read, and this will have to do for this one. Okay - one thing I noticed was that Ben Affleck looked like a mannequin at the end. This is not intended as a smear on his acting; in fact, I think Ben Affleck is a pretty good actor. But I think they must have just used a wooden head at the end. It might have been the lighting, I suppose.

Or maybe he was on his way to make another Tom Clancy movie.

Despite the mannequin-like features of Affleck, some of these final scenes were quite touching. There's a moment - plot spoiler here - when a guy finally gets around to asking the gal to marry him, after they've been living together for seven years or so. The whole thing is done well; borders on the maudlin at certain moments, but then we're at the movies here. But I found this interesting. On Saturday night I played poker with four guys who'd lived with their girlfriends for six, eight, nine, ten and eleven years. Some of them went on to marry, some of them did not, but it occurred to me while I was watching that this is just the way it is now. Isn't this definitely a bad thing? Can this possibly be a good thing? If, under these new mores, the divorce rate were to slide up or down five points, would that be an indicator either way? How do people generally feel about this? The guys at the poker table who had decided to get married seemed happy enough, but it didn't make for the most inspiring of stories. The guys at the table who'd flown the coop didn't seem much happier, but they didn't seem all that worse for wear either. This is the way we live now, as Trollope (pronounced trollop) once wrote.

From the YouTube Music Video Archives: Concerto for Harp and Orchestra by George Frideric Handel

My very favorite piece of music of all time. I recently learned that one of my neighbors makes harps for a living, and it reminded me of this Concerto by Handel, number six in his Opus 4 collection, numbers one through five having been written for Organ. I first heard it on the soundtrack for the movie To The Limit back in 1989 at the Imax theatre at Seattle Center. This clip ... ⇧ ... features Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, which is an okay piece of music as well.

On Slum Dog Millionaire

I think I've now seen three movies directed by Danny Boyle: 28 Days Later (zombies!), Sunshine (science fiction), and now this, which is ... the feel-good movie of the year. Last year. After a Bollywood ending that outdoes anything ever cooked up by Woody Allen or the author of the Book of Job, there is an amazing dance/title sequence to close the movie out. I guess what I'm trying to express is that the part after the ending is really the best part.

Alphonse: A Monster For Our Time

Matthew Lickona, author of Swimming with Scapulars and various of columns for the San Diego Reader, has a new book out. Check it out here. It looks fantastic.

To judge from one panel, that kid has a serious grip.

For Self-Examination

Not only in his youth, but throughout his entire life, Kierkegaard was very buttoned up with respect to his sexual proclivities. Unlike Hans Christian Anderson, Kierkegaard would never have dreamed of burdening posterity with journal entries about sore testicles, nor would he ever have marked his calendar with an X for every day he masturbated. Even less would Kierkegaard have imitated Strindberg, who would carefully measure his erect member with a ruler and then consult his physician about whether his six and one-quarter inches was above or below average. The closest we get to these delicate subjects is a journal entry from 1843 in which Kierkegaard confessed that the only person with whom he "had ever had a lewd conversation" was a seventy-four-year-old "captain from the China trade," who was a regular at Mini's cafe...

p. 105, Soren Kierkegaard: A Biography by Joakim Garff

Ethos, Pathos & Logos

This post touches not only on my problems with this president, but with politics ( and the media) generally. Call me simple, but if you knowingly leave an impression about something in people's minds, aren't you communicating a message? And if that intentional message is contradicted by your words, doesn't one or the other have to be a lie?

Maybe I need a philosophy professor to straighten me out.

Wow!

More Klavin!

War is Not the Answer!

On Die Fälscher

I'd like to get back to reviewing movies, but I need to find a way to get paid for it. For now I'm going to try and use the blog as a log for what I read and watch day by day. All of it. Whether you read it or not.

Anyway, Die Fälscher, or The Counterfeiters, was excellent. Karl Markovics is fantastic as Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch in a story based on a true story about Jewish prisoners at Sachsenhausen who were forced to help finance the German war machine by producing forgeries. In fact, "Project Bernhard," as it was called, aimed at actually destabilizing the economies of Britain and the USA by producing and circulating vast quantities of forged banknotes. Something like 140 million British pounds were put into circulation - some of them examined by the Bank of England itself.

My quick observation has to do with the acting of Markovics. It's been said often enough before, but acting in a film really must be a completely different animal than acting on stage. Markovics hardly makes even the tiniest of facial gestures, and yet this glacial visage informs us in so many ways about his character that it's very difficult to consider much else. Yes, it's a great story, and yes there's a lot of brutality, but what really makes the movie is the performance by Markovics.

Red Ink V

On reading Ross Douthat's column on abortion and the comments that follow

"All Abortions are not Equal" is one of the best opinion pieces I've read on the abortion issue in some time. Douthat provides some perspective on the career of George Tiller. It's one thing to read the phrase "late-term abortion" over and over again, especially by opponents of the procedure, but it's quite another to acknowledge the reality that too often surrounds it:

Tiller did abortions in third trimester, when almost no one else would do them – which meant, inevitably, that he handled the hardest of hard cases. He performed abortions on women facing life-threatening complications, on women whose children would be born dead or dying, on women who had been raped, on “women” who were really girls of 10. His Wichita, Kan., office, barricaded against protesters, was reportedly lined with thank-you notes.

As Douthat writes, these and other testimonials "help explain why so many Americans defend his right to do it."

Douthat is also informative. I didn't know that "Even the now-outlawed “partial-birth” procedure, which abortion-rights supporters initially argued was only employed in the direst of dire situations, turned out to be used primarily for purely elective abortions." What is the evidence for this? Someone lied through his teeth.

Douthat is also succinct:

"Either a fetus has a claim to life or it doesn’t. The circumstances of its conception and the state of its health shouldn’t enter into the equation. But the law is a not a philosophy seminar. It’s the place where morality meets custom, and compromise, and common sense. And it can take account of tragic situations without universalizing their lessons.

It's also clear what Douthat wants, and I can't see how anybody can argue against this: "laws with more respect for human life, a culture less inflamed by a small number of tragic cases — and a political debate, God willing, unmarred by crimes like George Tiller’s murder."

I was, however, pretty sure that people would, or at least that the column would have its fair share of detractors. So I clicked onto the comments. Here's the first, from Norman in Oklahoma:

There is only one person who can decide whether an abortion is justified, and that is the pregnant woman.

End of discussion.

At the time of my reading, 292 people recommended Norman's comment. As usual, when confronted with this argument, such as it is, I find it very hard to disagree. Of course the pregnant woman is the only person justified in making this sort of decision. So many people say so, and say so with a great deal of passion and conviction. And then I do begin to disagree anyway. Hasn't Norman - assuming he is male - actually disqualified himself from the argument? Why then does he bother leaving a comment here - to argue in favor of his own disqualification? Why "End of discussion"? It clearly isn't, at least to judge from the comments that follow. Less obviously, what if the that pregnant woman is in a coma? What if the pregnant woman is 17 years old? What if she's 34 years old? Do such distinctions make a difference? Why or why not? Then, maybe a little uncharitably, I wonder if "End of discussion" is actually revealing of a Pro-choice hastening towards terminality in general.

So I read the next comment, from Dan Styer of Oberlin, Ohio:

Ross Douthat claims that

"The argument for unregulated abortion rests on the idea that where there are exceptions, there cannot be a rule."

This claim is absurd. No one argues for unregulated abortion. Supporters of abortion rights argue that abortion must be regulated to make it safe. Opponents of abortion rights argue that abortion must be regulated to make it impossible. No one supports "unregulated abortion."

Is this a fair point? Well, up to a point. Styer is certainly correct that supporters of abortion rights do want regulation - i.e., laws - to make it safe. I also think a fair reading of Douthat's use of the term "unregulated abortion" is that it results in abortion any time, anywhere. But maybe Douthat should have chosen his words more carefully. Then again, nothing anybody says or writes is ever going to be the perfect truth (thus the need for "End of discussion" reactions), so just how much more carefully does one have to write? The issues isn't simply one of semantics. Dan was recommended by 172 readers at that time.

I then scroll through a number of comments that don't interest me as much. I get to No. 8, from— "Pa_in_Pa" in Indiana, PA :

While Mr. Douthat makes a good point about our need to have a public discussion and vote on abortion, rather than leaving abortion in the hands of a changeful board of justices, I am chary of a people's ability to determine the issue, even democratically, about what constitutes human life (or full human life). History is replete with too many examples of peoples who have defined others to be sub-human or non-human, and then done what they wanted with them. We no longer accept (most if not all of) these culturally defined conceptions.

The cruz of the problem is that we are left with either posing the question as an absolute or as a concept relative both to (our) culture and to (our) history. If this observation is correct, the anti-abortion folks have a logical advantage. Either human life does or does not exist at some time from conception to a "natural" death. All other choices are humanly contrived (arbitrary) moments.

A modest proposal would be to frame the debate in terms of our realization that we do not truly value all human life equally in practice anyway. Abortion then becomes a matter of deciding what is politically viable in the determination of what constitutes human life, and then hope that we never end up on the sub-human or non-human end of the scale. Future generations may look back and condemn us as barbaric by their standards for our decision, but by then we will be long dead.

"Now we're getting somewhere", I say to myself. Good old Intractability, you never fail me. And who is "Pa_in_Pa"? Is he in fact a father? Would this fact make him more or less qualified to debate the question? Would Norman in Oklahoma be willing to let him in on the discussion? I note that Pa_in_Pa is only recommended by 11 Readers. This saddens me, as it's the best comment I've read so far, and yet only 11 other people even think it's worth reading. Then I'm glad, because I haven't let this modest attempt at polling determine what I value in comments. I don't think I do. Then, frankly, I get depressed, again, knowing that polling in some form or another certainly has determined what I value in comments, reading in general, and really just about everything. I am a mouse surrounded by cats, a plaything of the gods, a cog in some infinite and infernal machine that is ever more rapidly falling into deeper and deeper depths of darkness.

I see that the next comment is from Laura in Seattle, and I am heartened by the simple fact that a fellow Seattlelite is falling with me:

A woman is around 11 times more likely to die from carrying a pregnancy to term than from having an abortion. Pregnant women are more likely to die of strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary emboli, and breast cancer than women who undergo abortions--they are also more likely to be murdered. If we're willing to allow pregnant women to have abortions because the pregnancy is endangering their life, this would allow every pregnant woman an abortion. Perhaps it's time to stop devoting so much energy to restricting the ability of women to make their own medical decisions, and devote some of that energy to improving the health of all women and children with limited access to health care.

Actually, she isn't falling, or failing, at all. She makes a good point, or rather she lists some good facts - because that's what we need here: more facts. And after listing these facts, she does make a good point, that we need to devote more energy to improving the health of women and children. Nothing to argue there. Laura, unsurprisingly but not unfairly, is recommended by 232 readers. I just wish she'd given us the sources for that information.

My attention is quickly caught by B. Mull, of Orange County, CA. He certainly has something to say:

You know, it takes a lot of nerve to come out with a blame-the-victim diatribe like this in the wake of Dr. Tiller's murder. I would think the anti-choice terrorist mob would want to lay low this week. Please try to recognize your personal religious beliefs. They are not based on scientific reality. They are not based on the right of self-determination. They are not even based on what's good for children. In short, feel free to impose an abortion ban on yourself. Otherwise, back off!

Yikes. I want to do just that - back off - but conscience (in my case, admittedly formed by my personal religious beliefs) demands that I point out a couple of things, pose a few questions, if only to myself: (1) Douthat's column probably did take some nerve to write, as well as a lot of work; (2) It is hardly a diatribe; (3) When and how does Douthat blame the victim? (4) "anti-choice terrorist mob" refers to what, to whom? (5) What does it mean to "recognize" one's personal religious beliefs? Could Douthat be doing just that? (6) What is meant by "scientific reality"? (7) How does one define what's good for children? How actually does one define the term "children"?

Comment #13 is from John Conrad in Manhattan:

A man telling a woman what to do with her body. Let me guess - he's probably a Catholic, a conservative, a Republican. And he probably believes philosophy ended in 1274 (hint: the year Thomas Aquinas died).

In the absence of a materially definitive and therefore legally dispositive determination of when life begins, we should trust a woman and her doctor to decide if and when to have an abortion. Is this too hard for the party of serial divorces (Newt, Giulliani, McCain, etc) pedophilia (the Catholic Church), and homophobia (the Mormorns) to understand? Leave women alone. Haven't you blamed her enough since Eden?

Well, that ought to settle that. And John Conrad is recommended by 313 readers.

There are many other fine comments, but I have a life and I need to move on. I'm not surprised that most of the comments reflect a Pro-choice position, although I admit that I am somewhat surprised by how reasonable these claims are. The last one on the first page -from Laura, in Philadelphia - seems an appropriate place to ... leave. It's indicative of this very reasonability; articulate, to the point, and allowing for those awful "grey areas". But the punctuation bugs me.

I'm not particularly concerned with your personal beliefs about what constitutes a "justified" abortion. If we as a society can agree that there are gray areas with regard to pregnancy termination, then we have a responsibility to create and uphold laws that reflect these gray areas. What constitutes a threat to the health or life of the mother is one gray area. The morality of termination before viability is another. Reasonable people can come to very different conclusions about what is "right" in these circumstances. Because of this, I trust women to make decisions regarding their own medical care when living in these gray areas, and I trust their doctors to provide appropriate medical guidance and care in these circumstances. End. Of. Story.

Well, no it isn't, and this seems to me the most salient point of all.

From The YouTube Music Video Archives: Total Eclipse of the Heart, the literal video version

By way of Matthew Lickona. What I think is amazing about this video is that it manages to get better, every frame by glorious frame. You think it can't get any weirder, and it does. Oh yes, does it ever.

Too Stupid to Live in the United States

I don't care if you were born in this country or not Miss Sugawara--you should go now. You're voted off the island. You're the weakest link. Adios amiga.

Meet Clarence

High school seniors Terrence Stephens and Jason Ankrah, star football players at Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg, Md., were sitting on a plane returning from a recruitment session at the University of Nebraska when they struck up a conversation with the man sitting next to them.

"Lawless violence breeds only more lawless violence"

That's Robert P. George, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and frequent NRO contributer, on the murder of Dr. George Tiller. We can add that in the long run, it will not do nothing to diminish lawful violence either.

Whose cause does this action serve?

17 Things Which Have to Go Right If You are Traveling to the Moon

One Hundred Trillion Dollars!

Red Ink IV

Red Ink III

HELLO AMERICA, IS ANYBODY F@#&*%^ OUT THERE!!!

From The YouTube Music Video Archives: Django by the Modern Jazz Quartet

I've heard mention of the Modern Jazz Quartet over the years and finally got around to picking up "Django" - one of their masterpieces, according to fans. I like it; like the vibes especially. The song "Django" was composed by the group's pianist, John Lewis. It is one of his best known compositions, written in memory of the French/Belgian gypsy guitarist, Django Reinhardt.

Read Korrektiv and Enroll Your Favorite Journalist in the Greenlandic School of Journalism

With the "Fly Your Favorite Teacher to Alert, Canada One Way" contest in full swing (Rufus, Quin and I are pouring over submissions and we should have the results very soon), it's time to announce a new contest for our loyal readers.

I'm nominating Chris Matthews!

"People Who Smoke and Drink Too Much, and Cheat on Their Wives...That's About What You Get Out of It."

Lit Crit Hit of the Day: Robert Dale Parker's "Sanctuary and Bad Taste"

Robert Dale Parker is a professor of English at the Univeristy of Illinois, whose work I've admired for some years. First it was an article on Elizabeth Bishop, and just today I came across this recent analysis of the Faulkner novel everybody loves to admit they like even as they admit how bad it is, but love it anyway. Or something like that. Parker explains it all better than I ever could:

And so this essay will be an exercise in taste and an exploration of the novel as an exercise in taste. Let me say right off: I think Sanctuary is in bad taste. I think it took bad taste to write it, and it takes bad taste to ask our students to read it. Perhaps nowhere is bad taste more deplored than in France, or so at least Americans like to believe. Perhaps that is also why no one appreciates bad taste more than the French, as Americans also like to believe, typically citing the French delight in the films of Jerry Lewis, but perhaps we could also cite the French taste for Faulkner on both counts, good taste and bad taste, and also good taste in bad taste.

Now I have to go read Sanctuary all over again.

On Pniniad: Vladimir Nabokov and Marc Szeftel by Galya Diment

This first-rate scholarly study of the relationship between Marc Szeftel and Vladimir Nabokov has been endorsed by such heavyweight academics as Brian Boyd and Robert Alter, and I can only add that if there is such a thing as required reading for non-specialists in Nabokovopolis, this should be at the top of the list. Galya Diment provides a fairly conclusive argument that Mark Szeftel was an important model for the Russian Master's third novel written in English, the second in America.

The heart of the book consists of five chapters and a conclusion, and also contains appendixes from Marc Szeftel's archive and own writings. The latter includes of selections from his diaries, which make it pretty obvious that Szeftel wasn't nearly as comfortable a solipsist as the alter ego fate appears to have dealt him. And man, did he ever know it. Some of the passages included in Diment's study read like outtakes from a rough draft of Kinbote's, without the miniscule amount of self-awareness the fictive scholar was able to muster. They certainly exhibit nothing like the former king's rather heady imagination, in which readers have taken so much delight. What is there, and what Diment makes all too clear, is a great deal of sadness. The sadness of an émigré, the sadness of a scholar, and perhaps even the sadness of a century.

Szeftel seems to have toiled long and hard in the academic vineyards, at times with scholars as notable as Roman Jacobsen, and for reasons that perhaps only Nabokov himself knows, never really achieved his due regard as an academic. More to the point, he seems to have settled just outside the realm of humiliation and some grand joke at the hands of everyone from the great writer to colleagues and even his students. The operative paradox here is that Szeftel would have remained one of life's unknown little tragedies had it not been for his immortalization as the Russian specialist at Waindell, but as Diment evinces he may well have never felt himself to be quite so tragic a character at all if he hadn't crossed paths with the accomplished poet-lepodiatrist-teacher-scholar-writer from St. Petersberg. One of Szeftel's books was praised by Nabokov, he was once on the verge of actually working with Nabokov, and he long contemplated scholarly studies of Lolita even after he became one of the models for Pnin. In the end he produced a few anecdotes about exchanges with Nabokov during the time they shared together at Cornell.

Along the way, Diment notes that a case has been made for considering Pnin an even greater work than the now monolithic Lolita, and by no less a scholar than Michael Wood in `The Magician's Doubts.' The reason for this originates in the rather more organically developed theme of the Double, a theme Szeftel himself consciously noted and, like several others (to Nabokov's own consternation) tied to Doeseovsky. She expertly employs the work of other scholars to illuminate what is particularly special, if not unique, about Pnin's relation to the novel he inhabits:

"The most dramatic declaration of Pnin's independence and VN's [the self-identified narrator of the novel] "just deserts" comes from Charles Nicol... Nicol actually goes as far as to describe the two men as atgonists and their relationship as a struggle between the "devilish" narrator and the innocent protagonist, in which Pnin "has confronted Nabokov and won." (p.56)

It seems to me that Nicol overstates his case a little here, but I do think that Diment's account of the narratological ambiguity that grew as the novel progressed and its roots in the brief conjunction of the fates of Szeftel and Nabokov is illuminating.

Diment is entirely evenhanded in her treatment of everyone involved, and the only particular bias consistently shown is her high regard for the Northwest, Szeftel's final home and where she herself teaches (at the University of Washington, sponsors of the press that published this book). She notes that Szeftel never much enjoyed the region himself, and perhaps even saw it as the true boondocks, one of the many injuries to be suffered in a long and yet disappointing life. In its way, this is one of the saddest works of scholarship I've ever read. But it is gracefully written, and, as she says in the conclusion, a real tribute to the model, to the author, and to our ability to transform life through fiction. Marc Szeftel certainly did his best to partake of that transformation.

From The YouTube Music Video Archives: Signori! di fuori son già i suonatori from Le nozze di Figaro

Seattle Opera is playing one of Mozart's finest through May 16. This trio is ... so beautiful; certainly one of Mozart's greatest achievements ... no; one of the greatest achievements in the history of music. No, actually it's the greatest achievement of all artistic endeavors in human history. That's me doing an imitation of "Victor Eremita" in Either/Or. Kierkegaard's greatest problem probably boils down to mistaking Don Giovanni as the high point of classical art. Moreover, the problematic nature of “The Immediate Erotic Stages or the Musical Erotic” in Either/Or has much to do with this failure to recognize Figaro as Mozart's greatest work. Both Don Giovanni and Figaro are comedies about the role of erotic love in human society, but Figaro ends happily for all concened - forgiveness asked for and then granted. Don Giovanni ends with the hero, really an anti-hero, dragged down to hell by the guilt of his sins. Question: is the inclusion of Hell necessary for a full portrait of humanity?

Maybe, but must it really end there? I prefer Figaro's evasions here:
Mente il ceffo, io già non mento.
(My face is lying then: I'm not.)

And then Susanna and the Contessa's gentle revelation:
Il talento aguzzi invano
palesato abbiam l'arcano,
non v'è nulla da ridir.
(All your talent's in vain
we have revealed the secret,
there's nothing more to say.)

So the Count chimes in:
Che rispondi?
(So what do you say?)

Figaro takes the advice of the Contessa and Susanna:
Niente, niente.
(Nothing, nothing.)

The Count persists:
Dunque accordi?
(Then you own it?)

Figaro:
Non accordo.
(No, I don't, sir!)

The Contessa and Susanna plead and declare:
Eh via, chetati, balordo,
la burletta ha da finir.
(Hold your tongue, you fool,
the comedy is over.)

"Not quite!" says Figaro:
Per finirla lietamente
e all'usanza teatrale
un'azion matrimoniale
le faremo ora seguir.
(Then, to end it properly
and in accordance with theatrical tradition
we now go to continue
with our marriage ceremony.)

I Need the River

I need the river,
the way it carries the
spring runoff in its arms
like a mother,
the way it glides like
a roller blader, like
bearings in fresh oil,
like a drunken thought
in the mind of a happy man.
I need the river
like that man needs that drink
at the end of a long day.
I need the river ghosts
and the river spirits
to whisper their secrets
in my ears, to tell me
the news from upstream,
to silence the demons in my head,
to show me the light that
dances on the riverbed.
I need the power of the river
to flow through my soul,
to turn the turbines of my mind.
River, I call to thee.
Make me one of your people, let me
follow you down,
Let me follow you downstream.

"these same people talk about being struck momentarily stupid when West African bullfrog semen is found in their blood"

Curt Schilling has a blog:

Then go home and raise your own damn kids with your own set of values, integrity and morals. Be accountable to them and responsible for them and stop blaming video games or the 25-year-old kid from the Dominican who can hit a baseball 455 feet but you don’t know and never will, for the ‘problems of today’s youth”. It starts and ends under your own roof. Your kids idolize the people you allow them to, and believe things you don’t refute or discuss, and that’s no one’s fault but your own.

Read the entire post.

Grand Theft Dante

I found this by way of Rufus's "Tweets" located at the bottom of the Korrektiv sidebar. I'm posting it here for a couple of reasons: (1) to show Rufus that I really do follow his twittering, and (2) to help other readers of this blog - and perhaps even other writers on this blog - keep up with the now increasingly rapid and ridiculous proliferation of technology. And it's also pretty damn interesting - I had thoughts along these lines myself while getting my ass kicked by my nephew in Grand Theft Auto.

T S Eliot wrote of Dante that “there seems really nothing to do but point to him and be silent”. How very wrong T S Eliot was. In perhaps the most bizarre literary cameo since Geoffrey Chaucer was shown singing along to Queen tunes in the 2001 film A Knight’s Tale, Florence’s most famous son will soon be crashing into your living room as the growling, cross-wielding hero of his very own video game. Yes, in 2010, as the frankly mad-looking trailer for Dante’s Inferno has it, you too will be able to “Go to Hell”.

Anyone expecting a faithful interactive representation of the Commedia’s sorrow and pity will be somewhat taken aback. Made by the developers of last year’s outer-space zombie shooter Dead Space, the game recasts Dante as a muscle-bound anti-hero, carving his way through the Nine Circles with a scythe and a cross to liberate his girlfriend from Lucifer.

In a side note, I now have a number of new projects going on. One is a boring old venture into old-fashioned book publishing.

Two others are ideas for a couple of technologies that will help people "communicate" with each other so much better. The first of these is a networking group called "MyFace", in which you can post pictures of yourself and keep in touch with all your long lost friends from junior high - especially the ones you did everything you could to avoid at the time. The other is called "Fiddle", which utilizes a much more streamlined method of posting. It's just a page - no pictures to speak of - with a list of one or two sentences on what you find interesting right now. You can then follow the posts of others as well. In order to discourage anybody from wasting each other's time, there will be a 25 word limit. Posts will preferably be about new technology, and how great life is because of it.

"To God What is God's and to Caesar What is Caeser's"

From the YouTube Music Video Archives: Gillian Welch

Quin's latest dip into the archives knocked my socks off, I must say. A nice little sidebar to the apocalyptic liturgy of late. "John the Revelator" also made me think of Gillian Welch's song, "Revelator," so I went on a little YouTube trip of my own. I found Gillian's revelator and looked up the lyrics to confirm no apparent connection to John ... and yet ... surely there must be an intentional echo, nicht wahr? Or some common text or ... something. Anyway, I gave that a listen, and was impressed by the stern, beautiful stoicism. Not entirely sure what to make of it beyond that, though. Flashback to hearing a Gillian Welch song for the first time in a coffeehouse somewhere and being taken with it, but then being disappointed with when I bought the Revelator CD and not really listening to it much. OK, scroll down the YouTube list of related clips. What's this: Gillian Welch and David Rawlings performing a cover of Dylan's "Queen Jane Approximately." Who is this David Rawlings who seems to (another nod to a recent Quin post) hold his guitar like it is an extension of his phallus? I wonder if he named his guitar Alice. He plays it with the complete opposite of malice. A pretty great cover. So of course I couldn't resist going over to the sidebar and selecting Dylan himself performing the same in 1998--and not at all badly. Pretty damn fabulously in fact. But: back on task: Gillian ... and well, David Rawlings would seem to be her nearly constant on-stage companion, playing an odd-looking violin-like guitar (even while referencing St. Augustine) in that phallus-gyrating fashion and some damn sweet bluegrass licks and offering up harmonies to match the lovely, stern, downhome Gillian as if we might be with them and Jesus in paradise at any moment. Yeah, time's a revelator, but I wanna sing that rock and roll. Oh!

From The YouTube Music Video Archives: John the Revelator by Blind Willie Johnson

Well who's that writin'? John the Revelator / Who's that writin'? John the Revelator / Who's that writin'? John the Revelator / A book of the seven seals / Tell me what's John writin'? Ask the Revelator / What's John writin'? Ask the Revelator / What's John writin'? Ask the Revelator / A book of the seven seals / Well ooh ooh why me, thousands cried holy / Bound for some, Son of our God / Daughter of Zion, Judah the Lion / He redeemeth, and bought us with his blood / John the Revelator, great advocator / Get's 'em on the battle of Zion / Lord, tellin' the story, risin' in glory / Cried, "Lord, don't you love some I" / Well Moses to Moses, watchin' the flock / Saw the bush where they had to stop / God told Moses, "Pull off your shoes" / Out of the flock, well you I choose.

Here also is an interesting version by Depeche Mode, another by Nick Cave, and Gov't Mule,

ABC's John Stoessel on the Things You Can't Talk About

It's time these were talked about. Along with Medicare, I'll throw in abortion and the Obama deficits. The bottom line is that if you love children, you won't kill them and you won't bankrupt them. You may enjoy children, you may feel sentimental about children--the Nazi's were sentimental about children. True love requires sacrifice.

Secrets of the Phallus

More on Federalism From a Really Smart Law Professor

...and friend of Kurt Lash.

Too Good to Pass Up

Another Exchange with Anonymous

Anonymous writes, How are you defining 'economically liberal' and 'economically conservative'?

To me economically liberal means in favour of the free market (ie classically liberal), but nowadays 'economically conservative' means the same thing, unless you mean paternalistic. But perhaps I misunderstand the US use of the terms?

My reply: Is this the Anonymous Rufus calls "Lady Gadfly", who teaches philosophy somewhere in England? To whom I should probably defer when it comes to defining terms? Anyway, yeah, I think the mist rising over the Atlantic Ocean must work like a mirror, maybe a funhouse mirror, so that the terms take on a meaning opposite that of whatever is meant on the other side.

I might be mistaken, or grossly oversimplifying, but I think most Americans take "economically conservative" as a descriptor favoring the free market - which you term "liberal". That's how I've used it here. The problem, as I think you indicate, is that the term, "liberal" is first (or at least earlier) associated with J.S. Mill, and it seems right that British understanding and usage should take precedence over the American version.

I'm not sure that Mill ever considered himself "a liberal", as he was more concerned with defending and then revising Bentham's and (his father) James Mill's 'Utilitarianism'.

Goldberg is well aware of all this, and as far as I can tell he is using the term "economically liberal" to refer to those favoring a Keynesian approach to the economy.

It gets confusing because no less a Republican (and therefore someone widely recognized as conservative) than Richard Nixon goes on TV and says "I am a Keynesian now".

I like to think that this is corrected somewhat by the reclamation of the term "conservative" for economists who (roughly speaking here, roughly) follow the Adam Smith-"laissez-faire"-Hayek-Friedman line of thinking.

But even then the comparatively tidy world of philosophy is seriously distorted by very messy politics, what with GHWBush I saying "Read my lips, no new taxes" and then GWBush setting steel tariffs and expanding Medicare drug benefits ... it gets fairly difficult to keep the definition of "conservative" straight, never mind who's "liberal", and the addition of prefixes like "paleo", "neo", "compassionate", and "crunchy" aren't all that helpful.

And while I think "liberal" is still a useful term, it doesn't seem to me that anyone really likes the term applied to his or her self. This side of the Atlantic, at any rate. Hence the appropriation (in my view) of the term "fiscal conservative".

I wasn't thinking of "paternalistic" originally, but I think there is certainly room for that in the mix. Perhaps there is something paternalistic in tradtional concepts of liberalism, not to mention conceptual traditions of liberalism and liberal concepts of traditionalism. Bush II is, after all, the son of Bush I, and Barack Obama II dreams of his father’s dream of the problem facing our socialism, and an Arlen Specter is haunting America, the Spectre of Communism that may yet be undone by Groucho Marx … “a likely story, and probably true.”

A problem that isn't a problem and a solution that isn't a solution

The always-perceptive Ramesh Ponnuru on the Just War theory here.

On Jack Kemp, Jackalopes, and Jacobins

I've always been an admirer of Jack Kemp, and it's nice to see him remembered as Jonah Goldberg does in a recent column. As in death, so also in life was Kemp a korrektiv to politicians who had lost their committment to ideas - whatever their politics.

I've never been a big fan of jackalopes, those stuffed rabbits sporting antlers at roadside attractions all across our great land, but I laughed out loud when I read about socially liberal, economic conservatives as the "jackalope of American politics". I do wonder if they are "exceedingly rare", or rather less a Griffen-like mythologicaI creature than a joke. If, as Goldberg writes, "most people who are socially liberal are economically liberal as well", is it because economic conservatism and social liberalism fundamentally incompatible with each other, or is it because some people who are socially AND economically liberal have actually managed to square the circle? I really don't know the answer.

In my arguments with people who consider themselves socially liberal fiscal conservatives, it's always the case that they really aren't economically conservative. Always. To some extent it depends on the definition of "socially liberal". I guess I could consider myself "socially liberal", in the sense of letting others do what they want as long as they don't harm others. Want a silver bone in your nose? That's cool. You like the Princeton First Year with your German Shepherd? Not cool ... but if you have to, just please pull the blinds.

The problem is that most socially liberal people I know sooner or later come around to favoring more government benefits. Then, even if it's demonstrated that more government benefits generally lead to less initiative in the private sector, my SLFC friends will maintain their belief in their own fiscal conservatism. It seems to me this is because they favor socially liberal government action, which requires greater spending, which then justifies the need for more taxes, which is fiscally conservative because it is economically responsible. The "tax and spend liberal" sooner or later turns into a "spend and tax liberal," or vera-vice, but it seems to me a stretch to call this "fiscally conservative".

One of Goldberg's most cherished anathema is the Jacobin, referring to French revolutionaries in favor of one centralized power after doing away with another - namely the monarchy. Unless I'm mistaken, Goldberg uses the term not so much in favor of bringing back the monarchy, as to describe contemporaries in favor of a bigger, faster, and stronger federal government. There's a good reason to beware this, and I think socially liberal fiscal conservatives should keep an eye out for creeping Jacobinism on their watch. Now it's the norm. Gay marriage, national health care, legalizing marijuana ... would it be so wrong to try these out one state at a time? Thanks to Article IV and the full faith and credit clause, this is often unlikely.

And yes, this concerns many Republicans as well as Democrats. But Jack Kemp wasn't one of them.

Put Out a Call to Tom More

Ed Henry Asks President Obama About FOCA

[Excerpt of the] Text of President Barack Obama's news conference on Wednesday, April 29 at the White House, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions:

Ed Henry?

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. In a couple of weeks, you're going to be giving the commencement at Notre Dame. And, as you know, this has caused a lot of controversy among Catholics who are opposed to your position on abortion.

As a candidate, you vowed that one of the very [first] things you wanted to do was sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which, as you know, would eliminate federal, state and local restrictions on abortion. And at one point in the campaign when asked about abortion and life, you said that it was above — quote, above my pay grade.

Now that you've been president for 100 days, obviously, your pay grade is a little higher than when you were a senator.

Do you still hope that Congress quickly sends you the Freedom of Choice Act so you can sign it?

OBAMA: You know, the — my view on — on abortion, I think, has been very consistent. I think abortion is a moral issue and an ethical issue.

I think that those who are pro-choice make a mistake when they — if they suggest — and I don't want to create straw men here, but I think there are some who suggest that this is simply an issue about women's freedom and that there's no other considerations. I think, look, this is an issue that people have to wrestle with and families and individual women have to wrestle with.

The reason I'm pro-choice is because I don't think women take that — that position casually. I think that they struggle with these decisions each and every day. And I think they are in a better position to make these decisions ultimately than members of Congress or a president of the United States, in consultation with their families, with their doctors, with their clergy.

So — so that has been my consistent position. The other thing that I said consistently during the campaign is I would like to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that result in women feeling compelled to get an abortion, or at least considering getting an abortion, particularly if we can reduce the number of teen pregnancies, which has started to spike up again.

And so I've got a task force within the Domestic Policy Council in the West Wing of the White House that is working with groups both in the pro-choice camp and in the pro-life camp, to see if we can arrive at some consensus on that.

Now, the Freedom of Choice Act is not [the] highest legislative priority. I believe that women should have the right to choose. But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on. And that's — that's where I'm going to focus.

Rufus Tweets

Don't have time to read the lengthy and in-depth blog posts here at Korrektiv? Keep up-to-date with the latest in Catholic Existentialist Tomfoolery (at a maximum rate of 140 characters per entry!) via my microblog now available on Twitter: @rufmac. You can also check in on my latest tweets over on the sidebar, just below Quin's novel, Bird's Nest in Your Hair. Man, this blog entry is getting long. I'm tired! Gotta stop now.

Yesterday in Porn II

An era is passing ... has passed, really. I really did my best to capture the twilight of commercial porn in "Bird's Nest In Your Hair", but perhaps you'd prefer Mark Steyn's tribute to Jack Wrangler and Marilyn Chambers, who died last week at age 57. In addition to "Behind the Green Door", Miss Chambers also made a brief appearance in Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos.

10 Things From Your Twenties That You'll Regret In Your Forties

Could someone tell me what an MILF is?

Glendon and the Laetare Medal, continued

This article was written in response to an opinion expressed that Glendon's "diplomatic style seems to be less suited for U.S.-Vatican relations and more for U.S.-Cuba relations." The whole article is worth reading, but here's one paragraph in particular that really sets the record straight:

Professor Glendon was to have been honored for not only for her scholarship, but for her second career, her pro-bono work -- ranging from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the great civil rights issues of the present day -- namely, the defense of human life from conception to natural death. Her concerns range from the aging and dying population to the unborn to the well-being and dignity of every life, regardless of race, religion, or economic status. Her outstanding work in this field has earned her the respect of the most brilliant minds of the international community, regardless of whether they agree with her position. So again, to see her merely as "strongly anti-abortion" instead of as a tireless defender of the dignity of life, is to reveal not only a lack of understanding of the subject's work, but also the writer's real interest in this question.

Furthermore, during his first 100 days in office, President Obama has worked tirelessly to undermine Professor Glendon's lifetime of work; he is funding abortion out of the bailout package and planning to suppress the protection of conscience for health care workers.

Apprently Father Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, is now in search of an alternate recipient of the Laetare Medal. Would it not be better to just let the matter drop, and perhaps take it as an opportunity for meditating on what led to the impasse in the first place?

Zombies!

Ed McMahon Drunk on the Carson Show

From the YouTube archives.

Red Ink II

Christopher Buckley on being the son of Mr. and Mrs. William F. Buckley

Well, who needs Yahoo! News when we have The New York Times? Buckley has written a fine memoir of life as a Buckley. He proclaims his agnosticism in such a civil way ("I’m no longer a believer, but I haven’t quite reached the point of reading aloud from Christopher Hitchens’s “God Is Not Great""), but the entire excerpt is shot through with religious overtones:

I don’t think I ever once heard Mum utter a religious or spiritual sentiment, a considerable feat considering that she was married for 57 years to one of the most prominent Catholics in the country. But she rigorously observed the proprieties. When Pup taped an episode of “Firing Line” in the Sistine Chapel with Princess Grace, Malcolm Muggeridge, Charlton Heston and David Niven, Mum was included in the post-taping audience with Pope John Paul II. There’s a photo of the occasion: she has on more black lace than a Goya duchess. The total effect is that of Mary Magdalene dressed by Bill Blass.

To add to these Naturalist sentiments, Iet me just say that the ability to write must certainly have an hereditary aspect.

Things Should Start to Get Interesting Right About Now

On A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

A Deepness in the Sky is the prequel to A Fire upon the Deep, and both are considered some of the best of recent science fiction. I liked AFUD a lot, especially in the way Vinge took the entire Milky Way as his canvas, and then made its spiral shape and the distribution of stars the primary element of what he called "Zones of Thought". These Zones of Thought are such that life evolves more slowly near the center of the galaxy, while at the edge of the galaxy there exist Godlike powers - some of which are certainly the result of artificial intelligences created by men. Whether God actually exists is somewhat more in question, but not at all denied. Although I'm skeptical about the validity of all this, Vinge is writing about events tens of thousands of years in the future, when science has advanced far beyond the barely-beyond-the-stone-age age in which we now live. I also liked the planet he imagined within this system, where wolf-like creatures have crossed the threshold of symbolization and achieved a kind of civilization based on their ability to think in packs of four or more. Well, it seemed more plausible in the actual reading of the story.

DITS takes place some unspecified time earlier, when the most important starfaring civilization is on the verge of making first contact with aliens that have not evolved from earth. This civilization is made up of a federation of traders that seems based on the 17th century Hanseatic League, except that they're actually called the "Qeng Ho" - a name that is more probably based on "Zheng He", a 14th century Chinese sailor also known as "Sanbao", or Sinbad. Vinge seems to have a fondness for Chinese culture, or at least Chinese names. His books are peopled with quite a few of them - most importantly "Pham Nuwen", one of the main character is AFUD who is back again in DITS. This time it isn't so much God-like powers that he's up against, but another human civilization that has recently grown out of a dark age by developing what seems to be a fairly benign form of mind control, but which of course turns out to be pretty horrific.

This time the alien race resembles spiders rather than dogs. These spiders seem to be about the size and dimension of go-carts, and at the beginning of the book have managed to build up a civilization roughly equal to the advances achieved on Earth in the earliest 20th century. They have skyscrapers, cars, and airplanes. Life on Arachna (the name given to their planet by visiting humans) goes into a kind of hibernation mode for 200 years or so at a time, and the transition in and out of these long winters is traumatic in the extreme. The leading nation on Arachna maintains its advantage through science and a kind of scientific-military-industrial complex which makes the US effort look like a Cub Scout field trip. Most of these scientific advances are pushed by a genius spider named "Sherker Underhill". Underhill utters the phrase that becomes the title of the book, in the midst of a public debate with a religious whacko who almost wins the debate by calling his children freaks. You have to read it to believe it. And actually, by the end, it was lost on me. Although Vinge has enjoyed a long career as a professor of Mathematics and Computer Programming, many of these ideas struck me as far-fetched in the extreme: spiders riding motorcycles, a planet with small moons made out of diamonds, and a main character that lives for tens of thousands of years. It's all in good fun though - mostly anyway.

When it takes on a serious tone it only becomes more ridiculous. The book runs the gamut: from techonological prophecy to futuristic anthropology to enforced idiot-savantism as a version of mental slavery. But, hey, it's science fiction

Father Stanley Ladislas Jaki, OSB (1924-2009)

The American writer Walker Percy, a convert to Catholicism, formulated the position Jaki came to espouse this way in his novel Lost in the Cosmos: "As Whitehead pointed out, it is no coincidence that science sprang, not from Ionian metaphysics, not from the Brahmin-Buddhist-Taoist East, not from the Egyptian-Mayan astrological South, but from the heart of the Christian West, that although Galileo fell out with the Church, he would hardly have taken so much trouble studying Jupiter and dropping objects from towers if the reality and value and order of things had not first been conferred by belief in the Incarnation."

I hadn't heard of Fr. Jaki, but he sounds like quite a guy -- and this reference to Lost in the Cosmos as a novel caught my eye.

Korrektiv Now Offering Free Wi-Fi

From The YouTube Music Video Archives: People Got A Lotta Nerve by Neko Case

From her new CD, "Middle Cyclone", which is great - amazing, really.

So the saying says, "An elephant never forgets." / Standing in the concrete cage / Swaying sad and insane / They walked over the ocean in 5heir dreams they dream awake / Until the lights grew dim / until the cop cars came / Everybody tells me this is crazy / Yes, I know it / I'm a man, man, man, man, man, man eater / But still you're surprised-prised-prised when I eat ya / You know / They call them "killer" whales?! / But you seem surprised / When it pinned you down to the bottom of the tank / Where you can't turn around / It took half your leg, and both your lungs / "When I craved I ate hearts of sharks / I know you know it" / I'm a man, man, man, man, man, man eater / But still you're surprised-prised-prised when I eat ya / Yes, I'm a man, man, man / Man, man, man eater / But still you're surprised-prised-prised when I eat ya / It will end again in bullets, friend

"Miki" spells it out for us over at www.songmeaning.net:

I think the song's a little more abstract than actually being about wild animals... a maneater is basically "an irresistable woman who chews and spits out men after using them for some sort of gain -- be it sexual, financial or psychological." neko warned this guy that she's no good for him and yet he didn't listen and fell for her anyway. she has no apologies and points him to her previous warning. the "ending in bullets" is basically the harsh ending of the friendship/relationship.

More Moyo, Less Bono

Steyn on Bono's tax sheltering:

It’s Bono’s money, not theirs. And who’s to say, even if he did give it to the government, that they’d stick it in the mail to some Afro-Marxist kleptocrat as opposed to squandering it closer to home? I’m with the U2 lads on this: I think the caterwauling rockers know better how to spend their dough than the state does.

On Africa:

in 1950, what was then the Belgian Congo had a higher GDP per capita than either China or India. But today it’s literally the last place in the world you’d want to start a business. Well, okay, a big chunk of the Congo’s been a war-torn hellhole for the last decade. So what about, say, Guinea-Bissau? Starting a business there requires overcoming 17 government hurdles, takes 233 days and costs 257.7 per cent of income per capita. Which is why Bono can’t put his money where his mouth is.

On the "aristorockracy":

I love elderly rock stars—not for their “music,” which is mostly ghastly, but for their business acumen, which totally rocks. Sir Paul McCartney owns the publishing rights to Guys & Dolls. David Bowie was the first pop singer to hold a bond offering in his back catalogue and had $55 million worth of Bowie “Class A royalty-backed notes” snapped up in nothing flat after Moody’s gave them their much coveted triple-A rating. Madonna cleans up with a book of nude photographs featuring such unsettling sights as her naked bottom propped up like a novelty bike rest, and then decides to relaunch her literary career with some improving children’s stories, but, either way, is savvy enough to headquarter her business interests in the United States and United Kingdom.

Blogging Towards Damnation

Less and less of our information flow is devoted to gathering facts, and more and more is going toward popularizing opinion. Twenty-four-hour news channels have been replaced by 24-hour opinion channels. The chatter is the story.

Knotheads and Leftpapasanes

Who needs The New York Times any more, now that we have Yahoo News? Here are some highlights:

Miss California may have lost her shot at becoming Miss USA after expressing her opposition to same-sex marriage but she’s nevertheless emerged as a star. After getting booed by the beauty pageant crowd and berated by one of the contest judges Sunday, Carrie Prejean is suddenly a conservative sensation, a poster girl for the right who has bloggers, talk show hosts and Republican pols singing her praises. Prejean’s beauty contest saga began Sunday when competition judge and openly gay blogger Perez Hilton asked her if she supports gay marriage.

Hilton later said in a video on his blog that Prejean’s answer did not sink her chances of winning, though his disdain for her was unmistakable.

“She lost not because she doesn’t believe in gay marriage. Miss California lost because she is a dumb [expletive].”

The reaction among conservatives, who embraced Prejean as a martyr for the cause, was equally strong.

Prejean has taken full advantage of her newfound stardom, becoming an almost hourly fixture on cable news—and Donald Trump, the owner of the Miss USA contest, has also fuel the story by throwing his weight behind it in an effort to promote the pageant and himself. Trump is scheduled to appear on Fox News’s “O’Reilly Factor” Thursday night to discuss the controversy.

Conservative blogger Matt Lewis of Townhall.com concluded that Prejean seems destined to turn up on the campaign trail.

No doubt.

But this is a serious issue, is it not?

Should or should not people with same sex attraction enjoy the full fruits of citizenship as people with opposite sex attraction?

Where else should we see one of the central debates of our time played out, if not at the Miss USA pageant?

This cuts right to the heart of our idea of what it means to be a human being in a free society, does it not?

Public Discourse

Don't see this very often. In National Review's Corner, Charles Murray writes:

Here’s a novel experience. Kathryn Lopez called my attention to Greg Forster’s critique of my Kristol lecture here, wondering if I might want to respond. So I read it. And then read it again. And then thought about it some more. And here’s the novel part: I have nothing to say except, “Well, okay, I take your point.”

Deeply, morally satisfying.

Technology Tuesday

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work

Regarding the latest Anonymous post on "Very Interesting Non-Partisan Article on What the Fed Should Do Now"

Anonymous said...

"Non Partisan" Hmmm: "The Weekly Standard is a conservative American opinion magazine . . . Its current editors are founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes."

And Andy Kessler.. ? So-- The Nation is non-partisan too?

I was also surprised when I followed the link and found it was from the Weekly Standard. I was even more surprised when I read the article and saw that it was indeed fairly non-partisan. I write "fairly" because, as you (Anon) note, it does appear in a magazine that advertises its own conservative biases.

Still, while The Weekly Standard s certainly partisan, I don't think the article is. This may well be because I have my own ideological blinkers on, but I found Kessler's description of the problem with determining the money supply to be a straightforward account of how modern monetary policy works, what it evolved from, and the special challenges that face us in the future.

He does not advocate, for example, a return to the gold standard. And I would think there are readers of the Nation who would see the massive influx of cash into our economy as at least somewhat problematic.

So I'd say, yes, Anonymous has a point - the Weekly Standard is definitely a conservative magazine. But that doesn't mean that everything in it is necessarily so. I'd say that's true of The Nation as well.

However far over the falls the political discourse in this country has gone, I think there are still a few realities - facts - that conservatives and liberals can agree on. The WMD we expected to find in Iraq weren't there. There has been a large influx of money into the econonomy. The Coleman-Franken race is more about politics right now than counting ballots. There are probably a few more out there, but it might not be too much longer before anything that even appears to be simple, plain-as-day reality is vaporized in the heat of "debate".

Read Korrektiv and Fly Your Teacher to Alert, Canada One Way

Last year's "Fly Your Teacher to the Kerguelen Islands One Way" was a stunning success. This year's contest will feature the Northern Hemisphere.

Just submit the name of a worthy teacher in the comments section.

The lucky winner will be announced on June 7.

Korrektiv staff and their families are ineligible.

Very Interesting Non-Partisan Article on What the Fed Should Do Now

Food

Try some today.

Cute, but Poignant

...especially if you have daughters. Watch the slide show.

Champagne Right Away, Best Sheets on the Bed, Jonathan Webb Returns to Korrektiv!

From the YouTube Music Video Archives: Susan Boyle!

Heart-Shaped Tin

You take a piece of tin and hammer it
And then you bend it into shape and rub
Some heat into it--with a little spit--
Until it shines like Moses' mystic shrub.

You fold a sheet into a roof and let
The rain come down as diamonds from the sky,
As liquid pennies sent to pay the debt
Of days, as tap dancers who dance and cry.

We bend each other to the point of laughter
And listen to the music of our life
With tin ears tuned to happy ever after
As if we were the mythic man and wife.

A decade now we've worn each other's skin,
Receiving gifts of diamond hearts within.

-------------------

Mrs. McCain and I were married ten years ago on April 7. Sometimes we also celebrate the date according to the Christian calendar as the first Wednesday in Easter, which is today. Every year I write a sonnet for her, figuring there will be a nice little collection after 50 years or so. Since the first 10 anniversaries have traditional themes associated with them, I've tried to work those into the sonnets I've written over the past ten years. This year the traditional theme is Tin--with Diamonds as an alternative theme as well. Since we're too broke for real diamonds right now, I put some in the poem along with the tin. Poetic diamonds are cheap, but they might be even better than real ones for wooing a woman--even when that woman is your wife of ten years. At least that's what I'd like to believe. Dear Wife--I love you, forsaking all others, now and always. Thank you for marrying me and cheering me up all along the way for ten years running. What an adventure it's been--the ten best years of my life--and I do believe the next ten will be even better!

New Life!

Heartiest Kongratulations to the author of All Manner of Thing and his wife on the birth of their daughter, Iona Maria Scholastica Barthos Burrell, born last Tuesday. Being something of gyrovague Benedictine, I especially want to commend them for the choice of the name "Scholastica". Prayers of good will and glad tidings, are certainly welcome, I'm sure.

Many Blessings, Many More!

Dominick Dunne on Phil Specter

Phil Specter, producer of the Beatles' Let It Be and many other fine records, has been found guilty of murder. Dominick Dunne, Hollywood producer, celebrity journalist, novelist, and for all I know not a bad Catholic, wrote this account of the trial a few years ago. Here's my favorite passage:

So back to the men's room. During a break [in the trial], I made for it. It was empty except for one person standing at the center urinal, which was lower than the other two, as if for kids. It was Spector. He had opened his Edwardian frock coat for the business at hand, and it billowed out on each side, half blocking the other two urinals, rendering them unusable. I didn't have the nerve to ask him to move his coat and free up a urinal, and I also didn't really want to pee next to him, considering that he was on trial for murder just down the hall, and I was there to write about him. So I waited my turn in silence in the back by the sinks.

He took great care in rolling up his sleeves and elaborately soaping and scrubbing his hands in very hot water, the way I have seen germaphobes do after they've shaken hands. When he was drying his hands with a paper towel, he noticed me for the first time.

"Hi, Dominick," he said.

"Hi, Phil," I replied.

I found this by way of Mark Steyn (where else?!), who has an even funnier account of the whole messhere

New on Korrektiv...

Listening Tour II

Health care summit.

Captain Beefheart--Nowadays a Woman's Gotta Hit a Man

From the YouTube archives.

What About Pseudonymity? III

What follows is the conclusion of the famous essay "The First Person", by G.E.M. Anscombe. "Famous" in philosophy departments, anyway. I know Henri is a fan, and I think it was something along these lines that led me to consider (read: rationalize) the value of pseudonymity in the first place. That, and of course wanting to imitate Kierkegaard. That, and being a coward. Anyway ...

Suppose -- as is possible -- that there were no distinct first-person expression, no pronoun "I", not even any first-person inflection of verbs. Everyone uses his own name as we use "I". (Children sometimes do this.) Thus a man's own name takes the place of "I" in this supposed language. What then? Won't his own name still be a name? Surely it will! He will be using what is syntactically and semantically a name. That is, it is semantically a name in other people's mouths. But it will not be so in his mouth, it will not signify like a name in his utterances.

If I used "E.A." like that, and had no first-person inflections of verbs and no such word as "I", I should be in a difficulty to frame the proposition corresponding to my present proposition: "I am E.A." The nearest I could get would be, for example, "E.A. is the object E.A." That is, "E.A. is the object referred to by people who identify something as E.A."

There is a mistake that it is very easy to make here. It is that of supposing that the difference of self-consciousness, the difference I have tried to bring before your minds as that between "I"-users and "A"-users, is a private experience. That there is this asymmetry about "I": for the hearer or reader it is in principle no different from "A"; for the speaker or thinker, the "I"-saying subject, it is different. Now this is not so: the difference between "I"-users and "A"-users would be perceptible to observers. To bring this out, consider the following story from William James. James, who insisted (rightly, if I am right) that consciousness is quite distinct from self-consciousness, reproduces an instructive letter from a friend: "We were driving in a wagonette; the door flew open and X, alias 'Baldy', fell out on the road. We pulled up at once, and then he said 'Did anyone fall out?' or 'Who fell out?' -- I don't exactly remember the words. When told that Baldy fell out he said 'Did Baldy fall out? Poor Baldy!' "

lf we met people who were A-users and had no other way of speaking of themselves, we would notice it quite quickly, just as his companions noticed what was wrong with Baldy. It was not that he used his own name. That came afterwards. What instigated someone to give information to him in the form "Baldy fell out" was, I suppose, that his behaviour already showed the lapse of self-consciousness, as James called it. He had just fallen out of the carriage, he was conscious, and he had the idea that someone had fallen out of the carriage -- or he knew that someone had, but wondered who! That was the indication of how things were with him.

Even if they had spoken a language without the word "I", even if they had had one without any first-person inflexion, [1] but everybody used his own name in his expressions of self-consciousness, even so, Baldy's conduct would have had just the same significance. It wasn't that he used 'Baldy' and not "I" in what he said. It was that his thought of the happening, falling out of the carriage, was one for which he looked for a subject, his grasp of it one which required a subject. And that could be explained even if we didn't have "I" or distinct first-person inflexions. He did not have what I will call 'unmediated agent-or-patient conceptions of actions, happenings, and states'. These conceptions are subjectless. That is, they do not involve the connection of what is understood by a predicate with a distinctly conceived subject. The (deeply rooted) grammatical illusion of a subject is what generates all the errors which we have been considering.

Well, yes, I am inclined to say, this might be the case in a certain conative sense of things. But let us also admit that even if there is some truth to this sense of things, it can be used to provide cover for all sorts of bullshit. And more to the point, chickenshit.

Dylan on Obama

Walker Percy Short Story Discovered

The big break came when I turned to a folder in the archives labeled D:55 that had the too-good-to-be-true tab inscription in Percy's hand: "MISC—Save for book."

That's where the twenty-seven-page onionskin typescript of "A Detective Story" nestled behind pages of handwritten reading notes about Dostoevsky texts such as The Possessed and Notes from the Underground.

More

What About Pseudonymity? II

What About Pseudonymity?