Read the entire blog, but this quote from Andrew Sullivan hits the nail on the head. Republicans: please, can Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly & their mean-spirited & paranoid delusional comrades. Come home! You'll find Lincoln, TR, Ike & others waiting for your return. Turn to Burke, to Niebuhr, to something other than the paranoid style of American politics. Anyway, here's Sullivan:
These charlatans and money-grubbers have turned the broad tradition of
Anglo-American conservatism into Southern Fried Fanaticism - and I
wanted to see them crackle in their batter. They have replaced empirical
doubt with unerring faith in an ideology that had its moment over
thirty years ago and is barely relevant to the world we now live in.
That faith has been cynically fused with fundamentalist religion to make
it virtually impossible for the GOP to accept that women are the
majority of voters in this country, that gay couples are equal to
straight ones, that 11 million illegal immigrants simply cannot be
expected to "self-deport" en masse by a regime of terrifying policing,
that war is a last and not a first resort, that the debt we have is
primarily a function of two things: George W. Bush's presidency and the
economic collapse his term ended with.
So true, so true!
The internet deserves another shout-out of praise for somehow guiding me to this wonderful book. I often treat the internet as I do the labyrinthine Seminary Coop Bookstore: I can wonder here & there & discover the most delightful titles and ideas. I think that this tip came from Farnum Street, which obtained the tip from an article written by Joseph Epstein. But no matter, along with my trusty Kindle (a useful supplement to the paper book) I have now completed this delightful & instructive book.
Reading this book was like sitting in class with the most urbane and humane don that I could imagine. He combines a literature class (from the Greeks to the British & French masters) with a writing class. And while this is not work shop, no exercises, no bullet points, you realize that he writes the writing that he teaches. Clarity, brevity, and courtesy toward the reader are his guiding principles, and he practices these virtues, displays them really, while guiding us along a path littered with great writers from past ages.
This is not an easy, how-to book. Quotations in French require a trip to the endnotes for translation, and a great number of the examples quoted are new to me, even if the names of the authors are familiar. However, the effort proved worthwhile, and I completed the book feeling a great sense of satisfaction at having been entertained and delighted while I received great instruction. The perfect professor.
