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Walker Percy Weekend ’17
Still on a Percy theme, the Walker Percy Weekend organizers have announced that tickets go on sale today.
Walker Percy Wednesday 121
I experience the sensation that the world really ended in 1916 and that we’ve been living in a dream ever since. These good fellows have spent their entire lives working, raising families, fighting Nazis, worrying about Communism, yet they’ve really been zapped by something else. We haven’t been zapped by the Nazis and the Communists. On the contrary. It is a pleasure to fight one, worry about the other, and talk about both.
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“We were after the same thing, the greatest good, the highest quality of life for the greatest number. We were not a bad team, Tom. Between us we had it all. We each supplied the other’s defect.”
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“The only difference between us is that you’re the proper Southern gent who knows how to act and I’m the low-class Yankee who does all these bad things like killing innocent babies and messing with your Southern Way of Life by putting secret stuff in the water, right? What people don’t know but what you and I know is that we’re both after the same thing—such as reducing the suffering in the world and making criminals behave themselves. And here’s the thing, old buddy”—he is smiling, coming close, but his eyes are narrow—“and you know it and I know it: You can’t give me one good reason why what I am doing is wrong. The only difference between us is that you’re in good taste and I’m not. ”
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Catholics have become a remnant of a remnant. Louisiana, however, is more Christian than ever, not Catholic Christian, but Texas Christian. Even most Cajuns have been converted, first by Texas oil bucks, then by Texas evangelists. The shrimp fleet, mostly born again, that is, for the third time, is no longer blessed and sprinkled by a priest.
Why don’t I like these new Christians better? They’re sober, dependable, industrious, helpful. They praise God frequently, call you brother, and punctuate ordinary conversation with exclamations like Glory! Praise God! Hallelujah! I’ve nothing against them, but they give me the creeps.
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“One are decent, tenderhearted, unbelieving, philanthropic people.
“The other are some preachers who tell the truth about the Lord but are themselves often rascals if not thieves.”
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“What a generation! Believing thieves and decent unbelievers!”
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“Don’t you know where tenderness leads?” Silence. “To the gas chambers.
“Never in the history of the world have there been so many civilized tenderhearted souls as have lived in this century.
“Never in the history of the world have so many people been killed.
“More people have been killed in this century by tenderhearted souls than by cruel barbarians in all other centuries put together.”
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The Pentecostals are decent folk, honest and forthright, no crazier than liberal unbelievers and a good deal less neurotic, but perhaps a bit paranoid, given to suspecting godless conspiracies under every sofa. But if I keep them off the couch, don’t mention sex, wear a white coat like a TV doctor, speak to them face to face, take their blood pressure—they tend to hypertension—examine their eyegrounds, they’ll tell me their troubles.
Conservatism: Analytically Reconsidered
The new issue of The Monist: “This special issue is motivated by the observation that conservatism plays a marginal role in contemporary philosophy even though it appears to be of considerable importance in moral, social, and political reality. One reason for this neglect is that defenders of conservatism have often refrained from articulating their arguments in a language that is acceptable to and understandable by analytically trained philosophers. The contributions of this special issue show that conservatism can profitably be approached from the point of view of analytic philosophy. Many of them are indebted to Jerry Cohen’s (2012) seminal paper on conservative value, which develops a sophisticated justification of what Michael Oakeshott (1991) called the disposition to be conservative”.
Superintelligence: Science or Fiction?
Deirdre McCloskey on Dave Rubin
I had the honour and pleasure to spend the weekend at an intimate conference this past weekend with the delightful, funny, kind, supportive and of course brilliant Deirdre McCloskey. A true renaissance woman unlike the one-dimensional regressive hacks that populate most academia these days.
The Enactive Approach
Notice too that although the choice of processes under study is more or less arbitrary and subject to the observer’s history, goals, tools, and methods, the topological property unraveled isn’t arbitrary. — The Brains Blog
Why Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Criticism of Islam Angers Western Regressives
Why Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Criticism of Islam Angers Western Liberals Regressives. (Strike though added — they are certainly not liberals but authoritarians, with much in common with their bête noire — i.e. Fascists).
Cosmos + Taxis 4 (1)
Coming soon
Walker Percy Wednesday 120
“Hear this, Tom. I’ll make it short and sweet. We’re not talking about some bush-league medical project—fluoridating water to cure tooth decay. We’re not even talking about curing AIDS. We’re not even talking medicine, Tom. We’re talking about the decay of the social fabric. The American social fabric. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know—all the way from the destruction of the cities, crime in the streets, demoralization of the underclass, to the collapse of the family.”
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“There is still grace, style, beauty, manners, civility left in the world. It’s not all gone with the wind. You know who’s coming up for the reception? Pete Fountain and his Half Fast Band. And Al Hirt. Both are personal friends of mine. I wish you could join me.”
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“Here’s a switch. Here’s Vergil, the scientist, skeptic, the new logical positivist, and here’s the uncle, defender of old legends, ghost ships, specters.”
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She is one of those women who have no other qualification than pleasantness and reliability.
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“You’re talking about violating the law of the land, gentlemen,” he says quietly. “Doe v. Dade, the landmark case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court which decreed, with solid scientific evidence, that the human infant does not achieve personhood until eighteen months.”
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There’s Hawkeye and Trapper John back in Korea. I never did like those guys. They fancied themselves super-decent and supertolerant, but actually had no use for anyone who was not exactly like them. What they were was super-pleased with themselves. In truth, they were the real bigots, and phony at that. I always preferred Frank Burns, the stuffy, unpopular doc, a sincere bigot.
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The Canadians are as affable but standoffish—though not as shy as the English.
But both, Canadians and Ohioans, are amiable, gregarious, helpful—and at something of a loss.
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The Ohioans looked zapped but keep busy.
The Canadians looked zapped but also wistful.
Every time I talk to a Canadian, either he will get around to asking me what I think of Canada or I will know that he wants to.
I realize that I do not have many thoughts about Canada. Reading Stedmann, who mentions the heroic role the Canadians played in World War I, I realize a curious fact about Canadians: When you hear the word Canada or Canadians, nothing much comes to mind—unlike hearing the words Frenchman or Englishman or Chinese or Spaniard—or Yankee. I realize this is an advantage. The Canadian is still free, has not yet been ossified by his word. (Why am I beginning to think like Father Smith?)
