Ginny – Page 40 – Chicago Boyz

Neuhaus, R.I.P.

January 10, 2009January 9, 2009 by Ginny

Father Richard John Neuhaus has died. Joseph Bottum’s obituary in First Things includes links to tributes, including Brian Anderson’s “A Priest in Full” in City Magazine and Ross Douthat in The Atlantic. Douthat observes:

No modern intellectual did so much to make the case for the compatibility between Christian belief and liberal democratic politics – and in the future, when the two have parted ways (as I suspect they will) more completely than at present, both Christians and liberals will look back on the synthesis he argued for with nostalgia, and regret.

Defining the Family Down

December 19, 2008December 18, 2008 by Ginny

Taranto links, with some irony, a NYTimes article emphasizing one aspect of census news, an increased percentage of black children live within a family:

Demographers said such a trend might be partly attributable to the growing proportion of immigrants in the nation’s black population. It may have been driven, too, by the values of an emerging black middle class, a trend that could be jeopardized by the current economic meltdown.

The Census Bureau attributed an indeterminate amount of the increase to revised definitions adopted in 2007, which identify as parents any man and woman living together, whether or not they are married or the child’s biological parents.

We suspect the third “indeterminate” reason is key and the news may not be all that great. But how do we know? Taranto has fun with this, but it has serious implications. It appears a combination of “political correctness” (ah, he says he loves the child; isn’t that the same as being a father – even better, perhaps?) and post modernism (words can mean whatever the hell we want them to, so can traditions, so can biology).

Lost Causes, Lost Effects

January 5, 2009December 10, 2008 by Ginny

Jeremiah Wright was back in the pulpit Sunday, pontificating on the tragic December anniversary of the 1941 bombing of Hiroshima; this was shortly followed, he told his congregation, by the bombing of Nagasaki. Wright himself was born in 1941. Of course, as Leno’s untutored-man-in-the-street questions indicate, we are losing our understanding of events within our own lifetimes.

Losing dates, we lose our understanding of history for we are less likely to see that ideas have consequences and effects follow causes. We also lose gratitude for those that went before – whether for Shakespeare’s words or the bravery of Washington’s troops or the beauty of ideas that impelled the Puritans or gave the founders their wisdom. We don’t understand real courage nor how tolerance comes to us. Most of all, we lose the sense we only reach the heights we can because we stand on other’s shoulders. Such ignorance gives us a false pride.

Thompson on the Economy

December 9, 2008December 9, 2008 by Ginny

Belmont Club links to Fred Thompson on the economy. That rumbling voice inspires a kind of good humor; it always seems the voice of good humor – the masculine equivalent of Dolly Parton’s laugh. Here it is in the service of satire and beneath its humor is a picture of the equivalent to the Tory approach to the Brits in 1776; Thompson, a father for two generations, concludes with the equivalent of Paine’s remarks.

The Frontier & Its Risks

December 7, 2008December 4, 2008 by Ginny

Daniel Henninger applies Frederick Jackson Turner to the current crisis. In 1893 Turner argued “westering” defined American character, especially individualism. Henninger notes “Turner’s purpose wasn’t to idealize America but to try to understand the wellsprings of its remarkable and self-evident success.” It tells us something today: “The current crisis is the result of a world gone madly long on real estate. Daniel Boone, the famed American frontiersman, went belly-up speculating on Kentucky land. He moved on in 1788 and paid his debts. So should we, without losing sight of the American frontier, where we discovered the rewards of risk.”