By Dalwhinnie
From time to time the Internet directs me to interesting people with whom I am not on all fours, but who seem to be in the domain of the real. Terry Glavin seems to be one of them, at least on the subject of leftist anti-semitism. Andrew Potter is another. Both seem to be judging the effectiveness of left-wing causes by real-world criteria.
By Dalwhinnie
Peter Foster asks in today’s Financial Post:
“To put it in a nutshell, why is valid economic theory so counter-intuitive to the human mind? Also, why do liberals feel the need to get on such a moral high horse in their condemnation of economic truths?”
Answer to the first question: Envy. And a wise concern for not being cheated.
Answer to the second question: Moral superiority is its own reward.
My point is that liberal market societies have emerged from certain historical processes, late in time, and could be lost for millennia if certain conditions are not satisfied.
By Arran Gold
Short shrift is given to youngsters in Asian culture and that is one of the factors which has inhibited the development there in all spheres, including scientific, cultural and economic. That is why one sees leaders of China and India, who would feel more comfortable in a nursing home than the world stage. But here is a meme to watch.
By Dalwhinnie
I sent a letter to Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail. This was the article in question. An exposition at the Royal Ontario Museum on Darwin could not find corporate sponsorship. Wente concluded that new scientific findings on the biological bases of sex, race and character difference were as offensive to liberal dogmas as evolution is to the creationists.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinions/columnists/Margaret+Wente.html
Dear Mrs Wente:
Your article on Darwin in this Saturday’s Globe was well taken. The implications of modern research for notions of equality, race, intelligence, character and crime are extremely challenging for those who have believed that only the structures of society prevent the achievement of equality, and engender racism/sexism/nationalism.
By Arran Gold
We all learn from MSM that Bush voters are knuckle draggers and that Kerry voters are, well oh so sophisticated. What is the reality? Read the rest…
By Arran Gold
A gun buyback program highlights the foolishness.
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By Dalwhinnie
I was thinking about the nature of the Estonian composer Arvo Part’s music the other night as I was listening to the glorious and completely perfect rendition of it by the Elora Singers under Noel Edison. I was hearing Part not as a modern composer but as someone who has gone back to the musical composition styles of Orlando Gibbons, Tallis, Monteverdi, and Palestrina, and Orthodox Church composers unknown to me. That he is a Christian composer is obvious. He is composing religious music in the style of all three Christian denominations: Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant. He says the choice of language determines for him the musical style, so that if commissioned to do something in English it sounds like a commentary on English Renaissance compositional techniques, for instance. It could be so, but I suspect he is being way too coy. I think he is deliberately going back to the idea of music as it originally was in those times: religious, devotional, and even private - not meant for more than 12 people in the audience, maybe fewer. The number of musicians required to play his music is likewise small. It is as if he has decided that the whole western musical tradition needs to start anew, with very small ensembles, and get away from the titanic emotional outpourings of the 19th century, the bizarre ideological nonsense of the mid 20th, and return music to its roots in the expressions of the soul.
Try a comparison of the Beatitudes, which ends with Petrenko’s triumphal blast from the organ, and De Profundis, in Latin. One sounds so English in style, the other so Latin. Or at least English and Latin as interpreted by some talented musicological alien. His Orthodox work in Kanon Pokajannen is equally true to that tradition.
In any case I think with Part we are in the presence of a complete reinvention and rediscovery of music, which is not trying to go forward, but to go back to its wellsprings in expressions of faith.
See if that interpretation makes any sense for you.