Wild and Wasted Virtues

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Some of the pre-election commentary, especially from the Left, reminds me once again of an interesting Chesterton passage from 1908:

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. For example, Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it easier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive. Mr. Blatchford is not only an early Christian, he is the only early Christian who ought really to have been eaten by lions. For in his case the pagan accusation is really true: his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy of the human race because he is so human.

Previous reference to this passage:  Sympathy for the Devil

New! – Your Mildly Anxious Pre-Election Tech-Grouch Haikus

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Elections coming.
Bad or worse – not good or bad –
Is the real question.

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New Google inbox
Maximizes confusion.
But, Google knows best.

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Social media:
People at each other’s throats
Over little things.

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That damned noise again. . .
Some app, can’t ID which one.
This is the future?

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(Feel free to add your contributions in the comments.)
 

Watching the Major Media Meltdown

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I’ll confess to always having had a bit of cynicism about the professional national media orgs; this dating from my several turns in military public affairs and being one of those in-house media entertainment/news providers for the military broadcasting system. From the latter experience, I learned just how the sausage-news is created, expeditiously and on-schedule for the daily-dish-up. The former served up endless stories of media personalities acting badly from peers who had been there when they happened; checkbook offers for tips, tantrums on the flight-line as the media flight was about to depart, disgustingly snobbish behavior towards military media-relations staff … yep, darned few modern-day embedded reporters earned anything like the affection and respect earned by Ernie Pyle during WWII. Those who flew in to cover Gulf War I did not manage to conceal a tone of gratification and happy surprise in their coverage upon observing that the troops in that war were neat, polite, professional; the very farthest from the bunch of murderous, drug-addled psychotics which the aftermath of the Vietnam War had obviously led them to expect. And yes, we all noticed this at the time.
(Pro tip when it comes to producing local news? The calendar is your friend. A good half of your stories are ruled by the predictable. A significant or insignificant holiday a story or two or three predicated on that holiday. The bigger the holiday, the more stories which can be milked out of it. Significant local event a scheduled road closure, or a grand opening? Oh, yeah another couple of stories to fill the required minutes in the regular broadcast. Even something semi-scheduled, like a rain/hurricane season? At least a story or two about preparations… And so it goes.)
Back to my main point mainstream national news media: I presume that someone still watches CNN.

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Nicely Put

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Bill Reader, at Sarah Hoyt’s blog, speaking of American democracy:

It is also remarkable in how undramatic it was in its conception, admitting the probability that people with some flawed ideas are not flawed in all ideas—that extreme measures to silence a person because of disagreement, even totally valid disagreement over things that are an existential threat to the nation, would throw many babies out with the bathwater and render the country draconian and uncomfortable in the meanwhile.

A very good point–someone having bad ideas, or at least ideas that we think are bad, does not mean that he doesn’t also have good ideas.

One thing that I have noticed about “Progressives” is that their categorization engines tend to be over-aggressive:  if someone has any of the opinions/beliefs in a particular list, then it is assumed that he/she also has all other beliefs in that list.  For example, IIRC, I’ve seen commenters assail our friend Bookworm for being an Evangelical Christian, whereas actually, she is Jewish. They simply cannot grasp that there might be a Trump-supporting human who is in material ways unlike their mental model of Trump supporters (uneducated, angry, anti-sex, highly-religious Christian, etc).

The quoted passage is from a very interesting essay that is worth reading in full.

Books I’m reading

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I read four or five books at a time. I have one in each room of the house. The Kindle is for the bedroom and reading in bed. That one was “Ship of Fools” by Tucker Carlson.

That is very good but got me depressed a bit. The best review on Amazon was:

Don’t drink wine and read this book, you’ll get angry and make posts on social media that are completely accurate and your friends will hate you.

I feel pretty much like that.

I’ve been reading “Militant Normals” by Kurt Schlicter. It is less depressing and quite good.

Then there is the audio in the car which is now, “Revolt of the Elites” by Christopher Lasch. It was written in 2016 and published in 2017 so has nothing so far about Trump.

Today, I finished “Citizen Soldiers” by Stephen Ambrose which describes the war from Normandy to the end. It’s not just a narrative of the war but has chapters on POWs and about crooks and deserters. There was a lot of “Combat Fatigue” which got Patton into trouble. It was best treated close to the front and 90% of the soldiers returned to their units or at least went back to some job.

I am also reading a couple of books on the back patio, one of which is “The Sleepwalkers” which is about the advent of World War I, and it will be 100 years since the Armistice in two weeks.

The other books is, “Vatican” by Malachi Martin, which I read years ago but am rereading it. I am stimulated to read it by the antics of Pope Francis who seems to be the leftist Pope Martin warned about.