Hannah Arendt

Since then it has turned out, and this fact speaks for the stability of the amalgamation, that wherever one of the elements of the Roman trinity, religion or authority or tradition, was doubted or eliminated, the remaining two were no longer secure. Thus, it was Luther's error to think that his challenge of the temporal authority of the Church and his appeal to unguided individual judgment would leave tradition and religion intact. So it was the error of Hobbes and the political theorists of the seventeenth century to hope that authority and religion could be saved without tradition. So, too, was it finally the error of the humanists to think it would be possible to remain within an unbroken tradition of Western civilization without religion and without authority.
-"What is Authority?" in Between Past and Future. (128)

Texas Rangers All Star Break 2012

We have reached the All Star Break, the ceremonial mid season, and the Rangers still lead the Angels by four games. It doesn't seem like it. Also, they are tied with the Yankees for the most wins in the Majors, and only have one more loss than the pinstripes. The pitching should only get better from here out. Derek Holland made his first start back from the DL and was solid. Colby Lewis and Alexei Ogando are due to come off soon. The hitting is starting to pick up, although it is coming from the bottom of the order. Last night the Twins felt it was better to intentionally walk David Murphy rather than face him. Napoli is not getting many hits, but he is drawing a lot of walks. The last two nights the Rangers came from behind to beat the Twins 4-3. I don't know about momentum but it is certainly a better feeling than if they came up short in either one.

A Musical Fourth 2012

Wednesday was the ninth annual A Musical Fourth at The Chapel of the Cross. Once again, it was very well attended. New numbers this year included Shenandoah, America from West Side Story, and The Old Church. From an organization standpoint the most notable change was the transition of choir directors from Dr. Paul Thomas to Ms. Andrea Thomas. She brought a lot of energy to the performance with her directing.

Texas Rangers July 6 2012

The Rangers are still in first place although  losing three in a row to the White Sox did not help. There are eight Rangers going to the All Star game with Yu Darvish being chosen by the fans as the last one. I keep hoping they will turn it around. The pitching staff should be healthy soon but what has happened to the hitting?

Walker Percy

"If you do not learn to read, that is, read with pleasure, that is make the breakthrough into the delight of reading-you are going to miss out." And I don't mean that you are going to miss out on books being bookish. No, I mean that, no matter what you go into- law, medicine, computer science, housewifing, house-husbanding, engineering, whatever- you are going to miss out, you are not going to be first-class unless you've made the breakthrough. You are going to miss out, not only on your profession, but on the great treasure of your heritage, which is nothing less than Western civilization.
-Walker Percy. Signposts in a Strange Land. (356)

The Health Care Debate

Unlike many others, I am not going to comment on the ruling in the Health Care case except to make one observation. It appears the Chief Justice was the most conservative of all. He correctly perceived that it is not the purview of the Court to overturn bad legislation only that which is unconstitutional. The Health Care Bill is a tax (just try to campaign on that) and is constitutional. If you don't like the law, vote out those who voted for it.

N. T. Wright

The second thing that Christians have done is to say, with those neo-Anabaptists, that the church must simply put its own house in order, keep its own nose clean, and live as a beacon of light, but without actually engaging the world. It must construct a parallel society in which the kingdom values of Jesus are lived out for all to see.
-  N. T. Wright. How God Became King. (165)

Rule of Law

Once again we find the Congress of the United States divided by party on an issue. Of course, its not the critical issue of the debt. Rather, it is whether to cite the attorney general for contempt in failing to produce documents related to the investigation of the failed program known as "Fast and Furious." To listen to the speaker, Mr. Boehner, it is a constitutional crisis. On the other side, Ms. Pelosi calls it "frivolous." Which is it?
It is a constitutional crisis, but it is one of a greater magnitude than the gentleman from Ohio or the lady from California can comprehend. We no longer respect the rule of law. The tyranny of the majority prevails. It no longer matters to have the law on your side. Politics is now a numbers game pure and simple.
Those people imprisoned in the Beltway mentality do not understand this is the source of frustration the rest of us feel. For most Americans it is at the level of uneasiness, occasionally boiling over in anger. Most of the country knows something smells but they can not yet put it into words due to this concept being ignored in the education they received. If someone speaks out, explaining the problem and defining rule of law, he could lead a revolution.

Texas Rangers June 21 2012

Thank God for interleague play! If you're the Texas Rangers, it's good for what ails you. Win two out of three against San Francisco, sweep the Astros, sweep the Padres. Holland and Feliz are progressing in their rehab and Roy Oswalt starts Friday against Colorado. The amazing thing is that the Rangers appear to have cooled off in the last month and the Angels always seem to be winning, yet Texas still has a five game lead on the Halos.

Bell's Palsy- A Brief Note

In reading a guidebook regarding Bell's Palsy, I came across an article with a great and descriptive tittle: "Can't Whistle, Can't Spit." How true!

Bell's Palsy- Perspective

It has been three and a half weeks since I was first told I had Bell's Palsy. I am blessed in many ways. My recovery has been rapid and noticeable. Today I smiled fully. I can't whistle yet but I am getting closer. Many Bell's Palsy sufferers do not have such a rapid recovery. It can take years. And then there are those friends whose health reports are much worse. One has just been diagnosed with colon cancer that has reached the lymph nodes, another has acute leukemia, and a third just had a pacemaker installed. Blessed indeed.

Dostoyevsky

From a letter to Nikolai Ozmidov (1878):

Now assume that there is no God, or immortality of the soul. Now tell me, why should I live righteously and do good deeds, if I am to die entirely on earth?...And if that is so, why shouldn't I (as long as I can rely on my cleverness and agility to avoid being caught by the law) cut another man's throat, rob and steal?

-Quoted by Alister McGrath. The Passionate Intellect. (158-159)

Bell's Palsy-Overcoming Fears

My biggest fear through all of this has been losing the ability to speak clearly. I make my living from my voice, teaching US History. If my students could not understand me, I would be relegated to teaching online classes which are all work and no fun. Not only that, but I believe God gave me a gift with my voice. I use that gift, when called upon to read the lessons from the Bible in church. I had two opportunities this weekend past to do that and had no problems. Today, I lectured for two hours and for the first  time did not feel any discomfort speaking or as if I had "fluffed" a word.

Texas Rangers June 14 2012

Have things finally turned around? The hitting seems to be coming back, although mostly at the bottom of the order. But what has really been astounding is the pitching: with Neftali Feliz, Derek Holland, and Alexei Ogando all on the 15 Day Disabled List, and Roy Oswalt pitching himself back into shape at Frisco, all the starters have done is throw three shutouts in the last five games, allowing only one run in the fourth game and losing the fifth. Did I just jinx it?

Bell's Palsy- Continued Improvement

For the last two days I have been able to shut my left eye completely. I no longer have a problem rinsing and spitting when I brush my teeth. A friend who had not seen me in a week remarked on the noticeable improvement.

Bell's Palsy- Progress

Since I last wrote several days ago, there has been some marked improvement. Some movement has returned to the left side of my face. My smile is straightening out. The wrinkles are beginning to return to the left side of my forehead. Most important, though, is my speech. I am "fluffing" fewer words than before. Yesterday, in a two-hour lecture, I only noticed it once. Last night, when it has been more prevalent, I did not notice it at all.

C. S. Lewis

I have come to the conclusion that if you cannot translate your own thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts are confused. Power to translate is the test of having really understood your own meaning.
-quoted in Alister McGrath. The Passionate Intellect. (41)

Philip Rieff

What men lose when they become as free as gods is precisely that sense of being chosen, which encourages them in their gratitude, to take their subsequent choices seriously. Put in another way, this means: Freedom does not exist without responsibility.
-Philip Rieff. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. (79)

Bell's Palsy- Surprises

Two surprises actually.
I was dreading teaching summer school, two hours lecture a day five days a week, with my speech problem. But (at least after two days) it seems to be working like therapy. I am more comfortable talking and my face looks better after the workout.
The second surprise is the support I am getting. It is a strange way to find out who the people are who really care, those that are rooting for me, praying for me.

Bell's Palsy

Today I was diagnosed with Bell's Palsy.
No surprise really, we've suspected it for about ten days now. The relief is that it was not a stroke or a tumor.
What is Bell's Palsy? Basically, it is thought to be a viral affection affecting one of the facial nerves. The left side of my face is affected. I cannot close my left eye completely. The wrinkles are gone from the left side of my forehead. My mouth is crooked. I cannot whistle. I fluff some words when I speak, although people assure me it is not noticeable.
I lectured today for two hours and sometimes it seemed like I was slurring every other word. I notice now, four hours later, that the left side of my jaw is really sore but my pronunciation appears to be a lot better.

Texas Rangers June 5 2012

Two questions: Can anybody on this team pitch? Can anybody on this team hit? Last night they were nearly no hit in a game where Oakland (yes, Oakland) scored eight runs in the first inning. A good team is going to get blown out once in a while over 162 games. But lately, if I didn't know any better, I'd swear I'd pulled a Rip van Winkle and it was the Cowboys scores I was seeing,

Change the Course of History

In light of the post on the overuse of the word "tragic," this is in the same vein.
So often the phrase is used "x changed the course of history." Is this really true? More importantly, is it really possible? When an individual changes direction, or course, that person still has an idea of where he is going. But in history, do we know where we are going? Do we know the result? A person or an event can affect history, they can have an impact on it, but can they change the direction? Only if we know what that direction would be without the actor. Put another way, a river runs in a certain direction. A natural phenomena (such as an earthquake) or a man-made phenomena ( a dam) will change the course of the river. Another example is the Dallas White Rock Marathon. Organizers have changed its course several times in recent years. You can't change the course of history without a time machine.

Tragic

Death is less noticeable when it occurs privately and piecemeal. In time of peace we can pretend, almost successfully, that it is only a regrettable accident, which ought to have been avoided. If a wealthy old gentleman of ninety-two suddenly falls dead of heart failure, the papers headline the event: "Tragic Death of Millionaire"; and we feel quite astonished and indignant that anybody so rich should be cut off in his prime. With all that money available for research, science should have been able to solve the problem of death for him. If we do not think this, then why use the word tragic about a death so clean, painless, and mature?
-Dorothy Sayers. "Problem Picture" in The Whimsical Christian. (134)

Slavery and the Constitution

Regardless of how events played out, sectionalism and slavery are key to understanding the major debates and compromises in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787. Slavery, of course, did not precipitate every division at the convention, nor was every debate that did not include slavery trivial.
But in the central role it played, the weight of evidence leads inescapably to the conclusion that the Constitution was drafted by highly pragmatic men who were pursuing limited and self-interested goals. Philosophical concerns seemed to play only a minor role in the proceedings, and only then with but a few of the participants. Nonetheless, for all that, precisely because the delegates in Philadelphia were pragmatic, and were there to represent specific, parochial interests. They were able to draft a document that was workable, adaptable, and able to survive challenges that could never have been imagined in 1787. It is distinctly possible that had idealism dominated in Philadelphia, American democracy would have failed.
-Lawrence Goldstone. Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution. (195)

From Dorothy Sayers

Creed of St. Euthanasia

(commonly called the Atheneum Creed)

 

I believe in man, maker of himself and inventor of all science. And in myself, his manifestation, and captain of my psyche; and that I should not suffer anything painful or unpleasant.

And in a vague, evolving deity, the future-begotten child of man; conceived by the spirit of progress, born of emergent variants; who shall kick down the ladder by which he rose and tell history to go to hell.

Who shall some day take off from earth and be jet-propelled into the heavens; and sit exalted above all worlds, man the master almighty.

And I believe in the spirit of progress, who spake by Shaw and the Fabians; and in a modern, administrative, ethical, and social organization; in the isolation of saints, the treatment of complexes, joy through health, and destruction of the body by cremation (with music while it burns), and then I've had it.

-Dorothy Sayers. "Selections from the Pantheon Papers." in The Whimsical Christian. (10)

Texas Rangers May 31 2012

The Rangers were hammered by the Mariners last night ending a four game winning streak but there is still good news. The bats seem to have come out of hibernation. Both Nelson Cruz and Mike Napoli appear to be back on track. Neftali Feliz went on the DL but the team signed Roy Oswalt formerly of Houston and Philadelphia. We have now reached a point where top players (including pitchers) want to play here. They love the chemistry. The irony is that the Phillies put Roy Halladay on the DL yesterday. I bet there is some cursing going on in the city of Brotherly Love today.

Peter Berger on Religious Liberty

In recent discussions of the place of religious liberty in the American polity, a number of people have argued that religious liberty is the first liberty, that it is the foundation, the fons et origo, of all the other rights and liberties. I for one agree with the basic proposition, and I do so for one, overridingly important reason- the polity that recognizes religious liberty as a fundamental human right thereby recognizes (knowingly or unknowingly) the limits of political power.

It is easy to see why this should be so. At the core of man's religious quest is the experience of transcendence, the encounter with a reality that is "totally other" than all the realities of ordinary life. And a necessary consequence of this encounter is that all the ordinary realities, including the most imposing and oppressive ones, are relativize. In the realm of human institutions, none is the more imposing and (at least potentially) more oppressive than the polity, especially in its recent embodiment as the modern state, which is a historically unprecedented agglomeration of power. This characteristic, of course, is manifested most terrifyingly in the modern totalitarian state, but all contemporary states, even the most democratic ones, possess instruments of power that would have made the most awesome tyrants of antiquity green with envy....The state is a very serious business indeed, deadly business (for in the end every state, even the most peaceful one, rest on the power of the sword), and those who represent the state take themselves very seriously. That is why the state wraps itself in religious or quasi-religious symbols, why it fosters solemn ceremonies, and why the refusal to be serious about the state is everywhere a punishable offense (from lese majeste to contempt of Congress). Given all this, it should not surprise us that there is a built-in tension between the institutions of political power and the religious quest that tends toward relativizing them.
This has always been so. The holders of political power have always tried to contain the potentially subversive force of religion by controlling religious institutions. Most of the time they have been successful in this, but ever again there appeared religious spokesmen- emissaries of transcendence, if you will- who refused to play the role of legitimators of the political status quo. The power-holders naturally took a very dim view of these troublemakers and frequently employed very disagreeable methods to deal with them. The more tyrannical the ruler, the more urgent was the need to shut up the troublemakers....
It is precisely in this quality of relativizing, unmasking, debunking the pretensions of human power that we can see the deep affinity between the religious and the comic, between the prophet and the clown. The prophet proclaims that God laughs at all the kings and emperors of the earth; the clown makes a joke and reveals that the emperor has no clothes. No wonder then, that tyrants are afraid of prophecy and of jokes. No wonder that the tyrants of modern totalitarianism, very logically, have been equally assiduous in controlling the institutions that (heaven forbid) may bring forth prophets as they have been in persecuting anyone who dared to make jokes about their grimly serious agendas. And this is why churches have become the last refuge of dissenters in all totalitarian societies, and why the same societies have produced a luxurious growth of underground humor....
A believing Jew or Christian can put this insight into a theological proposition: redemption will one day be perceived as an immense comic relief, and even now, in an as-yet-unredeemed world, redemption can be anticipated as a healing joke. Yet I am certain that my views about the primacy of religious liberty in a catalogue of liberties would remain the same if tomorrow I should lose my faith and should redefine myself as an agnostic. As an agnostic I would also be concerned that human existence not be confined in the prison of ordinary reality, and even if I would be unable to make positive affirmations about the nature of that which transcends our ordinary lives, I would not want steel bars to be imposed on every window that might, conceivably, open up on unthought-of possibilities. In other words, there is a secular argument to be made for the primacy of religious liberty, as there are secular reasons for the democratic option against the totalitarian temptations of our age.
This points us to a paradox, which is particularly relevant to current debates over the meaning of the First Amendment in the United States. Without going into constitutional and juridical ramifications of this issue, it seems to me that there is a distressing triviality about much that has been said about a "secular purpose" in this or that activity of religious institutions, including some things that have been said by the Supreme Court....To be sure, there is a "secular purpose" served if a church runs a soup kitchen, an orphanage, or even (though this is more doubtful) a university. But the most important secular purpose any church can serve is to remind people that there is a meaning to human existence that transcends all worldly agendas, that all human institutions (including the nation-state) are only relatively important and are ultimately not to be taken seriously, and that all worldly authority (even that of the Supreme Court of the United States) is disclosed to be comically irrelevant in the perspective of transcendence.
Here, then, is the paradox: religious institutions serve their most important secular purpose precisely when they are least secular in their activities. Society, under certain circumstances, can easily dispense with church-operated soup kitchens or universities. Society can ill afford to lose the reminders of transcendence that the church provides every time it worships God. The protection of religious liberty serves the purpose of this ultimate anamnesis, which ipso facto protects the possibility of laughter and the wondrous mystery of the human condition.
I do not share the view that democracy is the noblest form of government, even less the Wilsonian messianism that would see the United States as the providential instrument by which democracy is to be imposed on every nation on earth (a messianism, incidentally, to which the American right is as prone as the American left- the two only differ as to which recalcitrant countries are to be the objects of the democratic crusade). Rather, I am inclined to agree with Winston Churchill that democracy is an appalling business- until one considers the alternatives- or at least those that are available under modern conditions. The modern state, for reasons rooted in its very structure, contains the impulse to expand into every nook and cranny of society. The totalitarian state is, of course, the apotheosis (I choose the word deliberately) of this impulse.
Democracy provides the only half-way reliable institutional mechanisms to curb the totalitarian impulse. It does not do this because of its ideology: As J. L. Talmon has convincingly shown, there is such a thing as "totalitarian democracy," at least in the sphere of ideas (Jacobin in its original version), sometimes (alas) in the sphere of facts. But the core of Western democracy, and certainly of the democratic experiment of the United States, is the institutionalizing of limits on the power of government. Political scientists have defined democracy in different ways; most come down to two key elements- regular elections and some sort of bill of rights. In other words, democracy seeks to ensure (not sporadically, but through predictable institutions) that the rascals can be thrown out from time to time and that there are certain things that they cannot do while they are in.
Democracy (not as an idea, but as a functioning political reality) is based on suspicion and irreverence- which is precisely why it is the best shield against the totalitarian project, which demands faith and veneration. Any democratic constitution must say to the state, repetitively and insistently, "Thus far, and no farther!" Every protection of political liberties and of human rights, of course, does just that. The recognition of religious liberty, as a fundamental and irrevocable right, does it in a fundamental way. Religious liberty is not one of many benefits that the state may choose to bestow on its subjects; rather religious liberty is rooted in the very nature of man and, when the state recognizes it, the state ipso facto bows before a sovereignty that radically transcends every worldly manifestation of power. For the religious believer, of course, this is the sovereignty of God; for the agnostic it will be the sovereignty of that mystery of man's freedom.
These considerations have very practical implications for many of the controversies currently dividing American society. We have reason to be grateful that this society is democratically governed, that controversy is possible and indeed protected, and that by and large religious liberty is secure. However, it would be very foolish to overlook the totalitarian tendencies even within this society, some of them very much present in issues touching on religious liberty. I do not have the time to spell this out; suffice it to say that one of the hallmarks of the totalitarian process is always the urge to drive underground the metaphysical propensity in man to banish transcendence from the public square (except in the domesticated form of established or civil religion), and to make all of social life subject to the trivial worldview of a functional rationality. Put simply, the totalitarian project requires a world without windows; the defense of religious liberty is the counterproject of keeping alive a sense of the wonder of our condition.
But how does fundamentalism fit into this picture? The problem, of course, is that one man's fundamentalism is another's self-evident truth. Depending on where you happen to live, the word may evoke Communist Party officials trying to preserve Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, ayatollahs putting women behind veils, or born-again seminary trustees firing professors for not teaching that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. I happen to live two blocks from the Charles River; when I hear the word "fundamentalism," I think of my academic colleagues and neighbors whose unbending convictions and self-righteous intolerance of heretics are fully up to ayatollah standards (though, thank God, they lack Ayatollah means of enforcement). Perhaps we can be satisfied here with an ad hoc definition of fundamentalism as any all-embracing system of belief held with rigid certitude and coupled with the moral assurance of one's right to impose it on everyone else. Fundamentalism thus understood, whatever its ideational content, will always be an enemy of religious liberty; always and everywhere, it can only flourish behind tightly shut windows; and wherever it sees an open window, it is under the urgent compulsion to slam it shut.
It is undoubtedly correct to say that, through most of human history, the content of most fundamentalisms has been religious. The reasons can be explained, but this coincidence between religion and fanaticism must be a source of sorrow for any religious believer. It is a source of sorrow for me since I believe that not only is it possible to be religious without being fanatical, but that genuine religious faith precludes fanaticism. In the contemporary world too, sad to say, there has been a notable upsurge of religious fundamentalisms. The most dramatic cases of this, of course, are Islamic and Protestant fundamentalism, both enormously powerful forces cross-nationally and both (though there are very important differences between them) capable of inspiring large numbers of people to make radical changes in their lives. Other religious traditions, however, have shown themselves capable of very similar outbursts of unlovely and at times homicidal fanaticism....
Those who regard Protestant fundamentalism in this country as constituting a comparable danger to pluralism and to civic peace are unconvincing, but let it be stipulated that there are situations in America too where religious liberty is threatened by religious fanaticism (I would certainly think so if I were a seminary professor about to be fired for teaching modern methods of biblical scholarship, though, even in my distress, I would console myself with the knowledge that my persecutors cannot call upon the police to assist them).
All the same, it seems to me that the most pervasive fundamentalisms facing us here are secular ones. Politically, they are both of the left and the right. In the milieu of the "new knowledge class" in America, it would be unnecessary to go on about the right (as when, in an act he himself modestly described as one of courage, the former president of Yale University denounced the Moral Majority- at Yale). In this milieu there is bemused contempt about the "superstitions" of religious fundamentalists, such as their belief that the Bible is literally inspired or that prayer can cause miracles.
As a theologically liberal Lutheran, I must confess that I find the first proposition very improbable and that I am inclined to skepticism about any concrete specification of the second. But among the cultured despisers of Jerry Falwell and his cohorts it is widely believed that the Soviet Union has changed fundamentally because it has the first leader with clothes that fit, that the establishment of racial quotas is a means toward a race-blind society, or that a six-month fetus should have a legal status roughly comparable to a wart. It seems to me that here we have "superstitions" greatly more dangerous than those found in the Protestant hinterland. It is the values and the prejudices of the knowledge class, not those of Reverend Jerry Falwell, that today shape important policies, are enacted into law, and define what is culturally acceptable. It is primarily against them, and not against the subculture of conservative Protestantism, that religious liberty must be protected. It is precisely the knowledge class that today seeks an "establishment of religion"- that is, the imposition through state power of its particular worldview and morality- and which interferes with the "free exercise of religion" of those who disagree with its ideology.
The social psychology of all fundamentalisms, religious or secular, holds no great enigmas. Its core motive is what Erich Fromm called "the escape from freedom"- the flight into an illusionary and necessarily intolerant certitude from the insecurities of being human. In all likelihood this motive is age old, but it takes on a special force under the circumstances of modernity. Indeed there would seem to be a dialectical relation between the multiplication of choices brought about by modern pluralism and the flight into a once-and-for-all choice posited as an absolute. The affirmation of religious liberty, by contrast, is finally grounded in the refusal to participate in this flight into fanaticism. Once again, it can take a religious or a secular form: the latter will be a stoic acceptance of uncertainty; the former is based on the recognition that faith does not require false certitudes, that it can even live with doubt. This is why the fanatic cannot laugh (an incapacity he shares with the totalitarian); faith, on the other hand, opens up the possibility of laughter at the most profound level- the laughter that participates, in anticipation, in the joyful play of the angels.

-Peter Berger. "Afterword" in Articles of Faith, Articles of Peace. (114-121)

Texas Rangers May 22 2012

At this point in time the Rangers are in a deep funk. It looked good when they took two out of three from the Angels but since then they were swept by Kansas City. The hitting is cold, the pitchers have the YIPS (even Yu Darvish). Let's hope they can get it worked out.

Hannah Arendt

It is true that totalitarian domination tried to establish these holes of oblivion into which all deeds, good and evil, would disappear, but just as the Nazis' feverish attempts, from June 1942, on, to erase all traces of the massacres- through cremation, through burning in open pits, through the use of explosives and flamethrowers and bone-crushing machinery- were doomed to failure, so all efforts to let their opponents "disappear in silent anonymity" were in vain. The holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the story. Hence, nothing can ever be "practically useless," at least, not in the long run. It would be of great practical usefulness for Germany today, not merely for her prestige abroad but for her sadly confused inner condition, if there were more such stories to be told. For the lesson of such stories is simple and within everybody's grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that "it could happen" in most places but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can be reasonably asked, for this planet to remain a fit place for human habitation.
- Hannah Arendt. Eichmann in Jerusalem. (232-233)

Pursuit of Happiness

America's political system used to be about the pursuit of happiness. Now more and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered.
-Jonah Goldberg. Liberal Fascism. (20)

Salvation and the State

You must make them understand that their salvation is in themselves....They [the people] must not look to the state for guidance- they must learn to guide the State.
-Dorothy Sayers

Education

Education is ever more important as societies grow more democratic. The purpose of education is not to prepare for a job; it is, far more, a preparation for understanding and giving meaning to the civilization in which one lives. Only the cultural maturity of the majority will allow democracy to last. Otherwise fanaticism and violence will motivate people. It will be the only way of filling the spiritual void of their existence, by replacing individual liberty with collective exaltation.
Jean-Francois Revel. Democracy Against Itself. (264-265)

Democracy

The fact is that humanity is doomed to democracy, and this is so because without democracy, it is doomed, period.
-Jean-Francois Revel. Democracy Against Itself. (198)

Texas Rangers May 8 2012

Maybe the Rangers have their mojo back. They beat the Orioles last night 14-3. Cory Snyder had six RBI's, which is a team record. Josh Hamilton hitting a home run in the top of the ninth was icing on the cake. Tonight's game is not over yet (bottom of the eighth, Rangers up 10-1) but I have to go ahead and put something down. Hamilton is in the zone: four two-run homers. So much for Snyder's record. This is only the 14th time it has happened in Major League history. In other words, it is rarer than a perfect game. Hamilton also had a double off the left centerfield wall. And Beltre had a homer as well.

Texas Rangers May 4 2012

It looks as though the Rangers have hit a rough patch. Hamilton and Beltre have been in and out of the lineup with stiffness. and now they've lost three games in a row. Next weekend they play the Angels. I hope they get their mojo back.

Institutions

Douglas W. Allen. The Institutional Revolution: Measurement and the Economic Emergence of the Modern World. 267 pp. University of Chicago. (2012).
Throughout this book the hypothesis speaks with one voice: a logical, economic connection exists between a wide range of bizarre pre-modern rules and customs, and the evolution of these institutions into the modern world. What on the surface seem to be archaic, inefficient institutions created by people who just did not know better, turn out to be ingenious solutions to the measurement problems of the day." (227)

American Airlines: The Saga Continues

We won't know until at least Monday but it appears that American Airlines is going the way of Eastern and Pan Am. US Air has gotten the unions on board for a buyout plan. Let me say right now, I do not like US Air. It is trying to make a right out of two wrongs, the merger of Allegheny and Piedmont. If the buyout takes place, it will have a major economic impact on this region. US Air has promised the moon, that there will be little dislocation, but do we trust them?
American has always had a problem with its unions and it now looks as though that problem will be fatal. When we view the comments and activities of the unions, we can begin to understand managements viewpoint a little better.
There remain some unanswered questions, such as what are the pension benefits that are at stake? Are they in the GM, City of San Diego range? What is the take home pay for a machinist or a pilot or a flight attendant? How do they compare with the competition? 'Just some thoughts...

Texas Department of Motor Vehicles

Yesterday I had to go to the DMV to get the title changed on my car. We all know the horror stories, the low comedy (Patty and Selma from The Simpsons come immediately to mind). But I must say, this time it was fast, efficient, and friendly. There were twenty one people ahead of me and I was out of there in less than thirty minutes. CHEERS.

Rangers April 18

The Rangers just finished a quick two-game series in Boston with a sweep, 18-3, 6-3. We definitely need someone new to kick extra points. Seriously, Josh Hamilton is hitting everything and Mike Napoli is getting hot. Derek Holland and Colby Lewis are looking good. A little worried about Joe Nathan, but maybe it's just rust.
The weekend series against the Tigers is shaping up to be big. The top two records in the American League. Both teams are among the leaders in hitting and pitching. Of course, we won't hear that much about it in the national press because Boston and New York are playing. What a shame.

More Nisbet

The merit of Tocqueville's analysis [in Democracy in America] is that it points directly to the heart of totalitarianism- the masses; the vast aggregates who are never tortured, flogged or imprisoned, or humiliated; who instead are cajoled, flattered, stimulated by the rulers; but who nonetheless are relentlessly destroyed as human beings, ground down into mere shells of humanity. And the genius of his analysis lies in the view of totalitarianism as something not historically "abnormal" but as closely related to the very trends hailed as progressive in the nineteenth century.
-The Quest for Community. (171)

Robert Nisbet

The liberal values of autonomy and freedom of personal choice are indispensable to a genuinely free society, but we shall achieve and maintain these only by vesting them in the conditions in which liberal democracy will thrive- diversity of culture, plurality of association and division of authority.
The Quest for Community. (247)

More Gordon Allport

The final truths of religion are unknown, but a psychology that impedes understanding of the religious potentialities of man scarcely deserves to be called a logos of the human psyche at all.
-Becoming. (98)

Gordon W. Allport

The theory of democracy requires...that man possess a measure of rationality, a portion of freedom, a generic conscience, propriate ideals, and unique values. We cannot defend the ballot box or liberal education, nor advocate free discussion and democratic institutions, unless man has the potential capacity to benefit therefrom.
-Becoming. (100)

Rangers 2012

The Texas Rangers are entering their second full week of the season with a 7-2 record. The pitching has been stellar. Yu Darvish looks to be worth the investment. What is interesting is some of the younger players who are in utility roles at present. The future looks good.

The Three Books that Have Impacted Me

Several years ago, when interviewing for a teaching job, I was asked to name the three books that have had an impact on me. Since then I have thought a great deal about how I would answer that question in relation to my teaching of history. Here is how it stands at present.
First would be Robert E. Lee and the Road of Honor by Hodding Carter. In the 1960s Random House brought out a series of history books for children written by journalists, the Landmark Series. This was the first history book I had ever read and I was hooked. I reread it about five years ago and it still holds up, informative, easy to understand and well-written.
Next would be Charles Beard's Economic Interpretation of the Constitution. Granted the book is nearly a century old and many subsequent works have been written to refute it but Beard still retains an impact on all students of American History. Harold Bloom wrote in The Anxiety of Influence that Shakespeare has a pervasive influence on contemporary man even if he is not read because of his impact on not just language but our view of humanity. Beard's influence is similar for historians because of his emphasis on research.
Third would be a work better classified as political philosophy. That is The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt. In this massive tome Arendt posits the steps that lead to a totalitarian government. First, Anti-Semitism, then Imperialism, finally totalitarianism. This book has affected my thought about US History. If we change Anti-Semitism to Racism, can we apply Arendt's thesis to the United States?

Community

The processes that have led to the release of the individual from the old customs and solidarities have led also to a loss of moral certainties, a confusion of cultural meanings, and a disruption of established social contexts. We cannot, in sum, deal with the progressive emancipation of individuals without also recognizing the decline of those structures from which the individual has been emancipated. Judgments of progress must always be specific and selective; they cannot be disengaged from opposing judgments of decline and disruption.
-Robert Nisbet. The Quest for Community. (70)

Ralph Waldo Emerson on Shakespeare

Some able and appreciating critics think no criticism on Shakespeare valuable, that does not rest purely on the dramatic merit; that he is falsely judged as poet and philosopher. I think as highly as these critics of his dramatic merit, but still think it secondary. he was a full man, who liked to talk; a brain exhaling thoughts and images, which seeking vent, found the drama next at hand. Had he been less we should have had to consider how well he filled his place, how good a dramatist he was, -and he is the best in the world. But it turns out, that what he has to say is of that weight, as to withdraw some attention from the vehicle; and he is like some saint whose history is to be rendered into all languages, into verse and prose, into songs and pictures, and cut up into proverbs; so that the occasion which gave the saint's meaning the form of a conversation, or of a prayer, or of a code of laws, is immaterial, compared with the universality of its application. So it fares with the wise Shakespeare and his book of life. He wrote the airs for all our modern music: he wrote the text of modern life; the text of manners: he drew the man of England and Europe; the father of man in America: he drew the man and described the day, and what is done in it: he read the hearts of men and women, their probity and their second thoughts, and wiles; the wiles of innocence, and the transitions by which virtues and vices slide into their contraries: he could divide the mother's part from the father's part in the face of the child, or draw the fine demarcation of freedom and of fate: he knew the laws of repression which make the police of nature: and all the sweets and all the terrors of human lot lay in his mind as truly but as softly as the landscape lies on the eye.
Quoted in Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence.

To Make a Point

Mark Ellingsen. The Richness of Augustine: His Contextual and Pastoral Theology. (2005).
Normally I do not review books until I finish reading them but I will make an exception here. This is an exceptionally good book except for one glaring stylistic point; the author wants to emphasize that Augustine was African, all well and good. I will not debate here the difference between North, Central, and South Africa. The problem lies in the consistent naming of Augustine as "the African Father." The Fathers of the Church are those whose writings expanded the theology of Christianity. I have no problem with classifying Augustine as a Father of the Church, it is long accepted usage. The kicker is the adjective "African." Rarely does a page go by without the term "African Father." It is used as often as "he" or "his." We get the point! If one wants to be technical it should be "An African Father" since Clement of Alexandria would also qualify in this way. The editor should have realized this and changed it. It mars a good book.

The Bob Bullock Texas History Museum

Bob Bullock was not one of my favorite Texas politicians but the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum makes up for that and then some. My wife and I spent two hours there yesterday and could have spent two more easily. It presented the history of Texas in a frank, unvarnished way, without being either Politically Correct or Worshipful. For more info, check out the website at
http://www.thestoryoftexas.com/

The Age of Ballyhoo-2012 edition

H. L. Mencken called it "ballyhoo". Today we call it hype. The Hunger Games. Etch-A-Sketch. Mega-Million. In today's world we move from one hype to the next without a thought. And that is the key. The era known as the Enlightenment emphasized the mind and thought. In reaction we had the Romantic movement which emphasized the heart and feeling. It results in the dichotomy between heart and mind, I think versus I feel. But the mind has to be educated in order to function. If it is not educated, not trained, we fall back on instinct. We are a more instinctual society today. Is that a good thing? Basing our responses on emotion and instinct, the public consciousness suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder. Instinct directs us to the here and now, there is no past and thus no future. We are prey to those who can take advantage of the moment, like advertisers, who are trained for this. Warhol was right, it is the future and everyone is famous for fifteen minutes.

Why Charles Lemert Doesn't Matter

Charles Lemert. Why Niebuhr Matters. Yale. 2011
Charles Lemert is "University Professor and Andrus Professor of Social Theory Emeritus at Wesleyan University and Senior Fellow of the Center for Comparative Research at Yale University." The Yale University Press saw fit to have him write about Reinhold Niebuhr in its "Why X Matters" Series. I am not sure why. Certainly the writings of Niebuhr could be classified as Sociology or Cultural Studies but that would be missing the main source. Would it not make sense to have someone who has some background in theology or history? Lemert apparently has not touched these subjects since his undergraduate days. His understanding of theology would embarrass a layman, his knowledge of history is embarrassing to a historian.

Theologically Lemert does not grasp the impact of the Social Gospel on Urban American Christianity. His convoluted attempts to explain Augustine make the simple complex. His snide comments are a constant distraction, such as "Anglicanism (a faux Protestant cult). "

Historically, Lemert does somersaults in keeping Niebuhr as a member of the Old Left while downplaying the threat of Communism. Yet, if one reads the work of Niebuhr, it is obvious that he did not do likewise. One only has to turn to the opening page of The Irony of American History to see this. Niebuhr writes:

Everybody understands the obvious meaning of the world struggle
in which we are engaged. We are defending freedom against tyranny and trying
to preserve justice against a system which has, demonically, distilled
injustice and cruelty out of its original promise of a higher justice.
(3)

To put it succinctly, Lemert does not answer the question why Niebuhr matters.

Why History

The goal Herodotus claimed for himself in the opening sentence of the Histories, to prevent the deeds of humankind from losing their color with the passage of time, is the goal of a man who saw the world of the past slipping away, along with the generation who had shaped it. He himself had grown up in a different world but he had learned to revere that of his father. Without doubt he knew it could not be brought back, but he also ensured it would not be forgotten.
-James Romm. Herodotus. (202)

March 2

Texas Independence Day. 176 years ago a number of people took their stand.

Bureaucracy

While watching the movie Tora, Tora, Tora earlier this evening, I was struck by one of the many examples of bureaucratic paralysis. The movie depicts the events leading up to and including the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. There were numerous instances but the one that stood out involved the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold "Betty" Stark. When informed that the decrypted intercepts indicate war, Stark is advised to put the Navy on alert. He pauses, and then decides he has to ask the President first. His Army counterpart, General George C. Marshall, needs no such confirmation, he goes and orders the Army to be ready (the tragedy being the message doesn't get to Hawaii in time.
But Stark's hesitation is a far cry from a similar situation some forty three years earlier. In 1898, Congress was debating declaring war on Spain. The Assistant Secretary of the Navy, on his own initiative, ordered the US fleet to prepare to attack the Spanish fleet at Manila, thus paving the way to Admiral Dewey's smashing victory. The Assistant Secretary's name?
Theodore Roosevelt.
In another irony, Roosevelt was entertaining a guest from England, a journalist, who sixteen years later, as Second Lord of the Admiralty (British for Assistant Secretary of the Navy) would keep the British fleet at sea after maneuvers while Europe waited for war. His name was Winston Churchill.

Stroke

Yesterday I discussed Woodrow Wilson and how his stroke affected the vote on the Treaty of Versailles. I realized that they were as familiar with the horrors of a stroke as my generation was with polio. Not that there are no more strokes but that treatment has advanced so far. In Wilson's day, it was amazing he lasted four more years. When my father had a stroke 27 years ago, the fact that he lived for another ten years was par. Now people have strokes and are back to work in a matter of days. Amazing.

More Hannah Arendt

The lower middle classes, or petty bourgeoisie, were the descendants of the guilds of artisans and tradesmen who for centuries had been protected against the hazards of life by a closed system which outlawed competition and was in the last instance under the protection of the state. They consequently blamed their misfortune upon the Manchester system, which had exposed them to the hardships of a competitive society and deprived them of all special protection and privileges granted by public authorities. They were, therefore, the first to clamor for the "welfare state," which they expected not only to shield them against emergencies but to keep them in the professions and callings they had inherited from their families.
-Hannah Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarianism. (36)

Does This Thesis Hold?

Neither exploitation nor oppression as such is ever the main cause for resentment; wealth without visible functions much more intolerable because nobody can understand why it should be tolerated.
-Hannah Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarianism. (4)

The Bureau

Tim Weiner. Enemies: A History of the FBI. 537 pp. Random House. New York. 2012

In Federalist 8 Alexander Hamilton wrote:

"Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct....Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort to repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free."

Of course the counterargument from Benjamin Franklin runs along the lines of "they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." This is the eternal debate. But this is not the place for it.
Enemies deals with the agency tasked, among other things, with protecting the US from enemies foreign and domestic who seek to subvert our way of life [as opposed to our lifestyle]. Most works regarding the Federal Bureau of Investigation fall into two camps: Saviors or Devils. Related to that is anything regarding the man who was the Bureau for fifty years: J. Edgar Hoover, either a hero or a crossdressing, deeply conflicted, villain. Weiner presents what is perhaps the most objective history of the FBI to date, a treatment that shows the War on Terror is not a recent phenomenon.

A Sure Sign of Spring

Pitchers and catchers report!

An Interesting Thought

From George Marsden. Religion and American Culture, pp. 194-195

The sensational reactions that marked the whole era between the two world wars reflected the tensions of rapid cultural change. They also sometimes obscured the significance of the changes since they helped create the impression, eagerly promoted by media, that anyone who would express alarm at the transformation must be a bigot or fanatic.
Nonetheless, some sober observers recognized the revolutionary nature of the developments taking place within American society itself. One of the most astute of these was the famed journalist Walter Lippmann. In A Preface to Morals, appearing in 1929, Lippmann observed that the irreligion of the modern world [is]... radical to a degree for which there is, I think, no counterpart." Modern Americans, he said, had "defied the Methodist God and have become very nervous." Lippmann, a secular Jew himself, was not recommending a return to old-time religion. Even though he thought that J. Gresham Machen had "the best popular argument produced by either side in the current controversy," he was convinced that anti-intellectual popular fundamentalism and extremism had irremediably discredited traditional Protestantism among the thinking people in the community. Yet civilization could not go on without a shared morality. Lippmann's solution was to base such a moral consensus on a new humanism. "When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists."
Building a new humanist moral consensus was, of course, more easily said than done. And "the acids of modernity" that Lippmann described had sources that went beyond ideological or even religious change.
Perhaps most basically, the United States was increasingly becoming what the sociologist Pitirim Sorokin described a few years later as a "sensate society." That is, the operative values for most Americans of the time were increasingly defined by satisfaction of the senses- materialistic, hedonistic, or sensuous. This was an accentuation of the trend that Henry Adams pointed out at the end of the nineteenth century, that the United States was preeminently a materialistic civilization. It was materialistic philosophically in that it was built on a science and technology that regarded the material, empirically observable world as the "real" world. And it was practically materialistic in its efficient commercial and technological management of material culture.
Such broad cultural trends lay beneath the celebrated "revolution in morals" of the 1920s. Commercial interests particularly pushed Americans toward definitions of themselves in terms of things that they owned and pleasures they could enjoy. In the 1920s the wide promotion of such outlooks was relatively new. Commercial advertising was just emerging in its modern form. The commercial possibilities of sexual suggestion were just being developed. During the Victorian Era sex was a subject to be avoided in public. Once that taboo was broken, around World War I, advertisers made the most of it. As one observer put it, "Advertising, once pristine, began the transition which...was to transmute soap from a cleansing agent into an aphrodisiac."

More Cicero

Shun also the desire for money. Nothing is more the mark of a mean and petty spirit than to love riches; nothing more honorable and more magnificent than to despise money if you are without it, but if you have it to devote it to liberality and beneficence.
-Cicero. On Duties. (I. 68)

More Cicero

Fleshly lusts are harsh masters for our minds, since they compel and command us to enter upon courses which never end. Because they can in no way be appeased or satisfied, there is no crime to which they do not drive those whom their enticements have ensnared.
-Cicero. On the Commonwealth. (VI. 1)

An Old Roman

The search for truth and its investigation are above all, peculiar to man. Therefore, whenever we are free from necessary business and other concerns we are eager to see or to hear or to learn, considering that the discovery of obscure or wonderful things is necessary for a blessed life.
-Cicero. On Duties. (I. 13)

From the Federal Farmer

We do not by declarations change the nature of things, or create new truths.
-Richard Henry Lee. Letters from a Federal Farmer. Number XVI.

Why Sports Matter

The most universal experience in America, historians say, is to have been uprooted. Rooting is a pressing national need. The human being needs roots, because the pretense to infinity, the search for total universality, may be proper to the spirit but not the body, and whoever commits himself to such a search dooms himself to the disintegration of the embodied self, which is death.
-Michael Novak. "Rooting, Agon"

Tradition

Tradition is an embodiment of givens that must constantly be fought for, recovered in each generation, and adjusted to new conditions.
-Eugene Genovese. The Southern Tradition. (4-5)

Richard Weaver

It is apparent...that those who are in rebellion against memory are the ones who wish to live without knowledge, and we can, in fact, tell from their conduct that they act more than others on instinct and sensation.
-Richard Weaver. Ideas Have Consequences. (67-68)

Will Percy

Should I therefore teach deceit, dishonor, ruthlessness, bestial force to the children in order that they survive? Better that they perish. It is sophistry to speak of two sets of virtues, there is but one: virtue is an end in itself; the survival virtues are means , not ends. Honor and honesty, compassion and truth are good even if they kill you, for they alone give life its dignity and worth. Yet probably England and France and all the good and noble and the true of all the world will die and obscenity will triumph. Probably those that practiced virtue will be destroyed, but it is better for men to die than to call evil good, and virtue itself will never die.
-William Alexander Percy. Lanterns on the Levee. (313)

C. S. Lewis on Politics

I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from Rousseau, who believed in democracy because he thought mankind so wise and good that everybody deserved a share in government. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power. I do not think equality is one of those things which are good simply in themselves and for their own sakes.
- C. S. Lewis. Present Concerns. (71)

Hayek on Rewards

Though most people regard as very natural the claim that nobody should be rewarded more than he deserves for his effort, it is nevertheless based on a colossal presumption. It presumes that we are able to judge in every individual instance how well people use the different talents and opportunities given to them and how meritorious their achievements are. It presumes that some human beings are in a position to know conclusively what a person is worth and are entitled to determine what he may achieve. It presumes what the argument for liberty rejects: that we can and do know all that guides a person's actions.
- F. A. Hayek. The Constitution of Liberty (97)

Morality

Besides the arts, however, many theoretical studies also play their part in making morality possible, in saving it from the blindness and narrowness which have so often limited its use. They make the facts intelligible to us; they help us to interpret the world in which we must move. This is plainly true of history, of anthropology and the other social sciences. But most of all it is true of psychology, which can have a central. function.
- Mary Midgley. Wickedness. (200)

Weaver on Education

History has always been a sobering discipline because it presents the story not only of man's achievements but also of his failures.
-Richard M. Weaver. "Education and the Individual"

Evil

As long as one believes that the evil man wears horns, one will not discover an evil man.
-Erich Fromm. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness

The Prince of Motown

Prince Fielder signed a $214 million, nine year deal with the Detroit Tigers. Good luck keeping that pitching staff together! This is good for the Rangers, although not as good as if Washington signed him. It means, in all probability, that the Rangers can go ahead and resign Josh Hamilton. Fielder has more long term upside, he's younger and more durable. But Hamilton is box office, a fan fave, like Michael Young. He symbolizes an attitude that plays well. And, if he is re-signed, it means he will not go to the Angels which was a possibility.

Education

Nothing can be plainer, when we consider it, than this fact that education is discriminative. It takes what is less good physically, mentally, and morally and transforms that by various methods and techniques into something that more nearly approaches our ideal of the good.
-Richard Weaver. "Education and the Individual."

Yu-Phoria

Last month the Rangers made news when they posted $51 million to the Nippon Ham Fighters for the rights to negotiate with pitching phenom Yu Darvish. Wednesday was the deadline and they announced the signing of a six year $60 million deal. This was so important that they broke in to all the local news programming.
Who is Yu Darvish? He's 25 years old, about 6 feet 4, weighs about 240. Over the last five years pitching in Japan his ERA has been under 2, his strikeouts over 200. His throwing style is the conventional American 3/4 style, with comparisons to Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan. And now he gets to work with Ryan and the Maddox brothers (Mike and Greg)( yes Cy Young, Atlanta Braves Greg Maddox).
What does he mean to the Rangers? First and foremost, box office: this kid is a draw. He means that the Rangers will do what it takes to stay at the top. It more than compensates for the loss of C. J. Wilson. It means for another exciting season in Arlington.

The Modern Schism

Martin E. Marty.The Modern Schism: Three Paths to the Secular. 1969 181 pp.
The reality of the secular has come to obsess modern religious thinkers. This volume analyzes the complex story of The Modern Schism, an episode in the cultural and spiritual history of the West which has had fateful consequences for contemporary society.
Marty argues that during the nineteenth century, there occurred a cluster of events more devastating to- and potentially more hopeful for- Christianity than anything that happened during such similar periods as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. He traces three different types of secularization which together make up the "modern schism," shows how they have developed in the West, and where they are leading man today.
By contrasting the ways in which the old Christian order was attacked in Europe, ignored in England, and transformed in America, the author points to present alternatives to that order and what they mean for society.

The BCS--A Week Later

OR, Why Alabama is and should be number one.
First, let us look at the game itself. Has there ever been such a game between the top two teams where one team's defense so totally dominated the game? The final score was 21-0, five field goals, one touchdown. But a look at the defensive statistics gives the rest of the story. LSU had 92 yards of total offense...for the game. They crossed the fifty yard line once, midway through the fourth quarter. Nothing worked for them. Even their punter was sub par. They had Tyrann Mathieu, the "Honey Badger", but I doubt his name was called more than three times the entire game.
Some argue that LSU and Alabama were a poor match. It certainly turned out that way. If the situation had been reversed and LSU dominated, I would agree that Alabama did not belong in the game. But what to do when it is the number one team that does not belong? Oklahoma State had a better argument that they should have played for the BCS title than LSU but the rules did not allow it.
The rules for the BCS title game are relatively simple. Take two polls and some other ranking system, put them all together, read the entrails, and the top two teams compete for the title and it is agreed that the winner will be the champion. But some people don't like the rules. One writer voted LSU number 1, while four voted for Oklahoma State. They might cite the injustice of the system but protest votes don't work.
This argument is flawed on many levels. Oklahoma State argues they had as much right to be there as Alabama. After all, there loss was in overtime on a field goal. But it was to unranked Iowa State. People overlook the fact that OSU blew a 17 point lead. They excuse it by the tragedy of the death of the women's basketball coach. Sorry, but that is called life and it is unfair.
Others have complained that it wasn't a glamorous match up-is this a football game or a beauty contest? To quote Andy Griffith, "What it was, wuz football".
This game and the response points to one of the ills of our society. I call it "Al Gore Syndrome". If you don't like the results, change the rules. In the 2000 election, Gore demanded a change to the way ballots were counted in Florida, the infamous "hanging chad". He also wanted another recount after the official recount. When we don't like the result, change the rules, or get a court to do it for you.

ROLL TIDE

Laissez les bon temps rouler TIDE.
More tomorrow o the aftermath of this game as a reflection of our society.

The Lost Cause

For those men believed in something. They counted life a light thing to lay down in the faith they bore. They were terrible in battle. They were generous in victory. They rose from defeat to fight anew, and while they lived they were formidable. There were not enough of them; that is all.
-John W. Thomason quoted in Dobie, A Texan in England(238)

J. Frank Dobie

Although I have not read much in the way of Texas Literature, I have read a fair amount over the last year about Texas Literature. Anybody who delves into this topic must deal with the overwhelming presence of J. Frank Dobie. Dobie, perhaps more than any other author defined Texas as Western. The iconic event for this occurred back in 1939 when the Texas Institute of Letters awarded its first "Best Texas Book" to Dobie over Katherine Anne Porter. Politics aside, it points out a dichotomy in the identity of Texas, Dobie represents the West, Porter the South.
If one looks at a road map of Texas, taking I-35 as their guide, one can best see the division. To the east is that Texas which is Southern, to the west Western. The awarding of the TIL prize signified that Texas was hereafter to be considered a Western state.

A Texan on Culture

A cultivated mind is the Guardian Genius of Democracy.
-Mirabeau B. Lamar

It is interesting to note that J. Frank Dobie gave this quote (unattributed) in A Texan in England when comparing the recreational activities provided by American forces (Red Cross Huts) and English forces (lecture series)(210).

More McGrath

There is unquestionably a general trend among theologians, from the Renaissance onwards, to adopt an attitude to the past consonant with the experience of, and perspective on, the world particular to their specific social group within their specific sociopolitical and cultural system. Alister McGrath.The Genesis of Doctrine. (152-153)

History

It is therefore necessary to register a certain degree of hesitation concerning the image of "selecting" criteria for evaluating the authority of the past, in that this image suggests an active choice on the part of the agent. A more nuanced account of this process would suggest that a certain outlook on the authority of the past is (possibly unconsciously) presupposed within the group to which the theologian belongs, reflecting its social needs and aspirations, and that this is received and assumed as self-evidently correct. -Alister McGrath.The Genesis of Doctrine. (153)