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.