The Death Throes of a Culture

I like classical music. I will often listen to it playing quietly in the background while I work or on the road stuck in traffic. Classical music draws from a deeper source in us than the surface stimuli demand with which we have to contend in daily life and carries us to places of real thought and introspection, sad ones as well as joy and triumph on occasion. Australian pianist Anna Goldsworthy laments its imminent passing and examines it in a long article in The Monthly.

Goldsworthy notes that the average age of classical concerts has risen from age 30 in 1937 to 65 or above today. She examines some of the culprits: ADD among listeners (i.e. - hitting the clicker), the association with snobbish elites, and the lowest common denominator effect of television with its snippets of music reduced to jingles and silly songs. 

A huge reason is that children never learn to like classical music because they are not exposed to it. Goldsworthy says that:

"Research suggests that only 23% of government schools offer “continuous and developmental” music education, compared to 88% of independent schools. None of this bodes well for audience renewal, and, more problematically, it is a serious equity issue. Children of privilege enjoy the benefits of early music training, and the gap widens. It is no surprise that classical music becomes elitist, when only the privileged are taught its language."

She continues:

In my darkest moments, I wonder whether a transgenerational empathy is still possible, or whether we are drifting so far from the world of Beethoven and Schubert that they will soon have nothing to say to us. And if Beethoven becomes mute, Shakespeare cannot be much further behind.

Indeed that is true and I suspect that we are very near the end of the road or have even entered a new Dark Age. But why?  The reviewer of Goldsworthy's piece has the answer.

William Bigelow, writing for Breitbart, makes this incisive point at the end of his review:

" ... Goldsworthy misses the essential point: art is a reflection of the values espoused by its culture, not an essential pillar on which the culture stands. It is an ancillary aspect of the culture, not a fundamental element of its survival. What Goldsworthy and many other artists ignore is that the two fundamental pillars of Western culture, the nuclear family and Western Judeo-Christian values, are being savaged and left for dead by those who wish to destroy the West. If those two fulcrums of Western civilization are destroyed, the death of all Western traditions will inevitably follow, including classical music."

And Shakespeare, and ... You cannot have the nectar without the flower and as scripture reminds us, who is the One who clothes the lilies of the field? Matthew 6:28-30. Goldsworthy has written a thought-provoking article, but I hope that she and her fellow artists will walk the last mile and understand what, or rather Who, underlies all of creation.


www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/25/real-reason-death-classical-music/

The Return of Morality

Done deal. The Chinese Communist Party has decreed that from henceforth there shall be no: gluttony, heavy drinking, adultery, abuse of power, nepotism - and golf. Golf? Sorry folks, I just read and write this stuff, not decree it in the first place. This done, I am sure that Red China is well on its way to being the paragon of moral virtue in the world. Except for maybe golf.

www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/10/22/chinese-communists-ban-gluttony-adultery-moon-cakes-golf/

No Need to Get Excited

Comrade Putin said this week that continuing U.S. work and testing on an anti-missile system threatens Russia. He further said that the threat against which it is purportedly directed, Iran, why those folks would never harm a fly - no, no, no, no, no! 

www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/10/22/vladimir-putin-u-s-missile-defense-system-threatens-russia/

Although he has probably convinced our President, there is the troubling fact that Iran successfully tested an IRBM with precise control, as reported by the WSJ on October 12 - just 10 days ago. Hmm..

www.wsj.com/articles/iran-test-fires-new-missile-1444610450

Oh, and in June, 2015, just 5 months ago, Russia itself added 40 of its new SS-27 class of ICBMs replete with MIRVs and all sorts of goodies to make sure they get through to vaporize their intended targets. 

thediplomat.com/2015/06/russia-to-add-40-new-icbms-should-the-west-be-worried/

And then there's the little matter of Russia invading the Ukraine, annexing the Crimea and Georgia, threatening the Baltic countries, Syria, etc., etc., etc. 

Nope, nobody here but us nice peaceful folks, Mr. President, so you can put the shotgun away.

Everybody Knows Women Can't Shoot Straight

An anti-gun and female law school professor contends that women shouldn't be allowed to carry because they can't really know how to use the things. As AWR Hawkins and The Washington Post report, however, it seems that women are batting 1.000 in real-life rape situations:

The U.S. Census Bureau conducts in-person interviews with several thousand persons annually, for the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). In 1992-2002, over 2,000 of the persons interviewed disclosed they had been raped or sexually assaulted. Of them, only 26 volunteered that they used a weapon to resist. In none of those 26 cases was the rape completed; in none of the cases did the victim suffer additional injury after she deployed her weapon.

Based on the data, a reasonable conclusion would appear to be, You Go Girl!

www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/21/law-professor-campus-carry-women-cant-use-guns-effectively/

The History of the Land of Volvo Ain't What It Seems

Socialists, including the Democratic party in the U.S. (in fact, why don't they just rename themselves the Social Democratic Party?), love to point to Sweden and the Scandinavian countries as exemplars of what socialism can do if done right. Unfortunately for them, when you peer behind the talking points, history shows differently, as a new study by a Swedish scholar, Nima Sanandaji, shows:

Sweden was a poor nation for most of the 19th century (which helps explain the great wave of Swedish emigration to the United States in the 1800s). That began to change as Stockholm, starting around 1870, turned to free-enterprise reforms... The result was an environment in which Swedes experienced "an unprecedented period of sustained and rapid economic development." In fact, between 1870 and 1936 Sweden had the highest growth rate in the industrialized world.

Scandinavia's hard-left turn didn't come about until much later. It was in the late 1960s and early 1970s that taxes soared, welfare payments expanded, and entrepreneurship was discouraged...

Sweden's world-beating growth rate dried up. In 1975, it had been the 4th-wealthiest nation on earth (as measured by GDP per capita); by 1993, it had dropped to 14th. By then, Swedes had begun to regard their experiment with socialism as ... "a colossal failure."

The real key to Scandinavia's unique successes isn't socialism, it's culture. Social trust and cohesion, a broad egalitarian ethic, a strong emphasis on work and responsibility, commitment to the rule of law — these are healthy attributes of a Nordic culture that was ingrained over centuries.

These are the attributes of a healthy society for any nation regardless of ethnic background or geographic location. The sooner we re-learn this again as Americans and quit drinking the Kool Aid of socialism, the better off we are going to be - all of us, red and yellow, black and white. 

townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby/2015/10/18/no-bernie-sanders-scandinavia-is-not-a-socialist-utopia-n2067623

A Death Before Dying

A very sad column today on KGW.com, but one worth reading. The writer lost her cousin to a drug overdose when they were still teens and she writes about the experience. Some poignant excerpts:

"I am not an addict.

But try and love one, and then see if you can look me square in the eyes and tell me that you didn't get addicted to trying to fix them.

If you're lucky, they recover. If you're really lucky, you recover, too.

'What if you had to wake up every day and wonder if today was the day your family member was going to die?' will become a popular, not-so-rhetorical question.

Drug addiction has the largest ripple effect that I have ever witnessed firsthand.

It causes parents to outlive their children. It causes jail time and homelessness. It causes sisters to mourn their siblings. It causes nieces to never meet their aunts. It causes an absence before the exit.

You will see your loved one walking and talking, but the truth is, you will lose them far before they actually succumb to their demons; which, if they don't find recovery, is inevitable."

Her cousin died at 19 from a drug overdose. 

www.kgw.com/story/news/features/2015/10/14/lessons-i-learned-from-loving-a-drug-addict/73958870/

Rules, Schmools

We're from the government and we can do whatever the heck we want.

"Two professors of public policy conclude that governments are more likely to violate environmental regulations than private owners. 'Publicly-owned facilities are more likely than similar privately-owned facilities to violate regulatory requirements under the CAA [Clean Air Act] and the SDWA [Safe Drinking Water Act],'as their recent study notes."

www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/14/study-governments-likely-break-environmental-law-private-firms/