I have just finished a surprisingly good read, courtesy of my father. After my brother gave him Promises to Keep, Joseph Biden's autobiography, for Christmas on my suggestion, he recommended it to me in turn. The senator had always been a favorite of his, and now that he is America's vice president, all the more timely.

First, Biden is an amazingly good writer- his narrative holds one's attention from childhood on. Peppering his narrative with humor, lightening many of the dryer disappointments, and has a knack for imagery when appropriate. I am no less impressed by his attitude toward the political life. He argues, contra Jesse Helms when he was making an anti-government ruckus about a congressional pay raise Biden was also unenthusiastic about, that if we desire good politicians, they should have good pay. A very reasonable argument, especially during a time in his life when, so he reports, he had to really stretch his pay as a senator to raise his family. It is natural that most Democrats will hold government in a higher esteem than their counterparts on the Right, but he nonetheless deserves credit for pointing out the absurd disdain many Republicans hold for politicians regardless of circumstances.

Biden irritated me at times. When it was not for his beliefs, as was to be expected, for his failure to explain how he adopted them. Now, he mentions his stance on abortion, a moderate version of the "personally opposed but" position staked out by most Catholic Democrats, several times, briefly noting that he held it as a personal conviction he could not enforce on others. He is likely aware that the Church grounds its defense of the lives of the unborn chiefly in reason and science, with no more divisive pious motivation than Thou shalt not kill, but fine. However, given the detail he gives about, for instance, how lovely the architecture on his high school was, he could have included something about what inclined him to take the liberal view. He grew up in a staunchly Catholic, Irish family, and only has good to say regarding his religious and ethical instruction (pictured is his current church). I would be interested to know why he decided to follow the Democratic party leftward on these moral issues, when many other Catholics, from families which had been Democratic since their immigration, deserted the party for the socially conservative wing emerging in the Grand Old Party. Naturally, a liberal Catholic would not denegrate their upbringing, but was he raised brought up to care only for the social justice aspects of Catholic teaching, or did his beliefs crystallize solely because of his political views, without any input from his Catholic faith?

Another aspect which turned me off was his general attitude toward foreign policy. Though, in the chapters on foreign policy during the presidency of George W. Bush [whom I now miss, thanks to Obama, more than his actions would independently merit], he displays ever more disdain for the neoconservatives. He sometimes calls them "neo-isolationists" for their unilateralism, to which association I take great offence. By contrast, though I can't remember if he ever identifies himself an internationalist, he lumps enough praise on Averell Harriman (pictured) and Colin Powell that he probably would not object to the label. Often, though, despite the marked disagreements about specific issues of policy, the then senator ultimately endorses an outlook similar to the neocon paradigm. For Biden, too, the United States of America fulfills her mission- or her "promise"- by policing the world. Besides that he never questions the neocons' good motives- an admirable practice- he never draws out the similarities in their perspective and his own. In all the chapters on his advocacy of US intervention in Yugoslavia, he never bases his arguments for why his country should get involved on anything but our role as a superpower. While he never dabbles in the democratic messianism the neocons are infamous for, he has a strong sense of American mission, of a course our Nation must take due to its highest ideals and the hopes others place in us. While he certainly displays greater prudence than Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et al, his beliefs are similar to theirs in that, within their framework, there is no part of the world in which America has no business interfering if its intervention will likely have a positive outcome.

On a separate foreign policy note, his penchant for pragmatism sometimes gets excessive. Though he spend an entire chapter explaining how foolish was our invasion of Iraq, and detailing his efforts to bring Bush to reason, he ultimately voted FOR empowering the president to use force in Iraq, justifying it by saying a strong vote in the affirmative would make assistance by the United Nations Security Council more likely. He even criticizes liberal Democrats who refused to support a more restricted version of the bill as purists, even though he too believed we had no reason to go to war. Is he really proud of this level of crass compromising he attempted? A lot of good all his careful calculations did us in the end!

If a colorful, insightful account of the political life, as experienced by a man who has held elective office since 1973 and who is now second in line for the presidency, interests you, Promises to Keep may also be to your tastes. In the end, Biden interests me despite his liberal internationalism. Indeed, he is not my type of politician. When he contrasts himself to Jesse Helms (as much my type as can be found in America), he gives his initial impression of Helms as his opposite. Whereas Biden concerns himself with expanding freedoms and civil rights, furthering the lofty ideals of the founding, he can only characterize Helms as a demagogue to the white, native Christians, as a man concerned only for his own kind. Perhaps if Biden recognized that Senator Helms, and those like him, can hardly be blamed for defending the communities they love, with all its particularities, from the multiculturalism which threatens them, he would not have been so puzzled when that same love manifested itself by adopting a child with cerebral palsy.

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A cool thing happened on Thursday. After two weeks of holding my breath, expecting a Rozen Maiden poster in the mail, the order arrived, but it was the wrong thing. I had accidently put the wrong number, and ended up with this cute Fruits Basket poster. I have heard much good about that manga, but as of yet haven't read any of it. I don't even know who the characters are, but it's cute, so it stays!

[Courtesy some website. don't know the intended message, but displays G.O.P.'s refusal to enbrace strong pro-lifers effectively.]

Eight-and-a-half months after the Grand Old Party's crushing defeat at the hands of our present president, I had expected it would finally wise up and renew its commitment to the issues most important to its base. However, if the G.O.P. and other conservative mailings I receive, the editorial slant on Fox News, and the continued mistreatment of pro-lifers are any indication, the party still has a ways to go. Of course, I am not saying the Republican establishment is completely devoid of sense and principle- there's been a slight improvement in that department ever since John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, and the opportunity to oppose President Obama's socialistic agenda has not been missed. Unfortunately, Republicans haven't distanced themselves from the hawkishness of the Bush years, and have little to organize around except their opposition to the President and the Democratic Left. While I am certainly glad they are against Obama's vision, rather than cozyng up to it, what are they for?

The failure to energize the party really baffles me; many more Americans still identify as conservative than liberal; the components for a successful and much-needed Right-wing coalition exist. The Democrats had the smoothest transition imaginable from their old, antagonistic "STOP Bush" mentality to their current Obamarama. In other words, their unofficial theme song changed from Green Day's "American Idiot" to Makadem's "Obama be Thy Name" without a hitch. My own party, however, continues to marginalize and ignore those luminaries who, like Pat Buchanan, advocate populistic economic policies, and give social conservatism a strong priority. I know this is a broad generalization, but Wall Street Journal conservatism and the concern for material wealth and "profit over people" mentality, to refer to last Friday's post, still predominate in many quarters. To be more concrete, the Tea Party movement which has made such news of late, and which has gotten support from many in the Republican party, seems excessively focused on financial issues; to be sure, I agree with the Tea Partiers in almost every particular, but what could be worse for the party than expressing its ideals through what are really little more than tax protests? The exclusive focus they've been given does little to shake off the association so many have of the party with greed and corporatism, and of the very worst elements of capitalism. Indeed, it seems to me the G.O.P.'s unofficial theme song is Wesley Willis' "Rock 'n' Roll McDonalds". (Me? My official theme song is that exercise in pop elegance, The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony").

As you might expect, the Massachusetts Republican Party is faring worse still. As of Wednesday, the race for the party's gubernatorial nomination is between Christy Mihos, convenience store mogul and former independent in the 2006 race, and Charles D. Baker, Jr., who is retiring from his position as CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Both are socially liberal, pro-choice and for gay marriage. Sigh. There remain some potential, as yet unannounced candidates more amenable to Christian beliefs and the natural law, but these two are likely to be the big contenders. As it is I'm a bit inclined to Baker, as Mihos said he's "more a populist", and more traditional, whatever that means. And as my fellow Bay Staters will remember, Mihos' ads in 2006 bordered on the obscene.

At the local level, politics are not, and could not be partisan, since the Republican party doesn't exist in Northampton. This year's mayoral race is becoming a caricature of liberal local politics. Mayor Mary Clare Higgins (no relation, though I was friends with her niece in high school) and the challenger, At-Large City Councillor Michael Bardsley, are gay. This would not be so bad in itself, even from my perspective (homosexuals can always choose to defend marriage, and with those who don't, local politics rarely involves such moral issues anyway), except that the pair use their elective soap boxes to advance their cause. In a comic moment, the pair, who were formerly political allies but have lately become estranged as the race nears, walked in separate sections of Paradise City's gay pride parade, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Though I have a feeling bardsley may be an improvement, since he has criticized Higgins' pandering to developers and the chamber of commerce, neither prospect excites me. Fortunately, perennial candidate Roy C. Martin, the personable perennial candidate, decided to jump in. Martin, for whom I voted in 2007, actually has a streak of conservatism in him, though when I saw him on the street one time, decked out in a three-piece suit and toting a sign for his 2005 campaign, he said he was a Democrat. He may be seen as an oddball (anyone who would run- this will make it- eight campaigns for the same office is a little abnormal), but in this town he definitely merits a primary vote. In the spirit of my home city, I too am coming out:

Roy C. Martin for Mayor 2009!!!

True Beauty came to me in a new manifestation two days ago. Promenading this way and that through You Tube, I stumbled across Atsuko's Ishizuka's "Waltz of the Moon". If only we Americans had our own Everyone's Song program, as well as such stunning music videos, rather than or at least in addition to MTV (even good American songs have music videos that are so bad they ruin the music). To be fair, now that there's c. 500 channels, there must be some good content once in a while under the moon, which

brings about such wonderful things
On a blue night...

The junk, however, tends to rise to the top, refuting the claim made in a Michael Novak article recently discussed at the Fish Eaters forum. Besides the typical insistence that Catholics should place a higher worth on the wealth of this world, he absurdly asserts, "In actual capitalist practice, the love of creativity, invention, and groundbreaking enterprise are far more powerful than motives of greed." Try telling that to any music fan. Even I, as great a lover of mainstream popular music as can be found, tire of the volume of bland, unexciting songs which perennially arise. How is it that, for instance, much of the music blasted at supermarkets is so lame that even I consider it an addition rather than a salve to my consumerist misery?

Just a few days back, I was waiting in an office during a thunderstorm, meanwhile enduring a torturous pop station from Springfield. As the storm intensified, I jokingly yearned for a blackout caused by a chance lightningstrike. As I stared at a piece of abstract art hanging on the wall, it seemed to me that a sort of Gresham's Law unconsciously orders the public square concerning art. The abstract art (or in other cases, uncannily uninteresting nature scenes) has the least substance and meaning to it, and therefore will be of nearly equal interest to everyone. It may offend aesthetic sensibilities, but there is nothing about which could be concretely objectionable. Formless visual art and pop songs so generic and undynamic they bore me out of my wits end up the first choice of supermarkets and doctors' offices.

This all reminds me, in turn, of a mock pro-capitalist movement I came across once. Though the silly, fake protesters pictured have a somewhat distorted, Marxist conception of capitalism (for example, undue connections between capitalism and military aggression), many of the amusing signs carry a real message:




































"More cars less trees." "Money is my life." "Profit before people." Even if one believes in capitalism out of devotion to individual rights, these are what it effectively leads to. Later, in the above mentioned debate, a Catholic defended capitalism by saying the free market merely refers to the situation wherein "government has no place in a business transaction". This general principle is absurd on its face. If government's concern is in bettering the community, and in encouraging the people to live the good life, then the government must intervene sometimes to regulate or prohibit potentially harmful transactions. Without government intervention, who would prevent private developers from clearing forests without taking the good of the community or the intrinsic worth of nature into account? Without government intervention, anything, no matter how harmful to the body or soul, can succeed on the market so long as it is popular. Our bad experiences with the socialism of progressive regimes, seeking to control every part of the economy in the service of green ideology or redistribution of income (both of which are misguided but understandable reactions against real problems caused by industrial capitalism), should not blind us to these truths. Who, the protesters seem to suggest we ask, would actually protest for capitalism? Given what man has sacrificed for his wealth, it would almost be a protest against Beauty.

Although school's out, I have not been free from worries about college. Specifically, how to best make use of one's academic abilities to work toward an actual career. Admitting career concerns to academic decisions has always irked me, though. To be sure, I have an interest in fetching a respectable job- then I could finally give big checks to the good guys whenever election season rolls around- but my material ambitions have never been too great. Armed to the crooked teeth with the philosophy necessary to live the good life, acquired political texts only I could find engrossing, a small but growing collection of mangas, and a few soda pops courtesy of the parents, I have need of little more. And the best men to emulate were happy with equally little. Socrates, remember, could barely afford to offer a one mina fine as an alternative punishment to execution. And Our Lord and Savior lived in His Mother's basement for thirty years.

While I have chosen to develop my talents- I expect I would've done so even without my parents' encouragement, but as for filling out all the loan info without Mom's help, that's another story- there remains an undue amount of pressure on high school graduates to shoot for a high-earning job, any high-earning job, even if they couldn't care less about it or the incumbent higher education. In true Lockean spirit, the greatest sin is no longer to put one's talents to ill use, but to leave them idle (Locke, in his Second Treatise, goes on and on about how developed land is ten, and later a hundred times more productive than undeveloped land. This reasoning, which leaves aesthetics and any intrinsic worth to nature aside, was often used to justify the white occupation of Indian lands, which had not been so optimally appropriated by their former owners). While there truly are goods forfeited when a person doesn't aim as "high" as they could given their abilities, we tend to forget the alternative goods to be had when an intelligent, able, moral, logical person takes on a career of a lower order, which they love and in which their good influence will be experienced by others. A job, after all, is like a vocation: choosing the right one is not a science; a lot of it is simply the choice to which a person can give their happiest volition. A dear friend of mine from high school, for instance, chose to work at a local restaurant for at least a few years before doing anything else; now she brightens my day whenever I drop by, a rose in just the right vase. For her and all the other underachieving non-careerists out there, I have penned

Sonnet CXXI

I am entrusted with a flame, by God,
To lighten the consented wont my feet
Are swinging toward to make my times complete.
He gave autonomy His honest nod,
But prods- the talents, small things handled well-
So I might liberally feed the flame,
That it should glow the fiercer, till the same
Lights everyone their way, a helpful Hell.
The compromise will have to be a pale
Rendition of the possible, to send
My feet to any happy, chosen end.
All those, the fewer, who will find my trail,
Encounter truer hopes for they who might
Be navigating with a lesser light.

If I were to give it a title, it would probably be "A Defense of Willful Mediocrity," but that would be too jovial for the tone, minus line 8. I should disclaim that I do not believe such "mediocrity" really requires a "compromise" of God's desires, but nonetheless living well a lesser life is a concept counterintuitive enough to be considered an "unorthodox" way of following the message of the Parable of the Talents. One must always do their best, never letting the Lord's blessings languish wastefully, but on the other hand God can hardly desire these talents be used in making our lives little Hells unto ourselves.

The Ultimate Irony. Last night a mouse somehow infiltrated our home, and scurried into a closet. When we heard Mom's scream, the rest of us put off watching Rocky and prepared to clobber the rodent if it tried to escape as we cleaned the closet out. The task almost complete, but still no sign of him, we came to an old brown bag containing the implements of my dad's childhood Mouse Trap game. "That would've come in handy," I said to a few chuckles, but no sooner had they laughed than my mother shrieked again. The mouse had climbed into the bag of its ow free will, thereby allowing us to trap it in a larger bag and free it outside. The game has been missing several pieces for as long as I've been alive, so I was quite happy to learn that it nonetheless still worked.

*************

In other news, it appears that that sweetest of victories is again coming under assault. The enraged self-pitying hedonists of San Francisco just can't let this one go, albeit this time they have the support of a former member of the Bush administration. Their futile fury, which could have been used almost anywhere else to greater ill effect, brings me the highest joy.

For the longest time I could not think up a sonnet for my friend Jen Gonet. Though we hung out almost daily in the SGA office last school year, I never had an ounce of inspiration. And since I've made it my policy to write at least one poem for each (lady) exec, I owed her one. Then just a few days ago, a memory of a picture on her office computer, of her three dogs in St. Patrick's getup, inspired the below. Unfortunately here it's a bit garbled, but you get the idea. As you may have guessed, a second source of inspiration was The Rockford Files:

Sonnet CXX On Jen Gonet's Answering Machine

Dear Jen, the Dáil called about the dogs.
In these days, Irish culture's hit a low.
They need a patriotic icon, so
They had their Dublin office search the blogs,
And from Assumption's, mention came across
Of three stout hounds dressed for St. Patrick's day.
When I described them, never was 'HOORAY'
So well annunciated. At a loss,
They saw it's not in the public domain,
But for that lofty-hatted pooch, they'll pay
€10,000,000 cash, but first, they say,
They're gonna need- they know this is a pain-
Ten thousand right up front (for payments, ease),
So send the money (and the picture) please.

Actually, I haven't seen The Rockford Files since I was little, and those Nigerian prince con artists also deserve some credit. Only problem was, after I gave the sonnet, I learned that the dogs (Henry, Fiona, and Nellie from left to right) actually belong to Meghan Donague, the exec who shared the computer with her. Oh well. Henry still looks dressed to sit in the Dáil, though!

*************

Also, I express my happiness at the ordination of thirteen new traditional Catholic priests by His Excellency Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais at the SSPX seminary in Winona. While I necessarily missed out on the festivities, Catholic Family News compiled a video with interviews of some of the young people present (incentive to watch- the first young lady interviewed is completely gorgeous). In light of which, a fitting slogan for the traditionalist movement as a whole might just be

The Traditional Latin Mass:
The choice of a new generation

Except that I'm more of a Coke man, and apparently we're supposed to be boycotting Pepsi.

A few readings I have done recently have me thinking about that gloomiest of ideas, determinism. A three-in-one book review in Modern Age quarterly encouraged conservatives to grant more significance to economic and social changes in charting the course of political history, as opposed to giving almost exclusive import to the parallel history of ideas. He argues the point well in his limited space, but he still rejects genuine determinism to a degree that could comfort the worst pessimist. Meanwhile, in one of the books I am presently reading, Raymond Aron's The Dawn of Universal History, a collection of his mostly 1950s essays on total war, the totalitarian state, and ideology (I originally purchased this one as a college text, but in my effort to get the full money's worth out of it, it's proven a fascinating leisure text), Aron repeats, again and again, that we must beware the temptation to believe that everything which has happened, had to happen, and that the future is predetermined by some factor x.

A great temptation indeed, in an age where widespread a knowledge of mathematics and physics leads some to begrudge mankind recognition of his free will! The news media, for its part, simply revels in the changes to come due to technology and too easy communication. The coverage of the ongoing rioting and protests in response to the Iranian elections credits Twitter and other technologies with making government suppression almost impossible. There are clearly bad things about the Iranian regime (the present cause of discontent, a possibly stolen election, makes one wonder: why didn't the clerical leaders just reject the unacceptable Mousavi in the candidate approval process? For that matter, how came it about that no one did their homework back in 1979, and realized that the creation of a faithful Islamic society, like any political project striving for some higher goal, is hindered and helped by allowing people to elect their leaders?). However, I do not share the reporters' giddiness at the prospect of mass political movements driven by messages of up to 140 characters. At least on blogs such as my own, one has the option of laying out one's reasoning at length; with Twitter, communication without resorting to soundbites and ideological cliches is not even possible. This may perfect the art of speaking in abstract ideology (what the Modern Age reviewer cautioned us to avoid); such a Twitter-powered political order would be a lexocracy, or rule by just a few words. Or in other words, the world as a whole would come to resemble the interior of your local Urban Outfitters. That possibility has to be the ultimate low in the realm of the political.

Are we all doomed to inhabit a society where meaningful communication is stifled by the very ease of interaction, and the prevalence of new technologies favors ever more dubious ideas? Perhaps. At least that seems to be happening with the unrest in Iran. The libertarian, anti-intellectual property Pirate Bay has launched a project to aid the opposition. In such a world, of course, a person could still live the good life, and nurture their mind with worthy letters. I, for one, often gain solace by reading Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. The monthly, written from a paleoconservative and usually Catholic perspective (the column by Aaron T. Wolf, a Protestant, is jokingly entitled "Heresies"), is everything the weekly National Review should be but isn't. Heavily philosophical, its articles always serve to lift one's head out of the proverbial clouds of Breaking News, celebrity stories, and other varied flashing lights. [Whether one actually agrees with everything or not. How I was irked when editor Thomas Fleming's recent column, "The Good Life," specifically excluded "Rihanna" and "graphic novels," which I assume includes manga, from such a life. I cannot say I never listen to Rihanna, and certainly see nothing wrong with "graphic novels," so long as they are not all one reads. If there is on excellence I have developed, it is the ability to switch from following up on the struggle among the Rozen Maidens at they try to become Alice, the perfect girl and daughter, to the speeches of Zarathustra or the sober observations of Aron, and vice versa. They can all be part of the complete, good life, which Shinku, the fifth doll, exemplifies, since she reads extensively in her spare time. Like most of the Maidens, she uses French phrases on occasion: who knows, maybe she has read Aron as well.)] But such a life, like the Christian life in general, has to be lived in opposition to the world, out of necessity rather than contrarian's preference. And its difficulty can ward off many who might otherwise follow such a life.

Yet, the history of conservatism points to a possible reassurance that all change will not be for the worse. Actually, my happy meditation began a few days ago, when I was standing downtown in the rain for a few minutes. Water is often connected with death and rebirth, sweeping away the present and christening in a baptismal renewal. I thought of how even the decay of organic matter, often sped up by moisture, occurs because of the flourishing of microorganisms. Water universally vivifies, and torrents of revolution and technology seem to be equally indiscriminate in their effects, even if the most obvious consequences benefit the advance of liberalism. I mean, though industrialization and the French Revolution sped the decline of the old order in the West, it also spurred the birth of conservatism as a reaction. Edmund Burke, the first modern conservative, could never have written his Reflections without a Revolution to think over (happily, Reflections is on the required readings list for one of my classes in the Fall, assigned by the same great prof who selected Aron). The upheaval, destructive and undesirable as it was, made reactionaries aware of the patrimony they were defending, allowing them to understand, and therefore combat effectively, the revolutionary forces and innovations threatening the traditional order. This may be a briefly elaborated reassurance after my reasonable griping, but I can't predict what form such a new awareness would take. Maybe (to speak of society more broadly and not merely the political order) the ever growing disregard for grammar and spelling, not to mention the bubonic plethora of smiley faces used in lieu of words to express one's mood, will lead some to a greater appreciation of syntax, diction, and other elements important to a language. The future of will probably not be quite so glorious as the correspondents at CNN imagine, nor should we expect so a dark night as monochrome as good Thomas Fleming awaits.