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It’s October, the best month, and it’s probably no coincidence that Jupiter, the best planet, is brighter than it’s been in a lifetime. Go check it out with a pair of binoculars tonight and you can spot the Galilean moons. Oh, and, yes, it actually is a coincidence….
Two new poems in Think
I have two poems in the latest issue of Think—which is a particular honor for me, since I have always liked this journal so much. One is “Epithalamium,” a poem I wrote for the wedding of my friends Nikos and Pagona a few years ago:
Please consider subscribing to Think. It’s a superb journal that carries some of the best poetry being published today.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
I had the rare chance to write about my favorite music group, Creedence Clearwater Revival, for The Dispatch. Creedence fans aren’t as lucky as Beatles or Stones fans: our band lasted for only five years and six albums (Mardi Gras doesn’t count), and there was only the most rudimentary merchandizing. The new Neflix documentary features the first Creedence concert footage ever officially released. In my article, I take a look at it and at a new book on the history of the band. Excerpt:
[Creedence’s] apartness from the counterculture was evident in their sound as well as their professionalism. Backstage at the Fillmore West one evening, a drunk Janis Joplin said she loved them because “You’re never playing that stupid psychedelic shit!” And it was true: Notwithstanding some far-out touches on their first album, Creedence’s distinctive style had more to do with Little Richard and Carl Perkins than with the LSD and consciousness-warping of Jefferson Airplane or the Grateful Dead. They scorned drugs, particularly after attending one Dead concert at which that band’s stoned members played so badly that John, Tom, Doug, and Stu vowed to only perform only while sober, and never to use anything stronger than marijuana. Creedence, writes Lingan, “may have been the only young men scared straight by their time in the [San Francisco] ballroom scene.” Indeed, John was downright puritanical by rock-star standards; shocked by his bandmates’ carousing on tour, he later wrote confessed that he was “not the guy who got into music to get girls—I was there for the music.” That helped earn Creedence a reputation for squareness, as did the fact that they always showed up on time and honored their contracts. They had few friends among their fellow rockers; the Dead, in particular, became their artistic nemesis. They felt closer to producer Bill Graham. “It reinforced the band’s way of thinking to see that they shared it with the most successful promoter alive,” Lingan explains. Indeed, Creedence was among the hardest working and most businesslike groups in history. They practiced every day, on a schedule so grueling that Doug once lost his temper and called their studio “a goddamn factory!”—which gave them a title for their 1970 album Cosmo’s Factory.
Defending school choice in Arizona and elsewhere
Opponents of school choice in Arizona failed to gather enough signatures to hold a referendum repealing the new law that expands the state’s school choice program. That was certainly welcome news. Meanwhile, the West Virginia Supreme Court will be reviewing the constitutionality of that state’s school choice program, which is modeled on Arizona’s. I filed a brief in that case, which you can read here—and learn more about the case here.
Amending the Constitution?
I participated in a new project with the National Constitution Center recently. As a follow-up to the project a few years ago in which conservative, progressive, and libertarian teams proposed new Constitutions, we got together this time to draft some proposed amendments to the Constitution. We came up with five, which include things such as imposing term limits on Supreme Court justices, changing the impeachment process, and eliminating the “natural born citizenship” requirement for the Presidency. We didn’t all agree on all these things; in fact, I ended up opposing the impeachment amendment as inadequate because it doesn’t address insanity or incapacity. But it was a fun exercise, and I talked with Armstrong and Getty about it yesterday.
More on substantive due process
My recent article about substantive due process in The UnPopulist got a surprisingly enthusiastic response. Robert Tracinski even asked me to come on his podcast Symposium to talk a little more about the subject, and you can watch our conversation here:
The Fifth Act
In The Objective Standard, I reviewed Elliot Ackerman’s fine new book The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan, which I strongly recommend. (Also available in audio format.) Here’s an excerpt from my review:
War is a horrendous waste of life and wealth, which leads many people to demand an “end” to what they call “forever wars”—a fundamentally trivial slogan that ignores the fact that wars cannot be simply “ended”; they are either won, lost, or postponed. They may seem to drag on “forever” because they last as long as threats last—and our refusal to terminate those threats only invites the enemy to ramp up aggression. Yet a people whose leaders preach dreary hopelessness instead of a commitment to well-defined victory can be lured into betraying their values and accepting surrender as a substitute for victory—because, after all, surrender is the only absolutely certain means for “ending” any war. That’s the path America chose in Afghanistan, meanly abandoning those to whom we made promises—the translators, the contractors, and the children….
Montpelier
After attending a conference in Washington D.C., Christina and I had a chance to spend Constitution Day at Montpelier, James Madison’s home in Orange, Virginia. Montpelier’s been in the news lately, due to complaints that it’s under new, “woke” management. But that wasn’t our experience, as I explain here.
Incidentally, Madison made the news this month because of Lizzo, who played a crystal flute (well, played one note on it), which once belonged to Madison. Contrary to some news reports, this was not the first time the flute was played. There’s an entire album of pieces performed on the flute by the Bach Collegium’s Rob Turner. You should get it. It’s nice. And it was recorded inside Montpelier!
Certain professional outrage generators out there were trying to make Lizzo’s playing of the flute a Bad Thing, because she only played one note (actually, she played it at some length at the Library of Congress a few days earlier; it’s a priceless antique—did you think she’d play “Flight of the Bumblebee” on it?), and because it’s somehow a bad thing that she took pride in holding a precious American artifact that belonged to the Father of the Constitution and was saved from the burning of the White House. She told her audience “history is cool, guys!”—which I guess is somehow terrible? I’m no fan of Lizzo’s aesthetic—I find it weird and off-putting—but the fact that a popular performer like her took so much pride in American history is a good thing, and it’s bizarre—no, insane—to find it offensive.
Hiromi in Seattle
I’ve been going on about Japanese jazz pianist Hiromi for several months now; we were fortunate enough to catch her concert at Seattle’s Jazz Alley this month, where she performed her “Silver Lining Suite,” a four-movement quintet piece inspired by the Covid shutdowns. When you say it that way, it sounds dreary, but actually it was phenomenal. One of the best, most exciting concerts I’ve ever heard. Check out the album.
Coming soon
My new book is being printed now, and I’m looking forward to you all getting a chance to see it at the beginning of November. Until then…
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