Excerpt

"Flannery O’Connor is the only great Christian writer this nation has produced.  That is an astonishing fact. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Emily Dickinson, Frost, Stevens: not one of them Christian, at least not orthodoxly Christian. She is a Southerner and a Catholic, she’s not at the center of American culture, and yet she is our only great Christian writer."

Professor Ralph Wood, Baylor University, Interview.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

If you love Flannery O'Connor's short stories, as I do, you are in for a treat. Click here and then click on the hyperlink "Reading at Vanderbilt, 1959" to listen to a rare audio of Ms. O'Connor reading her most famous story, "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," at Vanderbilt University in 1959. "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" is an astonishingly story always but never more so than while hearing it read by the author herself - the humor, the absurdity, and the terror are fully apparent, and it is deeply moving. I'm not sure how long this recording has been floating around the web but no matter, it is a tremendous addition to American letters.  Hat tip to Terry Teachout, who heard about it from Maud Newton. Go listen.

Interlude - Jerry Lieber, RIP

I just found out that Jerry Lieber died earlier this week. Rock and roll would have been much different without him and his partner, Mike Stoller. They wrote so many great songs. They brought joy to millions, not least myself. You can read more about Lieber here, here, and here. Or listen below. RIP

[youtube]MbcY0qtJ1iY[/youtube]

 

Excerpt

"Of course, the key factor here is that nobody, including the Libyans, knows what’s going to happen there. There are multiple factors: regional (eastern versus western Libya); ethnic (Berbers and Arabs); ideological; factional; personal; and recent defectors from Gaddafi’s regime versus rebels. The stakes in loot and oil money are high.

There has been no change in Libya’s social make-up. The rebels have looted, burned, and killed civilians, with a special animus toward black Africans, a group identified with Gaddafi’s regime by the rebels.

Thus, the prospects for violence and internal disorder are tremendous."

Barry Rubin, from his Rubin Reports column this morning.

Interlude

If you live in the Washington D.C. area, this is your song of the day:

[audio:IFeelTheEarthMove.mp3]

No Apology Necessary

I just finished watching Bret Baier's Special Report program on Fox, which I do nightly. I watch little else on Fox but I rarely miss Special Report. I was worried when Brit Hume left as anchor a few years back, assuming the show would go downhill without him. Instead, I believe Bret Baier has made the show better. A genuinely nice guy, his calm, confident demeanor is perfect for a news anchor, and the show's supporting reporters are excellent from top to bottom. It is a terrific news program, very informative, and I particularly like to hear what the panel at the end show has to say about the day's events. I've been reading Charles Krauthammer since he first started publishing his column in the Washington Post back in the 1980's, and I believe he can now be considered, due to his presence each night on Special Report, the most influential of all the conservative columnists (a position George Will was in for years.) Steve Hayes, who I once saw while walking downtown and stopped to introduce myself, is as interesting a commentator as Krauthammer. Juan Williams sat in the panel's middle chair tonight, the liberal chair.

Tonight's panel discussion focused on the events in Libya. With Qaddafi about to fall, there is some finger-pointing going on at those of us who thought the Libyan action was a mistake. This is an attitude I just don't understand. Juan Williams observed that Michelle Bachmann has yet to apologize for her position against U.S. involvement in Libya. Ms. Bachmann's position, as I understand it, was that we should withhold action because Libya under Qaddafi posed no threat to the national security interests of the United States. Now that it appears Qaddafi is about to fall, Williams and others on the left (and some on the right) think that this somehow proves us wrong. How so? As I said, Libya under Qaddafi posed no threat. That was never the reason for the "kinetic-military action," as the administration so cynically put it. The stated reason for the war was to stop Qaddafi from killing his own people. That Qaddafi is now gone, or nearly gone, does not change the fact that he was not a threat, nor does it make our involvement in Libya more justified. Of course we could take Qaddafi out, if we really wanted to. Did anyone ever doubt it? The question is, is it now our policy to take out the leadership of every country which is brutal towards its own people? We are going to busy indeed. If anything, Libya is now more of a threat to U.S. interests than if we had left things alone, simply because we have no idea as to the nature of those who will end up in power. Being such a tribal nation, at this point we don't even know who will end up in power, or how long if ever it will take for some stability to come to the region. I fear the brutality the Libyan people are about to face will make Qaddafi's seem mild and it is very possible we could end up seeing a regime dominated by Islamists with sympathies towards Al Qaeda or Iran. Who would need to apologize then?

While Williams was pointing his finger tonight I could not help think of this quote by Edmund Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France, one all conservatives may want to pause and reflect on:

When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government, with public force, with the discipline and obedience of armies, with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue, with morality and religion, with solidity and property, with peace and order, with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things, too; and without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints.

Eventually we will know how things turn out in Libya. But, whether good or bad, the principle that many of us stood on six months ago - that the United States military should only be used when our national security is threatened - will stand either way. Those of us who were against the Libyan adventure have nothing to apologize for.

Excerpt

"The American people are excruciatingly well educated about the relevant fact: the checks hitting their bank accounts, monthly or fortnightly. They will not be educated out of them. A generation ago, they might have been shamed out of it, but shame is now impotent. They will not willingly give up those checks, and there will always be a Barack Obama out there to profit by pretending that pillaging half of the country to bribe the other is a kind of moral crusade, rather than a lightly disguised form of armed robbery."

Kevin Williamson, from his column at National Review Online, The Burden