Tuesday
From Subversives to Belloc
Dusted off the shelf: Subversive Orthodoxy by Robert Inchausti. Sub-title: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise. It's a collection of 3,000-4,000 word essays about orthodox Christians who took unconventional positions. William Blake, Kierkegaard, Chesterton, Kerouac, Wendell Berry, McLuhan, Ivan Illich, others. It got me thinking: Who are the subversive orthodox today? The query stumps me. It's a tricky idea in today's milieu. You can find liberals who buck mere Christianity; you can find conservatives who toe the Republican party line. We'd need to find someone who believes with the likes of C.S. Lewis and loathes the likes of Nancy Pelosi and John McCain and is prolific and smart and is making at least a small difference in the cultural discourse. I guess Thomas Woods is the best I can come up with. * * * * * * * The current issue of Gilbert Magazine came last week. It has some pretty good stuff, like an essay by philosopher Donald DeMarco entitled "G.K. and The French Connection," which contains this nifty summary of modern philosophy: "British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead in Science and the Modern World complained that 'modern philosophy has been ruined' because it has oscillated miserably between three extremes: the dualists who place mind and matter on the same level, the materialists who place mind within matter, and the idealists who place matter within mind." * * * * * * * Fr. James Schall also offered a short essay recommendation of a new Belloc book: The Essential Belloc. Great Schallian passage:
When we think of Belloc and The Servile State, we think of Distributism, another lively movement that found a new home with people like Wendell Berry and Allan Carlson and new beginnings in England. But I think Belloc would have found the notion of Earth Day closer to the worship of pagan goddesses and the modern state than to the riches of the earth. Belloc was ever sensitive to the heresies contained in modern political and social movements, of which they are replete.
