Barrel Strength

I have been reading high-minded rebuttals of the latest trendy atheists. In particular, Michael Novak’s “No One Sees God” is a fine engagement with the squadron of atheists who currently occupy mindshare.

But, tiring of my non-fiction diet of history, science, and religion, I found Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” in an attracive edition, and have been devouring it to the exclusion of the weightier tomes.

You may be of an age to recall the wonderful Brideshead Revisited television series of 1981 with Jeremy Irons, with the gorgeous settings and the great music by Geoffrey Burgon. There is also a new movie covering the same, which I have not yet seen. Like Dune, Brideshead will engender a fresh edition each generation. It is one of the great stories.

In the chapter, “Brideshead Deserted”, the hero Charles Ryder encounters Cordelia Flyte, younger sister of his alcoholic former friend Sebastian, while on his first commission as an architectural painter, painting the Brideshead London palace before it is torn down to make way for a block of flats. This is several years after Charles had his falling out with Lady Teresa Flyte over Sebastian’s hopeless drinking. Cordelia asks Charles to take her out to dinner. She is fifteen, quite ugly and very perceptive.

They are at the restaurant talking of the late Lady Flyte, who was disliked by members of her family in varying degrees. Who can fail to recall Lady Flyte’s [Clare Bloom's] cool and withering denunciation of Charles Ryder for having assisted Sebastian’s drunkenness be lending him a couple of pounds? “Callous wickedness”, she called it, in her cool, quiet voice.

So here they are years later as Cordelia scarfs down her first meal in a public restaurant, speaking of her late mother.

Read the rest…

I am. When Obama lies straight out about his stance on single payer insurance – knowing that it is a lie and that he will be caught out in the lie – and goes ahead and lies anyway, something bad is happening.  I think he is confident – maybe not serenely confident but confident enough – that the mainstream media will protect him and he will get his way. That frightens me. The truth is that there is no health care crisis in the US. Most people are insured for most problems.  Most Americans have more to lose than to gain from collectivizing medicine – and they know it. I think Steyn has this weasel Obama pegged – all he needs to do is jam through something – anything – and an irreversible trend will be started.