Ideas
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Walker Percy’s Postmodern Catholicism
Why was he a Catholic? Because he believed that the Church's teachings are true; and because the Church, in his view, stood above and apart from the present age, which he called the age of the "theorist-consumer." In his view, the present age has no use for anything that cannot be bought and sold or
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More on ‘Lost’ and Dante’s Island Down Under
About a month ago, I wrote a too long post about how Cuse's and Lindelof's Lost was an creative exercise in postmodern religious syncretism and mythopoesis, but leaning perhaps a little more heavily on retrieval themes from Dante and by extension Catholic iconography. I think after watching the finale last night, that assessment holds up
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The Tea Party and the Middle
Tristero at Hullabaloo has a post this weekend responding to a February article in the Progressive by Chip Berlet entitled "Taking Tea Partiers Seriously". He is bothered by a theme in Berlet's article that suggests that there is anything about the Tea Party or the cultural right's agenda that should be respected. Take them seriously
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Dying Traditions III
Since no one attempted to rebut my previous post on Dying Traditions, I'll do it myself: We're from somewhere, and you aren't. We have roots. We have memories. We have a cultural heritage and identity that you have no idea about. You cannot even begin to understand what we feel because it's not something you
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Dying Traditions II
In the neo-Confederate view, North and South went to war because they represented two distinct and irreconcilable cultures, right down to their bloodlines. White Southerners descended from freedom-loving Celts in Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Northerners–New England abolitionist in particular–came from mercantile and expansionist English stock. This ethnography even explained how the War was fought. Like
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The Zeitgeist of Unbelief
[Ed. note: I'll be revisiting several older posts with the idea of trying to regain my footing concerning the cultural-sphere themes that have always been the primary concern of ATF. Several of the key posts in this area are found in the "Don't Miss" section on the left side of the page. But I feel
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Charisma Wasted; Opportunities Lost
If you were Barack Obama and were pursuing the policies that he ended up pursuing, would you want Dawn Johnsen in charge of the office which determines the scope of your legal authority as President? Greenwald Things going on in my real life have kept me from posting the last two weeks. There's just not
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Modernity and Soul Atrophy
A couple of weeks ago, I linked to an interesting lecture/slide show by the late Leonard Shlain, a physician who has written a couple of interesting books about the interface between rationality and irrationality, science and art, literacy and orality. His book, the Alphabet versus the Goddess: The Conflict between Word and Image and my
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A Progressive/Populist Alliance?
Digby reposts a piece she wrote taking a long look at the problems with such an alliance, foremost among which is the inherent nativism that fuels the fires of populist political passion. Populists have a tendency to bash elites–not just the financial elites, but progressives, whom they perceive as elites because of their cosmopolitan sanctimony.
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The Down Side of High Mindedness
Digby reposted a piece she put up in 2004 about the difference between conservatives and liberals and it reinforces my recent trope that we are still fighting battles from the 19th Century. She quotes the blog Steamboats Are Ruining Everything who in turn quote an1820 essay by William Hazlitt: Conservatives and liberals play the game