tree

A world outside consciousness exists only within it.

words I rarely need

Turret.

Stonewall

Get off my back! says the Americans.

today

The fundamental (although in practice usually not the most salient) reason for a compound form of government can be simply put:  ordinary people, particularly en masse, are unfit to rule, yet only the people have legitimacy to rule and can do so safely.

Practically speaking, as I say, there are more salient reasons for compound government in practice: anti-corruption, extensibility, and so on.

squint

One of the odder self-delusions is that of those who traffic in vice with the notion that they will have less competition - because of ubiquitous virtue.

dude

Adventures in advanced homosexuality: two homosexual males establishing a social friendship by straight means, that is, a bromance.  Layers of presentation cast in the role of peeling some back.

the stuff one dreams of

Says Brooks today, of one future possibility: "Alternatively, insiders like the Simpson-Bowles commission or the Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Six” could assert authority and recreate a strong centrist political establishment, such as the nation enjoyed in the 1950s."  If only.

hearth god

A fine young fellow, who's talking to me about school, with an eye towards his career to follow, asks: "Am I Corporate enough?"  He asks it with enough intensity and sincerity to suggest a willingness to set up a secret alter to Goldman Sachs in his bedroom.  Naturally I tell him it's the wrong question.  But the need in that question, and the object of that need!  This is humankind.

demos

In politics and economics, sooner or later, the solution becomes the problem.  Sooner, if the solution is left absolute, due to its inflexibility in the face of variation.  Later, if the solution is elaborated, because of it encumbrances.

Why in politics and economics and not other domains?  Because these are social domains and and social solutions either are or involve incentives, and in social domains, incentives deracinate people, and people, when uprooted, behave more crassly - more like deterministic masses and less like romantic individuals.  That's why the problem of the romantic individual - in novels or in life - is the social trap.  A rooted person feels trapped.  And that's why the problem of the uprooted person (what we like to call a free person) is alienation.

anything goes

Last night I saw a big song and dance number, well done, big cast, great song, beautiful voices.  And tap dancing - this is a sound that doesn't survive reproduction.  It is thrilling, and the big number last night took up maybe 10 minutes - nearly overwhelming.  What a sound!  What excitement!  And all the more exciting for carrying no message whatever, but only physical happiness, shared by a house of people thrilling to it, thinking this is really something.  And I say - it was!  Hot damn!

speaker

The lawyer uses language to create or eliminate, to clarify or obscure.  Little else. (And what little else there is comes either as a consequence of the language work or else from being a trustable agent.)  But of course the agency is largely that of language itself, incarnate.  If the title were not already in use for a cousin position, we might well call a lawyers a Speaker.

a to a

There is something wonderful in the transformation of letters from cursive to print - to say nothing of the range of variations in each of those two means of fixing a letter onto a page.

apprentice

Excessive democracy is mere populism, and an evil equal to most other "mere" political structures.

seasonable

Even a well-meaning movement may be, on balance, destructive and negative, and generally is if it is not patiently developed.  A prematurely rampant force, even when virtuous, is not desirable.

great moments in long words

Wherewithal.

Bonneville

The soul of America has come to be Salt Lake City.  For a time.  For this time.  This troubles me less, and somehow heartens me more, than perhaps it ought.

a poor patch

How I miss hymns.  Not only to sing them, but to have that field of action for language.  Words, sentences, lost to me.  Entire expressive structures, lost.  Yearning, tender neediness and reliance, great reverence, adoration of mystery - all lost.  Without religion, even apart from the loss of faith, simply for lack of religion alone, I am lame, as the cost of being more true.

Nobody can have it all.  Even the poorer reaches of religious language is rich: I cannot hear Immortal, Invisible God, Only Wise, or I Need Thee Every Hour without feeling the loss.

look upon justice

I have extraordinary respect for American courts as repositories of significant and necessary powers, and as careful, able users of that power.

But I have no special respect for American courts as determiners of what is right, or even of what properly is to be determined given a textual authority.  In determinations, a court is only so much better than equally intellegent and disinterested men as practice and careful briefing by lawyers may make it.

The important thing is to understand that courts are more than determiners of outcomes - they do not just call balls and strikes.  They are repositories of awesome power over you, over me, overall.  And in that capacity, they are wonderfully effective and deserving of profound respect.

border patrol

There is such a thing as military skiing.

or?

From one perspective, the last near-two hundred years have been little the digestion, by human consciousness, of Darwin.  And from another, Darwin hardly matters.  That perspective can color-shift history so completely is telling.

elementary

A simple virtue of virtue is invulnerability to exposure.

"Look Upon Justice"

So some local parents I knew wanted me to talk to their son about college, now that he's a high school senior.  So we did and had a fine talk.  And I learned a thing or two.

Apparently at his catholic school if you don't stop reading whatever you're reading right at the end of reading period, you get in trouble. Well, when you get in trouble at this place, you are punished with a "Look Upon Justice" period, which is actually an hour standing in the chapel, silently staring at the crucified Christ.

He said, in his backturned baseball cap, mop-headed teenager way, "It kind of makes you hate Jesus."  I should think it would.

an Eamesian one

Among the qualities of virtue is its utility.  The virtuous man is simply better equipped to enter the field of action.  Some of that utility is obvious (such as a facility for quicker sorting) but other aspects of that utility are subtle.  For example, the virtuous warrior may at times seduce through virtue, or impel acquiescence through virtue, in settings where his force would not do.  I said this was an Eamesian one, but it might as well have been a Homeric one.  But the point cannot be stretched to far: a virtuous man is no match for a host of evil men, even if they are individually weak in other ways, too.

only kidding

You know how you get rewards points on credit cards.  I think you should get points every time you fill up your tank with gas.  Collect enough points and you get a free vacation to Abu Dhabi.

erg

Up to a point, the way to deal with the insistence and volume professional demands is to lean into them.  The work one chooses to make a profession of is not an imposition but part of one's true self.

unhesitating

The submission of all to medical orders is not only one of the true surprises of our culture, but also one of the best paths to understanding it.

ticket to ride

Some people have sex because it is the most fun they can have for free.

given the choice

I'd rather be damned if I didn't.

then and now

If the great mass of a people are tough and decent, that is enough.

grave

"'Dust thou art, to dust returnest'
Was not spoken of the soul."