Your Daily Pernicious Infusion

Drudge was linking the other day to the latest in a string of articles on preposterous  arrests and charges. Some allege a pattern of outlawing of just about everything, others see in increasingly SWAT-like tactics the militarization of police, and others see plain old brutality. I've always heard a lot about such issues in left and libertarian circles, but even the right, which is fairly quick to pull the anti-cop card, seems to be growing alarmed. There is plenty of literature on the important legal and moral issues but I would  draw two points.

First, police are not aliens: they're fellow citizens who, prudently or not, have been vested with a good deal of authority. I wonder whether police recruiters are doing enough to ensure they hire people with the proper disposition to be officers of the law, and whether they're following up with proper evaluations, for to every job there are both complementary and opposed dispositions. Also, it's quite possible that there are more positions than can be filled by proper candidates and no amount of funds or training is going to fix the problem because you can't give or incentivize character. The pool of ideal candidates for any job will vary from time to time, and employers across professions need to have the liberty to hire the worst and acquire the best as they see fit. Not everyone's good at his job and many jobs are dangerous when poorly filled.

How often, though, do we wonder about that: how well our friends and loved ones perform their jobs? Are they efficient? Respected? The thought that your friend or spouse is ineffective, or worse, at work is a surprisingly potent disappointment. We really ought to consider the needs of  our friends' qua professionals. As we noted above, not everyone is perfectly suited to their job and thus people often force a disposition, a tiring and stressful task. Police come home tired of having to be on alert, teachers tired of quieting children, managers of making endless corrections, and on and on. People need daily help, some complementary others supplementary, to get through their days, and such needs are all too easy to ignore.

Second, the public bears the fruits of its expectations. I've grown to think that, along with political caterwauling about crime rates, the fact that seemingly every night some variation of Law and Order precedes the 10PM news is having a deleterious, disquieting effect on our society. For my part, I've never flipped past either program without being appalled by the relentless fear mongering. I'm not sure whether you can spend two hours, maybe a few times a week, one speculating about fictional crimes and the next confirming them, and not grow a little paranoid. I'm not suggesting anything nefarious or the absence of criminal and dangerous activity, but Ii may simply be that in the absence of grave, imminent danger, man tends to seek some to give his activity purpose and import. Expectations seem to dictate much here.

For example, the NYC City Council recently approved of measures to increase police oversight, over the expected objections. Whether the council's reaction reflects genuine democratic sentiment I can't say, but there is a potentially troubling breakdown of trust here. Citizen's don' trust the police, who again are still their fellow citizens, neighbors, friends, and fellow New Yorkers, to leave the innocent alone, citizen's don't trust the mayor or commissioner to administer the police, the mayor and commissioner don't trust the people to hold them accountable as they see fit, and last but not least the people think a police force of such scale is necessary to protect themselves from criminals, criminals who are nonetheless fellow citizens as well. Troubling for sure, but I wonder whether our negligence and expectations have as much to do with the apparent breakdown as actual crime.

Another 4th

As we noted recently, holidays have a funny way of attracting as many naysayers and spoilsports as they do true believers. I don't mind the party-poopers so much because I myself am of two minds on holidays. On the one hand I prefer quiet solemnity to public pomp, and on the other, reflection to jubilation. The downside of reflection, especially on a day of celebration, is its liability to veer toward the pessimistic. Christmas brings fears of commercialism, Thanksgiving of waste, Earth day of arboricide. Things do seem to produce their opposites, and thus Independence Day naturally produces some loathing the loss of liberty. Is it appropriate?

By that I don't wonder whether it is honest to fear the loss of freedom: of course it is. Shouldn't, though, today as all holidays, be one of gratitude? Surely. Anyone anywhere with the slightest soft spot for liberty ought to mark the day with a little affection for America as people, union, nation, and project. The people prosper in myriad, unexpected and often untutored ways. The union circumscribes some behavior to preserve liberty. As a nation we've gone to bat for a few others. As a project the American undertaking has given everyone involved and everyone looking-on quite an education.

Surely enough, though, the other shoe falls and fearing for every cause which a free man might follow we despair for our liberty. Yet these fears, it seems to me, have a right to surface on America's Independence Day, for I can think of no day on which the Founding Fathers might have feared more for liberty than on the day they dissevered themselves from the mother country. They surely worried for their lives and property in the expectation of British suppression. They already knew the acrimony of self rule from the heated colonial conflicts among Tories, moderates, and liberals, between Levellers and aristocrats, between Diggers and capitalists, farmers and commercialists, among democrats, republicans, and monarchists, and seemingly every combination possible. What questions must have run through their minds. Who would run the war? Who would prosecute it? Who would adapt the state constitutions? How would they get along without British adjudication?  Would they be prey to other powers? What if the war were lost or, saddest of all, what if they had misjudged their readiness to govern themselves?

Familiar fears. It surely would have been easier to rush headlong or fall back, rather than prudently pave the way. While today's causes are often just we lay waste our efforts and selves when we allow any sudden gust of zeal to uproot prudence. For although we are a varied society of individuals, by dint of fate our fortunes are intertwined–more still, they have been interwoven over many years, and it is that calm with which free men walk with easy hearts among one another that bears the truth: peace finds a home not in the fool's inflamed romance with freedom but the prudent care of liberty.

TV Review: Downton Abbey

Written and created by Julian Fellowes. Seasons 1-3: 2010-2012

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. – W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming

spoilers

I have often thought about that generation of Englishmen who broached the twentieth century. How many must have expected their privileged jubilee to carry on, how many that their antique virtues and traditions would preserve their world. Not even the soberest of them could have foreseen their culture's imminent twilight or its harbinger, the First World War. Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, is the pole of Downton Abbey, where things go on much as they have for hundreds of years. The tenants farm the land, the townsfolk sell their wares, the servants keep the estate, and the Crawleys keep up appearances. Don't snicker too much: Robert, his wife Cora, and his Dowager Countess mother, Violet, have their hands full keeping up appearances, i.e. doing damage control in the wakes of the Crawley debutantes, Mary, Edith, and Sybil. In fact, though he loves them dearly, no father since Lear had such luck with the suffragette, the backstabber, and the tart. How proud a father he must be, cleaning up after his daughters so they don't become the Crazy Crawleys of Downton.

Aristocratic pretentions aside, Downton Abbey could have proceeded down such conventional soap opera paths, neatly laying out fodder for gossip while stringing cardboard characters along a pointless plot. Downton avoids these pitfalls by using the plot to depart from the archetypes of the pilot and actually develop the characters. We see Mary (left, center) evolve from a sneering prima donna who delights in cutting remarks and outshining her sister into a humbled spinster after a furtive fling with an exotic houseguest, to a tortured fiancé. Finally, she marries the presumptive heir to Downton, including the dwindling Crawley fortune, and she's eager to preserve what in her youth she had dashed off with indifference. Her husband, a distant cousin and middle class lawyer who's poised to inherit the estate due to Robert's lack of a son, follows a circuitous path to nobility. At first he promises that aristocratic life won't change him but slowly and surely, as he grows to love the family and appreciate life on the estate, he too wishes to preserve Downton.

Mary's youngest sister, Sybil, provides a contrast to her sibling because she does, in fact, throw away her noble life by running off not just with a commoner, not just Downton's mechanic, but a republican Catholic socialist. Robert's inability to dissuade his daughter from marrying Branson is the first sign that life isn't going back to the pre-war ways. It doesn't help that Branson is stubborn and abrasive, never choosing simply to decline an offer or remain silent but at every opportunity feeling it necessary to articulate his opinions about injustice. Yet Sybil transforms her husband from an angry rebel with a boulder on his shoulder and nothing at stake in life, into a husband, father and, while not in name, a Crawley. In an amusing scene, he meets Dowager Countess Violet, his wife's grandmother, who has invited him to dinner. After he voices his opposition to dress coats, the symbols of oppression, she promptly ignores him and has the butler dress the man for dinner; he can argue politics with Robert as much as he wants, but he's showing up properly dressed to dinner with grandma. After his wife's untimely death, he realizes that the family still cares about him and his child, and that he can fulfill his ideals by helping Downton's tenants instead of burning down the houses of noblemen.

All three men, Matthew, Branson, and Robert ultimately adjust to their postwar lives, moving from impotence to torpor to unity. They each, however, must concede what is now out of their control. Matthew can't control the fact that Mary is willful and sardonic, Branson can't control the fact that Sybil still loves and needs her family, and Robert must admit that he can neither control his daughters anymore nor run Downton alone. Finally, none of them can control the fact that they're all family now, Matthew and Branson by marrying into it, and Robert by adopting them as sons. There's a moving scene at the end of season three where the three men, having each found his place in the new world of Downton, rejoice together after a house victory in Downton's annual cricket game.

–

That's half the story, and while the other half live downstairs at Downtown they do so with no less interest and intrigue. Can we begin with anyone other than Carson, the Lord of the Staff? Every bit Lord Grantham's counterpart, the Head Butler Carson is the joyful keeper of traditions, or as he would say, standards. He deplores disorder and staves off any hint of slackening standards by a stern demeanor which holds earls, ladies, doctors, lawyers, and virtually everyone in check. He's a sort of walking constitution, making everyone upstairs and down think twice about whether their whim du jour is worth breaking tradition. Carson's not wedded to the past though, just rooted in it. However much he grumbles about newfangled gadgets, he doesn't mind that the "world change us," just not too much or soon or for the worse. He upholds the traditions and abhors poor form not as a Gradgrind but because he loves and respects the Crawleys, his family, and everyone's behavior on the estate points back to its lord and lady.

The house staff might be an even tougher lot to wrangle than their noble lords, though, with varying plots to replace, promote, embarrass, and court one another. Yet here too there's meaning and not simply vulgar utility. Anna and Bates both move from islands of maturity to friends who take solace in each other's forbearance, to agonized lovers, to parted spouses, and finally to reconciliation. The perpetually scheming Thomas and Mrs. O'Brien move from being allies to enemies until they both are transformed, O'Brien by a tragic crime, and Thomas by a love and a death.

–

All of these downstairs threads are interwoven through the goings on of the Crawleys with every manner of eavesdropping, flirting, framing, and miscommunication possible. It's quite a feat to jump around from thread to thread but writer-creator Julian Fellowes manages it so well you scarcely notice the switching. Likewise he's adept at tightening the tension on some and slackening it on others, always pleasing and confounding our expectations to keep us poised for more. Just as everything seems to be going wrong, one resolves, as everything seems to go well, something awful happens. Yes, you could probably condense all three seasons into one movie, but there's an apparent, persuasive reality to the character who unfolds over months and years and not within the confines of two or three hours. Certainly there is much which might be cut, from flower shows and missed connections to false alarms and untimely detours, but when so well done it's less bloat than too much of a good thing. Besides, who would want to give up any of the Dowager Countess' balloon-bursting quips, the endless taunting between O'Brien and Thomas, or Carson's regal decorum?

For a show which is a frank riff on the soap opera and miniseries model, Downton Abbey transcends both, the former primarily insofar as it situates its characters in circumstances to which they'll need to adapt, but also by allowing its characters to act not based on what they just did, but based on everything they've done. Downton exceeds the miniseries model by letting its characters change and not relegating them to the stiff conceptions the series started with. Most importantly, Downton exists in the larger context of a world in change and examines the transition from one where everyone knew where they stood to one in which you must constantly adapt.

This slow shift is subtly handled and the most revealing part of Downton. In the old world, the lord gave the orders and everyone followed. Yet Robert's wife and daughters no longer obey his word as law. The girls run off with different men, to varying ends, and they take what jobs they like. Two parallel scenes tell the tale: Robert and Carson each forbid their charges to be in the presence of a young prostitute whom cousin Isobel is letting work at the house, and each in turn is duly ignored. Dark times.

Yet the prewar days seem more and more distant. Before the war, young men and women felt they had to attract one another. Men had to be dapper, informed, and successful, while the women had to be charming, graceful, and deferential. Both had to be genteel. After the war and the suffrage movement, the young simply come as they are, under the premise that no one should judge or be uncomfortable just for "being themselves," as cousin Isobel says. It's the opposite of Carson's policy of strict standards. Finally, as the years roll on, the characters slowly drop the pretenses of discretion. Where once discretion reigned a supreme virtue, now candor rules and everyone more freely says what they feel when they feel it. The coarsening of manners and the liberation from tradition have gone hand in hand, with the result that instead of joining and partaking in company, everyone is aggressively themselves. Except with Carson, of course, the holding center at Downton.

Downton's not a dour place, though, and there's plenty of joy in children, romance, and the familial bonds which do endure. There's also plenty of fun in cheering for your favorite characters, from the daffy head chef Mrs. Patmore and her loyal little assistant, Daisy, to the honorable Bates, to poor Lady Edith, the middle child perpetually trying to raise herself out of spinsterhood. We even get a few running jokes, the best being the accidentally sloshed Mr. Molesley. In fact there's a rather Dickensian quality to the characters in their daily joys and plights, and ultimately it's these colorful, imperfect people we seek when we so eagerly return to Downton Abbey.

A Citizen's Examination of Conscience

1. From where did/do I derive my political ideas: Reason, tradition, emotion, et cetera?
2. Have I ever returned to study, and possibly challenge, the ideas I first learned?
3. Do I speak on, and address others about, only matters which I have thoroughly researched and considered, and on which I have opinions which I can logically and clearly articulate?
4. Of my own ideas, do I keep current on matters with which they intersect?
5. Do I stay informed on a variety of issues, or only certain ones?
6. Do I speak as appropriate to prove my case to others, or to gratify myself?
7. How often do I read scholarly books and articles?
8. How often do I read any books and articles which articulate opposing viewpoints, or do I only read ones with which I already agree?
9. Do I seek out the best opposing viewpoints to understand them and potentially challenge my own ideas, or am I content to read the most easily refuted opposing ideas?
10. Do I check the facts of articles?
11. Do I especially check the facts of articles with which I agree?
12. Do I stay informed about legislation and court cases?
13. Do I read legislation and court cases myself, or do I rely on others' opinions and summaries?
14. In evaluating political decisions, do I consider:
1. Both universal and particular law?
2. Whether the matter is of a political nature in the first place?
3. Whether the law ought to be passed or the case heard at that particular level of government?
4. The principles on which the decision rests?
5. The precedent which informs it and the precedent which it sets?
6. Potential side effects, positive and negative, and their probabilities?
7. Whether there is enough information to decide the matter at all?
8. Whether the desired outcome might be better achieved by another means?
15. In evaluating candidates for political office do I:
1. Have an objective set of criteria against which I equally compare all candidates?
2. Stay equally informed about all candidates?
3. Consider as separate, but related and relevant the character, talk, and action of the candidate?
4. Separate rhetoric from logical arguments?
5. Hold officials accountable after delegating my authority to them?
16. When disagreeing, do I do so from principle or as a reactionary or emotionally? 
17. When disagreeing, do I use facts which I can cite, or have I allowed my facts and sentiments to congeal into a sense which is no longer rooted in particulars?
18. Do I promote the good by ways other than voting?
19. Do I treat speculation with appropriate skepticism?
20. Do I expect of other citizens what I do not do myself?
21. Do I admit when I am wrong?

Post #500: A Quiz for Myself

For the 500th post, fulfilling a kind request with thanks.

1. Your favorite virtue? courage
2. Your favorite qualities in a man? self-control
3. Your favorite qualities in a woman? charm
4. Your favorite occupation? anything which requires my full attention
5. Your chief characteristic? thorough
6. Your idea of happiness? joyful piety
7. Your idea of misery? being a feminist
8. Your favorite color and flower? no preference
9. If not yourself, who would you be? Benjamin Franklin
10. Where would you like to live? at home
11. Your favorite poets? Horace, Catullus
12. Your favorite painters and composers? Botticelli, Rembrandt; Mozart, Bach
13. Your favorite heroes in real life? Cicero, John Adams
14. Your favorite heroines in real life? Abigail Adams
15. Your favorite heroes in fiction? Samwise Gamgee
16. Your favorite heroines in fiction? Susanna in Mozart's Figaro, Cordelia in King Lear, Penelope
17. Your favorite food and drink? lentil soup and cranberry juice
18. Your favorite names? m. any virile, meaningful name; f. Jennifer
19. Your pet aversion? gum chewing; see #7 below
20. What characters in history do you most dislike? Alcibiades, Gracchi Brothers 
21. What is your present state of mind? aequus
22. For what fault have you most toleration? slowness
23. Your favorite motto? Be good and do good. (John Adams to his children)

Ten Random Facts

1. Age: 27 years
2. unmarried
3. born, raised, residing in Bronx, NY
4. BA in Classical Languages
5. grouchy when hungry
6. prolix when angry
7. misophonia
8. baritone
9. right-handed
10. geek/nerd

Manus

Manus is one of the more unusual words with which the young Latinist must contend. As one might expect, manus means hand, but it also by extension can mean handwriting, and it can even mean a band of men. Never mind that, though, for the important concept for us now is that of manus as the seat of paternal authority. Ultimate power the Roman paterfamilias held in his hands over his family and property, arranging marriages, property, and all family business until his death. So too from his hands could he pass his power to (emancipate) his son, or send from his hands (manumit) a slave.

In another respect, though, were the hands of ancient man his life, for they were intimately connected with his livelihood. Across the professions the hands do the work, from the noblest farmer who puts his plow into the ground to the baker kneading dough and the soldier holding his spear. Those first Christians too must have felt the same connections as they cast their nets into the sea. In the ancient world, a man's hands were the seat, symbol, and means of his agency.

Specialization and technology have to varying degrees diminished the sense of importance otherwise obvious in the manual world. Specialization has offloaded good a deal of life's labor to others, leaving less of it for the average person. Technology has either replaced or distanced us from much work, whether it is the digital keyboard separating us from the striking of the typewriter, which itself separated us from the craft of penmanship, or firearms, which separate the act of, well, killing. Recorded music enables people to listen without playing, and cars to move, all without any sense of power, material, or process.

Sailing is perhaps the most illustrative example, for with one hand on the tiller and another grasping the sheets, you are part of the tool that is the boat. You can feel every shift, from the turbulence of the sails to the smooth groove of a good tack. With that power naturally comes responsibility, but the manual interaction forces an appreciation of the process, material, and power involved.

Is there any reason we can't cultivate such an appreciation today? Not that I can see. Apart from the general awareness it would engender, I think it would lend a little more reverence to life; perhaps people would think before getting so handsy and reckless. Most of all I should imagine a difference at mass. It's all well and good to teach children to be reverent and careful, but you can't be reverent without cultivating the skill of reverence, and you can't do that without some appreciation, however slight and inchoate, of what you are and how you meet the world.

The Odd Couple

Rain on My Parade, Please

Something about celebration invites abuse. Atheists mock Christmas, anarchists mock Election Day, pacifists Veteran's Day. Irked by the politicization of "going green" a lot of conservatives have developed a not-so-quiet loathing for Earth Day. Valentine's day seems the most loathed these days, a towering rod electrified by hate. Why?

It's not so hard to imagine a few reasons. Some folks think qui tacet consentire and that's not unreasonable. They don't want to look like they condone something they find foolish or even worse. Other people simply bask in the joy of contrarianism and relish the thought of not joining the club. Some people are too insecure about an idea, even if they assent, to affirm their accord. At the dark end of the spectrum lurks envy, where some angry people find genuine displeasure at the sight of people affirming the good.

To varying degrees and toward various groups, holidays, and celebrations, we've all felt some of those ways. Perhaps we ought endeavor, though, to curb our sarcasm and not rain on anyone's parade. That it takes so much restraint to shut one's yap, or keep hands off the keyboard, suggests that silence is often a prudent response, at least at the time of their celebrating. After all, how much of our own disagreement is not justification of principle but rather self-aggrandizement and self-assuring masquerading as reason. There are in fact very few people with whom I'll disagree in person. In fact, whether and how I disagree is based on a rather complex calculation of the appropriateness of time and place, and most of all, how likely I am to persuade the individual. Most times and places aren't occasions for debate, and most people find genuine debate irksome, which is not unreasonable.

For my part, though, I welcome the rain, but mostly because I don't hold any parades. You see, the conservative that I am isn't in unqualified love with a great many things, first because everything has unintended consequences, and second because even the intended consequences can be taken too far in degree. As such, all activity is an invitation to a great deal of harm and I find do no harm an excellent principle. When you combine that approach with philosophical and generally curmudgeonly dispositions, you'll find that activity itself is a specious enterprise. In fact I'm not a fan of any activity per se, and find much appeal in the ideal of energetic stasis. Life requires a good deal of work just to maintain itself against entropy and it requires as much affection as well.

Such doesn't mean that the present is the best of all worlds, but that enough people cared to preserve it. Maybe it is the mindless accretion of prejudice or the meaningless terminus of accident-after-accident, but you can always spot the progressive by the list of geniuses he claims to have outsmarted. Problems rise and persist, often fundamental ones, but when possible they should be pruned and filed, not exploded. Rare is the need for violent revolution, and all revolutions are violent revolutions.

The complement of energetic stasis, then, is a sanguine curmudgeonry in which everything is at once loved and loathed. This all sounds very harsh, but what good relationship is rooted in unquestioning approbation? None, of course, or the short-lived perhaps. Instead we take delight in teasing and being teased, and in all teasing there is truth and tooth in the taunt. In time we correct our ways and all that's left is the happy memory of being teased. Life as love.

Presidential Rhetoric V: James Monroe

Welcome to Part Five of our series on the rhetoric of American presidential inaugural addresses. Please feel free to take a peek at the previous entries in the series:

1. Worthy of Marble?
2. John Adams
3. Thomas Jefferson
4. James Madison

We continue with our present look at the rhetoric of James Monroe's inaugural address, delivered Tuesday, March 4, 1817. As with all of his presidential predecessors, Monroe received a Classical education. Let us see what traces remain in the First Inaugural of the last Founding Father.

As usual, the speech is available via Bartleby, which we reproduce here boldface, with my comments following.

–

[1] I SHOULD be destitute of feeling if I was not deeply affected by the strong proof which my fellow-citizens have given me of their confidence in calling me to the high office whose functions I am about to assume. [2] As the expression of their good opinion of my conduct in the public service, I derive from it a gratification which those who are conscious of having done all that they could to merit it can alone feel. [3] My sensibility is increased by a just estimate of the importance of the trust and of the nature and extent of its duties, with the proper discharge of which the highest interests of a great and free people are intimately connected. [4] Conscious of my own deficiency, I cannot enter on these duties without great anxiety for the result. [5] From a just responsibility I will never shrink, calculating with confidence that in my best efforts to promote the public welfare my motives will always be duly appreciated and my conduct be viewed with that candor and indulgence which I have experienced in other stations.

We see from the color-coding a preface dominated by first person pronouns: this is the president presenting himself to the people. More so than his predecessors, Monroe feels the need to explain who he is, which he does by the underlined phrases:

• affected by proof
• called to office
• assuming functions
• deriving gratification
• sensibilities increased
• conscious of deficiency 
• entering into duties
• not shrinking
• calculating with confidence
• promoting welfare
• duly appreciated
• conduct viewed

This most important, opening paragraph is structured around five paragraphs and five ideas:

1. The president is affected by his election
2. The president is gratified
3. The gratification is increased by understanding of the importance of the position
4. The president is humbled by this
5. The president will do his best.

Monroe begins with what is the standard praise of the president's fellow citizens, but cleverly defines his election as "proof of their confidence," presuming the reason that the people selected him. Monroe continues defining the significance of his election in the following sentence by adding how it was rooted in "their good opinion of my conduct in the public service," and then follows up the observation with a most precise bit of elaboration: on the one hand he derives gratification from their esteem, and on the other hand he characterizes his gratification as of a degree which can only be attained by anyone who has done his best. The rhetorical effect is a sense of parity between what Monroe has offered and what the people want. He continues by defining his sensibility as an appreciation of the gravity of the office, an appreciation which results in a consciousness about his deficiency, and ultimately finds fulfillment in, well, this most specific situation:

[5] From a just responsibility I will never shrink, calculating with confidence that in my best efforts to promote the public welfare my motives will always be duly appreciated and my conduct be viewed with that candor and indulgence which I have experienced in other stations.

Monroe states that he won't shrink from a just responsibility, yet he seems to predicate this derring-do on the fact that his efforts, his motives, and his conduct will be appreciated. He has of course left out an important bit of information: the consequences of his action. Monroe concludes this slick reasoning with the even more clever coda wherein he states that he hopes for the same honesty and forgiveness he's received before; he's asking the people be fair and forgiving by defining them as fair and forgiving.

Undoubtedly the most argued introduction we've seen so far. 

The Liberal Arts: Dead or Alive?

Everyone likes to declare something dead. Conservatives rejoice at the diagnosis so the idea can be lamented and progressives celebrate as they stomp it more fully into the dirt. The two parties then wag fingers at one another as the curmudgeon cackles with joy in the corner. Liberals, however, with fervor wish for everything live and it is this type of optimist who tells me that the Liberal Arts are alive and well. I want this to be true: it is not. I make this diagnosis from the observation that the Liberal Arts have no reason to exist.

I uncontroversially suggest that every thing which exists has a reason to exist, a cause. Since the Liberal Arts today lack a cause, a reason to exist held broadly by the people, where one finds them, one finds not culture but artifact. What cause does Western Civilization today have which might necessitate the Liberal Arts? Do we have a concept of any ideal to which the Liberal Arts and only the Liberal Arts will bring us? Earlier ages had purposes in mind for education: concepts like καλόν, ἀρετή, humanitas, and honor, and archetypes like the Christian man, the Renaissance man, the chevalier, the courtier, the aristocrat, the man of letters, the gentleman, or the citizen. Werner Jaeger from the introduction to his Paideia:

...the process of educating man into his true form, the real and genuine human nature. That is the true Greek paideia...It starts from the ideal, not from the individual. Above man as a member of the horde...stands man as an ideal. [Jaeger, xxiii-xxiv]

Does there exist then, in our society anything remotely resembling an ideal of man, or are we condemned to Plato's vision of the democratic "emporium of constitutions" which tempts man in a thousand different directions? In light of the above ideal and archetypes, our own vague notions seem soft and pitiable. The concept of negative liberty implies little about the ideal for man. Equality is no more vivid a concept: equal to one another but as what? Justice to us means mostly that no one ought to be aggressed against, which tells us precious little about what man ought to do. Now I'm not criticizing our ostensibly libertarian government, only observing that socially we seem to lack a motivating principle for education. Does the model of the citizen move anyone today? If the low voter turnout and the high rate of representative reelection indicate anything, it seems to me that we've contracted out civics to a class of administrators. Some ideal must remain, though, surely.

Two seem to prevail. The first is success, a word which we sometimes use as a respectable-sounding byword for power and money and sometimes as a stand-in for honor. Yet by neither success nor honor do we mean τιμή, a sense of one's cut and rightful place in society based on some merit or fulfillment of an ideal, or honoria, esteem for public service, but a vague unqualified approbation. By success we mostly mean status, which of course implies hierarchy and which today is synonymous with celebrity. It won't need much explanation to say that celebrity and the Liberal Arts have little in common.

The other ideal toward which we seem to strive is itself infamous: happiness. How often have we seen television film scenarios in which a surly conservative father castigates his son for not pursuing the proper profession whereas the good, liberal father tells him, "Whatever makes you happy." Without reference to a particular ideal, though, this is tantamount to relativism, and as such what seems so may be: that anyone who is doing well by his own standards is doing well enough. Of course this non-judgmental  approach might originate in benevolence, say, acknowledging someone's limitations and honoring them for achieving what success they can. We call such charity, or once did. On the other hand such relativism may be just that, relativism, and therefore feed into the burgeoning multiplicity of "values" among which no one is better than any other.

Perhaps if we lower our standards a bit and consider less popular ideals we may find some which might justify the Liberal Arts. Let us turn to the arts themselves, for surely they will be our refuge. The American PBS begins its television programs with the entreaty to, "Help everyone explore new worlds and ideas." To be frank: What? So "new worlds and ideas" are good for everyone? Not old ideas? Can ideas actually be new? What do they mean by "world?" Is this the best that anyone can come up with, or is this pitiful slogan the only accord we have on ideals?  Speaking of slogans, a most venerable statement has been trotted out as one. See image, left. What can Plato's famous statement possibly mean without context, though? Virtually anything, of course. Music lovers have simply recruited Plato amongst their ranks, heedless of his philosophy.

Perhaps the National Endowment for the Humanities will light the way. For starters, what does it mean to be an "independent federal agency?" Independent of what? Anyway, let us give them a chance to justify the humanities.

Because democracy demands wisdom, NEH serves and strengthens our republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the lessons of history to all Americans. The Endowment accomplishes this mission by awarding grants for top-rated proposals examined by panels of independent, external reviewers. [link]

Well that's something, but it's just a hodgepodge of words. What's wisdom? Why does democracy demand it? Why do they use democracy and republic interchangeably? What are the "lessons of history?" Is that how history works? Why does excellence in the humanities strengthen the republic? Does promoting excellence strengthen the republic by creating wisdom? Why do they say serve and strengthen? Is there a difference?

It doesn't seem like they have any actual ideas, but they plan on achieving strength and wisdom by giving grants to "top-rated proposals," which I suppose are those which will bring about the most wisdom and strength, because money will fix everything. But wait, there's less, for the NEA wants to:

• strengthen teaching and learning in schools and colleges
• facilitate research and original scholarship
• provide opportunities for lifelong learning
• preserve and provide access to cultural and educational resources
• strengthen the institutional base of the humanities

These are not ideals, or at least not beyond "learning for the sake of learning." Teaching and learning and research and scholarship and lifelong learning and resources and the "institutional base of the humanities." Are you inspired yet?

Let us at least see how they define the humanities, since they attempt to:

"The term 'humanities' includes, but is not limited to, the study and interpretation of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life." --National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, 1965, as amended

Is not limited to? Are they serious that this list is not inclusive enough? Still, that's not their most egregious error, which is prefacing their list with "the study and interpretation of." I can't imagine a more meaningless premise, that you are "doing the humanities" just by "studying" and "interpreting," regardless of where you start, what you do, and where you end up.  I cannot pass over the ridiculous which follows: humanistic content and methods? What on earth? We apply the humanities to reflect our diversity? What gobbledygook.

Whatever we think of the NEA, it offers means, not ends. That may be well and good, but still then, from where will we get a reason for the liberal arts?

Undoubtedly there exist in many people true and proper ideals which kindle the liberal arts, but they do not endure in society as a whole. It is this degradation, and not laziness, lack of funding, or rampant philistinism which has sapped the humanities of its vital energy. Jaeger again:

Since the basis of education is a general consciousness of the values which govern numan life, its history is affected by changes in the values current within the community. When these values are stable, education is firmly based; when they are displaced or destroyed, the educational process is weakened until it becomes inoperative. [Jaeger, xiv]

The educational process does not die at once but is weakened until it devolves into pedantics and nostalgia and eventually is replaced. Too the process is not one which can be flicked on like a switched or programmed into a course of study, but must be lived and seen to be alive. It must be the culture.

We can only justify the liberal arts with concrete ideals about what man is and what he ought to do. Detached from them, these arts are neither liberal nor humanistic. The fact that we have so little art which reflects ideals tells us more about the state of the humanities than do the charters and funding of the nation's massive, grinding educational apparati. Like education, art without purpose is just so much pretend and pretense. Artists make no meaningful art because they have no ideals toward which they can struggle, no vision of man, God, or life which gives context to his otherwise self-orientated world. The Liberal Arts and Humanities kindle and cultivate in the individual, and urge him to recognize in others, an ideal, without which remains nothing but the bare world.

–

Jaeger, Werner. (Highet, Gilbert. trans.) Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. Oxford University Press. 1939.