Thursday, June 24th, 2004
Note to Readers: I will be off-line for awhile. My blog will not be updated for a few days.
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Archive for June, 2004
Appalachia Revisited
Thursday, June 24th, 2004Taking Another Look at the Hatfields and McCoys
If America has ever had a non-pluralistic culture, it was Appalachia in the nineteenth century before the coal mining started: Poor, backward, an area left behind by the increasing industrialization of America, its denizens isolated from the increasing influence of America’s mass media.
It was here that the shooting [...]
Elvis, the Colonel, and Me
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2004Excerpt
It was also the anniversary date of the release of Elvis’s first number one hit, “Heartbreak Hotel,” so we talked about Elvis.
All of us are fans. Gotta be. We were in middle school when Elvis died, and every cultural event that happens when you’re in middle school get branded on your brain as significant. [...]
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2004
“Social changes which propel dubious characters in great numbers into ruling positions make the political environment unlivable for well-bred men with some self-respect.”
Eric Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, 288-289.
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Monday, June 21st, 2004
Orestes Brownson’s Conversion
When Brownson started taking concrete steps toward Rome, it was philosophy that paved the road. His was a philosophical conversion, Rome via Athens, though he would later emphasize that no mental process can ever produce a convert unless grace is also at work (philosophy can remove the intellectual barriers, he would explain, but [...]
Sunday, June 20th, 2004
“The man who can wholeheartedly believe that all things are created by God and that God does not create evil, is freed from many burdens, and one of them is fear.” Paul Gallico, writing about St. Francis of Assisi.
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Saturday, June 19th, 2004
Laughter is the mind sneezing. Wyndham Lewis
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Saturday, June 19th, 2004
Prophet McLuhan on the World Series of Poker’s Popularity
“Poker is a game that has often been cited as the expression of all the complex attitudes and unspoken values of a competitive society. It calls for shrewdness, aggression, trickery, and unflattering appraisals of character. . . Poker is intensely individualistic, allowing no place for kindness or [...]
Saturday, June 19th, 2004
“If I had to single out one piece of writing which was more responsible than anything else for my becoming a Catholic, it would that essay of Kierkegaard’s.”
Walker Percy, referring to Kierkegaard’s essay on “The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle.”
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Saturday, June 19th, 2004
Some Education from Henry Adams
The “profoundest lessons are not the lessons of reason; they are sudden strains that permanently warp the mind.”
“The habit of expression leads to the search for something to express.”
“Friends are born, not made.”
“A friend in power is a friend lost.”
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Friday, June 18th, 2004
Books I recommend to young adults
James Schall, Another Sort of Learning. Read this while you’re still in college. Its primary value rests in the writers Schall introduces (the lists of books in the back of each chapter are excellent).
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. All of Lewis’ books should be read, but I highly suggest this [...]
Thursday, June 17th, 2004
“Christians should be the salt, not the syrup, of the earth.” Georges Bernanos
“What matters is not what ideas do to men but what men do to their ideas; how and when they choose them, and how and why they accommodate them to their own wishes, interests, lives, circumstances.” John Lukacs
“There are evil men who would [...]