Final Final

I have my last tonight - four hours of Family Law at 6:15 EST. After that, I just have to wrap a few things up with Law Review and the Impact Litigation Clinic, and then the J.D. is mine. Your prayers are appreciated.

Flakiness

My sister has some great thoughts on failure to commit.

New Weezer

I haven't listened to Weezer for the last couple albums, but I'm somewhat impressed with their newest single, "Pork and Beans." The music itself isn't too impressive - it's standard, circa-1995 Weezer - but the lyrics are worth hearing, especially in the context of Rivers Cuomo's career, as they are a simple statement that he doesn't care what the critics expect, he wants to make music that people like (much like the Tool song about selling out, the title of which is unmentionable here, but begins with H).

With the exception of the blue album, Weezer's commercial success has been more inversely proportional to their critical respect than almost any other band I can think of - anyone with taste knows it's their duty to embrace "Pinkerton," the commercial failure, and to malign the Green Album and "Maladroit," which put them back on the charts. Rivers cannot but disappoint his fans, who all seem to have a better idea of what Weezer is supposed to be than he does. In any event, I give you the lyrics to "Pork and Beans."

They say I need some rogaine to put in my hair
Work it out at the gym to fit my underwear
Okaley makes the shades to transform a tool
You'd hate for the kids to think that you've lost your cool

Imma do the things that I wanna do
I ain't got a thing to prove to you
I'll eat my candy with the pork and beans
Excuse my manners if I make a scene
I ain't gonna wear the clothes that you like
I'm fine and dandy with the me inside
One look in the mirror and I'm tickled pink
I don't give a hoot about what you think

Everyone likes to dance to a happy song
With a catchy chorus and beat so they can sing along
Timbaland knows the way to reach the top of the charts
Maybe if I work with him I can perfect the art

Imma do the things that I wanna do
I ain't got a thing to prove to you
I'll eat my candy with the pork and beans
Excuse my manners if I make a scene
I ain't gonna wear the clothes that you like
I'm fine and dandy with the me inside
One look in the mirror and I'm tickled pink
I don't give a hoot about what you think

No, I don't care

An Alternate Conception of the Chasm

Allow me to paint with a broad brush.

On his blog, my uncle, Doug Wilson, presents a vision of the way Christians should approach the liberal/conservative divide in American politics. I agree with him in his basic premise that the liberal/conservative dichotomy has very little to do with how Christians should view politics. However, I disagree with his conception of how the Christian approach is different.

He argues essentially that secular conservatives in America are those who have been able to see the big "E" on the eye chart of God's morality, and thus they oppose things like abortion and homosexuality. They have seen a piece of what God has revealed to the world about justice, what C.S. Lewis, in The Abolition of Man, calls the Tao. However, my uncle contends, the secular conservatives cannot be trusted to accurately understand the full extent of God's morality; thus, Christians should be reticent to fully endorse these secular conservatives who are merely fellow travelers on a few points.

Liberals, on the other hand, he says, have missed even these obvious points of morality. Thus, he argues, they are clearly blind, in ignorance of the Tao. While the secular conservatives probably cannot be trusted to understand the finer points of God's morality, the liberals most definitely cannot be trusted. How can we listen to liberal notions of justice when they have completely misunderstood fundamental principles of social morality?

Thus, if we drew up a chart of my uncle's conception of things, we would probably see the liberals on the far left, sitting next to some big block letters reading "WRONG." A little right of center, we would find the secular conservatives. On the far right, we would find my uncle and, presumably, God.

I differ with this conception of things because it calls the liberals blind. Assuredly, they are wrong about some very important pieces of God's will for mankind, but there are also matters about which they are correct. Inasmuch as the Tao has been revealed to us in Creation and has been written on our hearts, both the secular liberal and the secular conservative will be able to grasp after a part of it. I imagine the liberal and the conservative as the men in Plato's cave who do not see the forms of the world outside, but see the shadows of those forms projected onto the wall of the cave. The conservative sees the shadow of one truth, the liberal another. Both need to turn around (repent) and face the light.

Yes, the secular conservative is right to oppose homosexuality and abortion. God condemns both. But the liberal is also correct about a piece of God's plan, insofar as the liberal pursues social justice, caring for the oppressed, giving to the poor. "The LORD works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed." Ps. 103:6. "As it is written, 'He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever.'" 2 Cor. 9:9. This a piece of the Tao that has been revealed to the liberal, though the liberal may not be able to see the rest of it.

In fact, the parts of the Tao that the conservative sees are the parts that the liberal is most in need of understanding, and vice versa. The liberal is in ignorance of the fact that men are evil to an extent that cannot be redeemed by social programs. The liberal has to deny much of reality in order to maintain this view, perhaps because he knows that he wouldn't be able to love people if he fully understood how irredeemably awful is the human race. The conservative, on the other hand, understands full well how evil people are, so he insulates himself from all of it and is content to let the huddled masses go to hell - they, in their wickedness, don't deserve his compassion.

The problem with both the liberal and the conservative is the one thing they agree on: that salvation comes through merit. The liberal believes that salvation is through merit, and so he pretends, in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary (making him myopic), that everyone deserves it, which will allow him to love everyone. The conservative agrees that salvation is through merit but thinks everyone (except himself) wicked, so he doesn't need to care about them. But the central message of Christianity is that salvation is not through merit - if it were, who could be saved?

The Christian, if he lives rightly, has the compassion of the liberal and the standards of the conservative. He has, from Christ's strength, a great capacity to love others in spite of what he will readily admit are their faults, understanding how he has been loved in spite of his own faults.

My uncle concludes his post with an absurd parable of a liberal who kicks puppies for fun but preaches the necessity of ending poverty as a matter of justice; he then suggests that the best way to argue with this man is to say, essentially, "What do you know about justice? You kick puppies for fun!" I disagree: the best way to respond to this man is to agree with him that the resolution that we long for, that God will someday provide, is the end of all sadness and poverty, but that the fact that he kicks puppies for fun is evidence that he is not capable of bringing this change on his own strength, for he cannot even change himself. This absurd caricature of a liberal needs to learn that man cannot save himself, that humanity cannot save itself. The conservative, on the other hand, needs to understand that he cannot even live up to his own standards; that even if merit were the way to salvation, he wouldn't make the cut.

Christianity is extreme not because it drops 500 lbs. of fundamentalist weight on the right side of the political scale; Christianity is extreme because it contradicts every human worldview at some point, yet at the same time embraces the purpose of each of these worldviews and religions. The graph of the relationship of Christianity to all other political-philosophical views would show it not to the right of all, but above all, negating each of them, but affirming, and providing for, the peace for which each of them longs.

Neither the liberal nor the conservative understands the great, incomprehensible folly of God, that He will not punish us according to what we have done, but will reward us according to what He has done!

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

1 Cor. 1: 20-25.

Dominoes

I had one of those moments yesterday where you finally realize the meaning of a song you've been passively listening to for a long time. The song was Dominoes, by Butch Walker and the Let's-Go-Out-Tonites. Call me sentimental, but I think it's quite nice. Walker has always been good at the tragic character sketch. Here are the lyrics; criticism to follow below:

Sitting with the dog,
Trying to clear the fog
Of a memory: the last time
I saw her face.
Fifty years of time
An accident would take my mind,
Shortly after take the wife away from me.

Everybody knows
Memories will keep you alive,
Some of them can't be erased.
If I remember one today,
Let it be of Grace

The Catskills are all frozen,
Playing Dominoes and
I can hear a voice reminding me
I'm her hero.
Finding myself able
In the chair across the table
To remember that it wasn't always empty.

Everybody knows
Memories will keep you alive,
Some of them just won't go away.
If there's a memory left of Grace,
Let it come back today.

And I see her beside me
As the grandkids they remind me
She's in the cemetery that we
Played in as kids.
They just think I'm crazy,
But the things she tells me lately
Are the only things that I cannot forget.

Everybody knows
Memories will keep you alive,
Some of them can't be erased.
If I remember one today,
Let it be of Grace.

Most Butch Walker songs have a solid core of lyrical brilliance, but fail to attain perfection simply for lack of polish. Walker seems inspired, but he doesn't bother to edit; he just runs with the first workable line that comes into his head. This is, ironically, antithetical to his sense of production in recording, because his records (both his own and the innumerable albums he has produced for other artists) are laden with some of the most shimmery, sculpted, studio gloss you've ever heard.

While I find the song lyrically impressive on the whole, there are approximately three lines in Dominoes that bother me. The first is in the first stanza where Walker says "fifty years of time." Come on, Butch! Couldn't you think of a better word than "time" that the years were filled with? It's just redundant. Then in the second stanza, we have the line where he can hear her voice reminding him that he's her hero. This just seems too trite; he's painted an intriguing character in a vivid scene (Catskills, playing dominoes), and then as his wife's voice comes back, she gives him a Wind Beneath My Wings line? Lastly, there's the line about her being "in the cemetery that we played in as kids." I actually think this is a good line, but the only problem is that Butch used it in another song, Thank-you Note, where he says "and it felt like the mud from the pond on the ground that she played in as a kid." I wonder if he even notices the reuse.

Still, I love the song. Butch Walker is my kind of guy - a smart, talented singer-songwriter who is anything but cool. He joins the ranks of Don Henley, Justin Currie, and Roger Clyne of the Refreshments as a direct, cynical poet who will never be wholly embraced by masses or respected by the tastemakers, but will continue to be studied by me.

A Link From Manisha

Have you Vegetarians ever felt condescended to in the presence of a Vegan? Well now there's a way you can one-up them on the piety scale - Freeganism!

Per Tradition

I have my first exam today: Bankruptcy. It's Pass/Fail, so I'm not worried, but Manisha is taking it for a grade. Wish us luck, or pray us Providence, whatever your preference.

Some thoughts on "Sellout"

In my spare time, I've been working through Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal by Randall Kennedy, a black professor at Harvard Law. While Kennedy isn't what I would call a black conservative like Thomas Sowell or John McWhorter, he is moderate in his liberal views and gives a lot of deference to conservative blacks. In Interracial Intimacies, for instance, he proposed what is anathema to many black academics, that adoption of black foster children by white parents is a net gain on balance.

Here, in Sellout, he examines the phenomenon of the black man judged to be a traitor to his race, whether the slave warning the master of the rebellion, the black politician stumping for Jim Crow, or Clarence Thomas opposing affirmative action. Kennedy reasons that while there are in all races classic stories of betrayal by marginalized members of the group (think Ephialtes in 300), in black America, the betrayal is more likely to be made by the brightest stars, those with the greatest potential for success. However, Kennedy cautions against letting these accusations go to far; those who accuse a black man of treason should be accountable for their statements just as the traitor would be held accountable if judged treacherous. This absence of this accountability unnecessarily divides black America, he says, and, more importantly, deprives black America of open debate on issues - those who oppose the orthodoxy are damned without trial.

As a case study in giving this kind of fair hearing, Kennedy examines Justice Clarence Thomas, considered to be the biggest black sellout in recent history. Kennedy conducts a balanced analysis of all the criticisms of Justice Thomas, showing many of them to be without merit, but not sparing the Justice when he is found to be manifestly self-contradicted. As for Thomas' views on affirmative action, Kennedy first discusses their constitutional merit, giving the most persuasive argument I have yet heard for the proposition that affirmative action does not violate the equal protection clause (namely, that the intent of the framers of the 14th amendment was not to eliminate racial distinctions altogether). Then Kennedy proceeds with his analysis of affirmative action as a policy matter, which I quote at length:

Whether governments (or private entities) ought to establish or continue affirmative-action programs is a much closer question. On the one hand, affirmative action has strikingly benefited blacks as a group and the nation as a whole. It has enabled blacks to attain occupation and educational advancement in numbers and at a pace that would otherwise have been impossible. These breakthroughs engender self-perpetuating benefits: the accumulation of valuable experience, the expansion of a professional class able to pass its material advantages and elevated aspirations to subsequent generations . . . .

Furthermore, the benefits of affirmative action redound not only to blacks but to the nation as a whole. . . . The racial integration of police forces through strong affirmative-action measures has often led to better relations between minority communities and the poice, a result that improves public safety for all. . . .

On the other hand, Justice Thomas offers in opposition arguments that have been voiced by a wide range of intelligent observers. These commentators have argued that affirmative action entrenches the idea that blacks are unalterably inferior to whites; that it puts a pall over the achievements of all blacks (whether or not the received a boost from an affirmative action program); that it assists those who are relatively privileged while providing little or no assistance to those most in need of help; that it nourishes visceral resentment in whites . . . ; that it reinforces the status quo by deflecting attention from the root causes of disparities in education and occupational achievement; [and] that affirmative action is defended dishonestly in terms of "diversity" when in fact the real basis for the program is reparations . . . .

These are weighty objections that warrant close attention. But these objections should be assessed in a realistic context that asks whether American society is marginally better off with affirmative action (despite its drawbacks) or marginally better off without affirmative action (despite its benefits). I conclude that the former is more likely, given the limited set of plausible alternatives. I readily concede, however, that there is ample evidence for a reasonable conclusion that goes the other way. I disagree with that conclusion. But judgments the other way are surely understandable.

It's this last paragraph that most impresses me. Rarely does one see this kind of honesty and integrity in debate over such a politicized issue; we are too accustomed to demagoguery, whether from the liberals describing affirmative action as a moral imperative or the conservatives who lack any compassion for those whom affirmative action is designed to help. Here, Kennedy has fairly represented both sides of the debate - he is not contending with a straw man. That Kennedy frankly acknowledges the merits of the opposing view renders him eminently credible, and I look forward to reading more of his work.

He's always wanted to be Thom Yorke . . .

. . . but Chris Martin just looks like a bandwagon-jumper with this nonsense.