No power to the people

We got home last night from a fast-track vacation -- lots to write about, but it will have to wait -- and sure enough, the storm that caused power outages in the District (if only it had knocked out political power!) and large patches of the MD and VA suburbs had not spared us. 

The cats were all right; they don't normally use many electrical appliances, but I suppose the lack of air conditioning was a misery to them.

I sat out on the porch late. It was marginally cooler outside, maybe only 80 degrees. Inside ... ugh. I'm running a serious sleep deficit. But even celebrities have it tough: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes seem to have run out of electricity too.

It could be several days before we get electricity again (this is written from another location). Stay tuned.

If you sent any comments that are awaiting moderation, please be patient, as I only know how to access them from the home computer.

UPDATE 7/3: I've discovered I don't need to moderate comments from home emails -- I can do it here. I'm still getting used to this new Blogger interface.

Service interruption

I will be away on a brief trip through Sunday. See you after that.

The assisted suicide of Western nations

 

The pressure is on to preserve a make-believe currency, but since nothing else has worked, the limousine class is ready to call in an air strike on European countries' independence. Der Spiegel Online says:  

'States Must Sacrifice Sovereignty to Save Euro'

German media commentators have drawn some comfort from a blueprint for a radical revamp of the euro zone's architecture presented this week by the "gang of four" European presidents: European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Euro Group President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.

The ideas would entail a dramatic loss of national sovereignty through the establishment of a central authority with power to demand changes in individual members' national budgets, as well as a "medium term" move towards euro bonds, as well as a banking union with a single authority that would insure banking deposits and have the power to shut or recapitalize banks directly, with help from Europe's permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism.

"The gang of four" -- that has echoes. Presumably meant as a joking reference to the leaders of the Communist Chinese Great Cultural Revolution. Non-elite Europeans aren't laughing.

Only members of an economic mafia, living in an alternative universe from ordinary men and women, could call a "dramatic loss of national sovereignty" a change of "architecture," as though it entailed building a new deck overlooking the backyard.

You will love Big Euro!

Make no mistake. This isn't about saving those gaily colored euro notes -- that's just the excuse du jour. It's really the thin end of the wedge that will end citizenship in European countries and make every former French, Italian, Dutch, what-have-you national a serf toiling for the Lords of Brussels. That, or a welfare class dependent on Germany. Germany needs economic Lebensraum.

Back in Old Gloryland, the gang of nine (political appointees in black robes, whose Word is Law, from which there is no appeal) has told Arizona that it cannot uphold immigration laws that the federal government does not want enforced. Killers, drug traffickers, trespassers, welfare recipients, anchor baby factories ... Arizona cops can only ask them about their citizenship.

"No habla Ingles."

 "Americano?" "I no know no-thing."

"I'm going to have to report you to the federal authorities." "Oh, Cisco!"

"Oh, Pancho!"

Arizona reports Pancho to the federal immigration enforcer simulators. "Oh, that old guy again? Listen, I'm sorry, but Janet Napoletano says we can't arrest 'em or ask their age. That way they're clean, they're youths, and eligible for Obamnesty."

So population replacement goes on, and on, and on, until one Fourth of July in the near future you will look around and see what used to be the United States of America, now a mere geographical expression, linked with Mexico and Latin America in an amero currency and political union.

The only thing holding back a complete America del Norte y Centro is that the Canadians can't stand us. They'll hold out, long after U.S. citizens have consented to become ciphers in Latin America.

Faith

I don't suppose the debate about faith versus reason ever entered the human mind before Christianity. No primitive culture that I know of thought in those terms. The Greeks would not have understood the concept of "faith"; the pre-Christian Romans, no more so. Jews (and later, Mohammedans) had no use for faith. The truth had been given to them, the law was the law, and all it took to be a worthy person was to obey the law.

Almost from the beginning of Christianity, it was an issue. The Greco-Roman love of logic and dialectic couldn't be erased so easily even after the officially sweeping victory of Christian faith. Reading about the early history of the Church, you get the impression that the hierarchy had to spend half its time dueling heresies, some of which amounted to the idea that the doctrine made no sense to mankind's reasoning faculty: for instance, the Arian doctrine, which couldn't see how the "son" of God had existed eternally with the "God the father."

Thomas Aquinas committed his great intellect to showing that faith did not contradict reason, but his answer satisfied thinkers for a historically short period -- the Protestant revolution ("pro" faith) and  the Age of Enlightenment ("contra" faith) tested it again.

But the question had "bubbled under" even during the Middle Ages. Take Peter Abelard of the 12th century. He began his career as an ecclesiastical rock star, magnetizing students with his lectures. Abelard is remembered today mainly for his affair with his intellectual and sensual admirer Heloise. But despite their personal tragedy, Abelard continued his teaching which was -- by the standards of the time -- amazingly rationalistic. Although he never specifically denied Church doctrine, his attitude was not unlike that of one of Plato's students trying to justify it in logic.

Of course Abelard flirted with charges of heresy, arousing in particular the ire of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard, like other churchmen, feared that Abelard's call to reason would undermine the foundations of the faith. Abelard was eventually condemned for heresy by a Church council.

It's unlikely that anybody, save a few Catholic theologians of the old school, would defend faith as opposed to reason in today's world. I wouldn't; I don't believe in the idea of heresy; no institution should have the power to dictate belief. For all that, Abelard wasn't entirely right, and Bernard and his co-believers weren't entirely wrong.

Abelard wanted to square the circle, by taking the mystery of God and turning it into a series of propositions. Nine hundred years ago, he believed what is now almost unquestioned among the bien-pensants, that reason is the only valid form of knowledge. God can be understood, if at all -- if He exists -- by thinking about Him. St. Bernard was probably a narrow-minded cuss, but his objections were based on a more profound insight than ever seems to have visited Abelard: that there is a higher knowledge than the rational mind can comprehend. 

Reason has an important place. Despite all mankind's follies, it has made life materially better for almost everyone. But it has brought us not a bit closer to transcendent reality. Never has, never will.

That doesn't mean transcendent reality is a fantasy, only that reason is the wrong instrument for finding it. Spiritual discipline, of whatever sort is appropriate to the individual, is the right instrument in my view. But the path of spirit takes so long for most of us, so long, so long. Faith stops by. One gets the point of it.

Don't jump! The priest is on his way

I'm starting to feel protective toward this bloke. How would you like to fire up your computer, day after living day, and see a message on every other site that language professors hate you? 

Granted, language professors make up, oh, 0.0000017 percent of the population, but still ... it could do your head in after a while, you don't think?

Sir, I want to assure you that regardless of language professors' hatred you are as dear to me as anyone I've never heard of. Cheer yourself up. By the way, can you make me fluent in Greek in the next 10 days? 

What do you mean, there's nothing left of the Greek language except the word for "bailout"?

The Greek spring

Spring has about one more day to run. The Greek election settlement might last that long. Or not.

As The Telegraph's astute Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says, "Greece’s new leaders have a mandate from Hell. Almost 52pc of the popular vote went to parties that opposed the bail-out Memorandum in one way or another. There is no national acceptance of the Troika’s austerity policies whatsoever." [The "Troika" is, apparently, new slang for the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund -- Greece's moneylenders and dictators.]

The Troika wants to keep the aid drip feed open while demanding Greeks live in a dead economy created by imposed austerity. Greeks reject the imposed austerity but want to keep the drip feed open. Irresistible force. Immovable object. 

This problem is insoluble in the terms that the EU potentates can't think outside of -- keeping disparate economies and national cultures in an economic union and a common currency. They're the continental version of One Worlders and open borders libertarians. Their ideology is based on single-valued logic that ignores every real-world factor that won't fit. 

For now, the EU overlords have the upper hand: the law, the money, the power. For now. The Bourbons and aristocracy of France had all that in 1785. Much good it did them, a few years on, when their heads looked around and noticed they were inside a basket.

The "who-whom" dichotomy can carry on quite a while. Most of mankind does go quietly when meeting irresistible force. Sooner or later, though, the "whom" become the immovable object.