Where were we? Admittedly, besides the usual reading and writing, my free time has been taken up in trying to finish one spectacular and spectacularly long anime, Detective Conan. Seen here are Conan Edogawa, and his sometime rival Kaitou Kid in the background. As of yesterday, I passed episode 550, and have about 100 more to go before I can finally add this hefty notch to my anime belt. Measured and empirical, the series stands in contrast to the lighthearted moe series I usually prefer. To be sure, there is much adventure (whenever the villainous Black Organization shows up), and an uneventful love element between the protagonist Shinichi Kudo and Ran Mouri, the girl he was growing close to before the Black Organization turned him back into a child, and he adopts the Conan identity. Of course, the lover of hopeless causes that I am, my sympathies lie with Ayumi Yoshida, his admirer within the Detective Boys group his newfound elementary school comrades form around his high school detective talents.

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

An old friend of mine said to me that these are Strange Days. The turn of the phrase is rather negative, but given candidate Ron Paul's astoundingly good performance in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, I feel obliged to justify him those still wary:

Ron Paul: A Strange Candidate for Strange Times

I suspect, after all, that relatively few of Dr. Paul's supporters would confess their second choice to be Rick Santorum, as I do (unless you count the marginal protectionist candidate Buddy Roemer). Generally speaking, I bear few sympathies with the libertarians, who consistently understate the consequences of immoral and antisocial behaviors on the common good, so to keep their individualistic philosophy afloat, the conscientious paleoconservative has no other choice in the Republican 2012 field. His pledge to eliminate multiple departments from the federal government, cut the budget by at least $1 trillion the first year, end the Federal Reserve and restore hard money, end our foreign wars, end birthright citizenship, offer a $5,000 per child tax credit for tutors, books, computers, and other educational needs for homeschoolers (sounds opulent, until you remember all the goodies public schools get for the sake of brainwashing us into politically correct heathens), and decimate (that is, reduce by 10%) the federal workforce set him apart. While Paul has largely avoided hard rhetoric on borer security, he states clearly that there will be no amnesty (which Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, supposedly "conservative" alternatives to Mitt Romney in their times, could not promise). And while he is too moderate on the marriage issue, and thinks it wise to legalize immoral drugs, he is arguably the most pro-life of all the contenders, and hence more than qualifies for my support.

By all indications, Paul is a deeply Christian man, but reticent to speak of it publicly (among other things, this would alienate the many nonbelievers within his libertarian base). He leaves the profession of his beliefs to a Statement of Faith on his website. As I alluded earlier, in these Strange Times, where Christians in the West find their most formidable foe to be their own governments (thankfully, though, I must admit that the late Supreme Court decision protecting the Church's freedom to control whom it hires and fires, may represent a reprieve from the same in these United States), the time for a libertarian in the Oval Office has come. As Paul says,

I’m running for President of the United States because I believe that our traditions and way of life are under attack from an out-of-control federal government and reckless politicians who show no regard for what our Founders entrusted to our protection.

His defense of liberty is in the service of our America's traditions. The Zionist hawkery of evangelical Protestants notwithstanding, faithful Catholics in our country are already drawn to Paul. For example, in 2008 Richmond, New Hampshire, a town bordering Massachusetts, and home to the Saint Benedict Center our Pundit occasionally visits, was the only town in the state to go for Ron Paul, giving him 34% of their vote to Mitt Romney's 20%, while Paul received just 7.8% statewide. This time around (hover over the middle of the three green communities bordering Massachusetts), Paul won 47.7% to 22.1% for Romney. The town is tiny--the total tally of votes in last week's primary was 243--and shows just how Catholic traditionalists would rock the vote, if only they were more numerous. This traditionalist, at any rate, takes pride in sporting the pin he bought at the Ron Paul Store on his lapel as he hits his favorite spots in liberal Northampton.

Paul came in second place, but at least he received three delegates for the convention. According to polls I've seen, he's up to 15% in South Carolina, and according to one source has reached 20% support. Given the problems our Nation faces (very fresh in my brain, as I read Patrick Buchanan's epic and enthralling Suicide of a Superpower after getting it for Christmas), I can only hope, and pray that our fellow Christians turn to him, before it is too late for America. To be sure, I am not the sort of historicist who believes it can literally be "too late", but there comes a time when little is left to preserve in a moribund country, other than architecture. Think the Czech Republic, France, Latvia, Estonia, and other hotbeds of secularism with dire birthrates and nothing to save but stone cathedrals. We aren't there yet, or not so badly as they, I think. But either way, the only candidate worthy of hope is the one who promises to outright Restore America Now.

Quite often lately, I have thought on the future of beauty, mainly in illustration and fashion, but also in painting and music, though the last has hardly ever been my strength. Call it the influence of the European New Right. That anti-democratic school, its potent intellectual currents fed by the best insights of the post-Nietzschean Right, as well as of traditional Catholicism, tends to be very futuristic: that is, concerned with the way perennial ideals are embodied in new forms, artistic or not, rather than in revivifying older forms. While the distinction reflects an unfair dismissal of the contributions to culture made traditionalists (the vibrancy of communal life in Latin Mass churches being a perfect reproof of the bias against them), they do have a point. Newer forms and styles of art have, despite disadvantages, great potentials yet unrealized. While I, a child of the 90s, usually prefer bubblegum pop or its close cousins when I do listen to contemporary music, after reading this thought-provoking article at a New Right publisher's website, and listening to "Whilst the Night Rejoices Profound and Still", a piano song by the neofolk group Current 93, at long last I am awed by the possibility for greatness music still holds. Though neofolk often glorifies European paganism, we can make common cause with David Tibet, the front man of Current 93, who identifies as Christian. I hope to become much better acquainted with the genre in the future, but even now, I can recommend, also, Current 93's "Tamlin", an eerie modern ballad wrought from the traditional, without fear of your boredom or disapproval, my cultured reader.

My favorite arts after the literary, however, are the visual, to most of my musings and all of my efforts are devoted. As a lover of anime for reasons beyond the standby "It's over 9000!" (if only it weren't for dubs), and even more so of Gothic manga like Rozen Maiden, Godchild, and Dantalian no Shoka, it was natural that I should eventually succumb to the charms of Imai Kira. A cutie in her own right, as you can see, she is known for her illustration artbooks, calendars, and most famously for the art she produces for Angelic Pretty, a lolita fashion clothier with, for all my Californian readers, a location in San Francisco. Just days ago, two stunning, beautiful prints featuring her trademark innocents arrived in the mail. I can't find large images of the prints on the image search, but you may see them here and here. The dealer, Lolita Desu, is run out of Denmark by a femme with the cutest Nordic name--Sasha Maria Wiinholt Foght! On her equally kawaii Facebook, she represents herself as a cuddly furry!

My favorite Imai Kira works were not available for purchase, but I post a few here for your delight. I just adore Jewelry Princess, which is the Birth of Venus on the vanity. Please click to enlarge.


























There is something profound about "The World in the Black of the Left Eye", the title of which is cut off here. Observe the birds, silhouettes of birds, fallen birds, feathers, egg, and candled pastry.


























Piano! Piano! Piano! An unmatched socked herald with Medievally plain mien.


























I believe this one is called "Sleep Child".


























My favorite, melding modesty with sprightly eroticism. The hair is gorgeous.



My, my, and that is but the famed artist herself. Her work has inspired many admiring illustrators. See for instance this LiveJournal, Pinkish-White (see also the lady's Tumblr). Whatever one's tastes, her pastel-colored works, whether finished by hand or by Photoshop, are on to something.















I cannot conclude the post without recognizing some of the adherents to lolita fashion. Often overdone or misunderstood, the fashion, done rightly, enwraps the woman in the feminine beauty of her own nature, with the returned intensity of a forgotten age. In a time of spike heels, blue jeans, and halter tops, these self-motivated damsels give me hope. Some bloggers with really exceptional, inspiring style include Alice-tan of Pink Milk Tea, at left, and some of her friends at right.

















Those interested may watch this short documentary, LoliGirls: The Story Behind The Frills and Bows, which I heartily enjoyed and is well done for an amateur project.

Russell Kirk, it may surprise even my fellow paleoconservatives to know, profiled romanticism in his epochal The Conservative Mind. Writing on "the whole struggle between philosophical radicalism and romantic conservatism," he wrote,

What the Romantics dreaded in a world subjected to Utilitarian domination was an indiscriminate destruction of variety, loveliness, and ancient rights in the name of devouring individualism and a Philistine materialism.

How true still today. May the Lord God, as we enter the fair season of Advent, soften our hearts to the finest things by the experience of beauty, Amen+

For the reader's information, this 2009 Charles Coulombe article at Taki's Magazine gives an incisive and resonant account of the divide between "conservative," older paleoconservatives and their often "reconstructionist" younger counterparts. Coulombe, a Catholic monarchist born in 1960, spans the divide, and is an apt man to address the amusing subject, which has been on my mind since receiving the November 2011 issue of Chronicles magazine, whose cover proclaims, "Democracy is Tyranny." Does "democracy," I wonder, mean simply government by plebiscite, or does it include, in fact, all republics whose authority originates in the consent of the governed?

Before I leave the political realm, didja hear the remarkable news? Ron Paul is polling at 19% in Iowa! A single point behind receding frontrunner Herman Cain!!

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

Sip is a new (and hopefully not passing) loose tea and coffee stop in downtown Northampton. As much a lover of tea as crisp-yet-corporate Coca-Cola, I had to try it out, and stopped by on a walk this afternoon. I can only give it my highest review. To be sure, the only beverage I downed was an Earl Grey tea, its flavor very good but not revelational. Like many dining establishments, Sip's greatest strength is its delectable selection of sides. My oatmeal raisin cookie, pumpkin spice tea bread, and microscopic block of Belgian chocolate were scrumptious. I did not buy these Belgian waffles, but as per pictures from another website they look good. I find the interior, though very modern, surprisingly nice, and very bright next to shady Starbucks. My favorite bit of décor is a wall printed with a wood of bare birch trees; it manages to look cutting edge with a new spin on realist forest frescoes. Best of all (though this can hardly be credited to the good management), one of the employees is a fair lady friend from high school who, as I admitted, had slipped into name-in-the-yearbook status over college. Given the bit of friendly conversation, Sip gave me the perfect atmosphere to complete my new sonnet, which I then read to my friend. She thought it beautiful.

Sonnet CLV- Three Seasons Joined Their Heavy Hands

In late October, t'was Year of Our Lord
Two Thousand and Eleven, trees aghast
To strip in summer's clime stayed verdant past
The midmonth, shrubberies in full accord.
But silksome winter, eager to extend
Her swanly wings on branches billowing,
Crashed early, donning leaves a pillowing
Straw-soft, and shattered branches loathe to bend.
It made a royal mess, and on the night
Three seasons joined their heavy hands the fall,
But little colored, stood there, that was all,
As their reunion wrestling tripped the light.
Exhausted, they turned from themselves instead
To where the stars in changeless ringlets sped.

Since an earlier sonnet commemorated the Great Ice Storm of 2008, I decided to describe the forceful storm of last month in a new poem. Fortunately, being in Northampton, our power was only out for an unprecedented but relatively short 32 hours, and we lost no food. But let me tell you, we here in Paradise City had some good clean fun! The only restaurant open downtown was Pinocchio's Pizza, an excellent, established eatery (which Catholics will praise for rejecting usurious credit cards and accepting cash only). Waiting in line fifteen or twenty minutes in line in a place lit only by dimming window light for an orangegreasy, doughy slice of pizza may not be everyone's cup of tea (that's Sip), but made many good memories!

I shall soon embark on an epic quest. On the Lord's Day after next, November 20, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword will hit stores across North America; to Atobe's chagrin, the game actually won't be released in Japan until November 23, three days later. But, given the predominantly Western settings for Link's recurring adventures, the earlier release here is fitting. Since my brother purchased a Wii + New Super Mario Bros. Wii a few days ago, my fiery passion for the mainstays of Nintendo, and especially the heroic Legend of Zelda (see here; I even thought of Zelda after my baptism). As it were, and as I mentioned over four years ago in the first linked post, gamers have a bad name among Traditional Catholics; in society at-large, gaming is nearly a synonym for apathy and narcissism. I have never understood how this came to be. Games like Zelda, where the player guides a sword-wielding hero as he rescues maidens and vanquishes the teeming minions of darkness, point to something greater than the mean lives most gamers seem to lead. Thinking of Link, I think of what Zarathustra said:

It is time for man to plant the seed of his highest hope. His soil is still rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow there. Alas! there comes the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man -- and the string of his bow will have unlearned to launch!

The bow is yet supple and ready. The fighting spirit still can rise in man against intolerable evils. Yet, as Zelda enthralls me, I could was, again, put off by the results of this week's elections across the Nation. To be sure, here in Northampton, David Narcewicz, my candidate of choice, won by a landslide, but both he and his opponent, Michael Bardsley, whom I voted for the last time against the since-resigned incumbent Mary Clare Higgins, are Far Left Democrats who march in Paradise City's annual gay pride parade, but I definitely knew who the lesser of two evils was after the Rainbow Times endorsed Bardsley; and unlike his predecessor and Bardsley, Narkewicz is a heterosexual, married man with children, though I'm sure he would have a guilt trip if he knew I found that a political plus; if we hadn't elected him, it may have been decades before such a normal fellow occupied City Hall! And other than that, here, the two at-large city councillors I did not want elected won, and voters rejected a proposal to eliminate the Community Preservation Act, a tax used to fund affordable housing and other pet projects chosen by a committee.

The worst disappointment, though, as you can well imagine, was Mississippians' failure to approve Amendment 26. I had expected better from the Deep South state, but the voters certainly were subject to an endless, hateful campaign of deception, and made the vote much closer than it would have been in Massachusetts. As the sponsor of the question, Personhood USA, responds on its blog, "Personhood USA firmly believes that our campaign fell victim to the outright lies of our opposition, and because of their lies, children will continue to be murdered in Mississippi." However heavy the bombardment of liberal spin, it should remain common sense that Amendment 26 would not give personhood to a "fertilized egg", so to speak, because once an egg is fertilized, it is no longer an egg but an individual organism. This diction, present where most voters read about the question in papers or online, is wordplay intended to portray it as irrational. Admittedly, the language of "personhood" is a bit one-size-fits-all, but that is the fault of the legal system Personhood USA and pro-life legislators have to work with. As per the 14th Amendment, "...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," the subjects of the protection of the laws are persons. In Catholic thought, while we do not know with certainly when the soul is infused, life is assumed to begin at conception, during which, science has informed us, the conceptus begins acting as an organism, has human life in some sense and is certainly not an appendage of a bigger being. To speak in terms of human beings (with the emphasis on beings, as in organic wholes) seems much clearer than to use the artificial term persons, which is subject to limitless definiton and redefinition by Kantian and utilitarian ethicists. So, we are at a disadvantage, but we needn't be bitter (though we might be, since the genocide of abortion has been reconfirmed by voters, many of them wary of losing their precious contraceptives and in-vitro fertilization) or give in: myself, as a creative reaction to the defeat at the hands of liberal propagandists, I am adding Personhood USA and the American Life League to my GoodSearch causes. The fight isn't over yet. Closer to home, it may be high time I sent my compadres at MassResistance a check.

Good news. A few days ago our Pundit wrote a letter to the editor critical of the Occupy Wall Street movement, or more specifically its Occupy Northampton franchise. It appeared in today's Sunday Republican, a centrist daily published out of Springfield. Read it here. As of right now, it even has "Featured Story" status!

Letter-writer: Northampton protesters' shameless "gimme money"-style demands are on the caliber of rap lyrics, the composition of which might be a better occupation of their time.

As Han Solo said, sometimes I amaze even myself. For those interested, Jim Goad and Ann Coulter have also given apt evaluations of the movement in question.

To my great surprise, it stirred up a great response online, and at last check had garnered 82 responses, many if not most positive! As I note on my comment on the site, the editor did make an important typo—a protester's sign read "Love>Greed", from which, as I note, it follows that "when Richie Rich makes a profit, it’s greed, and when the ragged proletarians want to 'redistribute' his wealth to themselves, it’s love!", was made to meaninglessly read "LoveGreed"—but his added title, "Some protesters doth protest too much", is just marvelous, and captures my irascibly old-fashioned, Medieval mind.

Some remarks are necessary. While, as my faithful readers know, I often criticize capitalism on this weblog, this letter, while actually silent on capitalism itself, freely chastises its OWS antagonists. This doesn't represent a change of opinion on my part. Truth be told, conservatives like me should boycott Bank of America too, since it goes out of its way to cater to illegal immigrants. I bank locally. I am constantly aggrieved by the banality of capitalistic pop culture (except anime), architecture, trade deficits, and collusion with government to gain unfair advantages over small business, among other things. In a small way, I am glad that, now, both the Right and the Left are being overtaken by populist movements that demand with one voice, "End the Fed!", hopefully in favor of sound money.

What I absolutely cannot stand, and will not humor with claims of common cause, is the Marxist language of "We are the 99%!" As my commenters point out, the arrogance of any movement claiming to represent 99% of Americans without asking them first is astounding. It also reflects the dialectical-materialist mindset, according to which men are gathered together or opposed not by ties blood or belief, but by now much money they have, and which no thinking man ought entertain. That mass movements today still perpetuate this simple speak, which left tens of millions dead in 20th Century communist regimes, is offensive in the extreme.

Another thing. Much as the protest Left's drumming has not improved in fifty years, today's anticapitalist youth are on an even lower level than the original hippies. I sometimes think that, whereas Muslims are sometimes unfairly called "ragheads" (logically, the ladies of traditional Catholicism would be "laceheads"), it would be just to call these activists marked by particularly poor hygiene "ragshirts". And I say to you, wealthy Tom Monaghan is much closer to us traditional Catholics like myself, and Protestant Americans, than the Occupy Wall Street ragshirts!

The feedback thread from my letter is a heartening read. Highlights here:

Dear Leslie, Thank you for expressing the sentiments that I think most american s feel. This is all about a failed presidency, a failed economic policy and the extreme left's way of trying to get this guy another 4 years.—Itcf

Patriotism does not mean following blindly [he replies to a leftist], not knowing who the OW leaders are nor their goals, while calling for the destruction of the American system as a whole. OW leaders have called for Americans to

1. default on their student loans

2. default on their mortgages

3. default on the credit card payments...

You think this is "patriotic?" You and all the OW others should study some history... As an American, it's your right to follow anyone - just know WHO you are following so you don't hurt America. That's being patriotic.—suncatcher1

What do you expect for Northampton... the moonbat capital of Mass. Most of these "protesters" just like dancing around beating drums because they keep blaming "the man" for their life. Went up Main St. last night and thought that the circus was in town!—T-Ball

OWS (et al) demonstrations is nothing but a temper tantrum staged by societies losers and other mental misfits and anti-Semites from the socialist, communist and anarchist camps.

...

Senator McCarthy [he notes before I did] may have been and out of control drunken jerk, but that doesn't mean he was mistaken about there being communists in both the government and film industry. Kremlin records revealed in the 90s just how correct he happened to be about that fact.

To dismiss as McCarthyism someone making an observation that Marxists are involved or supporting this or that is nothing but a lazy cop out. Don't expect anyone to take your seriously if that's all you have to offer.—buddystone

Most of these protesters have no idea what they are doing or what they are protesting for. They are being led into a tunnel of Government controlled everything. I wouldn't call them communist, I would call the people putting this together communist sympathizers, and the zombie like followers will follow them into the cesspool.—obamaisdone

I also love the arrogance that they feel they speak for 99% of all Americans. They hardly speak for me and I am definately not what you call rich. I simply work my two jobs, pay my bills and try to have some fun every now and then. These OWS people are idiots.—01020ishome

I'm so sick and tired of those protesters! They couldn't give a reason why they're protesting other than being jealous of those who have jobs and making money. They want everything NOW without working for it. When I was young like those protesters, I had no money - worked 2 jobs and going to school. School paid off big time and I now have a respectable job, a respectable income, 2 cars, 2 great kids, and traveling quite a bit (ski trips to Colorado and California). They need to put their noses to the grindstones and earn their way up!—george7

And my personal favorite— communists protest in Northampton=the real american dream.—sickofthegames

Whether taken seriously or in jest, the comment reflects the decline of American culture since the end of World War II. Young Americans dream of a home, a car, and a two-child family, and blame the wealthy for their failure to succeed.

Since Atobe and I no longer go to school together, he has abandoned this blogspot and has left it to me, though he may contribute columns on a lark in the future. Therefore, is shall not any longer be A Blog from Atobe after the still much to be recommended film A Gift from Atobe. Not wanting to return to The Young and Once Good Pundit, the older, high school age relic of a name, yet unable to think of a good new one, I have decided, here and now, on The E'er Good Pundit. E'er, that poetic & arrogantly archaic contraction of ever, serves as a quirky expression of my character, as well as a guarantee of the weblog's consistent quality.

Happily, I have a nice new sonnet for you. Truly, my rate of production of these fourteen lined poems has dropped in recent years, down from almost fifty a year when I began college, though this is mainly because I have spent more time on an epic poem; under a burst of inspiration, I wrote no less than 250 lines last week. I ask you, then, to enjoy

Sonnet CLIV- The Bookshelf

The shelf stored titles by a TV host
To magnify and stud his own career,
A statesman's monographs retelling near
Salvations tabled and good fights to boast.
It held hyperboles by misanthropes
Accredited as nuanced novelists,
Hardboiled ethicists whose logic twists
As Smith and Jones enact unlikely tropes.
Although romancers stowed their heartful tales
With sage men's lives of sought enlightenment,
Their place of pride become a banishment
Did not contain the owner's choicest pearls.
His favorite books he kept not as most read,
But as a certainty beside his bed.

Those unfamiliar with the genre mentioned in lines 7-8 may consider themselves lucky. In one college philosophy course on biomedical ethics, we read several utilitarians and neo-Kantians. They tended to argue by means of ever more complex and harebrained thought experiments, especially on the subjects of abortion (the most famous being Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist problem) and "killng and letting die." The experiments may have a point, but after reading a particularly breathless question about whether it was worse for Smith to shoot Jones than to not tell Jones he was standing next to a bomb, my low estimation of their literary ability was sealed. Assumption being a good school, we also read several worthy followers of natural law; I particularly recall studying Hadley Arkes, a recent convert to the Faith from Judaism.

The practice of keeping the best books by one's bed, most notably the Bible, is common enough, but in writing this I actually remember the example of a former SGA President at Assumption. Though a solid partyer initiated in the ways of FiveMen, he was something of a philosopher king, and always kept copies of the Bible and the Republic on his desk.

Please support The Fifty Beads and Fifty Cents Campaign (ongoing).

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

What has our Pundit been up to lately?

Petitioning Pakistan to free a Christian convert convicted of blasphemy?
Fighting for a more petite-friendly fashion industry?
Generically asking retailers to stock more modest clothes?
Telling the US Government anime is the best thing for teens?
Protesting Seven Seas' refusal to publish the controversial masterwork Kodomo no Jikan?
Requesting a third season of Vampire Knight, a good-looking anime he's never even seen? (Alt. site here)
And getting a shuttle program at a college?

Yes, all of that and much, much more. It's been petition fever at A Blog from Atobe. Something about these famously ineffective online petitions excites our author. As it is, I was shocked I didn't see more "Free the [place n.] [#]!" petitions, and almost the only ones I did find were from annoying liberals, and received no support from me. The one I was gladdest to sign may have been the demand for a more petite-friendly fashion industry, due to all the kind short girls I knew in high school and college, as well as for the sake of cute little chibis everywhere. Beauty has always been very important to me, and I have always thought the ideal of the tall woman unnatural, and probably grounded in a feministic impulse to undermine the feminine, delicate, relative shortness of the fair sex. By nature, there is no reason at all an outfit cannot look stunning on a lady less than five feet high.

As I see it, this age is marked by the divide between cause people, who seek fulfillment through commitment to works of purported righteousness, and apathetic cynics. Whatever and how many bad things ought be said about ideological lemmings, they have the better of it. As Socrates argued in the Phaedo, misology and misanthropy are related, and misanthropy is fed by beginning with unreasonable expectations about human beings. Inflamed by the Rousseauian denial of original sin, and insistance on the "perfectibility" of man, people are more likely than ever to suffer a let-down when they realize utopian dreams are just that, and lose all hope in human goodness and potential. These are the people who spam good petitions, and create pointless, often vile petitions. With the latter example, the spammer's message, "HUMANITY IS GOD'S SIN", which he spent three-and-a-half days spamming several times a minute, eventually to reach a total above 60,000, is probably sadder than the demand itself, and demonstrates the nihilism petition saboteurs have imbibed. As a Catholic, I refuse to submit to that spirit. Not having too much to do, I take pleasure in signing good petitions; after all, I do not feel justified in complaining about something unless I do every little thing to address it first. Some online petitions might even be effective—I can easily see the pleas for the Pakistani Christian convert and a 3rd season of Vampire Knight being heard, since they each have tens of thousands of signatures, and I wouldn't be surprised if the shuttle program got enacted either. Few things a man can do online can be so sweet as lending someone your voice. Imagine, after a good petition gets spammed by careless heathens, the joy its creator receives when he sees one honest signature from a kind, concerned, unknown friend.

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

I am now reading The Queen of the Damned, the third book in Anne Rice's Chronicles of the Vampire. Though an easy read, I am again astounded by her grasp of the essence of modernity. Her vampires are all individuals with varying perspectives, and sometimes utter (suspiciously facetious) praise of the 20th Century, but the oldest and wisest of them always end up realizing modernity's not all it's said to be. Here Armand, who lived in Renaissance Venice before he was made a vampire, speaks to the mortal Daniel, in his 30s. Boldface mine. The picture is from her Catholic period, if I may be so bold, and the saint pose—what could have been—is just too kawaii to pass up. For the life of me, I can't figure out why she's so liberal when she writes like this; just read how she describes birth control. From the way her vampire novels read it's hard to believe she was ever an atheist.

Yet at other moments, he spoke in rapid bursts of the things around him, of the eerie garish cleanness of this era, of the horrid acceleration of change.

"Behold, earthshaking inventions which are useless or obsolete within the same century—the steamboat, the railroads; yet do you know what these meant after six thousand years of galley slaves and men on horseback? And now the dance hall girl buys a chemical to kill the seed of her lovers, and lives to be seventy-five in a room full of gadgets which cool the air and veritably eat the dust. And yet for all the costume movies and paperback history thrown at you in every drugstore, the public has no accurate memory of anything; every social problem is observed in relation to 'norms' which in fact never existed, people fancy themselves 'deprived' of luxuries and peace and quiet which in fact were never common to any people anywhere at all."

"But the Venice of your time, tell me...."

"What? That it was dirty? That it was beautiful? That people went about in rags with rotting teeth and stinking breath and laughed at public executions? You want to know the key difference? There is a horrifying loneliness at work in this time. No, listen to me. We lived six and seven to a room in those days, when I was among the living. The city streets were seas of humanity; and now in these high buildings dim-witted souls hover in luxurious privacy, gazing through the television window at a faraway world of kissing and touching. It is bound to produce some great fund of common knowledge, some new level of human awareness, a curious skepticism, to be so alone."

To complain, surely, is easier than to diagnose, but Tocqueville hardly said it better.

Individualism is a novel expression, to which a novel idea has given birth. Our fathers were only acquainted with selfishness... Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and his friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself...

Selfishness blights the germ of all virtue; individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and is at length absorbed in downright selfishness. Selfishness is a vice as old as the world, which does not belong to one form of society more than to another; individualism is of democratic origin, and it threatens to spread in the same ratio as the equality of condition.