Off the Track

This month's The Tablet, an international progressive Catholic weekly published in London since 1840, includes a small, three-paragraph piece from Rome on the end of the Tridentine Rite.

The Tablet reports that Fr. Reginald Foster, a top Latin scholar at the Vatican, saod that fans of the Tridentine Rite were doing harm to the Church. If Pope Benedict XVI, says Fr. Foster, continues to encourage such Latin-loving groups, a schism could ensue. "It's not the Latin, it's the mentality. These people think things were better before the [Second Vatican] Council," he told The Tablet. How alarmist and how uncharitable toweards those who love the old rite!

In fairness to Fr. Foster, he did conclude his comments by saying that it was a shame that so many young priests today could neither read nor understand and translate Latin. Priests, he said, should receive training in the "mindset that goes on from the Vulgate and Augustine and Jerome all the way to this present age."

Does the 68-year-old priest not see a connection between the Church's official retreat from the Tridentine Rite and the inability of younger priests to understand Latin? He seems confused, his comments sound somewhat contradictory, and frankly, he doesn;t seem to be doing such a good job as the Vatican's foremost scholar of Latin. One would think that such a position would necessarily entail a stalwart defense of Latin and its continued use in the Tridentine Rite that more than a few kooks on the Right appreciate and enjoy. (Here is a list of religious communities for men and for women that still use traditionalist Missals.)

The Tridentine Mass, by the way, was the Mass liturgy of the Roman Rite until the Second Vatican Council of 1962. It is called Tridentine because it refers to the Council of Trent (1545-63) which laboriously stipulated Church doctrine on the Sacraments and the nature of salvation, and which standardized the liturgy of the Mass, eliminating local and regional variations.

Things Fall Apart

I know I've been absent for a while. But there is so much going on in the world that I have to come out of hibernation. I have to transmit to you the kinds fo news stories, information, and experiences that I come across every day. Trust me: Some of this news is outrageous enough to scream about; the rest is simply depressing.

On the BBC World Service (on-line edition), sometime during the evening of Tuesday, Feb. 6, they had a report on a crime wave afflicting, of all places, Acapulco. Here is my paraphrase of the report:

There were two attacks, apparently, sometime in the last day or two, at two different government office buildings. In both, security guards and a secretary were shot by masked gunmen believed to have been members of rival drug gangs linked to coastal smuggling groups. There have been other such incidents and Mexican officials even speak of entire "lawless regions" in other parts of the country.

The incidents affect tourists as well. On Saturday, the BBC reported that two Canadian tourists were grazed by bullets shot at their hotel.

Despite a government crack down, in the month of January alone there were 190 deaths in Mexico.

No comments at the moment. I just shake my head and sigh.

NIBs 2

Emerging Markets

• Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said, in an interview with the FT , that the neo-liberal model had failed and that a strong, developmental state – in order to correct market failures -- was what countries like Ethiopia needed. Although Mr Zenawi has liberalized agricultural markets, he has been reluctant to privatize airlines or telecommunications. (William Wallis, Financial Times, Feb. 6, p.5)

Energy

• China and the UN are planning to establish the developing world’s first carbon trading exchange in Beijing, in order to compete with existing private sector exchanges in Europe and the US on which nearly $ 3 bln in carbon credits from developing countries were traded during the first three quarters of 2006. (Mure Dickey & Fiona Harvey, FT, Feb.6, p.1)

• Norway’s offshore oil drilling have become increasingly alluring as European countries grow increasingly concerned about the continent’s dependency on Russian gas and the erratic flow over the past year through Ukraine. Though most do not realize it, Norway is the world’s third largest exporter of oil and gas. (David Ibison, FT, Feb. 6, p.13)

Islamic Finance

• London has become the world’s first secondary market for trading sharia-compliant bonds (called sukuk) which are structured to pay profits from an underlying business rather than from interest banned under Islamic law (the creation of money from money is considered sinful). (David Oakley & Gillian Tett, FT, Feb.6, p.3)

News In Brief (NIBs) 1

China

• China launched its first navigation satellite on Saturday as part of the country’s continuing plans to develop a global positioning system that will rival the US’s GPS and Europe’s Galileo systems. (Mure Dickie, Financial Times, Feb.5, p.6).
  

• Cheap investments in Africa have resulted in a flood of cheap Chinese labour and products, sparking resentment and anger among locals in places like Zambia and opening the Chinese government to accusations of exploitation and neo-colonialism. (Chris McGreal, Guardian, Feb.5, p. 21).

Emerging Markets

• The German government is expected to propose at a meeting of finance ministers and central bankers an initiative to strengthen the bond markets of emerging markets, which are seen as cushions against financial shocks and swings in exchange rates. (Ralph Atkin et al, FT, Feb.5, p.8).

Energy

• The sudden consensus on climate change of late raises concerns that the “clamour for action will stifle debate about solutions.” Ill-conceived regulations must be avoided in order not to stifle growth. (Rick Haythornthwaite, FT, Feb.5, p.17).

• French energy group Total, the world’s fifth-largest listed international energy group, is expected to diversify into nuclear power under the leadership of incoming CEO, Christophe de Margerie. Officials point to opportunities like China’s planned construction of 30 new reactors worth $50 bln before 2020. (Carola Hoyos & Rebecca Bream, FT, Feb.5, p.24).

Middle East

• Goldman Sachs has signed a strategic co-operation agreement with the state-owned National Commercial Bank (NCB), Saudi Arabia’s biggest lender. Goldman will take a minority stake in NCB and thus becomes the latest US investment bank to look to the oil-rich Middle East. (Peter Thal Larsen, FT, Feb.5, p.23).

• Dubai increasingly symbolizes the changes, transformation and financial revolution that is hitting the Arab world. The country’s small size, its lack of an ethnic, linguistic, religious or political majority, and its reliance on an expatriate workforce make it the ideal society that capitalism built. (Faisal Devji, FT, Feb.5, p.17).

HAPPY NEW YEAR

When Guerillas Govern

Today I was unable to attend a guest lecture by government professor Nelson Kasfir of Dartmouth College. He was scheduled to speak at the Hong Kong Theatre at the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) at 16:00.

The event was free and conveniently located -- just a few blocks off Temple station, off of the Circle or District lines. But I still managed to miss it. (I stayed home to finish some homework.)

But Prof. Kasfir would have been fascinating. He is the author of interesting articles which I have never read but which sound terribly interesting. His themes of guerrilla armies, civilian democracies and civil society complement the broader discourse going on about weak, failed or non-existent states.

Some of Prof. Kasfir's recent articles include:

• "Guerillas and Civilian Participation : The National Resistance Army in Uganda, 1981-86," Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2: 271-296 (June 2005).
• "Civil Society, the State and Democracy in Africa," Commonwealth & Comparitive Politics, Vol. 36, No. 2: 123-149 (July 1998).
• "The Conventional Notion of Civil Society: A Critique." Commonweal & Comparitive Politics, Vol. 36, No. 2:1-20 (July 1998).

Look forward to a dialogue with some of you about these kinds of topics.

Seventy Years

My father turns seventy today. This post is to publicly congratulate him on seven decades of life. Felicidades, papa. Con mucho amor te escribo esto (ya que no deje suficiente tiempo para mandartelo por correo tradicional).

I'd just like to comment that my father has spent seven decades living a life that many today perhaps might find challenging. When he decided to embark on an intercultural career and lifestyle, he effectively chose to de-prioritize what most people increasingly consider most important: accumulating money and acquiring things--riches, material goods and shiny objects. My father, bless him, has consistently lived by a set of principles and values that almost seem anachronistic today. He is, for me and many others, a figure to be emulated, admired and loved.

Tambien, yo te quiero agradecer especialmente por haberme dado tanta libertad--y tanto apoyo, moral, emocional y material--para poder pensar, descubrir, explorar y aprender. Gracias por darme la oportunidad de poder desarrollar mis propias capacidades, de desarrollar mi intellecto y, sobre todo, de haber servido como ejemplo para mi y mi hermanita.

Te quiero, papa. Feliz Cumpleanos.

Dreher's Crunchy Cons

I received today a book published recently by Crown Forum in the U.S. which I intend to review. The book is titled Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip home-schooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party) and was written by former National Review writer Rod Dreher [now at the Dallas Morning News]. It is based on a highly contentious article on new forms of conservatism that he published in National Review a few years ago and which ended up the subject of long-running debates on blogs everywhere.

There will be many things to comment on, I’m sure, once I start reading Dreher's book. Already, though, while looking over the index, a reference to a former English professor of mine, Jeffrey Hart, caught my eye. Dreher writes:

“Man is not an island. This is something conservatives used to know, before we got puffed up and arrogant. One thinks of a statement attributed to my old National Review colleague Jeffrey Hart, a Dartmouth professor:

‘It is depressing to hear cigar-smoking young conservatives wearing red suspenders take a reductive review of, well, everything. They seem to contemplate with equanimity a world without lions, tigers, elephants, whales. I am appalled at the philistinism that seems to smile at a future consisting of a global Hong Kong.’” (p.165)

Prof. Hart is right. And I’m glad Dreher chose to use this excerpt. Many young conservatives today do seem to have an entirely materialistic view of the world. Many conservatives I’ve met have no understanding of the importance of, say, rural values to conservative political values. It’s a kind of Tory Bohemianism. It's what Dreher instead calls Crunchy Conservatism.

This is worth discussing further and I know I will be coming back to these themes in the coming weeks.

Prof. Hart, it should be noted, has published several articles over the past few years which have also served to re-assess where we all stand as conservatives. He has been increasingly critical of the Bush Administration and his articles over the past few years have provoked others to re-consider what some of us mean when we say we are "conservative."

One example of Hart's recent writings is "The Evangelical Effect" written for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and dated April 17, 2005. The sub-title to the article says it all:

"The Bush presidency is not conservative. It is populist and radical, says Jeffrey Hart, its policies deformed by the influence of Christian extremism."

This is highly provocative stuff. Hart gives fuller expression to his views in his recently published history of the 50 years of National Review, titled The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times. We shall look at this particular books later this year but these are questions and themes that, again, I think are worth grappling with if we realy mean to be engaged with the world.

Modernist Discourse?

In class today, we heard a 20-minute presentation on the so-called “modernist discourse” and the major criticisms to it.

What does this modernist discourse mean? Well, in the simplest of words and most general of treatments, it is everything that says that the use of critical, rational thought (Enlightenment rationality) will lead mankind towards ever greater progress.

In the context of the media, it refers more specifically to the set of ideas that are embodied in the works of such contemporary cultural / social theorists as Jurgen Habermas, Neil Postman and others. Beginning with Habermas, these gentlemen say that there exists a so-called “public sphere” that is neither the state nor the private realm, a sphere of action in which men become informed, discuss and engage in discourse, and exercise their rights and fulfill their obligations as citizens. They also suggest the idea that the publication of the book and the rise of so-called print-capitalism contributed to the development of the typographic mind through the increased penetration of the written word in human society. Furthermore, people like Habermas and Postman believe firmly that there has been a corruption of this public sphere. The rise of mass media, television and pop culture has ushered in what may effectively be called the end of the typographic age. And this, ladies and gentlemen, has weakend our capacity to become informed, deliberate and thus participate fully as citizens in their democracy.

Fascinating, huh? Some of it may even ring true. With my classmates over here, there has been much debate—both in and out of class—ever since we began reading Habermas last semester and Postman just a few weeks ago. Some people argue that to even posit that education and intellectual engagement with social reality are necessary in order to truly be informed participants in a democracy is authoritarian (for imposing an image of an ideal citizen) as well as elitist (for insisting that to one needs to be educated at all in order to be an informed political participant).

I am reluctant to say this but I sympathize with both Habermas and Postman. I haven’t any empirical data to back up my comments, but I do have anecdotal evidence indicating, I think, the deleterious effects of television on the cognitive abilities of my peers. Too much television. Toomany movies. Too many videos games. In general, I also find people around me increasingly impatient and less willing to struggle with things that are, shall we say, more poetical or meditative, more time-consuming and text-oriented. If they do read at all, it is not literature but trash or junk fiction (like The Da Vinci Code). I also find that people are increasingly nasty, ironic ain their outlook on life, caustic in their comments, sarcastic in their humor. This is fruit of a steady diet of secular entertainment. And these people are detached from life.

So, according to some critics, because I presume that things were better before the triumph of television, I should be labeled a modernist. (Confusing, I know.) In the same way, those who argue on behalf of the idea of a well-informed and vibrant public sphere, or a normative conception of the informed citizen, are thus critiqued by those who say that everything must be analyzed, unpacked, deconstructed and set into its proper context. The modernists, as it were, are attacked by the post-modernists who insist that there is no universality, that there is no Truth and that all we have to do is reveal the underlying assumptions and relationships of power, gender, etc., all of which must be made apparent to others. This is the post-modern discourse.

Then again, as socialogist Peter L. Berger said to me at a seminar last summer in Boston, the very fact that we are even engaging in this type of discussion is very modern and a legacy of the Enlightenment itself. I suppose one could say with a smile, We are all modernists now--even those who are against the modernist ideals.

Technical Issues

Until a few days ago, we were without an Internet connection at home, here at Oudezijds Voorburgwal 183 in Amsterdam. And I realized today that I have not posted anything for nearly a month. Well, now that we finally have an Internet connection at home, I will make a serious attempt at catching up. I even intend to back-date a few posts--perhaps going back to Denmark!

Have I mentioned how lovely and reasonable the Danes were?

Thanks for still being willing to read me. I promise to make it worth your while and to work hard to earn the time you give to me.

E Pluribus Unum

The other day, I received the November [2005] edition of the Claremont Institute's publication, The Proposition. The lead essay titled "The Crisis if American National Identity" was written by Professor Charles R. Kesler, editor of the Claremont Review of Books -- which is nothing less than the antithesis of the New York Review of Books.

Professor Kesler's essay (which was adapted from a lecture given at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC) is excellent. Here is just the opening paragraph:

About a decade ago, when he was vice president, Al Gore explained that our national motto, e pluribus unum, means "from one, many." This was a sad day for knowledge of Latin among our political elite--and after all those expensive private schools that Gore had been packed off to by his paterfamilias. It was the kind of flagrant mistranslation that, had it been committed by a Republican, say George W. Bush or Dan Quayle, would have been a gaffe heard round the world. But the media didn't play up the slip, perhaps because they had seen Gore's Harvard grades and figured he'd suffered enough, perhaps because they admired the remark's impudence. Though literally a mistake, politically the comment expressed and honored the multicultural imperative, then so prominent in the minds of American liberals: "from one," or to exaggerate slightly, "instead of one culture, many." As such it was a rather candid example of the literary method known as deconstruction: torture a text until it confesses the exact opposite of what it says in plain English or, in this case, Latin.

It's an excellent essay. If you are interestecd in reading Professor Kesler's essay in its entirety, or subscribing to the Claremont Review of Books, contact the Claremont Institute by calling 909-621-6825.