This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that “bravely” trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.

True.  via Op-Ed Columnist – South Park – NYTimes.com.

Nevertheless, I read the paper for a reason… within its pages contain some of the most enjoyable and thought-provoking articles and ideas in printed media.  As I was looking through the February 6th issue, a particular article caught my eye–it was titled “Before I die”… and as I skimmed the subtitle I discovered that this article was actually written in 1938 by a 17 year old student by the name of N.J. Carpenter.  As I began to read his words, I could only help but think how wonderful it was that such an innocent mind could be so honest about life… how such a young person could have such a clear view of what really matters in life… and what does not… and perhaps most importantly, what constitutes a life well-lived.

I would hope copyright law would allow me to quote a short excerpt for the benefit of the reader.  He begins with an introduction:

It may seem very strange to the reader that one of my tender age should already be thinking about that inevitable end to which even the paths of glory lead. However, this essay is not really concerned with death, but rather with life, my future life. I have set down here the things which I, at this age, believe essential to happiness and complete enjoyment of life. Some of them will doubtless seem very odd to the reader; others will perhaps be completely in accord with his own wishes. At any rate, they compose a synopsis of the things which I sincerely desire to have done before I leave this world and pass on to the life hereafter or to oblivion…

He then talks about one of life’s most universal desires — the desire for love..

Before I die there is another great desire I must fulfill, and that is to have felt a truly great love…  [i know that] my life will not be complete until I have actually experienced that burning flame and know that I am at last in love, truly in love.  I want to feel that my whole heart and soul are set on one girl whom I wish to be a perfect angel in my eyes…  I know that when I am at last really in love then I will start living a different, better life, filled with new pleasures that I never knew existed…

And finally, and perhaps most amazingly, he desires to feel great sorrow… a telling admission that shows, in my opinion, a profound insight into the human heart…

It is my belief that, as in the case of love, no man has lived until he has felt sorrow.  It molds us and teaches us that there is a far deeper significance to life than might be supposed if one passed through this world forever happy and carefree.

I’m not sure if this is at all relevant, but it is perhaps for this reason that Jesus tells us on the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.”

Of all the things I have read this year… this piece is, without doubt, one of the most worthwhile… feel free to read the whole thing.

This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin
Tried to reach deep but you couldn’t get in
Now you’re outside me
You see all the beauty
Repent all your sin

It’s nothing but time and a face that you lose
I chose to feel it and you couldn’t choose
I’ll write you a postcard
I’ll send you the news

There’s one thing I want to say, so I’ll be brave
You were what I wanted
I gave what I gave
I’m not sorry I met you
I’m not sorry it’s over
I’m not sorry there’s nothing to say

His recent book, “America Alone, The End of the World as We Know It“, is really a book about demography, or, to be more precise: demographic decline in Europe, the rise of Islam in Europe,  and its consequences for both Europe and the United States.  I don’t think it is a stretch to say that Steyn is a student of Oriana Fallaci… its clear he has at least familiar with her book “The Force of Reason”… and draws on similar themes.  This isn’t to say that I am in full agreement with either author, but the parallels were immediately clear.  As Christopher Hitchens might say: there is something just a bit disconcerting about an obsession with the birth rates of any particular people group.

Nevertheless, even with a healthy skepticism of the practical limits of demographic study, I find that Steyn makes some rather persuasive arguments.  He first points out the dramatic, unsustainable birth rates in most of Europe: Ireland is in first with 1.9 children per woman; Canada only has 1.5; Germany and Austria are at 1.3; Russia and Italy, 1.2; and Spain, 1.1.  When the replacement level is 2.1 children per woman, I think it goes without saying that this poses serious problems for Europe’s future.  As Steyn points out:

By 2050, Italy’s population will have fallen by 22 percent, Bulgaria’s by 36 percent, Estonia’s by 52 percent–or more… In theory, those countries will find their population halving every thirty-five years or so.  In practice, it will be quicker than that, as the savvier youngsters figure there’s no point sticking around a country that’s turned into an undertaker’s waiting room.  Not every pimply burger flipper wants to support entire old folks’ homes single-handed…

One of the things Steyn tries to accomplish in this book is to explain WHY these countries are in free-fall.  The primary culprit?  European Social-Welfare systems.  It turns out that when you live in a social-welfare system… where all responsibilities of adult life are subcontracted to the state… there is very little incentive to actually grow up:

The real issue, though, is not whether you like Euro-statism.  Regardless of how you feel about it, it’s kaput.  The un-American activities in which Europe has invested its identity are deeply self-destructive.  Secondary-impulse states can be very agreeable–who wouldn’t want to live in a world where the burning political priorities are government subsidized care, the celebration of one’s sexual appetites, and whether mandatory paid vacation should be six or eight weeks?  But they’re agreeable only for the generation or two they last.  And, as we’re about to see in demographically barren, economically ossified Europe, for good or ill it’s the primal impulses that count. Europe’s belief that you can smooth off the rough edges of Anglo-American capitalism and still remain wealthy has trapped it in societal structures predicated on false arithmetic whose disastrous consequences can’t be postponed much longer.  Unchecked, government social programs are a security threat because they weaken the ultimate line of defense:  the free-born citizen whose responsibilities are not subcontracted to the Government.

This raises the obvious question: from what does Europe need to defend itself against?  Well, nothing… YET.  But behind the rather peaceful facade of modern politics, Steyn sees very troubling signs of a culture war in the making: a war between western, enlightened values, and 7th century values of radical Islam.  And to a certain degree, that makes sense: if Europeans are dying off… and Islamic couples in Europe are vastly out-producing European couples (he claims the birth rate for muslim women in the EU is 3.5 children) than it is quite forseeable that the majority of the French or Germans could be Muslim at some point in the future.  And perhaps it is at this point where I am the most critical of the book:  Steyn doesn’t provide any citations for these figures… and does not address the great difficulties in calculating these figures… so we have no idea whether his figures are on the high or low end of the spectrum.  It is often frustrating to simply “take his word for it”.

But lets assume that Steyn is right and that the muslim birth rate is far higher than that of western women.  SO WHAT!?  What’s so bad about a religion of peace?  Most Muslims don’t buy the whole “jihad” thing, right?  Well, Steyn doesn’t buy this argument:

[I]slam is not just a religion.  Those lefties who bemoan what America is doing to provoke “the Muslim world” would go bananas if any Western politician started referring to “the Christian world.”  When such sensitive guardians of the separation of church and state endorse the first formulation but not the second, they implicitly accept that Islam has a political sovereignty too….

So it’s not merely that there’s a global jihad lurking within this religion, but that the religion itself is a political project…

And not only is Islam a political project, but Europe is the perfect petri-dish for its growth:

While its not true that every immigrant on welfare is an Islamic terrorist the vast majority of Islamic terrorists in Europe are on welfare, living in radicalized ghetto cultures with nothing to do but sit around the flat plotting the jihad all day at taxpayer’s expense…

Abu Qatada, a leading al Qaeda recruiter, became an Islamist big shot while on welfare in Britian, and only when he was discovered to have £150,000 in his bank account did the Department for Work and Pensions turn off the spigot

This notion of a “nanny-state” seems to be a central component of Steyn’s argument throught the book: with it, society crumbles, without it, society becomes stronger.  In fact, in the last chapter of the book, Steyn is rather critical of the American slide into dependency.  The more responsibilities we turn over to the State, the less able we are to fend for ourselves:

[T]he only reason “a box-cutter can bring down a tower” is because on September 11 our defenses against such a threat were exclusively the province of the state. If nineteen punks with box-cutters had tried to pull some stunt in the parking lot of a sports bar, they’d have been beaten to a pulp.  The airline cabin, however, is the most advanced model of the modern social-democratic state, the ski-high versions of the wildest dreams of big government… So on September 11 on those first three flights the cabin crews followed all those Federal Aviation Administration guidelines from the seventies.  By the time the fourth plane got into trouble, the passengers knew the government wasn’t up there with them.  And, within ninety minutes of the first flight hitting the tower, the heroes of Flight 93  had figured out what was going on and came up with a way to stop it.  That’s been my basic rule of thumb since September 11:  anything that shifts power from the individual judgment of free citizens to government is a bad thing, not just for the war on terror but for the national character in a more general sense.

There is obviously much more in his book, I merely hit the major points.  While I think many perceive the book as anti-Islamic, I think it perhaps better to say the book is a warning to the West… a warning against complacency and dependency.

Francis Schaeffer has been, for most of my adult life, a person of considerable interest.  As a curious teen, Schaeffer introduced me to the world of reformed theology and the provided reasonable explanations to the often challenging doctrines of predestination and grace.  Even apart from his theological ideas, Schaeffer had a gift for communication; his writing is substantive yet very approachable and his various speeches are indicative of an Oxford education.  One cannot help but be reminded of CS Lewis when reading Schaeffer — their style, intellectual capacity, and heart for the Lord seem to me very similar.

Each of these traits and impressions have left me with a certain fondness for his writing.  On somewhat of a whim, I have decided to re-read through many of his books I rushed through as a high-school student and have long since forgotten.

The first of these books — or in this case a small pamphlet titled “Art & The Bible” — is an overview of Schaeffer’s understanding of Art and it’s place in the Christian worldview.  The entire first half of the book is essentially a recitation of all the references to art in the Old Testament.  Shaeffer systematically points out that much of the art God commanded of the Israelites was for purely asthetic purposes.  Schaeffer references certain elements of the Temple in particular:

Then in verses 16 and 17 [of 2 Chron 3:7]we read, “And he made chains in the oracle, and put them on the tops of the pillar; and set the pillars before the temple, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.”  Here are two free-standing collumns.  They supported no architectural weight and had no utilitarian engineering significance. They were there only because God said they should be there as a thing of beauty.

I think Shaeffer’s point here is that even in the Old Testament, God was ‘sanctifying’ “Secular art”.  Schaeffer is careful not equate “secular” art with”sacred” art, but he is very clear that art need not be sacred to have value.

After having established that secular art can be pleasing and acceptable to God (in fact, Shaeffer goes as far as to say that a work of art is “a doxology in itself”), Schaeffer then begins to establish a framework with which Christians should approach art.  His first approach: Art as Art.

You see, for Schaeffer, art has a certain intrinsic value; its worth is in the fact that it is a product of creativity and that creative impulse mirrors the character of God:

As a Christian we know why a work of art has value.  Why?  First, because a work of art is a work of creativity, and creativity has value because God is the Creator.  The first sentence in the Bible is the declaration that the Creator created… so too the first words of the prologue of the Gospel of John…

He continues:

…[I]t is part of the image of God to be creative, or to have creativity…  All people are to some degree creative.  Creativity is intrinsic to our manishness.

Schaeffer’s next framework has to do with art as worldview.  He posits that a person’s ideas are inexorably linked to their worldview (although he seems to make a certain exception for purely abstract art).  Schaeffer explains that all art uses a certain language or vocabulary that is universally understood… in many cases, the created world we In some cases this “subtext” or implicit communication is sometimes more powerful than the image itself:

When Giacometti pictures the awful alienation of man, he makes figures which are alienated, but he is still living in God’s world and is still using the common symbolic forms no matter how he distorts them.  He plays with the vocabulary, but the vocabulary is still there.  So there is a communication between Giacometti and me, a titanic communication. I can understand what he is saying and I cry.

One wonders if we all would have such strong reactions if we really understood the ‘language’ the artists are speaking.  Music has certainly had this effect on me, and perhaps art could as well if I had the training.  I suppose there is a reason we build massive monuments to house, display, and protect art… it is perhaps the purest form of communication — and therefore the most valuable.

Interestingly, Schaeffer is not at all hesitant to make astetic value judgments as to the quality and value of a particular work of art.  In fact, he puts forth several criterion by which we should judge a work of art: 1) technical excellence, 2) validity, 3) intellectual content, and 4) the integration of content and vehicle.

Technical excellence is an objective inquiry and I will not elaborate on it here.  Validity, on the other hand, is worth explaining.  To Schaeffer, a work is valid if the work in question is a natural outflow of an artists own creative ideas and philosophy.  In other words, it is valid if it is representative of an artist’s OWN creative impulse.  According to Schaeffer, “commercial art would” would be an example of art lacking in validity.  Unlike ‘pure’ art, commercial art does not require an artists’ worldview to be incorporated in the work and therefore, the work lacks the same ‘power’ it otherwise might have.  Now, I must say I’m not entirely sure I agree with Schaeffer on this point:  Whether or not the artist’s own ideas come through does not mean that there is not the communication of a worldview.  I would at least argue that a work of commercial art could communicate any philosophy to any viewer with as much effect as the artists may himself be capable of.  These creative impulses and their relation to the message is certainly an interesting aspect of the creative process, but I am not convinced on the basis of Schaeffer’s argument that there is an objective difference between the communication in each instance.

Next, Schaeffer explains how a work’s intellectual content is to be addressed:

If we stand as Christians before a man’s canvas and recognize that he is a great artist in technical excellence and validity — if in fact he is — … then we can say that his worldview is wrong.  We can judge this view on the same basis we judge the views of anybody else…

The ability to objectively assess art is pivotal for Schaeffer because he recognizes the communicative power of art – especially art meeting the aforementioned criteria.  Schaeffer recognizes that when art communicates moral principles contrary to those of scripture, these principles must be addressed from a Christian worldview:

We should realize that if something untrue or immoral is stated in great art it can be far more destructive and devastating than if it is expressed in poor art or prosaic statement.  Much of the crude art, the common product of hippie communities and the underground press, is laden with destructive messages, but the art is so poor that it does not have much force.  But the greater the artistic expression, the more important it is to consciously bring it and its worldview under the judgment of Christ and the Bible.

Finally, Schaeffer distinguishes technical excellence and message from style.  To Schaeffer, “there is no such thing as a godly syle or an ungodly style”.  In fact, he sees the use of modern style as an imperative for the Christian artist.  He is very explicit on this point:

Christian art today should be twentieth-ctentury art.  Art changes, Language changes… [I]f a Christian’s art is not twentieth-century art, it is an obstacle to his being heard. It makes him different in a way in which there is no necessity for difference.

But Schaeffer is careful to provide one important guideline:

“we must use twentieth-century styles [but] must not use them in such a way as to be donimated by the world views out of which they have arisen.

This is a really interesting thought, but I cannot help but to read it without some degree of criticism.  Is a piece of art valueable only because of its message?  Schaeffer himself says that art has value as aesthetic expression alone… would it then be inappropriate for a Christian to paint a still-life with techniques popularized in the 1800′s? — styles which are still displayed in museums to this very day?  Perhaps Schaeffer means to imply that art created with the purpose of communicating a christian worldview should be expressed in a manner designed to be as clear as possible to its audience… and purely aesthetic art need not meet the same criteria.

Schaeffer presents an interesting and helpful introduction to art from a Christian perspective.  Short enough to be finished in a day, it is certainly worth your time should you want to broaden your framework on Christ and the arts.

Monica Crowley has found a useful analogy to explain just how out of touch congressional democrat leadership has become on the health care debate.  What’s the analogy, you ask:  Marie Antoinette (portrayed beautifully by Kirsten Dunst in her recent film) and the French Revolution.  Now, you may laugh, but I think in a limited sense, this analogy helps one understand not only the enormity of Washington’s foe-paw, but also the level to which the American public is angry… and we are REALLY ANGRY.  Here is just a snipped from Monica’s article:

Democrats’ “Let Them Eat Cake” Moment No. 1: This week, Mrs. Pelosi and her deputy, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, wrote an op-ed in which they called everyone who opposes their plan for socialized medicine “un-American.”…

Earth to Democrats: Displaying contempt for the American people when you are being paid by those people to serve their interests is generally not a good political move.

Democrats’ “Let Them Eat Cake” Moment No. 2: This week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the deficit grew by $181 billion in July alone, to $1.3 trillion. The massive spending, bailouts and collapsing tax receipts (individual tax receipts fell by 22 percent and corporate tax receipts fell by a staggering 57 percent) have led Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to ask Congress to raise the $12.1 trillion debt limit, so the government can spend and borrow even more.

If you were rational, you would see in these numbers an impetus to restrain spending. But among Democrats, such rationality doesn’t exist….

Democrats’ “Let Them Eat Cake” Moment No. 3: Mrs. Pelosi and her gang used the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill to sneak in funding for three luxury jets for their personal transport. Total projected cost to you: hundreds of millions. These are the same people who profess a love of the environment, a desire to minimize America’s carbon footprint, and concern about spending.

To put Marie Antoinette’s phrase in a more popular vernacular, it might sound something like this:

“let them pop a pain pill”.

Here are but a few of my favorite definitions:

ABSTAINER, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

ACCIDENT, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.

ACQUAINTANCE, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

CONGRATULATION, n. The civility of envy.

CONNOISSEUR, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.

DECIDE, v.i. To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over another set.

DICTATOR, n. The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of despotism to the plague of anarchy.

ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.

INDISCRETION, n. The guilt of woman.

INFLUENCE, n. In politics, a visionary quo given in exchange for a substantial quid.

INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.

JUSTICE, n. A commodity which is a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.

KORAN, n. A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.

NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.

NON-COMBATANT, n. A dead Quaker.

OCEAN, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills.

OWE, v. To have (and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession; it meant “own,” and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and liabilities.

PLAGIARISM, n. A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable priority and an honorable subsequence.

PLAGIARIZE, v. To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read.

POLITENESS, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.

PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

RESOLUTE, adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve.

via The Devil’s Dictionary (by Ambrose Bierce).

If you haven’t yet experienced the comic genius that is Arrested Development… let me make it just a little easier for you:

Being the good friend that I am, I thought some illumination was necessary. I proceeded to explain to her that:

What’s wrong with certain books being banned by library staff anyway? Surely even YOU would ban certain books if you were a librarian… for example, I doubt you would get a hustler subscription for your local library…

Librarians MAKE EDITORIAL SELECTIONS TO THEIR BOOK CATALOG ALL THE TIME. That’s why you have any given book in your library is BECAUSE of a conscious choice to PUT IT THERE.

This obviously was not convincing enough for her as she proceeded to say:

What the hell do you mean? Please tell me which power enumerated in the Constitution of the US or in Alaska’s laws give that idiot that right to ban books… I’d love to see Sarah Palin even begin to comprehend a casebook, lmao!!! She can’t handle children’s books in the local library, without getting offended. What a simple minded fool.

Banning books, wanting to teach a non science like creationism in schools, knowing nothing about how the constitution or goverment works, time and time again showing that she thinks she can be the arbiter of values for people who have the right to choose those things for themselves, I consider that i huge fuc**ng issue.

But I guess that’s why I’m a libertarian Joel, I believe in freedom, and people’s right to choose for themselves, and not have some half wit poorly educated blow hard tell me what I can or can’t do.

I’m sure you are getting the picture here; my logic didn’t make a dent. But, being the good friend I am, I concluded I just hadn’t explained it clearly enough:

libraries are not protected by the first amendment you IDOT. People are. Go ahead… explain to me how the constitution prohibits taxpayers from voicing their opinions about how their tax dollars are spent… LIBRARIES do not have first amendment rights!!!!!

Freedom of expression isn’t at issue here. Local communities can decide what they want in their library and what they DON’T want. Why is Palin unable to voice her opinion about what is in her community’s libraries??? Why should HER OPINION about this be stifled? You want to talk about stifling… let’s talk about the assumption SHE CAN’T GIVE HER INPUT. This is Orwellian doublespeak here.

[T]his whole thing is basically an argument that non-religious people are better-suited to decide what we should be learning at our local library than religious people. This is al basically just an attack on Christians and christian beliefs…

This was about as much as I could take. After a few more exchanges of (mostly) personal attacks, I felt my time would be better spent on other things).

However, just yesterday an article appeared in the American Thinker that really drew my attention back to this discussion. The author takes a somewhat different angle on this whole “book banning” issue and, from my point of view, lays it to rest.

Among the many accusations against Sarah Palin was that she banned books. Though debunked, that charge highlights a deeper issue, which is Rule By the Discreet Elite. In this case the Elite is librarians, yet another group credentialed by left-leaning institutions…

When a mayor or parent or just anyone in the community tries to do such a thing, it is called censorship, book-banning or book-burning. When a librarian does it, it is called “selection.”

If a book is removed from a public library, it is not “banned,” it is simply not provided free of charge at taxpayer expense. And if a book is not even removed from the library, but merely taken off its prominent display shelf, it is not banned or censored at all, it is simply not promoted by your local government.

But let’s get back to considering the stocking of public libraries with books. The Library of Congress has about 21 million catalogued books…. That means that just about any library you or your child uses has less than 0.1% of all books in it. Someone must have censored 99.9% of them!

When you choose what books go into a library, you are also choosing what books will not go into that library, since you simply can’t fit them all in. So why are librarians considered the one and only ones who can make such decisions? Concerned citizens can’t. Parents of children who use the school library can’t… That’s censorship. But librarians not only do it, they do it every day. It’s considered their job.

The real question is not which books should be stocked and not stocked at your local library, but who decides.

At the end of the blog fight, my friend tried pinning me with the question: “So is it okay to ban then or not? YES OR NO? Answer the question Joel!!” — to which my response is, well, I think local communities should decide which books to carry and vise-versa. I think that an institution that survives solely by the taxpayer expense should reflect the taxpayer’s values. Libraries SHOULD NOT be used as a tool by which an elite who think they “know better” about what children should be reading to force their ideas and values on to the community as a whole. My friend’s solution to this problem is “don’t fuc***g read [the book]“. While this is certainly a rational solution, it pre-supposes that the book SHOULD be there in the first place! This is a self-contradictory argument and therefore unacceptable. One cannot logically criticize one person for demanding something be pulled while simultaneously demanding it be shelved. It is a clever trick, but in the end, it is no better of an argument. Face it Priscilla, you lost this round!

new jquery project, originally uploaded by jrossol.

so… havent’ been blogging in a while…. well… there is a GOOD REASON. Just finished teaching myself some basic jquery so I can be more marketable as a web developer. FUN STUFF.  Basically, I built an interactive library of ALL the music I own so people can take a look at what I like, read my reviews… etc.  I used a very powerful yet surprisingly simple-to-use javascript library called jquery, and also implemented some asynchronous database calls that populate the meta-data without requiring a page refresh.  It’s still a work in progress, but I’m excited about its potential.  I will continue to update it with more cd’s, better effects, and more of MY OWN reviews (not the stock Amazon filler that’s currently there).  I’m probably breaking some copyright by doing this but what the hey… FAIR USE!

Check it out @ http://www.blogstitution.com/CD/index.php.  Click on an album to see the effects.

*** YOU will NEED safari or Firefox 3… or else you will have rendering problems.