Rights

From a review of What’s Wrong With Rights? by Nigel Biggar:

.... Rights are qualified by duty, not least that not to harm others. There is a liberty that belongs to Christian people by the word of God, a liberty Biggar defines as “the freedom not to be forced to do anything that God forbids, or to be forcibly prevented from doing anything he commands.” Also, to have a right “is not yet to have moral permission to assert it” — the social good might demand otherwise. ....

What’s Wrong with Rights by Nigel Biggar review: one man's crusade for intellectual freedom continues

"Present laughter to utopian bliss"

I was introduced to the essays of Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) as an undergraduate student of politics by a political philosophy professor at Milton College and read more while studying that subject in graduate school at William & Mary. The best collection of Oakeshott is Rationalism in politics and other essays (1962, 1991). Revisiting his essay, "On being conservative."

The common belief that it is impossible (or, if not impossible, then so unpromising as to be not worth while attempting) to elicit explanatory general principles from what is recognized to be conservative conduct is not one that I share. It may be true that conservative conduct does not readily provoke articulation in the idiom of general ideas, and that consequently there has been a certain reluctance to undertake this kind of elucidation; but it is not to be presumed that conservative conduct is less eligible than any other for this sort of interpretation, for what it is worth. Nevertheless, this is not the enterprise I propose to engage in here. My theme is not a creed or a doctrine, but a disposition. To be conservative is to be disposed to think and behave in certain manners; it is to prefer certain kinds of conduct and certain conditions of human circumstances to others; it is to be disposed to make certain kinds of choices. And my design here is to construe this disposition as it appears in contemporary character, rather than to transpose it into the idiom of general principles.

The general characteristics of this disposition are not difficult to discern, although they have often been mistaken. They centre upon a propensity to use and to enjoy what is available rather than to wish for or to look for something else; to delight in what is present rather than what was or what may be. Reflection may bring to light an appropriate gratefulness for what is available, and consequently the acknowledgment of a gift or an inheritance from the past; but there is no mere idolizing of what is past and gone. What is esteemed is the present; and it is esteemed not on account of its connections with a remote antiquity, nor because it is recognized to be more admirable than any possible alternative, but on account of its familiarity: not, Verweile doch, du bist so schon, but, Stay with me because I am attached to you.

If the present is arid, offering little or nothing to be used or enjoyed, then this inclination will be weak or absent; if the present is remarkably unsettled, it will display itself in a search for a firmer foothold and consequently in a recourse to and an exploration of the past; but it asserts itself characteristically when there is much to be enjoyed, and it will be strongest when this is combined with evident risk of loss. In short, it is a disposition appropriate to a man who is acutely aware of having something to lose which he has learned to care for; a man in some degree rich in opportunities for enjoyment, but not so rich that he can afford to be indifferent to loss. It will appear more naturally in the old than in the young, not because the old are more sensitive to loss but because they are apt to be more fully aware of the resources of their world and therefore less likely to find them inadequate. In some people this disposition is weak merely because they are ignorant of what their world has to offer them: the present appears to them only as a residue of importunities.

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. Familiar relationships and loyalties will be preferred to the allure of more profitable attachments; to acquire and to enlarge will be less important than to keep, to cultivate and to enjoy; the grief of loss will be more acute than the excitement of novelty or promise. It is to be equal to one's own fortune, to live at the level of one's own means, to be content with the want of greater perfection which belongs alike to oneself and one's circumstances. With some people this is itself a choice; in others it is a disposition which appears, frequently or less frequently, in their preferences and aversions, and is not itself chosen or specifically cultivated.

Now, all this is represented in a certain attitude towards change and innovation; change denoting alterations we have to suffer and innovation those we design and execute. ....

Michael Oakeshott, "On being conservative," Rationalism in politics and other essays, 1991.

Pure Sherlock

Just as Joan Hickson was the perfect Miss Marple, Jeremy Brett was the definitive Sherlock Holmes. From a Telegraph appreciation of the series:

.... Stage actor Brett was approached in 1982 with the idea to make an exquisitely crafted, fully authentic adaptation of the consulting detective’s best cases. He set his heart on becoming “the best Sherlock Holmes the world has ever seen”.

He conducted exhaustive research, becoming a stickler for any discrepancy between the scripts and Conan Doyle’s stories. One of Brett’s most treasured possessions was his bulging “Baker Street File”, detailing everything from Holmes’s mannerisms to his eating habits. In contrast to the stuffy portrayals of the black-and-white era, Brett brought passion to the role. He introduced Holmes’s fluttering hand gestures and barks of eccentric laughter (“Ha!”). He would leap over furniture in search of clues or hurl himself to the ground to examine a footprint.

Brett’s Holmes was like a bird of prey, with piercing vision and a predator’s instincts. He suffered black moods between cases – like Brett himself, who was bipolar – but crackled with electrifying energy when the game was afoot. .... Of the 80-odd actors to portray Holmes, Brett is how I imagine the character. ....

The series ran from 1984 to 1994, comprising 41 films. .... This is pure Sherlock for the connoisseurs, as faithful to his literary roots as has ever been seen on screen. ....

I watched Jeremy Brett in The Hound of the Baskervilles only two nights ago.

Culture Fix: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

A correspondence

From a review of Dorothy and Jack: The Transforming Friendship of Dorothy L. Sayers and C.S. Lewis.

.... In a new book, Dorothy and Jack, Gina Dalfonzo delves into the correspondence between these two writers, which spanned more than a decade, beginning with a letter from Sayers to Lewis and ending with Sayers’s death. With this compact tome, Dalfonzo draws out the ways in which the writers might have helped spur each other to greater creativity in their work and to deeper understanding in their personal lives. The book features long quotations from many of their exchanges, following the thread of one topic or another through the course of several letters back and forth, but their text is set inside what is primarily a case Dalfonzo outlines: that the correspondence between them, illuminated by knowledge of their personal lives, illustrates how the friendship altered both for the better. ....

Dalfonzo’s ability to pull the right excerpts from these letters and capture the playful spirit in which they corresponded will make readers feel almost as if they are being immersed in this very real friendship, watching slowly as Sayers and Lewis warm up to each other, their mutual fondness growing over the course of years. It is immediately obvious, thanks to the brief biographies Dalfonzo provides, that Sayers and Lewis had much in common in how they approached their work and in the values that undergirded their efforts. Most notably, both were profoundly shaped by their days at Oxford, and both had undergone significant personal experiences earlier in life — he a conversion, and she a series of troubled relationships — that helped explain their passion for using the written word to influence readers.

But those similarities did not mean they always saw eye to eye, even on those vital matters where their interests aligned. ....

In some of the book’s strongest sections, Dalfonzo explores ways in which this friendship between a highly intelligent man and woman may have shaped — and reshaped — Lewis’s views on friendship between the sexes and on women in general. Lewis didn’t marry until a little more than a year before Sayers passed away in late 1957. By that time, it seems clear from his writing, her presence as a strong female friend in his life had altered his attitude toward women and the possibility of platonic friendship. ....

Dalfonzo recounts that when Sayers passed away after a sudden heart attack, Lewis cried — the first time his stepson Douglas Gresham ever saw the older man shed a tear. That event recalls a passage earlier in the book, when Lewis told Sayers he had “shed real tears (hot ones)” after reading her play-cycle The Man Born to Be King. Perhaps his tears on both occasions were evidence of Lewis’s belief that our most meaningful friendships are those in which we see and share the same truth. .... (more)

C.S. Lewis & Dorothy Sayers: Review of Dorothy and Jack by Gina Dalfonzo

The eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Laurence Binyon, 1914

 First World War.com - Prose & Poetry - Laurence Binyon

“Retreat? Hell, we just got here!”

 

Allen Guelzo on "The Great War's Price":

.... Given that almost 8 percent of the American population was (like my great-grandfather) either German-born or the offspring of German parents, and another 4.5 percent Irish, who had every reason to sympathize with the 1916 Irish uprising against British rule, the United States might have felt little incentive to take the Allies’ side. ....

But once in, Americans were all in. “There was a crusading spirit in the air,” recalled one new recruit in the spring of 1917, “bands were playing martial music on the courthouse squares.” Newspapers hawked stories of German atrocities and pictured the German emperor, Wilhelm II, as “the Beast in the Bible’s Book of Revelation, who wanted to conquer the world.” Re­cruitment posters (led by James Montgomery Flagg’s frowning Uncle Sam) confronted young men with the demands “I want you for u.s. army” and “Uphold our honor, fight for us.” Those more hesitant would be drafted under the Selective Service Act of 1917.

After three years of watching the Great War from the sidelines, Americans ought to have been better prepared for taking up arms. They weren’t. The Army’s tactical doctrine showed no sign of any of the brutal lessons being taught in the trenches in France about machine guns, barbed wire, and poison gas.

The country would soon learn otherwise, for what the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) walked into was an entirely new and horrific way of making war, honed by three years of remorseless practice. All told, the United States put into uniform less than 4 percent of its population that was eligible for military service; from that number, 116,000 Americans died in the short span of their involvement. ....

From the muck of the war, American soldiers were able to retrieve at least a few moments of glory. The first sizable American units to go into action fought at Cantigny on May 26, 1918, at Soissons and Château-Thierry in July, at Saint-Mihiel in September (where up to 14 American divisions participated), and, in October and November, in the 47-day battle to clear the Argonne Forest. The U.S. Marines earned their first great title to combat glory in the fighting for the Belleau Wood in June 1918, along with the memorable response given by Lieutenant Lloyd Williams when the French advised him to retreat: “Retreat? Hell, we just got here!” The Germans gave the Marines one of the names they’ve lived with ever since: Teufel Hunden (Devil Dogs). ....

World War I & Woodrow Wilson -- The Great War's Price | National Review

"The footprints of a gigantic hound"

CrimeReads has a good post about Conan Doyle's best Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles. If you haven't read the book or seen one of the films, don't go to the link — it reveals too much of the plot, and that's fatal to the pleasure of a first read. From the post:

.... The Hound itself is no common blackmailer or thief or assassin. It is a thing of nightmares, so frightening that the sight of it alone can induce a fatal heart attack in one victim and send another hurtling to his death off a rocky outcrop while fleeing it. It is designed to scare not just characters in the novel but readers too....

Nobody can forget the book’s title character, once they have met it, even if the details of the story surrounding it may grow a little hazy in the memory afterwards. Like Count Dracula in the Bram Stoker original, the Hound looms perpetually over the events of the narrative even when it is, so to speak, offstage.

Professor Moriarty may be Sherlock Holmes’s nemesis, an archvillain every bit his equal in intelligence and perceptiveness, but the Hound is arguably the more formidable opponent, not least because—brutish, instinctual, carnal, inhuman—it represents everything Holmes is not. His ultimate victory over it is a victory over fear, proving that intellect should be the master of irrationality, that ego should always trump id.

Somewhere in all of us there is a Dartmoor haunted by a gigantic hound. We have seen its footprints. We know it lurks amid the swirling mist. ....

In the Footprints of the Hound: Why The Hound of the Baskervilles Still Haunts

Prayers instead of posts?

Wise words from Kevin DeYoung, who is "ready to think about something other than politics, read something other than politics, breathe something other than politics." From "When You Say Nothing at All," all of which is worth reading.

.... I’m not against Christians offering cultural and political analysis. I’m not against discipling Christians to see all of life through the lens of Scripture.

What I am against is the instinct shared by too many Christians, including pastors and leaders, that says, “If everyone is talking about it, I should probably say something too.” ....

More than anything else, I fear we are letting the world’s priorities dictate what the church is most passionate about.

This isn’t a blanket denunciation of ever saying anything about political issues or political candidates. I have before and probably will again. But perhaps there are questions we should ask next time before joining the online cacophony.

Am I making it harder for all sorts of people to hear what I have to say about more important matters? Think about it: most of us are annoyed when athletes and movie stars feel the need to enlighten us with their political opinions. At best, we roll our eyes and still watch their movies or their games anyway. At worst, we turn them off for good. People will do the same to us. It’s good to think twice before we cash in our goodwill chips, doubling down for or against a particular candidate. ....

Am I speaking on matters upon which I do not have special knowledge and for which no one needs my opinion? If my knowledge about something is limited to the three minutes I’ve been angry, or even the 30 minutes I’ve been surfing online, I probably don’t need to download those thoughts to the world. ....

American culture is incredibly diverse. We don’t all watch the same movies or television shows in this country. We don’t all go to church. We don’t all read the same thing or listen to the same music. The one thing that we can all get into is politics, and that’s not healthy. Politics has become the national pastime that brings us all together, only so it can drive us all apart. The task of the church, in this polarized environment, is to slow down, set our minds on things above, and stick to our own script. To be sure, we should not always be silent. But neither should we be the noisiest people in the room, especially when the room tries to tell us what we should be talking about.

Brothers and sisters, it’s OK to have an unarticulated thought. It’s OK to go about our lives in quiet worship and obedience. It’s OK to do your homework, read your Bible, raise your kids, and make your private thoughts prayers instead of posts. Alison Krauss was right: sometimes you say it best when you say nothing at all. (more)

When You Say Nothing at All

"There are no lost battles..."

It always surprises me when Christians seem to expect politics to solve things. We are supposed to have a pretty robust sense of what has traditionally been called "original sin," the idea that human beings are often fallible and sometimes simply evil, and that some things we deplore are conditions of life in a fallen world — not problems that can be solved. Anyway, reposted from 2011:

Hearing a politician say that those he disagrees with are "on the wrong side of history," Peter Berger "noted that being on the wrong side of history is not just a deplorable condition, but a morally reprehensible one. It is a disease—call it OTWSOH—for which the patient is responsible. Sort of like cirrhosis of the liver." Berger did a Google search for the phrase and discovered 1,380,000 results in 0.12 seconds. And, although he didn't do a count, he is pretty certain who is most likely to use it:

...I think it is likely that the phrase “on the wrong side of history” comes more naturally to those on the left. Progressives, almost by definition, think that they know where history is going. After all, they are children of the Enlightenment and thus inheritors of the idea of progress. Marxists have been most cocksure about this. They knew where things were headed, in the long run. Like all believers in predestination some of them were willing to wait more or less patiently for the inevitable culmination, others wanted to speed up the process by violent efforts of their own. Of course the story of Marxism is one of false predictions. Less grandiose versions of a philosophy of progress have not been much better in discerning the “right side of history.” There were indeed some conservatives who also claimed to know the inner logic of events. Hegel, no less, thought that history culminated in the Prussian state. In the first half of the twentieth century, miscellaneous fascist movements were convinced that they embodied the irresistible wave of the future. But conservatives tend to be much more cautious in the way they look at the future. They are instinctively suspicious of grand assertions of historical inevitability, especially the idea of progress. They are typically more pessimistic. This inclination was classically expressed by William Buckley’s definition of the conservative attitude as “standing astride history and yelling, Stop!”. Heimito von Doderer, a twentieth-century Austrian writer, had a more whimsical definition of conservatism: the insight that “the old aunts were right after all”.

It seems to me, though, that there is a fundamental recognition that can be shared by reasonable people on both sides of the ideological divide: We cannot say who or what is on the wrong side of history, because we cannot know who or what is on the right side. This postulate of ignorance need not lead to paralysis. It necessarily leads to a measure of humility. (more)

The Buckley quotation was actually from his mission statement for National Review in 1955: "It stands athwart history, yelling Stop..." It is a sensibility that refuses to believe in the inevitability of "Progress." Oddly enough, it is optimistic, believing that even the worst trends can be reversed, that as T.S. Eliot wrote "There are no lost battles because there are no won battles."

In the day of trouble

From the Book of Common Prayer (ACNA, 2019):

O God, the Creator of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you in Jesus Christ; in whose Name we pray. Amen.

Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage: We humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure conduct. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom, in Thy Name, we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail; all of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It's November!

Re-posted.

 

Beginning in 1907 and continuing at least into my youth, at some point in the Fall the Sunday Chicago Tribune would publish these on the front page. The cartoonist was a nationally famous Tribune cartoonist, John T. McCutcheon.

The story, from 1907 — if this is difficult to read (it will enlarge if clicked upon), it is also here

The rock that naught can move

If thou but suffer God to guide thee And hope in Him through all thy ways, He’ll give thee strength, whate’er betide thee, And bear thee through the evil days. Who trust in God’s unchanging love Builds on the rock that naught can move.

Only be still and wait His leisure In cheerful hope, with heart content To take whate'er thy Father’s pleasure And all deserving love hath sent, Nor doubt our inmost wants are known To Him who chose us for His own.

Sing, pray, and keep His ways unswerving, So do thine own part faithfully, And trust His Word: though undeserving, Thou yet shalt find it true for thee. God never yet forsook at need The soul that trusted Him indeed.

"For all the saints..."

A hymn most appropriate for All Saints' Day sung to Ralph Vaughan Williams's SINE NOMINE ("without name"), perhaps referring to all those saints whose names are not remembered on earth.

For all the saints, who from their labors rest, Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia, Alleluia!	The golden evening brightens in the west; Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest; Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed. Alleluia, Alleluia!
Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their might; Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well-fought fight; Thou, in the darkness, drear, their one true Light. Alleluia, Alleluia!	But yonder breaks a yet more glorious day; The saints triumphant rise in bright array; The King of glory passes on His way. Alleluia, Alleluia!
O blest communion, fellowship divine! We feebly struggle, they in glory shine; Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine. Alleluia, Alleluia!	From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast, Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, Singing to God, the Son, and Holy Ghost: Alleluia, Alleluia!

"What is the value in fairy tales..."

In Touchstone, "The Fairy Tale Wars: Lewis, Chesterton, et al. Against the Frauds, Experts & Revisionists":

.... "The individual is foolish, but the species is wise," wrote Edmund Burke. And with this deft hyperbole, he threw a monkey wrench into our modern individualism, which pits the self against tradition. Modern projects to revamp, reinvent, or otherwise rewrite the great stories are, more often than not, arbitrary exercises, prompted by the fleeting opinions of individuals who have a limited grasp of the original storyteller's literary sophistication. Today's fairy tale "experts" embrace a virtually obligatory suspicion of tradition, judging it to be inherently aligned with injurious prejudices, which, they say, we have outgrown and must shed.

These experts, whether Marxist, Feminist, Freudian, Jungian, or Comparativist, tightly wrap their story specimens in a favored methodology, and suck the very life out of them in order to single out and expose class prejudices, sexual stereotypes and gender constructs, archetypes, literary allusions, or universal themes that they claim to find in the stories. Yet in this selective process, they almost always lose grip of the narrative. The truth of a story is not scattered along the way, like the pebbles Hansel dropped in order that he and Gretel might find their way back home. The truth of a story takes form through the whole of the narrative. ....

In an essay titled "Children and Literature," the renowned child psychiatrist Robert Coles has written: "The truth is that many of us (certainly in my field of child psychology) don't give enough credit to the natural, normal everyday development of narrative interest, narrative sense, narrative response, narrative competence in boys and girls." Children are always seeking out new experiences, and they find them in stories when adults do not spoil these stories by superimposing concepts or rules over the narrative.

C.S. Lewis writes in "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Best Say What's to Be Said," that fairy tales "give us experiences we have never had, and thus, instead of 'commenting on life', can add to it." Children from roughly ages three through nine exercise their imaginations so powerfully that they quite consciously and quite deliberately leave the ordinary present entirely behind and enter into new worlds of make-believe. They will often object to adult interventions in their play because they know how, in the adult world, reason rules and imagination becomes a casualty. Children live near fairyland and enter into it through play with an ease of which adults are incapable.

More to the point, children instinctively resist abstraction. They cling to the narrative, hunt it down, one might say, to the lessons that can be learned through the dramatic action. Any parent or teacher who has read to children has experienced the intensity, even ferocity, with which children insist that when we try to explain a story, we must reference, retell, even "relive" the dramatic action. In other words, they insist on exercising their imagination, which, unlike reason or the intellect, moves not to abstraction or conceptualization, but seeks out the concrete in a story, the details, and analogizes from them to find meaning. ....

In his own essay on "Fairy Tales" from 1908, G.K. Chesterton maintains that a single idea "runs from one end of [fairy tales] to the other—the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition." This truth is the bedrock of morality. It is not only "the core of nursery-tales," but "the core of ethics." The failure to do from the start what is right or what is needed is the most ancient of humanity's memories. In biblical memory, this is the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. The serpent appeals not first to the reason, but to the imagination. "Imagine," it says to the first couple, "you can be gods if you eat the fruit of that tree." The idolatrous imagination triumphs in the garden, and it has been a source of much human tragedy ever since.

"The whole happiness of fairyland hangs upon a thread," Chesterton observes, the need for something to be done rightly or completely. "The king may invite fairies to the christening, but he must invite all the fairies or frightful results will follow." Then again, sometimes "all happiness hangs on one thin veto; all positive joy depends on one negative." The failure to make the refusal may bring about immense misfortune. Edmund, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, fails to turn down the refreshments the White Witch offers to him, even though his better instincts tell him that she must not be trusted. And this jeopardizes the entire economy of salvation upon which the hopes of all faithful Narnians rest. .... (more)

"The Fairy Tale Wars: Lewis, Chesterton, et al. Against the Frauds, Experts & Revisionists"

October 31 and November 1

Re-posted:

Today is Reformation Day and tomorrow is All Saints' Day.

Reformation Day is the anniversary of the day Martin Luther issued his challenge to debate his 95 theses – not the beginning of the Reformation but an important point in it. Halloween is actually All Hallows Eve, the evening before All Saints’ Day. Days were thought of as evening to evening so the eve was the beginning of the next day – think New Year’s Eve or Christmas Eve. Although today most approach it as a secular holiday that wasn’t its origin and for us Protestants all believers are “saints” – and All Saints’ Day is when we acknowledge “the great cloud of witnesses” who have passed on. So today and tomorrow we recognize first the Protestant Reformation and then all those believers who have gone before.

Therefore being justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand,
and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Romans 5:1-2 (KJV)

No fear!

I've posted this several times in years past as Halloween has approached.

As Halloween approaches it is useful for the more excitable among us to be reminded that the Evil One has already been defeated. From "Concerning Halloween" by James B. Jordan:

.... "Halloween" is simply a contraction for All Hallows’ Eve. The word "hallow" means "saint," in that "hallow" is just an alternative form of the word "holy" ("hallowed be Thy name"). All Saints’ Day is November 1. It is the celebration of the victory of the saints in union with Christ. The observance of various celebrations of All Saints arose in the late 300s, and these were united and fixed on November 1 in the late 700s. The origin of All Saints Day and of All Saints Eve in Mediterranean Christianity had nothing to do with Celtic Druidism or the Church’s fight against Druidism (assuming there ever even was any such thing as Druidism, which is actually a myth concocted in the 19th century by neo-pagans.) ....

The Biblical day begins in the preceding evening, and thus in the Church calendar, the eve of a day is the actual beginning of the festive day. [emphasis added] Christmas Eve is most familiar to us, but there is also the Vigil of Holy Saturday that precedes Easter Morn. Similarly, All Saints’ Eve precedes All Saints’ Day.

The concept, as dramatized in Christian custom, is quite simple: On October 31, the demonic realm tries one last time to achieve victory, but is banished by the joy of the Kingdom.

What is the means by which the demonic realm is vanquished? In a word: mockery. Satan’s great sin (and our great sin) is pride. Thus, to drive Satan from us we ridicule him. This is why the custom arose of portraying Satan in a ridiculous red suit with horns and a tail. Nobody thinks the devil really looks like this; the Bible teaches that he is the fallen Arch-Cherub. Rather, the idea is to ridicule him because he has lost the battle with Jesus and he no longer has power over us. ....

Similarly, on All Hallows’ Eve (Hallow-Even – Hallow-E’en – Halloween), the custom arose of mocking the demonic realm by dressing children in costumes. Because the power of Satan has been broken once and for all, our children can mock him by dressing up like ghosts, goblins, and witches. The fact that we can dress our children this way shows our supreme confidence in the utter defeat of Satan by Jesus Christ – we have NO FEAR! .... (more)

Biblical Horizons » Concerning Halloween

An enjoyable Halloween movie

There is a lot of over-thinking and political nonsense in the second half of this essay — attributing "insights" that never would have occurred to Capra or the author of the play or writers of the screenplay — but before that a good description of a very entertaining comedy. I first saw the play onstage in a Milton College production. About the film:

.... Arsenic and Old Lace is as Rockwell-esque as It’s a Wonderful Life, a gleeful, ghoulish comedy that runs wild in an aesthetic of darling, old-fashioned, almost Victorian-Americana. It is quaint. It is cozy. It is joyous. It is not a film, so much as a carol. A Halloween carol, you might say. ....

Based on the hit 1941 play by Joseph Kesselring and screenwritten by Casablanca dream team Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein, Arsenic and Old Lace is the story of Mortimer Brewster, a famous, wealthy, and well-liked theater critic (the first tip-off that this thing is fiction), who discovers one Halloween night that his entire family is criminally, murderously insane. Until he heads home (to the quaint Brooklyn street where he was raised), on that day, Mortimer (Cary Grant, hyper and nuttery) believes that the biggest trouble before him is a nuptial scandal, that he’ll make a mockery of his career by getting married; he’s the author of several bombastic, comical books that decry marriage, entitled things like The Bachelor’s Bible, yet what has he done? Gone and fallen in love with Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane), the daughter of the Minister who lives across the road from his two adorable spinster aunts, Abby (Josephine Hull) and Martha (Jean Adair). Mortimer’s aunts raised him in that house, so Elaine’s really “the girl next door,” of all things—a homey figure that checks the highfalutin city boy persona he has adopted. After they get married in the Manhattan courthouse and duck the paparazzi (again, he’s a theater critic?!), they swing by Brooklyn to say a quick goodbye to their families before heading to Niagara Falls. That’s when Mortimer stumbles upon a dead body stuffed into the window seat of his Aunts’ well-kept parlor. ....

And with this, the movie turns from a screwball romantic comedy about a secretly-reformed chauvinist who falls in love with a girl from his own neighborhood, into a high-stakes farce about a man who discovers that his loving family (and the idyllic block where he was raised) are not nearly as charming and innocent as they once seemed. There have been clues to this all along—including Mortimer’s ne’er-do-well brother Jonathan Brewster, whom they haven’t seen in years. Their childhood was spent with Jonathan tormenting Mortimer, and Mortimer seems to have blocked out the darker aspects of this fraternal bullying. But then, of course, this Halloween night, when Mortimer has to negotiate between the new, impatient bride waiting across the street [actually, across the churchyard], a dead body in his family’s living room, and his Aunts’ frank confession of serial murders, Jonathan (Raymond Massey) finally returns home. But Jonathan doesn’t look like himself—a wanted man (guilty of a dozen murders, just like his Aunts), he has commissioned a cowardly, alcoholic surgeon named Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre) to cosmetically reconstruct his face, resulting in a hack job that permanently makes him look like Frankenstein’s monster, scars and all. ....

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) is available right now on Prime Video

Arsenic and Old Lace - Crimereads

"Put not your faith..."

I encountered this today and as an election approaches thought it a good reminder.

Samuel Johnson:

How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
Still to ourselves in every place consigned,
Our own felicity we make or find.
With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.

Lines added to Oliver Goldsmith's "The Traveller" (1764)

Tyrants

The Hitler-Stalin Pact, 1939

Reviewing Hitler and Stalin at The Telegraph:

Who was the worst tyrant of the 20th century? While there are many contenders – from Mao to Pol Pot – none has been responsible for more deliberate killings than Adolf Hitler, with Joseph Stalin a close second, argues Lawrence Rees in his impressive parallel study. Comparing the crimes of Hitler and Stalin is not about denying the singularity of the Holocaust, he notes. It is about reminding people of the scale of destruction brought about by these two men, and to make sure that those who suffered from their rule are not forgotten. ....

The book focuses on the war years, which Hitler and Stalin started as allies, before, two years later, Hitler broke their pact and invaded the Soviet Union, turning them into mortal enemies. Stalin’s troops, weakened by years of purges at their leader’s behest, were initially overwhelmed when Hitler unleashed his forces on June 22 1941. ....

For both men, it was the First World War that changed everything, creating the space for the Bolsheviks to come to power in late 1917 and setting Hitler on his journey into politics. Neither of the two was interested in material wealth, but they shared an obsession with political power. Stalin continued to dress in simple workers’ or soldiers’ uniforms at the height of his rule; Hitler cultivated his image as an ordinary German chosen by destiny to lead his people. Both abhorred Christianity and liberal democracy, and firmly believed that a utopian future would emerge from their rule – and were both willing, determined even, to destroy anyone and anything that stood in its way. ....

Neither Hitler nor Stalin ever felt remorse for murdering millions of civilians. In fact, Stalin insisted that even Russia’s bloodthirsty 16^th-century tsar, Ivan the Terrible, whom he otherwise admired, had been too “kind” to his enemies: “He should have killed them all.”

Hitler and Stalin by Laurence Rees review: a tale of two tyrants

Re-reading

It's a little after 1:30 am and I have finished re-reading Treasure Island. It grabbed me much as I remember reading when I was young. There were lots of detail I had forgotten. I think I'll continue. What next? There is a long list of possibilities: Watership Down? The Wind in the Willows? Kidnapped? The Maltese Falcon? The Hobbit? I think perhaps I'll go this time with Buchan, perhaps Castle Gay. I'm enjoying this.