Surfacing for a night

I am able to climb out of my cave just long enough to provide my loyal readers with a post to enjoy -- hopefully you will find these notes of interest.  I'll be back posting regularly after next weekend.  At that time, my work schedule will lighten up for a couple of weeks.  Until then, here are three things to ponder:

• Why doesn't government work better?  In answering that question there is frequent recourse to theories of human nature and human action (James Q. Wilson's book Bureaucracy is particularly helpful on this point), but nothing beats the study of an actual government agency to see government disfunction in action.  Professor Bainbridge links to just such an an investigation over at his self-named blog.  Well worth a read.  Skepticism toward government isn't just about theories of Locke and Jefferson and Aquinas.  It is a principle well-established by experience, which as Edmund Burke or any of our nation's Founding Father's would have told you, is the best ground for public policy. 

• Is big business conservative?  No, it isn't, as Ed Driscoll makes clear at this post over at Instapundit, linking to Dennis Prager.  I can think of two reasons why big business tends not to be conservative:  1) big business doesn't really care about local communities, traditions and customs as normative features of human life; 2) big business likes to work hand in hand with big government to set up barriers to entry to competitors (I tend to think a large chunk of government economic regulation serves this function, at least in part).  

• How can I get a better understanding of Justice Scalia's jurisprudence?  Well, this post by Edward Whelan over at the Imaginative Conservative would be a great place to start:  Scalia the Originalist.  It's a review of two new books out about the work of Justice Scalia.  Anybody interested in law and constitutional interpretation would do well to give Whelan's essay a read.

And here's this Saturday's culture moment, Suite No. 3 from Handel's Wassermusik, performed by the Music Academy of the West, conducted by Nicholas McGegan: 

Sorry for the light posting...

I haven't posted in a bit here and I won't be for the next two weeks.  Sorry about that, but I am under deadlines at work and have to focus on getting projects turned around.  I will be back posting in early November -- check back then and I will have thoughts to share, promise!

A good reminder of the depth of the conservative tradition

That's exactly what is provided by Timothy Stanley over at The American Conservative in this essay about the Virginia statesman John Randolph of Roanoke:  Who Was John Randolph?  (Hat tip to: The Pittsford Perennialist.)  As Stanley notes, Randolph was one of political titans in the generation after the American Founding.  Russell Kirk's first major work was a political biography of Randolph, and much like Kirk, Randolph would have a hard time fitting into the more ideologically-oriented mainstream of current American conservatism.  As Stanley observes at the start of his essay:

John Randolph of Roanoke was everything the modern conservative might despise: aristocratic, sexually ambiguous, occasionally irreligious, anti-party, and the sworn enemy of military adventurism. His personality suggests he might have had more in common with the late Gore Vidal than Sarah Palin. Yet Randolph still stands out as one of the most important conservative thinkers of the generation after the Founding Fathers. David Johnson’s fine new biography of the Virginia gentleman is a timely reminder that conservatives come in all shapes and sizes—and often disagree.

Randolph is one of those figures from early American history who really should be studied more.  A fierce partisan in favor of the early Jeffersonian Republican Party, Randolph broke with Jefferson during the latter's presidency.  Randolph viewed Jefferson's expansive view of executive power and his loose adherence to the limitations of the Constitution as mortal threats to constitutional republicanism.  As a result, Randolph founded a "party within a party" -- the so-called Tertium Quids -- and worked to build coalitions with the remnants of the despised Federalist Party, all in order to preserve the notions of limited government and federalism under the Constitution of 1789.  Eventually, the alliance between the Tertium Quids and the Federalists would give birth first to the National Republicans, then to the Whigs, and finally to the current Republican Party in 1856.

Stanley's essay on Randolph is a good little introduction to this early American politician and thinker. A good read both to learn about this foundational conservative statesman, and also to learn about the traditional diversity of conservative thought.  As Razib Khan notes over at the Secular Right blog, Stanley's article is a good reminder that "conservatism is not a thing but a way," and that "not all conservatives are created in the same image."  Amen to that, Mr. Khan -- if you don't mind me saying "amen"!

A good question at the beginning of the Year of Faith

The pope has proclaimed a start to a "Year of Faith" for Catholics to deepen our relationship with God and to live out our faith more openly.  A good idea!  And at the start of this Year of Faith, the Anchoress asks a very good question: It's October, Do you know where your Rosary beads are?  The Rosary is a key to Catholic prayer and "praying the beads" has long been a staple of Catholic devotional life.  Now would be a good time to dust off our Rosaries and begin to use them to refocus our spiritual lives on what is truly important.  Not politics, not even economics, but on our relationship with God.  Amen to that.

A good quote on caution

"Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security."

 - Edmund Burke (1729-1797), English statesman and the grandfather of modern conservatism, quoted by George A. Panichas over at The Imaginative Conservative. 

A review of Gregg Frazer's book "Religious Beliefs of America's Founders"

A very clear review of Frazer's book has been written by Gary Scott Smith and posted over at the always worth reading blog The Imaginative Conservative: Founders' Faith: None of the Above.  Smith's review is quite positive. Meanwhile, I am almost finished with the book and will be posting my own review of Frazer's work in the future over at American Creation.

Nat Hentoff isn't voting for President Obama

Because of Obama's radical position in favor of killing unborn children.  As Hentoff -- an atheist journalist and classic example of a Left-conservative -- observes, Obama's commitment to abortion rights is so radical it veers into the territory of infanticide. Well worth a read.

The bloodlust of Che Guevara

That's the theme of this essay by Humberto Fontova exploring both the mainstream Left's continued adoration of Che and the Communist revolutionary's demented butchery.

The real St. Francis of Assisi...

...was not a garden gnome, as the title of this post by Fr. George William Rutler points out.  Fr. Rutler's essay does good work in clearing up a good deal of the modern confusion about il Poverlo and his devotion to the Church and the spread of the Gospel.

William Faulkner's 1949 Nobel Prize speech

From former blogger extraordinaire Tertium Quid (of From Burke to Kirk and Beyond fame) comes this link to William Faulkner's banquet speech after receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature.  Well worth a read and a listen.  I found this part of the speech particularly moving:

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

I don't think that this duty is just for poets and writers.  

Slavery and the American Founding: to which founding do we look?

That question is posed by Bradley Birzer in an excellent post over at The American Conservative.  As Birzer pointed out, there were a multiplicity of views among the Founders regarding slavery, some in support of the institution, others opposed.  The failure of the Founders as a group to resolve the problem of slavery in favor of liberty was a major failure by the founding generation, a failure that Birzer tackles head on:

Objectively, at least in historical terms, the modern scholar can reach only one real conclusion: the Founding Fathers did have a choice, and they chose poorly; they chose the inhumane option. And, they did so for the worst of reasons--expedience and nation building. They could have excluded South Carolina and Georgia (as Edmund Burke had recommended) from the Union. They also could have set slavery on a certain path to destruction, or they simply could have abolished the institution. Instead, they chose power over right.

And, because of their failure to choose good rather than evil, the country paid a very, very steep price in terms of men and material and hope and cause and right and justice and too many other things to list.

No system that violates natural law as deeply and as fundamentally as chattel slavery can be maintained without contravening the most basic principles of justice.  The tremendous cost to right the wrong of slavery is something that still scars our country, as does the horrible history of a constitutional system that denied the common human rights to men and women reduced to the status of human property.