There isn’t alot to say about Jarman’s “Book of Poisonous Quotes”… other than it is a great resource to guarantee you have a witty remark for almost any occasion.  Fortunately, I’ve been keeping track of my favorites and wanted to share them all with you:

On Critics:

• I love criticism just so long as it’s unqualified praise. – Noel Coward
• Any fool can criticize, and many of them do. – C. Garbett
• Critics are probably more prone to cliches than fiction writers who pluck things out of the air. – Penelope Gilliatt
• Criticism is prejudice made plausible – H.L. Mencken

On the Creative Arts / Fashion:

• Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them. – Bill Vaughan
• On Miniskirts – Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly.  – Sir Cecil Beaton
• A Dress has no purpose unless it makes a man want to take it off. – Francoise Sagan
• If you have to talk about fashion, then you are not in it – Michaele Vollbracht.
• There will be little change in men’s pockets this year. – Wall Street Journal (1948)

On Modern Art:

• Modern art is when you buy a picture to cover a hole in the wall and then decide the hole looks much better.
• the more minimal the art the more maximum the explanation.
• How vain painting is — we admire the realistic depiction of objects which in their original state we don’t admire at all – Blaise Pascal
• Everyone wants to understand painting.  Why don’t they try to understand the singing of the birds?  People love the night, a flower, everything which surrounds them without trying to understand them.  But painting — that they must understand. – Pablo Picasso
• This is either a forgery or a damn clever original – Frank Sullivan

On Literature:

• There is one good kind of writer — a dead one.  – James T. Farrell.
• Literature is mostly about having sex, and not much about having babies;  life is the other way round. - David Lodge
• An optimist is one who believes everything he reads on the jacket of a new book.

On Drama / Plays:

• I don’t like propaganda in the theater unless it is disguised so brilliantly that the audience mistakes it for entertainment. - Noel Coward
• Opening night is the night before the play is ready to open – George Jean Nathan
• A playwright is a lay preacher peddling the ideas of his time in popular form – August Strindberg.

On Film / Acting:

• The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder. – Alfred Hitchcock
• The words “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of the movies. – Pauline Kael
• Hollywood – a town that has to be seen to be disbelieved – Walter Winchell
• A celebrity is a person whose name is in everything except the phone directory
• A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well-known, and then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized. - Fred Allen

On the Media:

• Newspaper strikes are a relief – Princess Anne
• Journalism is the only job that requires no degrees, no diplomas, and no specialized knowledge of any kind. – Patrick Campbell
• People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with the news. – A.J. Liebling
• Freedom of the press is guaranteed to those who own one. - A.J. Liebling
• If you read alot of books, you’re considered well read.  But if you watch a lot of TV, you’re not considered well viewed.

On Politics:

• Politics is the conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
• If God had been a Liberal, we wouldn’t have the Ten Commandments — We’d have the Ten Suggestions – Malcom Bradbury
• What the liberal really wants is to bring about change which will not in any way endanger his position. – Stokely Carmichael.
• Fascism is Capitalism in decay – Nikolai Lenin
• Congress is so strange.  A man gets up to speak and says nothing.  Nobody listens — and then everybody disagrees. – Boris Marshalov

On the Sexes:

• What men desire is a virgin who is a whore - Edward Dahlberg
• A woman reading ‘Playboy’ feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual – Gloria Steinem

One of the major benefits of being done with lawschool and the bar exam is that I finally get to read — not what I HAVE to read — but what I WANT to read.  This disconnect has been going on for so long now that I have (literally) 10 books in a stack just waiting for me to read.

The first of these books is called “The Quest for Cosmic Justice” by Thomas Sowell.  Described by David Mammet (screenwriter, playright, director) as “Our greatest living philosopher”, Sowell certainly challenges all who read him and is exacerbates those who don’t.  His book explores the causes of (and failures that result from) a vision of justice held by many on the left — a vision dominated by what Sowell refers to as a pursuit “cosmic” (as opposed to traditional)  justice.  Cosmic, in this instance, refers to a desire to rectify inherent or “natural” inequalities. Sowell puts it this way:

Traditional justice can be mass-produced by impersonal prospective rules governing the interactions of flesh-and-blood human beings, but cosmic injustice must be hand-made by holders of power who impose their own decisions on how these flesh-and-blood individuals should be categorized into abstractions and how these abstractions should then be forcibly configured.

For Sowell, these inequalities are not necessarily desirable, but are realities caused by far more complicated circumstances than any politician can fully understand — or fully prepare for.  Sowell points to scores of examples including welfare, poverty, usually made worse by the policies of the self-appointed elite.

We must begin with the universe that we are born into and weigh the costs of making any specific change in it to achieve a specific end.  We cannot simply “do something” whenever we are morally indignant, while distaining to consider the costs entailed…

What, after all, is an injustice but the arbitrary imposition of a cost– whether economic, psychic, or other–on an innocent person?  And if correcting this injustice imposes another arbitrary cost on another innocent person, is that not also an injustice?

As soon as one starts asking whether the costs to one segment of society outweigh the costs to another segment, the process of creating “cosmic justice” becomes nothing more than a crude balancing of the equities, a fight for federal dollars — a corrupting process that almost never provides real relief.  In fact, the pursuit of social justice is not necessarily even an appropriate term:

In pursuit of justice for a segment of society, in disregard for society as a whole, what is called “social justice” might more accurately be called anti-social justice, since what consistently gets ignored or dismissed are precisely the costs to society.

The Quest for Cosmic Justice is not a learned treatice by any stretch of the imagination, it is in many ways a series of simple explanations about why social justice fails… and how we should approach issues of inequity instead of an analysis OF inequity.  Even so, I think what is so important about the book is the categorical framework Sowell suggests: Social justice is really anti-social justice, cosmic justice has nothing to do with “justice” at all but is instead the re-distribution of wealth to fix natural inequalities.  Conservative need to start approaching the world through the filter of these concepts… and hopefully we will convince others to do the same.

As I was researching a previous post, I came across a number of interesting blog posts and interviews I found quite interesting. In particular, I wanted to bring your attention to a great interview with my favorite liberal feminist, Naomi Wolf, author of the infamous “a room of ones own” (and the subject of possibly the best television prank in the last year). She is promoting her new book “The End of America” –a book that lays out the ‘Ten Steps to Closing Down an Open Society’ and “exposes” the ways in which America is mirroring the closed societies of history.

Allow me to begin this discussion by first complimenting Ms. Wolf. First, she just looked great during that interview. I was all about that red thing she was wearing (but I digress!). In all seriousness, I think this book is a valuable addition to the discussion and brings an important (albeit selective) historical context to modern politics. At the risk of cliche, I would remind you that those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. By reminding us of the evils of history Ms Wolf is, shockingly enough, being helpful… and I wish to encourage this kind of behavior.

This being said, I think it is fair to say that Ms Wolf’s conclusions are lacking… in any number of ways. It isn’t that she is always wrong, but that her foundational history is in many cases only loosely connected with modern practice. She begins with an assumption of guilt (primarily with the Bush administration… many times implying he is a ‘wannabe’ despot), finds similar parallels to dictators with completely different motivations and purposes, and then imputes those motives to Bush because factual circumstances were the same. Although a stretch, in some cases I found myself thinking that if two people washed their laundry, that would be enough for her to draw a comparison. I am, of course, exaggerating; but I do so to point out that to end one’s analysis at factual similarities without further analysis can lead to very irrational conclusions.

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I just finished a book by Dinesh D’souza titled “What’s so great about Christianity”.  I do not exaggerate when I say that D’souza is in the “Buckley” mold–his grasp of philosophy, history, and the sciences firmly establish him as a “renaissance man” (my kind of guy).  Throughout the pages of his book, he challenges and (in many cases ‘destroys’) the arguments and accusations Athiests such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have made against the belief in Christ.  

The book’s basic outline is well constructed.  First, D’souza systematically questions many of the “new Athiesm’s” presuppositions about Christianity.  He points out that Christianity, far from causing the moral tragedies of the modern world… has, in fact, been the changing force that helped overcome these very moral travesties.  For example, Christianity lifted women out of the second-class status Roman society had imposed upon them; it was the impetus for the great artists of our time: Michalengelo, Da Vinchi, Mozart, Bach, Handel… etc… ; it helped create the concept of western government — a concept based around the Christian principle that society must fight against the inherent sinful nature of man and must keep leader’s actions in check.  These are but a few of Christianity’s contributions to world history…  

D’souza then calls Athiesm out — asking it to provide the same answers it chides Christianity for failing to answer.  When tragedy happens, Where is Atheism?  Atheism cannot console the victims of tradgey… nor can it condemn the aggressor.  When Athiest rulers murder millions of their subjects… where is Athiesm’s defense (or apology?).  When Athiesm claims rationality as their trump card… on what basis can they claim that rationality alone provides all answers?  For all it’s proponents, Athiesm still has much to account for.

What’s So Great About Christianity may be the best piece of Christian apologetics in the past decade;  don’t pass it up!