When it first appeared, Tarkovsky’s Stalker: A Film by Andrei Tarkovsky was seen as a parable of totalitarian ruin. Since the curtain came down, it has a more universal reach. David Thomson ( “Have You Seen . . . ?”: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films , 822) sees in it “a universal malaise,” with its “appearance of decay, of chaos, of seepage . . . . [Tarkovsky’s] world is one of desolation, ruin, and breakdown. Nearly all structures are... Read more
What sets Western economies apart, Hernando de Soto argued in The Mystery of Capital , is not sheer physical stuff. One can have a lot of stuff without having capital. What makes it productive as capital are two “non-economic” factors. The first is imagination: “Capital, like energy, is a dormant value. Bringing it to life requires us to go beyond looking at our assets as they are to thinking actively about them as they could be” (43). The second is... Read more
A couple of vignettes from Paul Johnson’s Darwin: Portrait of a Genius , which is vintage Johnson. Darwin’s paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, who died several years before Charles was born was a well-known physician who filled his off hours with studies of poetry and science. His off hours included the time between house calls. He equipped his coach with “a writing desk, a skylight, and a portion of his library, so that he could carry on his intellectual pursuits while... Read more
I have been reading James Jordan and Peter Leithart since I was a wide-eyed Baptist seminary student in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I never cease to benefit from Leithart’s and Jordan’s writings and lectures. While as a Baptist I land differently on certain issues, I always know it is to my advantage to read Jim and Peter. Perhaps above all, my exposure to their writing has always forced me back to Holy Writ, and I have always been... Read more
Absolute religious freedom is impossible, argues Winnifred Fallers Sullivan in her 2007 The Impossibility of Religious Freedom , an analysis of Warner v. Boca Raton , which led to the banning of interreligious religious symbols from a cemetery in the Florida town. Religious freedom always founders on the issue of definition. In every legal case involving religion, she argues, “a court or a legislature or an administrative official must make a determination as to whether the religious practice in question... Read more
In a 1999 article in the Journal of Church and State , John Witte, Jr. offers a neat typology of forms of religious establishment. “Institutional” establishment involved the diversion of tax funds to support the clergy and religious activity. This form of establishment existed in a number of states into the 19th century, and it was the form of establishment that was most contentious during the era of the founding. John Adams’s religious article for the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780... Read more
In his Symbols: Public and Private (Symbol, Myth & Ritual) (387), Raymond Firth mentions an English case that illustrates the constriction of giving in modern societies: “A record of an English laws case some twenty years ago notes a challenge to a man’s legacy of 1000 pounds to the vicar and churchwardens of a church, the income to be spent on ‘seasonable food and drink’ to be distributed by them in the name of the testator among twenty communicants and... Read more
A friend asked me to clarify some comments I made about capitalism in my First Things piece last Friday. Thinking there may be wider interest in the question, I offer a revised version of my answer to him. As a starting point, let me clarify that the term “capitalism” here refers to the actual economic form that has evolved over the past several centuries. It does not refer to a theoretical ideal of a “free market.” Capitalism as a historical... Read more
The New York Review of Books review of Daniel Mendelsohn’s Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture (New York Review Collections) , the reviewer summarizes Mendelsohn’s comparison of Avatar and Wizard of Oz . Dorothy awakens at the end, Mendelsohn writes, “with all that she has learned from her remarkable odyssey, not the least of which is a strong new awareness of her own human abilities – she wakes to the realities, and the responsibilities, of... Read more
An essay at the San Francisco Egotist describes technologically-driven changes in advertising. What used to be a process of days or a week is not a process of hours. The shift is not, the author points out, confined to advertising: “Our technology whizzes along at the velocity of a speeding electron, and our poor overtaxed neurons struggle to keep up. Everything has become a split-second decision. Find something you like. Share it. Have a half-baked thought. Tweet it. Don’t wait.... Read more
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