Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and may 2008 be a good year for all Chicagoboyz, girlz, commenters, and lurkers.
Ginny
Brutalism & Indestructibility
Not unrelated to Shannon’s post: Few corporations would make a church congregation impoverish itself to honor the school of “Brutalism.” Charles Paul Freund at the American Spectator describes the arguments between the Third Church of Christ, Scientist (who can’t afford the upkeep of a remarkably uninviting piece of architecture) and the preservationists.
Reply to David Foster
After hijacking Shannon’s thread, thought I’d answer Foster in a separate post:
“Discontent foreran the Two Mutinies, and more or less it lurkingly survived them. Hence it was not unreasonable to apprehend some return of trouble, sporadic or general.”
Note: Robert Kaplan
Update: Veryretired notes today’s “Reflections on Blowback” by Lee Harris (at TCS Daily). Harris’s argument is clear and, characteristically, based on human nature.
A&L links to an essay by Robert Kaplan, in The American Interest, which discusses the role of faith and patriotism in defining why and how a nation fights; here, he uses the wise “congruent reality” of Conrad to demonstrate his points. He also describes what he sees as a widening gulf between those who fight and those at home, distinctions often rooted in the geographic and familial. But, then, he reminds us that was also true of the armed forces in 1939. He concludes with his conversation with a combat pilot,
Chavez Surprised
Was anyone else pleasantly surprised at the results from Venezuela? The Devil’s Excrement, Gateway Pundit, Drudge. Russia, of course, was less surprising.