Saturday roundup

An absolutely lovely essay at The Catholic Thing by Anthony Esolen. Seriously, I can't think of a more apt characterization than lovely:

A long time ago I wrote, in an article “The Lovely Dragon of Choice,” that the best things in our lives do not come as a result of our choice or planning.  You cannot draw up a blueprint for the manufacture of joy.  To the extent that you try, you render yourself numb to the possibility of joy.  The Spirit blows where it will.

I am teaching at Thomas More College, where there is much joy, and perhaps more of what I’ve called joy’s country cousin, mirth.  It is not planned.  It is the natural effervescence of young people who like one another, because they do know one another, all of them.

We are too small for loneliness.  They like one another, and they sometimes fall in love, because they have not been handed over, in libertarian manacles, to the vices of our time.  For there is no sin without those who suffer from it, as the collapse of family life and community life in our time has shown.

Yesterday as I was walking to class, two of my students, an alto and a bass, were singing “White Christmas” out of the window, in harmony, hailing the arrival of the first snow.  They sometimes hiccoughed in their harmony for laughing.  I sat at lunch next to a student and a colleague, the former carving up the latter over a chessboard.  Every day I see things I have not seen before.  They are ordinary things, in order, and not the result of a committee.

There is an intellectual and artistic liveliness among them too.  One of them, perhaps the quietest of all, spent fifteen minutes asking me questions about free verse, blank verse, why stress was the most prominent feature of English verse, whether that was so in other languages, and where he could learn more about the matter.  I gave him a book to read.

Another came by to talk about the interconnections among Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, the Book of Job, and the first chapter of Genesis.  This isn’t put on.  I walk downstairs to the lounge, and two boys are playing some fierce ping-pong, and other people are talking about old television comedies, and still others are chatting happily about some slippery point in philosophy.

There are two things we do plan, and it seems to me that other colleges are deliberate where they ought to be free, and free or apathetic where they ought to reason things out.

Our curriculum leaves little to chance or choice.  That is to say we have a curriculum, because we have a clear idea of what a person educated in the liberal arts should know.  We do not think that you get brains from a salad, a course in Victorian tailors here, a course in the New Orleans hurricane there, a course in elementary Spanish so that you can order a tequila in Tijuana, and a course in “gender and genocide,” so that you will want one.

He goes on to talk about how the absence of sexual libertinism is a major factor in that atmosphere in which real warmth, humanity, esprit de corps and interpersonal trust flourish.

And in the course of discussing a bit about how he wound up at Thomas More, quite contrary to his expectations for his career trajectory, he says this:

Not one good thing I have ever done or enjoyed in my life was the result of my foresight and determination.

It brought to mind today's devotional scripture, Proverbs 16:9:

A man’s heart plans his way,

But the Lord directs his steps. 

I often say 1990 was the most incredible year of my life. I went to Japan for two weeks, I went to the Soviet Union for two weeks, I went to San Francisco twice, Washington D.C. twice (where I attended a Pentagon briefing by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and a breakfast-briefing plea from the Saudi and Kuwaiti ambassadors to the US to do something about Iraq's belligerence) and met and married my wife, all while running a manufacturing company and maintaining a 4.0 GPA in pursuit of my master's degree in history. And I didn't initiate or orchestrate any of it. (Well, I was already enrolled in school and I'd had my job for a while.)

More refutation of the climate assessment released yesterday:

The usual suspects are touting the release of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (Volume II) yesterday. As far as I can tell it is the usual global warming rubbish recast in the name of “climate.” Matt Daily considers the political ramifications of the report in the Politico article “Trump’s dire climate report hands ammunition to Democrats.”

This is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Let’s turn over our resources and our freedoms to the Democratic Party and the administrative agencies in the service of their will to power.

Until Steve or John can take up the report, we will have to turn to Willis Eschenbach at WUWT. He extracts a few of the report highlights in “The froth of the Fourth” and cruelly subjects the hysterical allegations to empirical analysis: “After reading all of that, I got to wondering about the recent temperature history of the US. I went to NOAA’s Climate At A Glance, got their recent monthly data, and graphed it up, along with the dates of the four US National Climate Assessments.” The result is below.

I'll bet that was a dramatic scene when North Korea blew up the ten DMZ towers in the space of four minutes.  But let's hold off on any unicorns-and-rainbows hot takes:

Denuclearization of North Korea, more freedom for their people and a formal cessation of the Korean War are all admirable goals. But while you may grow tired of hearing me repeat myself, there’s something important to keep in mind here. Kim Jong-un is still a monster. He and his family have been directly responsible for the murder of tens, hundreds of thousands or even millions of their own citizens. They assassinate prominent military leaders and government officials with impunity while sending countless citizens to die in hidden work camps. His history shows that any promises he makes are valid only as long as they serve his purposes.

Kim has to be watched like a hawk. While much of this recent news is positive and encouraging, North Korea can still not be trusted.

Matthew Continetti at the Washington Free Beacon on why it ought to be a no-brainer for the US to grant Asia Bibi asylum. He begins with a refresher about who she is:

Asia Bibi got into an argument with her co-workers and ended up in jail. Bibi is a Pakistani Catholic and mother of five. She cannot read. For years, she picked fruit in her rural village. One day in June 2009, her peers refused to share a pitcher of water with her because she is a Christian. She argued with them, muttering some caustic words about the founder of Islam. They responded by accusing her of blasphemy: a capital crime in Pakistan. The next year she was sentenced to death row.

No longer. In October the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted and released Asia Bibi after a long legal battle, during which Islamic radicals assassinated a Pakistani official for supporting her cause. The response to her acquittal was unsurprising. Global media and human rights organizations cheered, while Pakistani fundamentalists demonstrated and hung Asia Bibi in effigy. The outrage spooked Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan into making it more difficult for her to leave the country. Facing the risk of extrajudicial killing, Bibi remains in hiding. Her lawyer Saiful Malook fled to Europe. Protests greeted his arrival.

And then offers the why:

Asia Bibi belongs in the United States. What better way to sustain America's history of religious freedom than to provide a home for this Catholic whose faith puts her life in danger? Not only would giving her shelter demonstrate our commitment to freedom, it also would highlight the differences between the United States and its sometimes-friend-sometimes-foe Pakistan. 

Great John Solomon piece at The Hill entitled "The Greatest Threat to American Journalism: The Loss of Neutral Reporting."

And let's wrap it up with a tweet yours truly posted a while ago:

Wayne Allen Root’s latest Townhall column is basically a public act of fellatio on Donald Trump. #cultworship

Now go fix some mulled cider and put on some Perry Como records.