tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43040535733085802012024-02-20T02:24:59.114-08:00Huron County ExtractCraig Bernthal’s Web Log: Commentary and Reviews with a Midwest Accent and a Catholic PerspectiveUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger182125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-62048504058102501802013-05-13T12:20:00.002-07:002013-05-13T12:20:30.311-07:00Clinton: I never had sexual relations with that woman.Just to get a sense of context, and how convincing politicians can make their lies, check out this famous clip of Bill Clinton's denial about having sex with Monica Lewinsky. He makes you feel darn guilty that the reporter ever asked the question, poor guy, time being wasted, America suffering:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBe_guezGGc">Clinton Lies About Lewinsky</a><br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-39940822174844168742013-05-13T12:06:00.002-07:002013-05-13T18:36:01.993-07:00Today's Press Conference About BenghaziBefore the election:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3V7Oqe1q-g">Obama on Letterman Characterizing the Benghazi Attack</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPGmN7Zw9Fk">Obama on "The View"</a><br />
<br />
Obama, months after the attack, is still characterizing it as mob action that went violent, still fingering the video, etc. He mentions terrorism, but it virtually sinks into a few terrorists inside a mob. The fog of war is emphasized. He puts terrorism into a context where it is still linked to a spontaneous demonstration about a video that no one could have expected. So he's smart, he covers himself on terrorism but downplays it as much as he can<br />
<br />
But given Gregory Hicks testimony, it is very hard to believe that Obama did not know exactly what had happened by the day after the attack, that it was a flat out Ansar al Sharia operation. This, I believe, he judged was too strong to acknowledge during an election campaign. Hillary Clinton must have known all of this as well. Also, they absolutely wanted to put off the lack of response to requests for more security, and the stand-down order only became known last week. Had that come out, it would not have played well in November. Now, it appears, they also pressured people like Hicks, Nordstrom, and others to keep quiet, and even demoted Hicks.<br />
<br />
Today, after last week's hearings, Obama gave a press conference: He said that at the time, nobody understood "exactly" what had happened in Benghazi, and apparently he still didn't know "exactly" months later on Letterman. That we didn't know "exactly" what was going on is something I could truthfully say about cooking dinner last night--even though it turned out well. "Exactly" is an impossible standard in application to anything, as Obama well knows. The question is whether State and Obama had any reasonable cause to believe there was a mob involved or that the attack was in response to a video. They did not, and they knew it. Obama is not exactly lying in this press conference. He's just refusing to engage the issues while making it look like he is.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-benghazi-talking-points-sideshow-20130513,0,2704074.story">May 13, 2013 Obama Press Conference</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-55315617997942313512013-04-09T16:22:00.002-07:002013-04-09T16:57:09.886-07:00The American Religious Creed<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b>The American Religious Creed<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b> </b>To
be said on the Sunday of each week and at the start of every school day:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->1.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->I’m entitled to my opinion and you’re entitled
to yours. (With certain exceptions; see below.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->2.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->All truth is culturally relative. (Please don’t
ask whether this truth is culturally relative.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->3.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->We should never make judgments about other
cultures or religions, but should always exercise tolerance no matter how
intolerant the aforementioned seem to be. (Actually, we shouldn’t even be
judging whether they are tolerant or not, which is judgmental itself, so please
don’t even get to the “but” phrase. And please ignore contradictions with
anything that follows.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->4.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Everyone should be nice to everyone else. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->5.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Being nice to everyone means that people who are
paying 60% of their income in state and federal income taxes should pay more,
otherwise they are being selfish. (Corollary: niceness requires that everyone
be part of the 98%; second corrollary: “I’m not selfish; I vote for Democrats.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->6.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Being nice to everyone means that abortion on
demand should be funded by the government. (Unborn children are not
“everyone”.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->7.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Being nice to everyone means that mounting
government debt doesn’t matter because people need government help. (Unborn
children are not “everyone”.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->8.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Being nice to everyone doesn’t apply to “the
2%,” who are selfish bastards anyway.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->9.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Being nice to everyone means letting any
combination or number of people who want to get married, get married, so long
as they’re all down with it, and Christians who have objections should just
shut up because they aren’t being tolerant. See #3.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->10.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span><!--[endif]-->All
Western discourse up to this point is just a mask for power to hide behind—this
creed excepted.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-1321311856275062272013-02-13T19:16:00.001-08:002013-02-13T19:17:19.336-08:00The Entire Nicole Williamson Hamlet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Wow! My favorite<i> Hamlet,</i> and an excellent print!</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/dN0y2OAesYE?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-16321677152612155872013-02-08T19:52:00.002-08:002013-02-08T19:52:19.683-08:00Yosemite in May 2012<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo2GHV7WJF9n_f5hrAKi7VluWNGXPKCS32QkNmhw53QZ4HqKQqaBZjOmv-m69CWRCWlHo0KKhqdIxYtID9z7dqATCmIRvoyKZey1XUec2Wua83BpWKmx_spm3SguDusoMfJk493dYEiZFn/s1600/IMG_3760.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo2GHV7WJF9n_f5hrAKi7VluWNGXPKCS32QkNmhw53QZ4HqKQqaBZjOmv-m69CWRCWlHo0KKhqdIxYtID9z7dqATCmIRvoyKZey1XUec2Wua83BpWKmx_spm3SguDusoMfJk493dYEiZFn/s640/IMG_3760.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Pretty soon, hiking season.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-45534411902197828562013-02-08T13:40:00.000-08:002013-02-14T16:28:56.327-08:00Light from an Invisible Lamp: J.R.R. Tolkien, Catholic Novelist<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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“I take my models, like anyone
else—from such ‘life’ as I know.” J. R. R. Tolkien, 1956, letter to Michael
Straight.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
“My subject of fiction is the
action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.” Flannery O’Connor</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">
<b>Chapter 1<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">
<b>“Light from an Invisible Lamp”: J. R. R.
Tolkien, Catholic Novelist<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, though panned by
many academics and intellectuals, has for half a century been one of the most
popular books in the history of English literature.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn1" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--></span></a>
Those who dislike Tolkien’s work tend to dislike both it and him intensely;
some associate Tolkien with an atavistic and authoritarian Catholicism, and all
the baggage they assume goes with it; others see him, usually in addition, as
the constructor of an infantile and escapist fairy-story, naively patriarchal,
and misogynistic.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn2" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[2]<!--[endif]--></span></a> I find among
my students that those who enjoy Tolkien are initially drawn in by an exciting
adventure with hobbits, elves, wizards, and orcs; but there is something more
in Tolkien that attracts his huge audience and my students: his creation of a
world that is meaningful all the way down. As they begin to understand the
religious and metaphysical underpinning of Middle-earth, students become even
more attracted to it. There is a good reason for this. They come to the
humanities looking for meaning—they want to understand what a good life is and
how to live it, whether there is “truth” and what it might be; and maybe more
than anything, they want beauty. Although it used to be the province of the
humanities to offer wisdom and beauty, during the last several decades, under
the influence of thinkers like Frederich Nietzsche, J. P. Sartre, Jacques
Derrida, Michel Foucault, and a battalion of their lesser disciples, we
professors have mainly occupied ourselves in challenging the idea that
“goodness,” “truth” or “beauty” mean anything whatsoever. In contemporary
literary studies, they are routinely taken to be the camouflage in which
malevolent power clothes itself and are considered “under erasure.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 48.0pt;">
In this cynical
intellectual climate, Tolkien alerts us to a deep hollow in our lives and a way
it might be filled. <span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">It is a hollow many nineteenth- and twentieth-century
English writers felt and resisted: Eliot, Auden, Waugh and their immediate
predecessors, John Henry Newman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and G. K. Chesterton,
all of whom held out for a meaningful universe in which the three
transcendentals were assumed to exist, objectively, not according to taste.
These men, with Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy on the American side, are
either Roman Catholics or “Catholic” in the broad sense of the word. They
believed in a Christian reality that just <i>was</i> reality, period.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn3" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[3]<!--[endif]--></span></a>
A secularized literature, by excluding God, was a maimed literature; it could
only present a maimed and distorted view of the world, for it had sliced away
the most real thing in it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Tolkien’s
main contribution to the “recovery” of reality in art was, he claimed, to write
not a novel, but a heroic romance, “a much older and quite different variety of
literature,”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn4" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[4]<!--[endif]--></span></a>
of which <i>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</i>, which Tolkien edited, and <i>Morte
D’Arthur</i> are examples. <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> is in many ways a novel—the
hobbits of necessity bring in the level of mundanity which is the novel’s
hallmark—but it is also full of the elements of chivalric romance: great
martial deeds, fiercely loyal lovers, wizards, strange creatures, the eruption
of the supernatural into the natural. Tolkien creates with a pre-modern sense
of reality—a mythopoetic sense—and Middle-earth, though under attack by evil
forces and deathly assumptions, is so alive that trees talk and even mountains
can have malevolent dispositions. “Mythopoesis,” a word of his own coinage,
refers simply to myth-making, whether by an individual or through long
tradition. It is the process through which the numinous dimension of reality is
set forth in story. Tolkien gives us a world, 6000 years in the past, which he
positions theologically between man’s fall and ultimate redemption<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn5" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[5]<!--[endif]--></span></a>—a
world which has not yet been “disenchanted,”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn6" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[6]<!--[endif]--></span></a>
which is uninformed of Christian revelation and yet informed by it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Whether his
readers realize it or not, Tolkien’s meaningful world is specifically embedded
a Roman Catholic Christian account of what reason is and more importantly, what
is real. This account combines Hellenic and Judaic thought to give an
explanation of why we assume the world can be rationally understood in the same
way, day after day. Andrew Davison gives a thumbnail description of the
genealogy of Western rationality that might make even atheists like Richard
Dawkins and Daniel Dennett feel uncomfortably Christian:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
As Einstein is
said to have put it: ‘what is most incomprehensible about he world is that it
is comprehensible’. In other words, why does the world make sense? What right
have we to assume that it should? Christians can make sense of he universe’s
sense, saying that it is God’s creation, made after the pattern of the Son, who
is Word, Reason, or Logos. There is logic because there is Logos; the world is
open to reason because there is Reason in God. . . . It is part of the
Christian faith that we have an account of why it is so.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn7" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[7]<!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Tolkien’s universe
is not only meaningful but graceful. A universe created by the Logos runs on an
economy of grace, and graceful transactions—sacramental transactions—fill <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> from beginning to
end.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In this book, I
will argue for four general propositions: 1) <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> is a “Catholic Novel,” written by a Catholic
author; 2); The idea of the Logos, as set forth in the prologue to John is
largely incorporated into Tolkien’s creation myth, <i>The Ainulindalë;</i> 3)
Although influenced by wide biblical understanding and imagery throughout,
Tolkien is significantly influenced by the Gospel of John and other books
traditionally attributed to John; 4) Tolkien’s Logos-centric universe in the <i>Ainulindalë</i> becomes the
foundation for his portrayal of Arda (Earth) from a sacramental perspective.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
None of the
support for these propositions leads an existence independent of the others.
However, The first proposition will be the main burden of this chapter. The
second proposition will be discussed in the second chapter on <i>The
Ainulindalë. </i>The third and fourth
propositions will be the matter for part of the third chapter and the rest of
the book. Tolkien had strong ideas about the relation of truth to myth, and it
is necessary to understand these in order to understand the relation of the
“true myth” of Christianity to his mythopoetic works, <i>The Silmarillion</i>
and <i>The Lord of the Rings.</i> I set forth his ideas about myth and story
and their relation to truth in the third chapter. Those who are already
convinced that <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> is a fundamentally Christian work
may find, in the first three chapters, additional reason for thinking so.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Although many
people have written books on the Christian content and orientation of J. R. R.
Tolkien’s <i>The Lord of the Rings,</i><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn8" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[8]<!--[endif]--></span></a>
it is not a universally accepted
way of approaching his work. A recent collection of essays, <i>The Ring and the Cross<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn9" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[9]<!--[endif]--></span></a>
</i>takes up the issue of whether Christianity in general and Catholicism in
particular have a substantial presence in the book. No one challenges the fact
that Tolkien was a devout Catholic, but Tolkien’s love of Anglo-Saxon
literature and Norse legend is a massive presence in the book, and those who
reject a Catholic dimension hold that his myth is grounded in those sources to
the exclusion of others. To me, this initially seemed the kind of issue which
academics devise to generate conference papers. I recognized the presence of
Christianity when I first read <i>The Lord
of the Rings</i>: Gandalf’s resurrection, Frodo and Sam’s trip up Mt. Doom, the
Ring as something like the Edenic apple—all seemed to have easy biblical
connections. Disagreement, however, is so substantial that it must be taken
seriously.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Before
arguing about Tolkien’s status as a Catholic novelist, it makes sense to define
the category. What might a Catholic novelist be? At least for my purposes,
Flannery O’Connor provides the most guidance in two essays from <i>Mystery and Manners.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn10" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[10]<!--[endif]--></span></a></i>
A Catholic novelist is not an apologist, because an apologist is not a
novelist. A Catholic writer is not an evangelist, because novels are not
concerned with evangelization. A Catholic novelist is a writer who sees reality
from a Catholic perspective:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
What we roughly
call the Catholic novel is not necessarily about a Christianized or
Catholicized world, but simply that it is one in which truth as Christians know
it has been used as a light to see the world by. . . . <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn11" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[11]<!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
The novelist is
required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it,
and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and
the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in
a larger universe. He believes that the natural world contains the
supernatural. And his doesn’t mean that his obligation to portray the natural
is less; it means it is greater. . . .<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn12" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[12]<!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
A minor example of how Tolkien uses
Christian light to see the world is his perception that Frodo’s very humility would
him the strongest person to carry the Ring, and that Gandalf would see this: “Blessed
are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.” The obligation to the
natural is greater because it is through the natural that the action of
grace—divine aid—is discerned; and it is in nature that the supernatural
comfortably resides. Tolkien makes the reader feel that the soil of the Shire
and the trees of Lothlórien are full of grace. Closely related to the presence of the
supernatural, at least as something whose reality is assumed, is the presence,
in some way, of the Catholic sacramental view of the world:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
The Catholic
sacramental view of life is one that sustains and supports at every turn the
vision that the storyteller must have if he is going to write fiction of any
depth.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn13" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[13]<!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
. . . Every
mystery that reaches the human mind, except in the final stages of
contemplative prayer, does so by way of the senses.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn14" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[14]<!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
Open and free
observation is founded on our ultimate faith that the universe is meaningful,
as the Church teaches.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn15" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[15]<!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
The Catholic vision is that the
holy is not located outside of a material universe that is corrupt, but within
a material universe that is mainly good, though fallen, and this means that
holiness can enter through the senses, that the world at large has a
sacramental quality. Christianity makes spiritual goods out of the most mundane
materiality: bread, water, wine, oil, but everything is meaningful. As Gerard
Manley Hopkins says, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Finally,
O’Connor says, this way of seeing is so habitual a part of the Catholic
mindset, that it works unconsciously:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
The tensions of
being a Catholic novelist are probably never balanced for the writer until the
Church becomes so much a part of his personality that he can forget about
her—in the sense that when he writes, he forgets about himself.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn16" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[16]<!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In sum, a Catholic
novel, like Graham Greene’s <i>Brighton Rock
</i>or O’Connor’s <i>Wise Blood</i>, may not
look Catholic at all on their face. One deals with a small time thug in
Brighton, the other with an atheist evangelist in the Protestant South. Both
bring a supernatural reality into the novel, both assume a meaningful universe.
All of these can be said of Tolkien’s work. Additionally, Tolkien is scrupulous
in his portrayal of nature, and by his own statement, in the first composition
of <i>The Lord of the Rings,</i> he was
largely unconscious of Catholic content. O’Connor’s main point, that a Catholic
novelist sees a world that illuminated by the light of Catholic culture and
thought—or more specifically by commitment to Christ—is the important one, but
although this illumination may touch everything, it may not establish itself in
symbols or action readily identifiable as Catholic. O’Connor has one important
addition in her essay, “The Nature and Aim of Fiction”: all fiction writers
need to have an anagogical vision, “the kind of vision that is able to see
different levels of reality in one image or situation.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Anagogical visions goes hand in hand
with having a “sacramental view” of life, for the sacramentality of the world
is apprehended through such vision. Fr. Andrew Greeley describes a general
Catholic imagination into which O’Connor’s view of Catholic novelists fits very
neatly:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
Catholics live in
an enchanted world, a world of statues and holy water, stained glass and votive
candles, saints and religious medals, rosary beads and holy pictures. But these
Catholic paraphernalia are mere hints of a deeper and more pervasive religious
sensibility which inclines Catholics to see the Holy lurking in creation. As Catholics,
we find our houses and our world haunted by a sense that the objects, events,
and persons of daily life are revelations of grace. . . .</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
This
special Catholic imagination can appropriately be called sacramental. It sees
created reality as a “sacrament,” that is, a revelation of the presence of God.
The workings of this imagination are most obvious in the Church’s seven
sacraments, but the seven are both a result and a reinforcement of a much
broader Catholic view of reality.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn17" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[17]<!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Tolkien’s letters
are a treasure trove for anyone trying to understand his habits as a writer or
the multiple ways in which his Roman Catholic beliefs shaped his view of
reality and his sub-creation of Middle-earth. He had comparatively very little
to say about these topics in interviews or other public forums. He did not want
to steer the interpretation of his own work, and this, perhaps, is a general
characteristic of serious novelists. It is not hard to understand why writers
are reluctant to become their own interpreters. They are already communicating
in the medium that allows them to say what they want. A novel or poem cannot be
recast as an essay and mean the same thing. It has to stand on its own, and interpretation,
however illuminating, also narrows. The “heresy of paraphrase” recognizes that
something is always lost in translation. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Moreover, readers
have an important part to play in the creative process of realizing a
narrative; authorial interpretation is, perhaps, an infringement of the
reader’s prerogatives. Tolkien
explicitly recognizes this in his “Foreword to the Second Edition” of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, though at the
same time, he cannot help but give some directions to readers who have
mistakenly taken the path of allegory: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
I cordially
dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I
grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or
feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers.
I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but <i>the one resides in the freedom of the reader</i>,
and the other in the purposed domination of the author. (Emphasis added; xxiv)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
So the reader gets freedom to
“apply” the work as he will. If you want to apply Sauron and the Ring to the
Cold War and see Stalin and the H-Bomb, more power to you. Just don’t imagine
that I want you to limit the meaning of my book to that association. I’m not
Edmund Spenser. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Yet,
the temptation to interpret one’s work, especially when readers are not
“getting it,” and are asking for help, must be intense, especially to a
literature professor whose <i>raison d’etre</i>
is furthering the understanding of literary texts. When people wrote letters to
Tolkien, expressing an interpretation that delighted him, he had no compunctions
about affirming it, sometimes with enthusiasm and sometimes with restraint.
When they wrote letters to him, and he clearly believed they had gone wrong or
needed a suggestion to go right, he also responded, sometimes with restraint
and sometimes with amazingly lengthy and forthcoming letters. This may seem to
contradict his “Foreword to the Second Edition,” where he also says of <i>The Lord of the Rings,</i> “As for any inner
meaning or ‘message’, it has in the intention of the author none” (xxiii). Now,
in one sense, this is true of all good novels. The message is not “inner,” as
if the novel were a nut that needed cracking—the message is the entire novel
itself. “Inner” is the problem
word for Tolkien, but that he had a message is made quite explicit in his
letters. Let us see what some of them have to say about Catholicism’s impact on
his imagination and <i>The Lord of the
Rings.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Tolkien’s
letters reveal a writer who used Christian concepts not only as commonplaces
for the construction of fictional reality, but as the ideas through which he
understood his own life and analyzed the meaning of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>. This occurs in so many places that a
complete listing and analysis would take a book in itself. What I offer here is
a representative sample as partial warrant for my specifically Christian and
Catholic reading of Tolkien’s work. For those who want more, I can only commend
them to <i>The Letters</i>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
The
most direct letter authorizing a fundamentally Catholic reading of <i>The Lord of Rings</i> is to Robert Murray,
S. J., where Tolkien simply declares the work to be fundamentally Catholic.
Murray, I suspect, has brought up the question of Marian influence on Tolkien’s
creation of Galadriel, and perhaps an association of Galadriel with Grace.
Tolkien replies:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
I think I know
exactly what you mean by the order of Grace; and of course by your references
to Our Lady, upon which all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty
and simplicity is founded. <i>The Lord of
the Rings</i> is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work;
unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.<span style="color: red;"> </span>That is why I have not put in, or have cut out,
practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices,
in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story
and the symbolism.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn18" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[18]<!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Such a letter to a critic is as a
red flag to a bull. “A fundamentally religious and Catholic work?” “The
religious element . . . absorbed into the story and the symbolism?” Let the
games begin! Yet there are cautions in this response. What does “fundamentally”
mean to Tolkien? When he says that the book was unconsciously Catholic at
first, but consciously so in revision, what does that imply? In what sense does
cutting out “religion” as an element of his imaginary world allow the
fundamental Catholicism more visibility? Tolkien does not answer these
tantalizing questions in his letters, but we can be sure that he is not going
to portray, for instance, formal sacraments or even allegories of sacraments.
But he may portray events that reveal a sacramental reality because he just
sees the world that way; he may construct plots and characters out of the
models furnished by deep Catholic belief, which Tolkien certainly had. To do so
would be to match Flannery O’Connor’s description of the Catholic novelist.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
We
get some clues as to how this “Catholic imagination” might inform The Lord of
the Rings in a 1958 letter to Deborah Webster who inquired about Tolkien’s life
and its relevance to <i>The Lord of the
Rings.</i> Tolkien first says that he doesn’t like biographical criticism (bad
for me!) because it only distracts attention from the author’s works and
because “only one’s guardian Angel, or indeed God Himself, could unravel the
real relationship between personal facts and an author’s works.” Yet, perhaps Tolkien draws a
distinction between personal facts and beliefs, especially those which might
provide models:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
[M]ore important,
I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman
Catholic. The later ‘fact’ perhaps cannot be deduced; though one critic (by
letter) asserted that the invocations of Elbereth, and the character of
Galadriel as directly described (or through the words of Gimli and Sam) were
clearly related to Catholic devotion to Mary. Another saw in waybread
(lembas)=viaticum and the reference to the feeding the will (vol. III, p. 213)
and being more potent when fasting, a derivation from the Eucharist. (That is:
far greater things may colour the mind in dealing with the lesser things of a
fairy-story.)<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn19" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[19]<!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Tolkien clearly
believes that Christianity is in his stories to be deduced, and</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
although he says Roman Catholicism “perhaps”
cannot be deduced, he cites two correspondents who have deduced it, to which
Tolkien does not object. I suspect the letter writer who found Marian influence
in Elbereth and Galadriel is Fr. Murray, of the previous letter. Tolkien
provides us with interpretive clues about how to read him when he discusses
lembas as like a communion wafer because of its Eucharistic associations: it
feeds the will and is more potent on an empty stomach. Tolkien does not say
that lembas <i>is</i> a communion wafer, or
that it <i>allegorize</i>s the communion
wafer, but lembas has a spiritual reality which is Eucharistic in a broad
sense. Like a communion wafer, lembas gives one the power to stay on the
journey. It communicates grace. Tolkien never gives a catalog of specific
characters, items, or scenes which could be deduced as products of a Catholic
imagination at work. One would never expect him to. But what this letter
reveals is a facet of how his imagination operates—that he creates with a
Catholic mind.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
How
does a Catholic understanding of reality affect Tolkien as the creator of plot?
He gives a very detailed discussion of this in a 1956 letter to Michael
Straight, in which he discusses Frodo’s “catastrophe,” the moment in which
Frodo decides not to destroy the Ring, but keep it for himself. The plot,
Tolkien says, can be understood as exemplifying (a word he italicizes) two
petitions from the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them
that trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil.” Tolkien says, the Quest is “the story of humble Frodo’s development to
the ‘noble’, his <i>sanctification</i>” (my
emphasis). He explains that the prayer, not to be led into temptation, is a
prayer that one retain the power to resist temptation, but finally, at the end,
Frodo’s will is completely overborne. Then, using Eucharistic language, he
describes how Frodo has been confronted with a “sacrificial situation”:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
[T]here are
abnormal situations in which one may be placed. ‘Sacrificial situations I
should call them: sc. Positions in which the ‘good’ of the world depends on the
behaviour of an individual in circumstances which demand of him suffering and
endurance far beyond the normal—even, it may happen (or seem, humanly
speaking), demand a strength of body and mind which he does not possess: he is
in a sense doomed to failure, doomed to fall to temptation or be broken by
pressure against his ‘will’: that is against any choice he could make or would
make unfettered, not under duress.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
Frodo
was in such a position: an apparently complete trap. . . <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn20" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[20]<!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
What is striking about this passage
is how thoroughly theologized it is. Tolkien is not saying Frodo is a
“Christ-figure,” but he is saying that Frodo acts very much like a disciple who
takes up his cross to follow Christ. Frodo’s trek into Mordor <i>sanctifies </i>him, sanctification being a
specifically Christian term referring to one’s growth in grace as a result of
commitment to Christ, a commitment that always has a sacrificial aspect. To
carry Frodo’s imitation of Christ further, his sacrifice brings about the
salvation of the world. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
As this point,
another petition of the Lord’s Prayer that brings Frodo’s plot-line to
conclusion: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against
us,” for it is Frodo’s forgiveness of Gollum which finally saves the day when
Frodo’s will gives out and Gollum has to bite off his finger to get the Ring.
Tolkien explains:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
[A]t this point
the ‘salvation’ of the world and Frodo’s own ‘salvation’ is achieved by his
previous <i>pity</i> and forgiveness of
injury. At any point any prudent person would have told Frodo that Gollum would
certainly betray him, and could rob him in the end. To ‘pity’ him, to forbear
to kill him, was a piece of folly, or a mystical belief in the ultimate
value-in-itself of pity and generosity even if disastrous in the world of time.
He did rob him and injure him in the end—but by a ‘grace’, that last betrayal
was at a precise juncture when the final evil deed was the most beneficial
thing any one cd. Have done for Frodo! By a situation created by his
‘forgiveness’, he was saved himself and relieved of his burden. (234)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Here, Tolkien gives us the
imaginary scaffolding of the central plot line of the <i>Lord of the Rings,</i> which extends from the beginning of the book,
when Frodo wishes that Bilbo had killed Gollum, to the point where Frodo’s pity
for Gollum loses him a finger and saves the world. Pity, forgiveness,
self-sacrifice, grace, salvation, the Lord’s Prayer: these are all part of the
Christian lens through which Tolkien is envisioning his story. Tolkien does
very little to foreground or “flag” characters, scenes, objects, events, plot
lines, or places as having a Christian valence. But he clearly believes that
Christian categories of all kinds are tools that he is using in the
construction of Middle-earth, and the product is a sub-creation that is “fun</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
damentally religious and Catholic.”
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
In
several letters Tolkien declares, in so many words, the Christian orientation
of <i>The Lord of the Rings.</i> In his
private notes on W. H. Auden’s review of the book, Lewis noted, “In <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> the conflict is
basically not about ‘freedom’, though that is naturally involved. It is about
God, and His sole right to divine honour.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn21" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[21]<!--[endif]--></span></a> In a subsequent letter to Auden, Tolkien
wrote: “I don’t feel under an obligation to make my story fit with formalized
Christian theology, though I actually intended it to be consonant with
Christian thought and belief, which is asserted somewhere . . . where Frodo
asserts that the orcs are not evil in origin.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn22" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[22]<!--[endif]--></span></a>
Frodo in that scene tells Sam that Mordor can create nothing, only mar what is
already created—a thumbnail description of the Thomistic idea that evil has no
positive existence, but is an absence, a deformation of something by
subtraction.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
This
is perhaps enough to at least establish that looking for a Christian and more
specifically Catholic subtext in <i>The Lord
of the Rings</i> is not only legitimate, but the very thing which Tolkien’s
letters, if not Tolkien himself, would goad a reader to do<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn23" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[23]<!--[endif]--></span></a>.
But the task does not promise to be a simple one that will yield precise
results, for as Tolkien says, he wants the religious element “absorbed” in
story and symbol. Tolkien gives no announcements, waves no flags, and claims to
shun allegory (with some reservations yet to be discussed). Still, to read
Tolkien well, we cannot ignore the religious element of the book, which many
have sensed on their own and which he clearly intended. Here, the freedom of
the reader may well come into play, accommodating an applicability that can be
sustained by the text, even if not mandated by it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Tolkien’s intention,
in part, is to give the reader this freedom, and, as he says in his prologue, it
is not his intention to determine outcomes. My goal as a reader is to stay
within the playing field of Tolkien’s texts, as inferred from the texts
themselves, his letters, and the artistic program he sets forth in
“Mythopoesis” and “On Fairy Stories.” My goal as a critic is to say something
about the Catholic subtext of the book that marshals enough evidence to be
convincing. I hope not to take Gollum as my role model in dealing with the
inevitable tensions between these roles. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Let us look at two
of the most personal of Tolkien’s letters to see get a sense of where the
Catholic apparitions in Tolkien’s story may reside. These letters deal with
religious experiences of Tolkien that border on the mystical. The first, a
letter to Carole Batten-Phelps in 1971 deals with the origin of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> and spiritual
power in the book itself:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
A few years ago I
was visited in Oxford by a man whose name I have forgotten (though I believe he
was well-known). He had been much struck by the curious way in which many old
pictures seemed to hi to have been designed to illustrate <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> long before its time. He brought one or two
reproductions. I think he wanted at first simply to discover whether my
imagination had fed on pictures, as it clearly had been by certain kinds of
literature and language. When it became obvious that, unless I was a liar, I
had never seen the pictures before and was not well acquainted with pictorial
Art, he fell silent. I became aware that he was looking fixedly at me. Suddenly
he said: ‘of course you don’t suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book
yourself?’<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn24" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[24]<!--[endif]--></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
This rather jolted Tolkien, who
relates in previous letters that he had long felt he wasn’t making up his story
about Middle-earth but discovering it.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftn25" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[25]<!--[endif]--></span></a>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
Pure
Gandalf! I was too well acquainted with G. to expose myself rashly, or to ask
what he meant. I think I said: ‘No, I don’t suppose so any longer.’ I have
never since been able to suppose so. An alarming conclusion for an old
philologist to draw concerning his private amusement. But not one that should
puff any one up who considers the imperfections of ‘chosen instruments’, and
indeed what sometimes seems their lamentable unfitness for the purpose.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Indeed! But look
what Tolkien, even if imperfect (as, after all Moses and Jeremiah claimed to be
as well), is considering: that he is writing with inspiration, perhaps even
divine inspiration. This implies
that he has produced a book that contains “divinity,” at least in the less
exalted sense that it is about divine truth. But where does that truth reside?
For his visitor, in Tolkien’s descriptions, perhaps of landscapes. But even in
Tolkien, rivers and mountains do not announce their doctrinal preoccupations or
allegiances. Yet I, and perhaps millions of others, have felt what Tolkien’s
visitor felt. Tolkien goes further yet, to address his correspondent’s sense of
“sanctity” in the book:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
You
speak of a ‘sanity and sanctity’ in the <i>L.R.</i>
‘which is a power in itself. I was deeply moved. Noting of the kind had been
said to me before. But by a strange chance, just as I was beginning this
letter, I had one from a man, who classified himself as ‘an unbeliever, or at
best a man of belatedly and dimly dawning religious feeling . . . but you’, he
said, ‘create a world in which some sort of faith seems to be everywhere
without a visible source, like light form an invisible lamp’. I can only
answer: “Of his own sanity no man can securely judge. If sanctity inhabits his
work or as a pervading light illumines it then it does not come from him. And
neither of you would perceive it in these terms unless it was with you also.
Otherwise you would see and feel noting, or (if some other spirit was present)
you would be filled with contempt, nausea, hatred. “Leaves out of the
elf-country, gah!” “Lembas—dust and ashes, we don’t eat that.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
This
correspondence concerns itself with the taste of <i>The Lord of the Rings,</i> the overall impression that it gives
Batten-Phelps and the two people Tolkien writes about. “Sanctity” and “grace”
and “light” are the words they apply. Tolkien doesn’t refuse them, and I don’t
think it’s an act of pomposity on his part. He also feels <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> has been given to him a gift. Moreover, to
react to the book with violent disgust, as Gollum does to the communion
wafer-like lembas, is to refuse grace. (The phrase “if some other spirit was
present” is probably derived straight from the language of Ignatian
meditation—“discernment of spirits.”) These are speculations verging on
enormous Christian claims, and a critic who wants a full understanding of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> must account for
this response, which I doubt is unusual, on the basis of the text. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
The
last letter to consider is an account by Tolkien of a religious experience that
is independent of <i>The Lord of the Rings,</i>
or any of his writings, but sheds light on the kind of mind he
possessed—acutely visual, symbolic, attentive to detail, and mystically
inclined. The letter is to his son Christopher, in the RAF, who has written
about his guardian angel. The date is November 1944.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
I had [“a sudden
vision”] not long ago when spending half an hour in St. Gregory’s before the
Blessed Sacrament when the Quarant’ Ore was being held there. I perceived or
thought of the Light of God and in it suspended one small mote (or millions of
motes to only one of which was my small mind directed), glittering white
because of the individual ray from the Light which both held and lit it. (Not
that there were individual rays issuing from the Light, but the mere existence
of the mote and its position in relation to the Light was in itself a line, and
the line was Light). And the ray was the Guardian Angel of the mote: not a
thing interposed between God and the creature, but God’s very attention itself,
personalized. And I do not mean ‘personified’, by a mere figure of speech
according to the tendencies of human language, but a real (finite) person.
Thinking of it since—for the whole thing was very immediate, and not
recapturable in clumsy language, certainly not the great sense of joy that
accompanied it and the realization that the shining poised mote was myself (or
any other human person that I might think of with love)—it occurred to me that
(speak diffidently and have no idea whether such a notion is legitimate: it is
at any rate quite separate from the vision of the Light and the poised mote)
this is a finite parallel to the Infinite. As the love of the Father and the
Son (who are infinite and equal) is a Person [the Holy Spirit], so the love and
attention of the Light to the Mote is a person (that is both with us and in
Heaven): finite but divine: i.e. angelic.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
This mystical
experience may well have something to teach us about scenes in <i>The Lord of the Rings.</i> Tolkien describes
its demonic reversal in the scene on Amon Hen, where the eye of Sauron searches
for Frodo, attempting to connect to him and then does connect. Its more angelic
equivalent is the opening of the dawn sunlight on the Rohirrim before Théoden
leads the charge against the orcs at the Fields of Pelennor, or perhaps the
blazing light around the White Rider in Fangorn Forest, the guardian angel of
Middle-earth. These scenes do speak of grace or its reverse, and Tolkien’s
letters provide a warrant for talking about them, and the rest of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, in the language
of Catholic spirituality. In fact, Tolkien seems to guarantee that it is there
to be found, in one way or the other.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Tom Shippey,
<i>J. R. R. Tolkien, Author of the Century</i>
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 2000.) Shippey’s “Foreword” has an excellent
summary of Tolkien’s popularity and the vitriolic intellectual response.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[2]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Edmund
Wilson was one of the first detractors in “Oo, Those Awful Orcs,” <i>The Nation</i> (April 14, 1956); For more
current examples, see Jenny Turner’s ironically titled “Reasons for Liking
Tolkien,” <i>London Review</i> 23, no. 22
(15 November 2001), in which she credits Tolkien and his work with paranoia,
soggy-sentimentality, and male supremacy. My favorite detractor is Germaine
Greer: “it has been my nightmare that Tolkien would turn out to be the most
influential writer of the twentieth century. The bad dream has materialized,”
in ‘the book of the century—’, <i>W: The
Waterstone’s Magazine</i> (Winter/Spring 1997) 8: 2—9; W. H. Auden, on the
other hand, hardly a sentimentalist, loves the book. See his two reviews, “The
Hero is a Hobbit,” The New York Times (October 31, 1954), on <i>The Fellowship of the Ring</i>; “At the End
of the Quest, Victory,” <i>The New York
Times</i> (January 22, 1956), on <i>The
Return of the King</i>.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[3]<!--[endif]--></span></a> This group of
artists and thinkers was mainly powered by Catholic converts such as Newman,
Hopkins, Chesterton, Waugh, Graham Greene and at a very young age, through his
mother, Tolkien himself. Christopher Dawson, the historian, was one of the most
influential. On the American side, converts included Orestes Brownson, Dorothy
Day, Thomas Merton. Books about this efflorescence of Catholic thought, which
passes unnoticed by the big literary anthologies or departments of English, are
Paul Elie, <i>The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage</i>
(New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2003) and Peter Allitt, <i>Catholic
Converts: British and American Intellectuals Turn to Rome</i> (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1997).</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[4]<!--[endif]--></span></a> <i>Letters,</i> 414.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[5]<!--[endif]--></span></a> <i>Letters,</i> 387: “The Fall of
Man is in the past and off stage; the Redemption of Man in the far future.”</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[6]<!--[endif]--></span></a> The famous
phrase is Max Weber’s, adapted from Frederich Schiller. See H. H. Gerth and C.
Wright Mills, “Bureaucracy and Charisma: A Philosophy of History,” in <i>Charisma,
History and Social Structure, </i>ed. Ronald Glassman and William H. Swatos,
Jr. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986), 11<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[7]<!--[endif]--></span></a> “Christian
Reason and Christian Community,” in <i>Imaginative
Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy, and the Catholic Tradition</i>, Ed. Andrew
Davison (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012); Kindle Location 680 – 97.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[8]<!--[endif]--></span></a> See Bradley
Birzer, <i>J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying
Myth: Understanding Middle-earth</i> (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2002);
Stratford Caldecott, <i>The Power of the
Ring: The Spiritual Vision Behind the Lord of the Rings</i> (New York:
Crossroad, 2005); Matthew Dickerson, <i>Following
Gandalf: Epic Battle and Moral Victory in </i>The Lord of the Rings (Grand
Rapids: Brazos Press, 2003); Matthew Dickerson, A Hobbit Journey: Discovering
the Enchantment of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press,
2012); Peter Kreeft, <i>The Philosophy of
Tolkien: The Worldview Behind</i> The Lord of the Rings (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2005); Louis Markos, On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to
Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis (Chicago: Moody, 2012); Joseph Pearce, <i>Tolkien, Man and Myth: A Literary Life</i>
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998); Joseph Pearce, Ed. Tolkien, <i>A Celebration: Collected Writings on a
Literary Legacy</i> (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999); Richard Purtrill, J<i>. R. R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality and Religion</i>
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984); Fleming Rutledge, <i>The Battle for Middle-earth</i> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004); Ralph
C. Wood, <i>The Gospel According to Tolkien:
Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth</i> (London: Westminster John Knox
Press, 2003)</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[9]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Paul E.
Kerry, Ed. <i>The Ring and the Cross:
Christianity and </i>The Lord of the Rings (Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson
University Press, 2011).</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[10]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Flannery
O’Connor, <i>Mystery and Manners</i> (New
York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1961)</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[11]<!--[endif]--></span></a> O’Connor,
“Catholic Novelists,” 173.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[12]<!--[endif]--></span></a> O’Connor,
“Catholic Novelists,” 175.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[13]<!--[endif]--></span></a> O’Connor,
“The Church and the Fiction Writer,” 152.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[14]<!--[endif]--></span></a> O’Connor,
“Catholic Novelists,” 176.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[15]<!--[endif]--></span></a> O’Connor,
“Catholic Novelists,” 178.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn16" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[16]<!--[endif]--></span></a> O’Connor,
181</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn17" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[17]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Andrew
Greeley, <i>The Catholic Imagination</i>
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 1 – 2.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn18" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[18]<!--[endif]--></span></a> <i>Letters,</i> p. 172.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn19" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[19]<!--[endif]--></span></a> <i>Letters,</i> 288</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn20" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[20]<!--[endif]--></span></a> <i>Letters</i>, 233.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn21" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[21]<!--[endif]--></span></a> <i>Letters,</i> 243</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn22" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[22]<!--[endif]--></span></a> <i>Letters,</i> 355</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn23" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[23]<!--[endif]--></span></a> And many
people have done it.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn24" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[24]<!--[endif]--></span></a> <i>Letters</i>, 413.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4304053573308580201#_ftnref" name="_ftn25" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[25]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Letters, </div>
</div>
</div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-5947309362312456022012-12-03T17:29:00.007-08:002012-12-03T17:50:04.978-08:00"How Many Are Saved" by Father Robert Barron<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Father Robert Barron's essay can be seen at the original site by going to this link: <a href="http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/column.php?n=2383#.ULyN6LY7f7Q.facebook">Robert Barron's column, 12/3/12</a></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">He poses a question that has come up in Little Rock Bible Study, which I facilitate at St. Anthony's of Padua on Tuesday nights. This is also a topic posed by the readings from Revelations at this time of the Church year. I think that Barron gives a very good answer; for a more scholarly article, which gets to about the same place, here is one from Avery Cardinal Dulles in <i>First Things</i> of February 2008: <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/02/001-who-can-be-saved-8">Who Can Be Saved?</a> </span></span><br />
<br />
When I listen to someone like Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens attack Christianity on the basis of Hell's existence, I realize it would be practically impossible to engage them on the topic because what they confidently think they know is so off the mark, at least for Catholics. Find your target, gentlemen, and at least attack us for what we believe rather than what we don't!<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Here is the Barron article, cut and pasted from the site linked above:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Dr. Ralph Martin, Professor of Systematic Theology at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, has written an important book titled “Will Many Be Saved?” The text received a good deal of attention at the recent synod on the New Evangelization, and its opening pages are filled with endorsements from some of the leading figures in the Church today. Dr. Martin’s argument is straightforward enough: the attitude, much in evidence in the years following Vatican II, that virtually everyone will go to heaven has drastically undercut the Church’s evangelical efforts. Why then, if salvation is guaranteed to virtually everyone, would Catholics be filled with a passion to propagate the faith around the world with any urgency? Therefore, if the New Evangelization is to get off the ground, we have to recover a vivid sense of the reality of Hell, the possibility, even likelihood, of eternal damnation for the many who do not come to a lively faith in Christ.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Martin certainly has some theological heavyweights on his side. Both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas believed that the majority of human beings end up in Hell. And the official magisterium of the church has insisted on a number of occasions that missionary work is vital, lest millions wander down the wide path that leads to perdition. Moreover, these theological and magisterial positions are themselves grounded in the witness of Scripture. No one in the Bible speaks of Hell more often than Jesus himself. To give just a few examples, in Mark 16, the Lord says, “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.” And in John 5, he declares, “The hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.” And in a number of his parables – most notably the story of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25 – Jesus stresses the desperate urgency of the choice that his followers must make. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">To be sure, the conviction that Hell is a crowded place has been contested from the earliest days of the Church, and Martin fully acknowledges this. Origen, St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Maximus the Confessor all held to some form of universalism, that is to say, the belief that, at the end of the day, all people would be gathered to the Lord. And this view was revived during the era of exploration, when it became clear to European Christians that millions upon millions of people in Africa, Asia and the Americas would certainly be condemned if explicit faith in Christ was truly requisite for salvation. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">The universalist perspective received a further boost in the 20th century, especially through the work of two of the most influential Catholic thinkers of the time, Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Rahner held that every human being is endowed with what he termed a “supernatural existential,” which is to say, a fundamental orientation toward God. This spiritual potentiality is fully realized through explicit faith in Christ, but it can be realized to varying degrees even in those non-Christians who follow their consciences sincerely. The supernatural existential makes of everyone – to use Rahner’s controversial phrase – an “anonymous Christian” and provides the basis for hoping that universal salvation is possible. Basing his argument on the sheer extravagance of God’s saving act in Christ, Balthasar taught as well that we may reasonably hope that all people will be brought to heaven. A good part of Balthasar’s argument is grounded in the Church’s liturgy, which demands that we pray for the salvation of all. If we knew that Hell was indeed a crowded place, this type of prayer would be senseless. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Now the heart of Martin’s book is a detailed study and critique of the theories of Rahner and Balthasar, and space prevents me from even sketching his complex argument. I will mention only one dimension of it, namely his analysis of Lumen Gentium paragraph 16. Both Balthasar and Rahner – as well as their myriad disciples – found justification in the first part of that paragraph, wherein the Vatican II fathers do indeed teach that non-Christians, even non-believers, can be saved as long as they “try in their actions to do God’s will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience.” However, Martin points out that the defenders of universal salvation have, almost without exception, overlooked the next section of that paragraph, in which the Council Fathers say these decidedly less comforting words: “But very often, deceived by the Evil One, men have become vain in their reasonings, have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and served the world rather than the Creator…Hence to procure…the salvation of all these, the Church…takes zealous care to foster the missions.” A fair reading of the entire paragraph, therefore, would seem to yield the following: the unevangelized can be saved, but often (at saepius), they do not meet the requirements for salvation. They will, then, be damned without hearing the announcement of the Gospel and coming to an active faith. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">So who has it right in regard to this absolutely crucial question? Even as I deeply appreciate Martin’s scholarship and fully acknowledge that he scores important points against both Balthasar and Rahner, I found his central argument undermined by one of his own footnotes. In a note buried on page 284 of his text, Martin cites some “remarks” of Pope Benedict XVI that have contributed, in his judgment, to confusion on the point in question. He is referring to observations in sections 45-47 of the Pope’s 2007 encyclical "Spe Salvi," which can be summarized as follows: There are a relative handful of truly wicked people in whom the love of God and neighbor has been totally extinguished through sin, and there are a relative handful of people whose lives are utterly pure, completely given over to the demands of love. Those latter few will proceed, upon death, directly to heaven, and those former few will, upon death, enter the state that the Church calls Hell. But the Pope concludes that “the great majority of people” who, though sinners, still retain a fundamental ordering to God, can and will be brought to heaven after the necessary purification of Purgatory. Martin knows that the Pope stands athwart the position that he has taken throughout his study, for he says casually enough, “The argument of this book would suggest a need for clarification.”</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Obviously, there is no easy answer to the question of who or how many will be saved, but one of the most theologically accomplished popes in history, writing at a very high level of authority, has declared that we oughtn't to hold that Hell is densely populated. To write this off as “remarks” that require “clarification” is precisely analogous to a liberal theologian saying the same thing about Paul VI’s teaching on artificial contraception in the encyclical "Humanae Vitae." It seems to me that Pope Benedict’s position – affirming the reality of Hell but seriously questioning whether that the vast majority of human beings end up there – is the most tenable and actually the most evangelically promising. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-46054972409063937952012-11-29T19:37:00.003-08:002012-11-29T19:37:49.449-08:00Susan Cain on Why It's OK to be Quiet--and Even ModestEpisode 1: Several years ago I walked into a Starbucks at the Sierra Vista Mall. The music was on especially loud, machines were grinding away, and then two young women walked in the door. Their eyes met the eyes of one of the women working behind the bar. They screamed. The woman behind the bar screamed. Then the two ran up to the bar and they all three screamed together for about two minutes. Then they settled into merely yelling. They were really happy, I think. This is not unusual behavior in California.<br />
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Episode 2: When my daughter was in junior high, I went with her as a sort of parent/helper/chaperone/camp councilor for the three or four days her school was at the camp. One of the girls in her class, who I knew from other activities as someone past "extroverted" by several turns of the nob, was in her element, because there was a sort of award at the end of camper with the most spirit. She was a megaphone on legs, and I never saw her inactive or non-vocal. Your could have given her a thousand decibel handicap, and she'd still have won the spirit award--which she did--with no close competitor. We encourage this stuff<br />
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Episode 3: Laura Ingraham, Rachel Madow, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews, Sean Hannity, etc., etc., on any weeknight. Screaming. Interrupting other people who then scream louder.<br />
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If you are having trouble coping with the world of screamers, if it exhausts you, you might want to watch this amusing TED Talk by Susan Cain, who has just written a book on introversion entitled <i>Quiet</i>:<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-13639460860820496262012-11-18T10:11:00.001-08:002012-11-18T10:11:30.252-08:00Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell: "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"The Wiki bio of Marvin Gaye, a MoTown icon, who might have played for the Detroit Lions: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Gaye">Marvin Gaye</a><br />
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Tammi Terrell & Marvin Gaye</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-13480627525142076732012-11-18T09:59:00.001-08:002012-11-18T09:59:58.849-08:00"Nightshift" by the Commodores (1985)In 1985 the Commodores did a tribute to Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, two famous R & B singers who had died the previous year. I heard this song again and again, as I studied Latin in the Cafeteria over the Michigan State bookstore. It is a haunting and beautiful song:<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-86801501650025809732012-11-16T15:09:00.000-08:002012-11-16T15:09:52.253-08:00California Budget Surplus by 2014?Given that I would like to retire in the foreseeable future, anything that makes the economic future of California brighter--especially PERS--is welcome news.<br />
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All over the internet and radio this week are budget projections that California will not run a deficit by 2014. Let's hope.<br />
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Here is an analysis of how fragile that prediction is:<br />
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<a href="http://thepragmaticconservative.wordpress.com/">Fragility of Projected Budget Surplus</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-86076736072800193242012-11-15T20:28:00.006-08:002012-11-15T20:28:58.970-08:00Fr. Barron Comments on "Skyfall"A very surprising and insightful review.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-10034615381603911442012-11-10T20:36:00.003-08:002012-11-14T15:11:36.524-08:00Views from the Edge of the Cliff<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I plan to keep adding to this page as the drama proceeds. Here are the first two entries (11/10/12):</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1. From <b>"The Fiscal Cliff May Be Overblown"</b> by Cyrus Sanati, CNN Money, <a href="http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/11/09/fiscal-cliff-2/">Overblown</a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: yellow; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Discussions around raising the marginal tax rate on the top 2% are simply just political fodder. Indeed, multiple studies, including ones by the CBO say that it would raise an insignificant amount of money (a negative for the Democratic view) but would also cause no real harm to the economy (a negative for the Republican view). In the end, if it takes changing the top 2% rate from 35% to 39.6% to end this whole fiscal cliff charade, you can bet it has already been agreed to.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: yellow;">As cynical as it may sound, it is simply irrational for either side to address the deficit in any meaningful way given how cheaply it is for Washington to borrow money. </span><span style="background-color: cyan;">As we have seen in Europe, nations won't swallow the bitter pill of austerity unless the markets force them to.</span><span style="background-color: yellow;"> So while the equity markets are jittery about the fiscal cliff that is not enough for Congress or the President to present any real long-term compromise if the yields on Treasuries remain at near all-time lows.</span><span style="background-color: cyan;"> It will only be when it becomes too expensive to borrow that you will see the government act in any meaningful way to address the nation's long term fiscal issues, not a second before.</span><span style="background-color: cyan;">"</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sanati's column has the ring of truth. The real problem is the long-term debt, which will not be addressed until the arithmetic takes over, in California or the United States. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2. <b>The Budget Control Act of 2011 seems to do almost nothing in the way of addressing debts and deficits</b>, although President Obama keeps saying that he's already cut spending by $1 trillion. See Wikipedia: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011">Budget Control Act of 2011</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Quoting the Wikipedia section on "Projected and known impacts" of the Act:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: yellow;"><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">"The act will not actually reduce the overall U.S. debt over the 10-year period it is specified for, only slow down the existing rate of growth of the debt.</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-nyt-sign_13-2" style="line-height: 1em; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011#cite_note-nyt-sign-13" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[12]</a></sup><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"> That is partly because the cuts due to the act will not reduce federal spending in absolute terms, but rather reduce the year-to-year increases in spending from what had previously been anticipated.</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-wnyc-expl_2-1" style="line-height: 1em; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011#cite_note-wnyc-expl-2" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[2]</a></sup><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"> Even with the slowdown, both federal spending and the debt are still projected to grow faster than the U.S. economy, due to the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_curve" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-decoration: none;" title="Cost curve">cost curve</a><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"> effects of health care, which the act does not address.</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-nyt-sign_13-3" style="line-height: 1em; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011#cite_note-nyt-sign-13" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[12]</a>"</sup></span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-nyt-sign_13-3" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1em; text-align: -webkit-auto;"></sup></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: yellow; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Most of the $900 billion in the first tranche of cuts occur in future years and so will not remove significant aggregate demand from the economy in the current and following year.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-lat-deal_4-5" style="line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011#cite_note-lat-deal-4" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[4]</a></sup> Only $25 billion in federal discretionary spending is required to be removed for 2012.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-wnyc-expl_2-2" style="line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011#cite_note-wnyc-expl-2" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[2]</a></sup> Regarding the across the board cuts, these could not take place until 2013 and so if triggered, a new Congress could vote to eliminate or deepen all or part of them. Some top Republicans were particularly concerned that any defense cuts could not go into effect until after 2013.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-lat-deal_4-6" style="line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011#cite_note-lat-deal-4" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[4]</a></sup></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: yellow; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Passage of the Budget Control Act of 2011 was not enough to avert, three days later, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_%26_Poor%27s" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Standard & Poor's">Standard & Poor's</a> downgrading the nation's credit rating for the first time in the firm's history, from "AAA" (highest) to "AA+" (highest, with qualifications).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-cbs-sp_30-0" style="line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011#cite_note-cbs-sp-30" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[29]</a></sup> They said they were "pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government's debt dynamics anytime soon."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-cbs-sp_30-1" style="line-height: 1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011#cite_note-cbs-sp-30" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[29]</a></sup></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In short, like all long term budget deals or tax bills, this can be undone, at will, by any future Congress and only reduces the increase in deficits and debt growth. S & P projects U.S. debt to be at least $22.1 trillion in 10 years. At Current Rates we are scheduled to hit that amount in four years. See this pinball-like representation of U.S. Debt: <a href="http://www.usdebtclock.org/cbo-omb-gop-budget-estimates.html">U.S. Debt Clock</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3. <b>If Bill Kristol is OK with a tax raise on the wealthy, then who can be agin' it?</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Speaking on Fox News Sunday, conservative commentator and <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/The+Weekly+Standard+Magazine" style="color: #205d87; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_self">Weekly Standard</a> editor <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Bill+Kristol" style="color: #205d87; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_self">Bill Kristol</a> went even farther than Cyrus Sanati (above).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: yellow; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires," he said. "It really won't, I don't think. I don't really understand why <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/U.S.+Republican+Party" style="color: #205d87; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_self">Republicans</a> don't take Obama's offer…. Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half of whom live in Hollywood and are hostile?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">4. "<b>We don't want to kick the can down the road."</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Corker and Conrad with Chris Wallace: <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/11/democrats-republicans-seem-more-ready-to-compromise-on-deficit-deal/">Democrats, Republicans seem more ready to compromise on deficit deal</a></span></span><br />
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Compromise already. If Republicans can actually get significant entitlement reform and more reductions in spending by going with Obama's tax rates, they ought to do it, even if they think it will slow job creation. It's better than a deadlock.<br />
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(11/13/12)<br />
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5. <b>"The Hard Fiscal Facts," WSJ, 11/12/12 Link: </b> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323894704578113033115035920.html">WSJ Editorial</a><br />
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Gleanings from this editorial, which is in favor of keeping the Bush tax cuts permanent (despite William Kristol):<br />
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1. In the fiscal year that ended on September 30, the federal government rolled up another $1.1 trillion deficit.<br />
2. The four largest deficits in modern history accrued during the last four years, the Obama years. See the editorial for a table.<br />
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3. "Tax Revenue kept climbing, up 6.4% for the [last fiscal] year overall, and at $2.45 trillion it is now close to the historic high it reach in fiscal 2007 before the recession hit. Mr. Obama won't want you to know this, but this revenue increase is occurring under the Bush tax rates that he so desperately wants to raise in the name of getting what he says is merely 'a little more in taxes.' Individual income tax payments are now up $233 billion over the lat two years, or 26%."<br />
4. "This healthy revenue increase comes despite measly economic growth of between 1% and 2%."<br />
5. "Now let's look at outlays, which declined a bit in 2012. That small miracle was achieved thanks to a 4% fall in defense spending, a 24% fall in jobless benefits, and an 8.9% decline in Medicaid funding. Note, however, that federal spending remains at a new plateau of about $3.54 trillion, or some $800 billion more than the last pre-recession year of 2007. One way to think about this that most of the $830 billion stimulus of 2009 has now become part of the federal budget baseline. The 'emergency' spending of the stimulus has now become permanent, as we predicted it would."<br />
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Conclusion: we are close to gathering more revenue than we ever have, as was true during the Bush II years; we are just spending far more than we are taking in. And this was also true during Bush II's presidency: then, tax cuts coincided with big revenue gains. We just spent way more than we took in.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/11/13/164960245/with-or-without-fiscal-cliff-cuts-deficit-looms-large">NPR's Fiscal Cliff Notes: Cliff Only Dents Deficit</a></b><br />
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These are very good. Go to this link and listen to them all: <a href="http://www.npr.org/series/157435112/fiscal-cliff-notes">Fiscal Cliff Notes</a><br />
<br />
I heard my first this morning in the car: "Fiscal Cliff Would Only Dent the Deficit"; this is only 3 minutes long: <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/11/13/164960245/with-or-without-fiscal-cliff-cuts-deficit-looms-large">Fiscal Cliff wouldn't come close to dealing with deficit</a><br />
<br />
(11/14/12)<br />
<br />
<b>7. New York Times, "Showing Backbone on Debt," November 13, 2012:</b><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
<span style="background-color: yellow;">"Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, provided a bit of good news this afternoon to those worried about painful compromises ahead in the negotiations over the fiscal cliff. President Obama, he said, still wants $1.6 trillion in new tax revenue (over a decade) in any package to reduce the deficit.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
<span style="background-color: yellow;">That’s almost impossible to achieve without raising rates on high incomes. Reverting to Clinton-era rates on incomes greater than $250,000 would raise $1 trillion; the rest could come from capping deductions, the method Republicans prefer but which would be insufficient alone.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
<span style="background-color: yellow;">Of course that’s just an opening position; the White House presumably is willing to come down from that number in talks with Republicans. But it’s more than the $1 trillion or so the president wanted in his talks with Speaker John Boehner in 2010, and sends a strong signal that the talks will have to yield far more than modest changes in the amount that rich people can deduct."</span></div>
<div style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
The editorial goes on to lament Obama's advertised deficit cutting goal:</div>
<div style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
<span style="background-color: yellow;">"Less heartening, Mr. Carney also cited an overall goal of reducing the deficit by $4 trillion, the same cut achieved in the Simpson-Bowles plan. There’s no need for the reduction to be that high. As the <a href="http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3856" style="color: #666699;">Center on Budget and Policy Priorities</a> has repeatedly pointed out, just $2 trillion in savings would stabilize the debt at about 73 percent of the economy, far less than the current (and growing) level of 82 percent. That would mean the debt would no longer grow faster than the economy, removing the threat of economic harm from a too-high debt burden, and giving policymakers time to deal with the real driver of long-term debt, health-care costs.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
<span style="background-color: yellow;">A deep, $4 trillion reduction is not necessary in part because Congress and Mr. Obama already cut $1.7 trillion from spending last year, in the various deals forced by House Republicans. Adding $2 trillion in new debt reduction on top of that would be a “notable achievement,” as the Center puts it, in a capital supposedly bound by gridlock.</span><span style="background-color: white;">"</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
See: <a href="http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/showing-backbone-on-the-debt/">Showing Backbone on Deficit</a></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
The $1.6 trillion dollar additional revenue goal is twice that which Obama asked for last year, which has people speculating that Obama wants a "fiscal cliff" deal to fail. See <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/13/1-6-Trillion-Obama-Doesnt-Want-a-Deal?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BreitbartFeed+(Breitbart+Feed)">$1.6 Trillion? Obama Doesn't Want a Deal</a></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
Obama's request does remind me of my favorite Dr. Evil Scene. "Ah . . . Dr. Evil . . . $1.6 trillion isn't very much money . . .":</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/jTmXHvGZiSY?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
He should go for $100 trillion in new revenue.</div>
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-10543557029100414462012-11-10T10:00:00.000-08:002012-11-10T17:42:22.313-08:00Obama's Proposed Tax Rates in Historical ContextThe only way to a sustainable budget requires extensive tax reform, reduction of "entitlements" and spending decreases in general, but I do not see Obama's tax proposals as unreasonable. They would produce overall lower marginal rates than under the Clinton years and slightly higher marginal rates than under the Bush years. I'd like to see a compromise in which Obama's tax proposals were accepted by Republicans and significant budget reductions accepted by the Democrats. Win/Win. We are so far in the hole that a $1 revenue increase tied to a $1 spending cut is necessary, and probably not a sufficient spending reduction. But see Brian M. Riedl who would just leave the cuts in place, "Ten Myths About the Bush Tax Cuts," <a href="http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/01/ten-myths-about-the-bush-tax-cuts">Heritage</a><br />
<br />
Riedl's conclusion: "<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The 110th Congress will be serving when the first of 77 million baby boomers receive their first Social Security checks in 2008. The subsequent avalanche of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid costs for these baby boomers will be the greatest economic challenge of this era.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; float: none; line-height: 18px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"This should be the budgetary focus of the 110th Congress rather than repealing Bush tax cuts or allowing them to expire. Repealing the tax cuts would not significantly increase revenues. It would, however, decrease investment, reduce work incentives, stifle entrepreneurialism, and reduce economic growth. Lawmakers should remember that America cannot tax itself to prosperity."</span></div>
<a href="http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-1.html">History of Federal Income Bottom and Top Bracket Rates</a><br />
<br />
You can find out marginal federal income tax rates back to the year 2000 (Clinton, pre-Bush rates)<br />
by going to Moneychimp: <a href="http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm">Federal Tax Brackets</a><br />
<br />
In 2000, for a married couple filing jointly, these were the rates;<br />
<br />
<br />
15% 0 and $26,250:<br />
28% $26,250 and $63,550:<br />
31% $63,550 and $132,600:<br />
36% $132,600 and $288,350:<br />
39.6% $288,350+<br />
<br />
Current marginal rates with the Bush tax cut in place are as follows, for a married couple filing jointly:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: left; text-decoration: inherit; z-index: 0;">
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>10%</b> on taxable income from $0 to $17,400, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>15%</b> on taxable income over $17,400 to $70,700, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>25%</b> on taxable income over $70,700 to $142,700, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>28%</b> on taxable income over $142,700 to $217,450, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>33%</b> on taxable income over $217,450 to $388,350, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>35%</b> on taxable income over $388,350.</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font: inherit; line-height: 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background-color: yellow;">Under the Obama proposal for married filing jointly (see below):</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; line-height: 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background-color: yellow; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16px;">10% $0 to $17,900</span><br style="line-height: 16px;" /><span style="line-height: 16px;">15% </span><span style="line-height: 16px;">$17,900 to $72,500 </span><br style="line-height: 16px;" /><span style="line-height: 16px;">25% </span><span style="line-height: 16px;">$72,500 to $146,350</span><br style="line-height: 16px;" /><span style="line-height: 16px;">28% </span><span style="line-height: 16px;">$146,350 to $223,050</span><br style="line-height: 16px;" /><span style="line-height: 16px;">33% </span><span style="line-height: 16px;">$223,050 to $247,000</span><br style="line-height: 16px;" /><span style="line-height: 16px;">36% </span><span style="line-height: 16px;">$247,000 to $398,350 </span><br style="line-height: 16px;" /><span style="line-height: 16px;">39.6% </span><span style="line-height: 16px;">$398,350+:</span></span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font: inherit; line-height: 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
The following is from the Tax Foundation. See the whole article at <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/blog/250000-threshold-how-does-it-work">The $250,000 Threshold: How does it work?</a></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font: inherit; line-height: 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
Under current policy, there are six taxable income brackets – 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33%, and 35%. Obama’s proposal would let part of the 33% tax bracket and all of the 35% tax bracket rise to Clinton-era tax rates: 36% and 39.6%<a href="http://taxfoundation.org/blog/250000-threshold-how-does-it-work#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color 0.2s, box-shadow, opacity, margin, height, left; border: 0px; color: #004bf7; font-size: 14px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="">[1]</a><a href="http://taxfoundation.org/blog/250000-threshold-how-does-it-work#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2" name="_ftnref2" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color 0.2s, box-shadow, opacity, margin, height, left; border: 0px; color: #004bf7; font-size: 14px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="">[2]</a>. The split in the 33% tax bracket (where the upper part goes up to 36%) is set to be the number calculated above: $247,000. (The same calculation for single filers comes out to $203,600). So the marginal tax rates on taxable income under each scenario are as follows:</div>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="background-color: #1d4a7c; border-bottom-color: rgb(29, 74, 124); border-bottom-style: solid; border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; color: black; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font: inherit; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 698px;"><tbody style="border: 0px; font-size: 11px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<tr style="border: 0px; font-size: 11px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="background-color: #eeeeee; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 12px; font: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 8px; vertical-align: middle; width: 134px;"><div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Filing Status</strong></div>
</td><td style="background-color: #eeeeee; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 12px; font: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 8px; vertical-align: middle; width: 180px;"><div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tax Cuts Expire (2013 projected parameters)</strong></div>
</td><td style="background-color: #eeeeee; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 12px; font: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 8px; vertical-align: middle; width: 174px;"><div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Current Policy (2013 projected parameters)</strong></div>
</td><td style="background-color: #eeeeee; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 12px; font: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 8px; vertical-align: middle; width: 210px;"><div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Obama Proposal (2013 projected parameters)</strong></div>
</td></tr>
<tr style="border: 0px; font-size: 11px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="background-color: #e8e8e8; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11px; font: inherit; height: 79px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 8px; vertical-align: middle; width: 134px;"><div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Single</strong></div>
</td><td style="background-color: #e8e8e8; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11px; font: inherit; height: 79px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 8px; vertical-align: middle; width: 180px;"><div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
$0 to $36,250:15%<br />
$36,250 to $87,850: 28%<br />
$87,850 to $183,200: 31%<br />
$183,200 to $398,350: 36%<br />
$398,350+: 39.6%</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
</td><td style="background-color: #e8e8e8; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11px; font: inherit; height: 79px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 8px; vertical-align: middle; width: 174px;"><div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
$0 to $8,950: 10%<br />
$8,950 to $36,250: 15%<br />
$36,250 to $87,850: 25%<br />
$87,850 to $183,200: 28%<br />
$183,200 to $398,350: 33%<br />
$398,350+: 35%</div>
</td><td style="background-color: #e8e8e8; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11px; font: inherit; height: 79px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 8px; vertical-align: middle; width: 210px;"><div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
$0 to $8,950: 10%<br />
$8,950 to $36,250: 15%<br />
$36,250 to $87,850: 25%<br />
$87,850 to $183,200: 28%<br />
$183,200 to $203,600: 33%<br />
$203,600 to $398,350: 36%<br />
$398,350+: 39.6%</div>
</td></tr>
<tr style="border: 0px; font-size: 11px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="background-color: #eeeeee; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11px; font: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 8px; vertical-align: middle; width: 134px;"><div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MFJ</strong></div>
</td><td style="background-color: #eeeeee; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11px; font: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 8px; vertical-align: middle; width: 180px;"><div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
$0 to $60,550: 15%<br />
$60,550 to $146,350: 28%<br />
$146,350 to $223,050: 31%<br />
$223,050 to $398,350: 36%<br />
$398,350+: 39.6%</div>
</td><td style="background-color: #eeeeee; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11px; font: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 8px; vertical-align: middle; width: 174px;"><div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
$0 to $17,900: 10%<br />
$17,900 to $72,500: 15%<br />
$72,500 to $146,350: 25%<br />
$146,350 to $223,050: 28%<br />
$223,050 to $398,350: 33%<br />
$398,350+: 35%</div>
</td><td style="background-color: #eeeeee; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11px; font: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 8px; vertical-align: middle; width: 210px;"><div style="border: 0px; font: inherit; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
$0 to $17,900: 10%<br />
$17,900 to $72,500: 15%<br />
$72,500 to $146,350: 25%<br />
$146,350 to $223,050: 28%<br />
$223,050 to $247,000: 33%<br />
$247,000 to $398,350: 36%<br />
$398,350+: 39.6%</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font: inherit; line-height: 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 20px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
As Luke Bernthal notes, in the comment below, we now have the lowest "highest marginal rate" since the Depression years:</div>
</div>
<a href="http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/course/Labortaxes/taxableincome/taxableincome_attach.pdf">Graph in PDF of highest marginal rates</a><br />
<br />
The graph is interesting, but those super high marginal rates after World War II were also connected to a very different scheme of deductions, including an interest deduction for all interest (not just mortgage) and no alternative minimum tax. What would be very interesting would be a graph showing effective federal income tax rates back to the thirties. I cannot find that data, and I'm not sure it exists. For effective rates back to 1979, see the previous blog.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-67460036405419606342012-11-09T22:04:00.000-08:002012-11-09T22:04:04.725-08:00Current Tax Rates / Effective Federal Income Tax<br />
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: inherit;">
<br /></h3>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: inherit;">
As we get into the "fiscal cliff" Congressional contest, we are going to hear a lot about tax rates. Here are the current rates. Historically, the most relevant data with regard to revenue collection may be effective federal income tax rates, which stay surpisingly even, even though marginal rates have varied a lot.</h3>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: inherit;">
<a href="http://taxes.about.com/od/filingstatus/qt/single.htm" style="color: #3366cc; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Single Filing Status</a></h3>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">[Tax Rate Schedule X, Internal Revenue Code section 1(c)]</span><ul style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: left; text-decoration: inherit; z-index: 0;">
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>10%</b> on taxable income from $0 to $8,700, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>15%</b> on taxable income over $8,700 to $35,350, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>25%</b> on taxable income over $35,350 to $85,650, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>28%</b> on taxable income over $85,650 to $178,650, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>33%</b> on taxable income over $178,650 to $388,350, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>35%</b> on taxable income over $388,350.</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: inherit;">
<a href="http://taxes.about.com/od/filingstatus/qt/marriedjointly.htm" style="color: #3366cc; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Married Filing Jointly</a> or <a href="http://taxes.about.com/od/filingstatus/qt/qualifyingwidow.htm" style="color: #3366cc; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Qualifying Widow(er) Filing Status</a></h3>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">[Tax Rate Schedule Y-1, Internal Revenue Code section 1(a)]</span><ul style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: left; text-decoration: inherit; z-index: 0;">
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>10%</b> on taxable income from $0 to $17,400, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>15%</b> on taxable income over $17,400 to $70,700, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>25%</b> on taxable income over $70,700 to $142,700, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>28%</b> on taxable income over $142,700 to $217,450, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>33%</b> on taxable income over $217,450 to $388,350, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>35%</b> on taxable income over $388,350.</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: inherit;">
<a href="http://taxes.about.com/od/filingstatus/qt/marriedseparate.htm" style="color: #3366cc; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Married Filing Separately Filing Status</a></h3>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">[Tax Rate Schedule Y-2, Internal Revenue Code section 1(d)]</span><ul style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: left; text-decoration: inherit; z-index: 0;">
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>10%</b> on taxable income from $0 to $8,700, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>15%</b> on taxable income over $8,700 to $35,350, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>25%</b> on taxable income over $35,350 to $71,350, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>28%</b> on taxable income over $71,350 to $108,725, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>33%</b> on taxable income over $108,725 to $194,175, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>35%</b> on taxable income over $194,175.</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: inherit;">
<a href="http://taxes.about.com/od/filingstatus/qt/headofhousehold.htm" style="color: #3366cc; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Head of Household Filing Status</a></h3>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">[Tax Rate Schedule Z, Internal Revenue Code section 1(b)]</span><ul style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: left; text-decoration: inherit; z-index: 0;">
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>10%</b> on taxable income from $0 to $12,400, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>15%</b> on taxable income over $12,400 to $47,350, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>25%</b> on taxable income over $47,350 to $122,300, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>28%</b> on taxable income over $122,300 to $198,050, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>33%</b> on taxable income over $198,050 to $388,350, plus</li>
<li style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit;"><b>35%</b> on taxable income over $388,350.</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">For historical effective federal tax rates, see the Tax Policy Center, which shows data back to 1979:</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=456">TPC Tables</a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-69021614449837629042012-11-09T21:34:00.003-08:002012-11-09T22:13:35.164-08:00Shields and Brooks This Week: Fiscal Cliff<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/FhrJKUPwXS0?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(Interesting exchange on "fiscal cliff" and raising taxes)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
Shields fails to acknowledge that one of the big reasons why we had "fiscal sanity" during the Clinton years was that a Newt Gingrich led Republican House blocked a lot of federal spending. This, in addition to deficit reducing taxes, laid the foundation for the prosperity of the Bush II years.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
What the United States needs to do is very simple. We need a small tax increase, but not so much to interfere with economic growth. We need to cut discretionary spending. We need big "entitlement" reforms in Social Security and Medicare / Medicaid. (We await the full financial impact of Obamacare.)</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
Result of last fiscal cliff deal: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/us/politics/09fiscal.html?pagewanted=all">NY Times</a></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-65323266633180513542012-11-08T10:22:00.001-08:002012-11-08T20:14:50.068-08:00Election Results; Obama's Complete Victory Speech; Romney's Concession<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/nv9NwKAjmt0?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(Obama's Complete Victory Speech)</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/7flw5TTt90o?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(Romney's Complete Concession Speech)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
Here is how the electoral map broke down:</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL_T3s7i8CMZl20CmpL8TTCQ_qY-qnRDh_Yfr4wMjSuyAVqII3z2TJjPeRt21gJO_zYk5okobyEb03pKJbp_PVJIIqMPzkLChZOjct6ggtqV2b7tt0KZVuP4A2zLAPl583Wu0r6SXZv2FA/s1600/electoral-college-map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL_T3s7i8CMZl20CmpL8TTCQ_qY-qnRDh_Yfr4wMjSuyAVqII3z2TJjPeRt21gJO_zYk5okobyEb03pKJbp_PVJIIqMPzkLChZOjct6ggtqV2b7tt0KZVuP4A2zLAPl583Wu0r6SXZv2FA/s1600/electoral-college-map.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
This is how it went by county, giving a good sense of where people cling desperately to their religion and guns:</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCUr7kv1rHxyH2pkAfDSP44T0rJb42oJCLEQItTDgNSF6lDeTK35KBztdwn644tI8FmG-hf8opbEnxuoq-zfFJbPLSF-p8ROA-oiSkdnNSnHaRtidzksnm1hLQhmxuR14fei47orMf6f1t/s1600/electoral-small.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCUr7kv1rHxyH2pkAfDSP44T0rJb42oJCLEQItTDgNSF6lDeTK35KBztdwn644tI8FmG-hf8opbEnxuoq-zfFJbPLSF-p8ROA-oiSkdnNSnHaRtidzksnm1hLQhmxuR14fei47orMf6f1t/s1600/electoral-small.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Election results are still being updated and so there is a lack of data on-line. See <a href="http://inthecapital.com/2012/11/08/2012-electoral-map-popular-vote-president-election-results-photos/#ss__31855_1_0__ss">InTheCapital, 2012 Election Map</a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I have not yet found official figures on all the popular vote splits in the swing states. In Ohio it was about 50 to 48, according to the Toledo Blade, <a href="http://www.toledoblade.com/Politics/2012/11/07/Dramatic-2012-race-results-in-2nd-term.html">President Captures Ohio</a>. The national split was also 50 to 48. Florida has yet to declare a winner, even though the map above give the state of Obama. The popular vote is 49.9 to 49.3, with Obama in the lead but enough absentee and provisional ballots to be counted that Romney, for what its worth, could still win Florida.<a href="http://www.enstarz.com/articles/9069/20121108/election-results-2012-barack-obama-leads-popular-vote-florida-still-uncertain.htm">Florida Still Uncertain</a></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-4521718574715790992012-11-06T22:09:00.002-08:002012-11-08T15:15:51.133-08:00The UnAmerica<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I grew up in a little Michigan town in the 1950s and 60s. I remember going to the barbershop with
my dad on a Friday night and watching Fess Parker playing Davy Crockett, on <i>The Wonderful World of Disney</i>. I suppose that more than
anyone—John Wayne in his many westerns, Gregory Peck in <i>Pork Chop Hill</i>—Davy Crockett was my generation’s icon of what an
American was supposed to be. Our fathers, who had fought the Second World War
were living, breathing incarnations of that spirit. The astronauts we watched
going into space were the most modern counterparts of what it meant to be an
American pioneer. Courage, dedication, self-sacrifice, and a stoic attitude
toward pain and difficulty were preached to us all. And then came the sixties,
drugs, sex, and throwing it all up—for what? For what we are now going to get.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
America has gone through several iterations: America from
the Revolution to the Civil War, American from the Civil War to the Great
Depression, America since the Second World War. And that could be parsed into finer categories: America since Vietnam. America after the Cold
War. But tonight, with the reelection of Barack Obama we have entered an
enormously different world, on par with the biggest changes in our national
life—the UnAmerica America. It has the following characteristics:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->1.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->It is based not on an ethic of self-sacrifice
for the common good, as the fathers of my generation practiced in the second
world war, but on getting as much as you can from the government.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->2.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->It is based not on an ethic of self-reliance,
but on claiming victimhood and demanding reparations.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->3.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->It is not based on traditional Judeo-Christian
sexual ethics but on government subsidized birth control and abortion.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->4.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->It is an America with no sense of boundaries or
reality when it comes to its own habits of consumption and desire. A 16
trillion dollar national debt? Why not a $22 trillion dollar debt? We’re likely
to see it at the end of 4 more Obama years.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->5.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->It is an America that doesn’t lead the rest of
the world but is inexorably going to withdraw from it as defense spending is
cut in favor of “entitlements,” a word which speaks an entire history. This is going to be a very dangerous world.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->6.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->It is an America that has been taught to be
ashamed of itself and its role in the world rather than proud.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->7.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->It is an America that hates the authority of
religion and so wants to neuter it, by turning it into a private hobby, or by crushing it while regulating its social presence out of existence. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->8.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->It is an America largely without a fourth estate—a media—that even attempts unbiased investigative reporting.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In short, it is an America that wants stuff, feels it’s
owed, and hates anything or anyone who would assert a limit. It is an America
that is ripe for soft-core tyranny. This America did not happen over night.
Its starting point began when I was a teenager. But we have never so
thoroughly embraced it as we did in the presidential election of 2012.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For anyone who thought the first election of Barack Obama a
fluke, that idea has been dispelled by returning to office a man who should
have been easy to beat, after a disastrous four years of fiscal
irresponsibility and arrogant disregard for anything like bipartisan politics. Those
of us who were hopeful that Romney, a moderate Republican, would win, must now
acknowledge that we live in a very different country than we were in even 10
years ago. What can we look forward to?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->1.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->A big recession in 2013 as businesses remain
skeptical about investing in a country run by anti-business Democrats.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->2.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->At least $20 trillion in government debt.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->3.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->A deadlocked Congress as Obama proclaims any
real compromise an unacceptable retreat.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->4.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->A declining military as spending cuts whittle
away at its effectiveness.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->5.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->The disappearance of Catholic hospitals, as they
refuse to provide workers with insurance covering birth control.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->6.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Iran will get the bomb, causing a Middle East
arms race. We will do nothing.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->7.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->American debt will be downgraded, interest rates
on government debt will go up, feeding the overall debt, pushing the country
toward insolvency.<br />
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">8.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">The trend to see the Constitution as outdated
will grow; there will be a lot of talk about replacing it, and this will be the
preliminary to actually doing so.</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->9.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Four years from now, the Republicans will still
be blamed for it all, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they lose again. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Blacks, Latinos, and single women certainly put Obama over the top. See this <i>Rolling Stone</i> article, which lays out what powered this election: <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-president-obama-beat-mitt-romney-20121107">How Obama Won</a>. The 67 to 31 split among single women, who for the first time in U.S. history outnumber married ones, was perhaps the most important demographic. To see the kind of country this group thinks they live in, and the kind of country they want, watch Sandra Fluke and Elizabeth Warren's DNC speeches, shrilly proclaiming what the government owes them.<br />
<br />
I suppose historians will try to date the decline of
America. Maybe they’ll pick 9/11. Maybe the Great Recession. But I pick tonight
as the real date, because this is the day American trumped reason with “what’s in it
for me?” and embraced decline. This is the day that America became a different
country.<br />
<br />
November 8<br />
<br />
OK, after one day to cool down, I refuse to abandon all hope. Still, unless courageous steps are taken both in California and in the USA to make significant spending cuts, the day of reckoning is simply going to be even more painful. California's Proposition 30 passage gives the university system in California breathing space, but each of these tax increases erodes California's tax base as more and more people with money--individuals and businesses--leave the state for others where the tax burden is lighter. Combine an eroding tax base with the likelihood of a recession this year, and Prop. 30 may be only a temporary bandaid.<br />
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see Victor Davis Hanson's column which has a very perceptive analysis of Democrat strategy in this election, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/332957/groundhog-day-america-victor-davis-hanson#">Groundhog Day in America</a>: "In textbook community-organizing fashion, Obama won the election by brilliantly cobbling together factions with shrill warnings of supposed enemies everywhere. Young women were threatened by sexist Neanderthal males. Minorities were oppressed by neo-Confederate tea partiers. Greens were in danger from greedy smokestack polluters. Gays were bullied by homophobic Evangelicals. Illegal aliens were demonized by xenophobic nativists. And the 47 percent were at the mercy of the grasping 1 percent. Almost any American could fall into the category of either an Obama-aligned victim or a Romney-aligned oppressor."<br />
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Although the following analysis by Bill O'Reilly is spoiled by the shameless self-plug at the end, it's thought-provoking, and I think right when it comes to Hurricane Sandy:<br />
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Much of what O'Reilly has to say is remarkably close to the <i>Rolling Stone</i> article, above. What the Republican party has to get across, if it wants a future for itself and a better future for the country, is that <b>government help for those who need it is impossible if the state is insolvent</b>. That seems obvious, but many people--at least 50% of voters--seem welded to the idea that our ability to extract money from "the rich" is infinite.To Democratic friends who are committed to more income equality: set aside the moral issues this would raise and the government power it requires. Just consider whether it is even possible to generate enough revenue to keep up with our current trend of expenditure.<br />
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Dennis Miller echoes my lament:<br />
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<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-54815777580153103482012-11-04T17:17:00.004-08:002012-11-04T17:17:38.075-08:00Anger and The Final Speeches of President Campaign<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(Springfield, OH, November 2, 2012)</div>
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(Morrisville, PA, November 4, 2012)</div>
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One of the most interesting and most disturbing things about this campaign has been the anger level. In my estimation, the Democrats, from the convention on, have simply been angrier than the Republicans, and I think this also characterized the candidates. Sandra Fluke, Elizabeth Warren--the Republicans in their convention produced nothing close to that level of angry superiority. You can see that distinction in these speeches, especially in Obama's "vote for revenge" comment. This is corrosive. It is not effective leadership. The problem with anger is that it can become a drug that supports one's righteous indignation and vice versa--its a circle that's hard to break out of. I know this from my own experience, and it was on my mind last year as I blogged about Fresno State issues. </div>
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One of the things that impressed me most about the campaign was Romney's temperance. I admire that about him, as I admire his charitable giving. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-46081568485056051332012-10-31T06:58:00.001-07:002012-10-31T06:58:50.753-07:00Review of "Cloud Atlas"<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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I was looking for an innocuous movie to take my 86 year-old
mother to. She’s a <i>Bridges of Madison
County </i>kind of movie fan, but she’d already seen <i>Trouble with the Curve,</i> which was the closest thing to a mom-flick
out there. So, when I checked the listings for the Birch Run Cinema and saw the ad for <i>Cloud
Atlas, </i>I thought, aha, Tom Hanks . . . Jim Broadbent . . . Hugh Grant.
It had innocuous written all over it. Plus, it looked interesting. So I said,
let’s go. I knew I’d made a mistake long before the scene where the pretty
South Korean replicant girls are being slaughtered and hung up, steer fashion,
to be recycled. I think I got my first clue with the flogging of an African slave on some Pacific atoll. </div>
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But
aside from the fact that you might not want to take your mother to see this
movie, was it any good? Yes and no. </div>
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<i>Cloud Atlas </i>is very ambitious and works
extremely hard to be spiritual and profound. It interweaves six narrative lines
set: 1) somewhere in the Pacific 1849; 2) in Cambridge around 1918 (if I
remember right); 3) in 1973 San Francisco; 4) in present day London; 5) in a
very far future Seoul; and 6) way way out in the future on an island—possibly
the same one as in the 1849 line.
(I haven’t read the novel this movie is based on.) One of the
assumptions of the movie is that reincarnation is part of the scheme of things,
so the main actors appear again and again throughout the movie. The ethical
point is that one’s crimes and acts of kindness resonate through time,
affecting the future and possibly even the past—a very karmic thought and also a very Charles Williams kind of
thought (read <i>Descent into Hell</i>).</div>
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The
issues dealt with are various forms of human exploitation, in plot order, as
follows: slavery; persecution of homosexuals; evil oil companies rigging
nuclear power plants to explode so you’ll buy more oil; a comic parody of the
other plots wherein Jim Broadbent shines as a publisher whose vindictive
brother has had him committed to an nursing home; slavery again, this time of
human beings grown in vitro; finally, a tribe of nice, kind peaceful islanders
being slaughtered by the descendents of the rock group, Kiss.</div>
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The
plot lines not only use the same actors—and identifying them is part of the
fun—but the same situations of capture and escape. The point seems to be the
same as in <i>Ground Hog Day</i>, where
people have to bang their heads against the same ethical problems until them
get the right—or don’t. </div>
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Now,
all this to me would be an intriguing recipe for a good movie. I like fantasy and I like big movies, so the 2 hour and 44 minute running time was not an initial problem. By
far the best story lines were the present day Jim Broadbent bit, as the
captured publisher, paying for past sins, and the future Seoul, in which the
beautiful Chinese actress Xun Zhou just steals the show—and there are some
great action sequences in that part, by the way. </div>
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The
evil oil company is such a cliché, it’s a failure of the imagination to run it
again, but it gives one of my favorites, Hugo Weaving, plenty of chances to
shoot at people and Halle Berry her best innings. James Sturges and David Gyasi
have a good gamble in the first plot of a runaway slave and the lawyer who
keeps him in his cabin as a stowaway. Ben Whishaw, who played a rather soppy John Keats in <i>Bright Star</i> is the star of the second
plot line; he’s a gay composer who gets a piece of music “given” to him from beyond, and
this becomes the “Cloud Atlas Sextet” which echoes through the movie as the underlying
bit of celestial harmony that holds the world and the movie together. It’s supposed to be the
most beautiful piece of music imaginable, but unfortunately, they have to keep
playing it, and it isn’t. I liked the piece--better than average soundtrack here--but it ain’t Bach or Beethoven;
still, the plot needs the music of the spheres, and what you can get away with proclaiming in a
novel was more than could be reproduced for a movie.</div>
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My
reservations about <i>Cloud Atlas</i> are not serious, but here they are. First, <i>Cloud Atlas</i> busts a gut to be “important,” and going “big” is often a mistake in this regard.
This movie goes big. Second, from my Catholic point of view, it just reinvents
the wheel while sedulously steering clear of any Christian reference
whatsoever. The main point of the movie is that self-sacrificing love is an
objective force in the universe. Amen to that fair prayer, say I. There isn’t a
more Christian thought in the world, but mainstream Hollywood is allergic to
that recognition. It goes the expected syncretistic route. The bigger problem is that this movie didn’t make me feel the
reality of the self-sacrificing behavior I saw on-screen. It was a bit comic
bookish, a bit reheated. As W. H. Auden says in "Musee des Beaux Arts," there's always some horse in the background scratching his ass while the crucifixion takes place or Icarus plummets into the sea. This movie needed some ass scratching. The last plot line is close to a Mad Max movie, so that adds a second clichéd plot. The
two plots that worked effectively were undercut by those that did not.</div>
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On
the other hand, I’m going to read the novel.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-84232839603931779512012-10-22T08:34:00.000-07:002012-10-22T10:50:37.334-07:00Chris Matthews' Devastating Critique of Obama and His AdministrationThe disillusion that Matthews expresses here seems to me to be utterly compelling in light of Bob Woodward's book, <i>The Price of Politics</i>.<br />
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What is scary about this clip is that it is from a year ago. There is nothing that Matthews says here that shouldn't completely explain the first presidential debate to him.<br />
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For me a vote in a presidential campaign is rooted as much in whether I trust or respect a candidate, and in the general direction they'd take the country, as in their policy arguments.<br />
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Although I don't think either candidate is being candid about what needs to be done to tackle our immense financial difficulties, I have two things against the Democrats in this regard that I think the Republicans will improve. First, the Democrats went on the most irresponsible, insane spending spree in history in the first two years of the Obama administration. It stimulated nothing and only made our situation far more dire. Second, they had a responsibility, as the party in power, to propose a plan to deal with the problem. Chris Matthews, in an astoundingly truthful clip, nails that they did not propose such a plan. I see no commitment or capacity in Barack Obama to do the immensely difficult work that reducing the deficit will require.<br />
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Neither does Chris Matthews.<br />
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Barack Obama went from being an unremarkable state legislator in Illinois to being President of the United States in four short years. An utterly undistinguished four years as a U. S. Senator, in which he seldom even voted for or against a bill, intervened. On this scant experience--and no experience as an executive--he was given the highest office in the land and arguably, the most powerful and important job in the world. He always hated legislative work and has been out of touch with Congress for his entire presidency. <i>What were we thinking?</i><br />
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America is beginning to wake up from a mass delusion, and historians are going to be studying, for a long time, how desire, propelled by almost the entire mass media, could have so trumped realistic expectations or assessments of Barack Obama's abilities. He was bored as a U. S. Senator, which is, to me, astounding. He goes from being no one, to U. S. Senator, and the job isn't big enough for him. Now he's bored with being president. Maybe Emperor?<br />
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addendum: for application to foreign policy, see today's WSJ editorial by Dorothy Rabinowitz: "The Unreality of the Last Four Years": <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/page/news-opinion-commentary.html?mod=WSJ_topnav_opinion_main">Rabinowitz, October 22, 2012</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-51148795986009412702012-10-21T19:03:00.001-07:002012-10-21T19:03:06.318-07:00Alexander Vilenkin Tufts LectureAlexander Vilenkin's Tufts lecture arguing that the universe had a beginning:<div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-57023456599803739002012-10-19T16:41:00.002-07:002012-10-19T16:41:45.312-07:00Complete Second Presidential Debate 2012<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(The Debate)</div>
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<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/16/full-transcript-of-the-second-presidential-debate/">Transcript (Washington Post)</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-26563326277534800062012-10-18T21:57:00.002-07:002012-10-18T21:57:20.897-07:00Al Smith Dinner Speeches 2012<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The Alfred Smith Dinner is given annually, but every presidential election year the candidates are invited. It's a Catholic affair, in New York. This year, these were the candidates speeches:</div>
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Romney went first</div>
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Then Obama</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304053573308580201.post-12266790411996757642012-10-18T17:06:00.001-07:002012-10-19T16:35:01.857-07:00"Scientism and God's Existence," Fr. Robert BarronLast Saturday I went to the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology to hear Robert Spitzer, S.J., talk about his book, <i>New Proofs for the Existence of God,</i> which I've read a couple of times, excluding the one incomprehensible (by me) chapter written in the language of math. It has long seemed to me that very good arguments could be made for God's existence--good enough to convince a reasonable person, and that Spitzer makes some of the most interesting ones, which hinge on time. Spitzer argues that time cannot be taken infinitely backwards according to any cosmological theory we've got, including multiple universes or string theory. If you agree that the universe / multiverse had a beginning, and also agree with the proposition that things which have beginnings must have causes, it suggests a beginning cause that had no beginning itself.<br />
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Spitzer also argued that physicists like Stephen Hawkings who posit the beginning of the universe never start from nothing--they always got some beginning state that is "something." I've read the last couple books that try to make the argument of a universe from "nothing," including Hawkings, and I think Spitzer is right. It still leaves open the question, where did that initial something--even if it's just a fluctuating gravitational state--come from?<br />
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Thomas Aquinas approaches the proof from contingency in two different ways. In the one that Spitzer focuses on, the line of causation is through time. But another way of looking at it has nothing to do with time, but rather with levels of reality. If you start with a cat, for instance, and next level might be organs, and then cells, and then molecules; protons, neutrons, elections; subatomic particles, to the very end. Finally, it seems, something is holding it all up, some causeless cause--otherwise, it's tortoises all the way down.<br />
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At any rate, leaving aside whether "proofs" for the existence of God are utterly convincing, I see no conflict between physical science and metaphysics or religion, as Fr. Robert Barron explains in the video below. That's good enough for me. I don't expect any human being to be able to explain with geometric precision the origin, meaning, or destiny of human life, whether they are Aquinas or Dawkins.<br />
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(Scientism and God's Existence)</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7