Comments on: An Open Thread while I get my act together

By: lee

lee — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 12:22:26 +0000

On a different topic:
Regarding the Hollywood crowd and their “demand a plan”: I got a plan. For every film that receives an R rating for violence, assess a tax or fee, both on gross receipts, and on each person earning in excess of $1MM on the film. Let’s say 5% of their gross earnings. And use this for helping victims of violence, treatment of violent mentally ill, etc.
Let’s see how Hollywood likes THAT plan!

By: Gringo

Gringo — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 04:37:48 +0000

JKB: two observations on ritual and ceremony. An aunt and uncle of mine ran a funeral home for some 20 years. My uncle said that funerals helped in the grieving process. Granted, he may have had a professional interest in saying so. Having been through memorial services for my parents and various relatives- decades after my aunt and uncle sold the funeral home- I would concur. The memorial services constituted a gathering of the tribes, of people who had the deceased in common, who shared stories about the deceased. The memorial services helped in the farewell.

I once attended a Christmas Eve mass in Guatemala with some friends. While there are many Catholic churches in Latin America in a baroque style, this church was relatively new and plain- more Protestant than Catholic in its decoration. However, the ceremony had its roots in 2000 years of the Roman Catholic Church. I felt uplifted after the mass- nothing intellectual, pure emotion. I thought to myself, the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t last for 2000 years without learning how to put on a ceremony. [I suspect that had I not known Spanish, or if the mass had been in Latin, which would have been the case before Vatican II, my reaction would have been somewhat similar.]

There hasn’t been a Catholic in my family tree for over 400 years, as far as I can tell, and neither I nor my parents were churchgoers, so my reaction is one of an outsider.

By: JKB

JKB — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 03:43:54 +0000

When I verified the Stuart Schneiderman link above, I stayed to catch up on his latest.

He has a post discussing Theodore Dalrymple’s post a few years ago on culture.
stuartschneiderman.blogspot…dalrymple-on-culture.html

In that post Schneiderman cite the importance of ritual and ceremony in community. Giving people a place and confirming their place in the whole. He used the family, nightly dinner as an example. It also reminded me of a friend, who a lifelong Beltway brat, i.e., born and raised in Suburban Maryland, who had to go through Catholic catechism before her marriage. She was, at least for the time, quite taken by the ritual and ceremony. I remember thinking at the time, how something similar to religion practice could be useful to help ground all those post-modern Progressives that were raised with nothing more than protest as their ritual and community.

This put me to mind of what ritual and ceremony could be developed to build common social norms for those of us not-Progressives (I don’t want to say Right, I’m about done with The Right).

I can see maybe some routine community trips to the firing range. Perhaps some get together that is light on political rhetoric and heavy on socializing. Maybe a book club that reads Western Civ. Something that meets routinely and can easily accommodate new people who become interested and then find community?

Anybody got any ideas?

By: Spartacus

Spartacus — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 01:37:37 +0000

“Shall we? That is, shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest?” — Mark Twain

It’s been an interesting question for a long time now.

By: JKB

JKB — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:34:56 +0000

I've been thinking about an old interview of a Kenyan economics expert recently posted about at Carpe Diem. The bottom line is the economist begs the West to stop sending Aid. Food aid kills the farm economy. Other aid makes it hard for the poor to build businesses. One thing Aid does do is support the kleptocrats in government. Plus, it makes the "enlightened" givers fell all superior inside. Well, here is a discussion of that interview, along with talk about the new trend. Ironically, it is China that is bringing free enterprise to Africa in the form of foreign investment rather than foreign aid. Without offering foreign aid Chinese businesses have done more for Africa’s economic development than the armies of celebrities and billionaires who are whining about how much we owe the Africans. stuartschneiderman.blogspot…free-enterprise-is-coming-to-africa.html

By: Danny Lemieux

Danny Lemieux — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:01:46 +0000

Just took down our Christmas decorations and outdoor lights. Now, its the bleak midwinter for us until the first signs of spring appear at the end of February, when the sun begins to feel warm and the ducks, swans, geese and cranes return. Quiet normalcy.