Monday

Miscellaneous Rambling

I kinda feel like Gaudete Sunday ushered in the Advent season for me. Everything from Thanksgiving through Saturday was crunched and rushed, from a flurry of meetings and appointments at the office to social obligations. While at Mass Satuday night, it dawned on me that the sailing looks pretty smooth for the rest of Advent. I'll still be busy, but not rushed; I'll have obligations, but days won't be crunched. I say, "far out." * * * * * * * Dan Bourdreaux at Cafe Hayek says this is his favorite quote ever: "The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful." I can't say it's my favorite ever, but man, it's great. Definitely in my top 100. * * * * * * * He also made reference this past weekend to a great Thomas Sowell quote: "Freedom is not simply the right of intellectuals to circulate their merchandise. It is, above all, the right of ordinary people to find elbow room for themselves and a refuge from the rampaging presumptions of their 'betters.'" Amen to that. * * * * * * * By the way, if you've never read Mencken, give him a try. I have found something soothing in reading essayists from previous eras. When I sit down with such a book of essays, I kinda feel like I'm going to read something and somone irrelevant, giving my reading session no set purpose. It's calming for some reason, but then the calm reading is often rewarded with something great. If you want to try Mencken, you could do worse than starting with his Chrestomathy. It's the first collection of essays I bought and read. * * * * * * * Speaking of old essayists, why did the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries use so many flipping commas? I find it distracting to read, say, the Federalist Papers, or, better, the Anti-Federalist Papers, with all those commas. They even mar the prose of Cardinal Newman. It looks like the comma orcs were on their way out by, say, 1900 or so, thereby preserving the unorthodox prose of Chesterton and acidulous prose of Mencken, but boy, pretty much everything before them is polluted with those punctuation gnats. * * * * * * * Please continue to patronize TDE through the Amazon box in the upper-righthand corner. It's been a pretty decent season so far. I appreciate it. * * * * * * * There will be special Christmas edition of BYCU this Friday. Tell your friends (especially if you don't like your friends).