Monday, November 23, 2009

The State of First Things December 2009

Next in a continuing series documenting the state of First Things

1. Well worth Reading

1. Mary Eberstadt, How Pedophilia Lost Its Cool
Pedophilia had begun to gain some respect on the Left a few years back (Eberstadt gives the examples of New Republic, Vanity Fair, Nation (of course), and the American Psychological Association's, Psychological Bulletin). Suddenly, however, the Left has stopped defending pedophiles. The cause of the change? The Catholic Church Scandal. Faced with a chance to bash the Catholic Church, the Left discovered that pedophilia is bad, really bad. Welcome to the rediscovery of morality on the Left.

2. Wesley Smith, Pulling the Plug on the Conscience Clause
A very nice account of the continuing advance of the Culture of Death. Can a doctor refuse to perform an abortion? Can a pharmacist refuse to provide drugs designed to cause an abortion? Can a doctor refuse to euthanize a patient who requests it? Depressingly, many say no.

3. John Sutherland's review of Nabokov's The Original of Laura (Dying is Fun)
The Nabokov book isn't really a novel; it is a set of notecards which were the start of a novel. The notecards have now been published and there is enough of them to figure out the rough storyline. In other words, the book sounds like a mess. Sutherland's review did nothing to convince me to want to look at the book, but it did convince me that there is a good reason for the book to exist. It also has some nice reflections on the idea of publishing a manuscript against the will of the author (Nabokov wanted the thing destroyed when he died) and the way Nabokov worked in thinking about crafting a novel.


2. Flawed, but worth the time

1. Thomas Berg's review of Gilbert Meilander's Neither Best nor God
The review wasn't that interesting, but it started with an interesting question that Berg has posed to the other members of the Empire State Stem Cell Board. Is there anything that you would say should never be allowed to be done with a human embryo? "One colleague conceded he would not want them served in an upscale restaurant as a kind of caviar; another, that she would not want them used for cleaning floors or for powering cars." The interesting question, which Berg does not discuss (he is reviewing a book after all) is what is really wrong with those sorts of uses for a human embryo? If a human embryo is a human, then I get it, but then of course killing them is wrong for any reason. But if the human embryo isn't human, what is wrong with eating them or using them in a cleaning fluid?

2. Julie Stoner's poem "Advent Carol" is clever and funny and decent poetry.

3. Jody Bottom's end of magazine column was also good.

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