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From the Commonplace Book

All this while the United States remained intensely preoccupied with its own vehement internal affairs and economic problems. Europe and far-off Japan watched with steady gaze the rise of German warlike power…. Deep anxiety ruled in France, where a large amount of Hitler’s activities and of German preparations had come to hand. There was, I was told, a catalogue of breaches of the treaties of immense and formidable gravity, but when I asked my French friends why this matter was not raised in the League of Nations, and Germany invited, or even ultimately summoned, to explain her action and state precisely what she was doing, I was answered that the British Government would depricate such an alarming step…. This was one of those awful periods which recur in our history, when the noble British nation seems to fall from its high estate, loses all trace of sense or purpose, and appears to cower from the menace of foreign peril, frothing pious platitudes while foemen forge their arms.

In this dark time the basest sentiments received acceptance or passed unchallenged by the responsible leaders of the political parties. In 1933 the students of the Oxford Union, under the inspiration of a Mr. Joad, passed their ever-shameful resolution, “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.” It was easy to laugh off such an episode in England, but in Germany, in Russia, in Italy, in Japan, the idea of a decadent, degenerate Britain took deep root and swayed many calculations. Little did the foolish boys who passed the resolution dream that they were destined quite soon to conquer or fall gloriously in the ensuing war, and prove themselves the finest generation ever bred in Britain. Less excuse can be found for their elders, who had no chance of self-redemption in action.

    -Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm, pp. 76-77

Stop the insanity 2

Turns out I'm cited in the same book. I agree with Adler. Cut out the impeachment nonsense.

Max Hastings on World War I

Readers of this blog will recall that I am a great admirer of the British military historian Max Hastings, whose book Retribution (called Nemesis in the U.K.) is one of my very favorite books. I'm not fond of military history. I usually find it unreadably dull and confusing. But Hastings is such an extremely good writer, and his blending of first-person experience with broader context and cold facts, makes his books so riveting, that I cannot wait to devour them. His newest book comes out next month; it's Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914.

New books on liberty and the Constitution

It looks like the next several months will be full of exciting new books for folks interested in the constitution and freedom. (The publication dates are always subject to change...) 

1) Josh Blackman, Unprecedented: The Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare (Public Affairs, Sept. 10).

I read this book in manuscript. It gives a very thorough and, most importantly, objective account of the history of NFIB v. Sebelius and other cases challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate. I disagree strongly with a few of Blackman’s conclusions about that history, but the disagreements are in good faith, and Blackman’s research is scholarly and his presentation fair to all sides. That’s apparently more than you can ask for from some people.

2) Ilya Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford Law Books, October 2)

I agree with just about everything Somin believes, and his academic specialty is the effects of rational ignorance on democratic institutions, so it’s great to see he’s got a book on the subject. I expect it will be precise, persuasive, and enlightening as his writing nearly always is.

3) Clark Neily, Terms of Engagement (Encounter, October 8)

I’m reading this book now. It’s an excellent call to arms—or rather, call to law—for those who think as I do that our judiciary has fallen down on the job. That job is to protect our constitution against the assaults of politics; to police the boundaries that separate the public sphere, subject to political control, and the private realm of individual rights that is—or so we were promised—not subject to political vicissitudes. Neily’s book is smoothly written and accessible to the layman and is an excellent choice for non-lawyers who want to know why our judges have failed us so badly.

4) Richard Epstein, The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (Harvard UP, December 9)

I adore Richard Epstein, and can’t wait for this book, which promises a defense of the proposition—obvious to my eyes, but controversial to others—that our Constitution was written on the basis of classical liberal political philosophy, and was not, as Holmes claimed, written for people of fundamentally differing views. Certain propositions about individual dignity and freedom are indispensable foundations for understanding our fundamental law.

5) Timothy Sandefur, The Conscience of The Constitution: The Declaration of Independence And The Right to Liberty (Cato Institute, Jan. 7)

Then, of course, there’s my book. In it, I argue not only that our Constitution was written to defend classical liberal values, but that the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment sought to reinforce those values after having seen them assaulted so savagely in the years leading up to the Civil War. Sadly, Progressive political philosophy undid their achievements, and as a result our courts have failed to defend crucial constitutional values. Conservatives and liberals alike—through their assaults on important principles like “substantive due process” or an engaged judiciary, have reversed our constitutional priorities, replacing liberty with majority-rules. I argue for a return to the principle of the primacy of liberty and an engaged judiciary that will protect individual rights from both sides of today’s political spectrum.

My interview with Nick Gillespie about Obamacare and economic liberty

Michael Parkinson's interview with Jacob Bronowski (1974)

Pornography as art? Yes, after all

Almost exactly ten years ago, I asked on (the older, no-longer-public version of) this blog whether it was possible for pornography to actually be artistic, or whether movies had to draw the curtain in order to remain art. Readers contributed to a conversation on the subject, but the consensus seemed to be “no,” and that was my own view, too. And that conversation came back to mind when I read Camille Paglia’s comment about contemporary pornography, that “explicit sex has become so diffused through the general culture that it’s lost its charge, which once came from the sizzle of transgression.” Paglia, who “continue[s] to support and defend pornography,” regards what she’s seen lately as “too-formulaic” and boring.

I wonder if Paglia is familiar with X-Art (need I say, NSFW?), which has changed my mind and proven to me that hard-core pornography can, indeed, be artistic. I know this is a subject which invites giggling, but I’m absolutely serious. X-Art has produced explicit sex videos that actually manage to express depth and meaning. If, as Louis Menand says, Larry Flynt managed to “put the shame back in sex” after Hugh Hefner had made it sophisticated and glamorous in the 60s, X-Art has managed—or at least, is making a strong effort—to reverse that deterioration, and put the beauty back into sex.

I don’t subscribe to X-Art, so I haven’t seen all their work, and some of it reiterates the ordinary sort of thing. But in their best videos, they manage to portray sex as an act of love, fun, and joy, rather than denigration, nastiness, pain, domination, or mere shock value. Yet they do this not by eschewing adventure or fantasy, or by producing boring or unsexy works. Instead, the producers put a high priority on beauty, pleasure, and happiness—their videos are celebrations of sex as an ideal that engages the heart as well as the body. It actually seems inappropriate to refer to X-Art as “pornography,” which literally means “dirty writing.” Their work is absolutely not dirty.

Art is about conveying a world-view which we are invited to judge based on our own priorities and values. When you look at a painting or a sculpture or a dance and respond to it artistically, your mind is saying “I want to live in the world this artist has built,” or, conversely, “That world is not what life is really all about.” The world that X-Art creates is no less an artistic presentation because of its explicit sexual content. On the contrary, the company’s producers have shown us an idea of sex that invites serious evaluation in addition to its powerful titillation. And what it invites is ja sagen.

I know, I know. Put that way, it doesn’t seem like the kind of “charge” or “sizzle” that Paglia’s talking about, but it is. In a culture where the left sees sex primarily in terms of power, the right in terms of shame or duty, and the porn industry sees it in terms of routine and even mechanistic drones, X-Art’s explicit, unashamed, joyful embrace of sex and portrayal of it as a mutual exchange of pleasure and this-worldly happiness—as, in a word, human—is profoundly counter-cultural; profoundly transgressive; profoundly new. And, in my opinion, a profound artistic achievement.

You shouldn't have to ask your own competitors...

...for permission to start a business.

Big Pino show in November

There's going to be a big retrospective show of Pino Dangelico, one of my favorite artists, in November.

"Skepticism" needs some freaking common sense

This is so pathetic.