The State of First Things, October 2010

Next in a continuing series. Since I have now been doing this particular series for a year, I have been wondering whether to expand it to the other magazines I read.  But, I haven't figured out how to do that. Almost every article in The New Criterion and Wired is well worth reading, and there is never very much in National Review worthy of comment.  I have been toying with an alternative format for those journals.

But, on to First Things

A. Must Read Articles
1. "Human Embryos in the Age of Obama"
A statement signed by 21 people.  It is an extremely good summary of both the state of the science behind research involving embryos and the problems arising from the Obama Administration's rather incoherent policy with respect to human embryos.  The short summary--murder in the name of Science is still, well, murder.

B. Flawed, but Worth Reading
1. Barr, "Fearful Symmetries"
Stephen Barr regularly writes articles about how the state of physics research in specific and science research in general lends itself nicely to a belief in a Divine Creator.   This article itself is not the best thing Barr ever wrote, but it, like his other articles, has some interesting tidbits.  My favorite discovery:  Grassmann numbers which have the property that AxB = -BxA.  I really want to know more about Grassman numbers now.  That is unbelievably intriguing.  The general point of this article is that the deeper physicists probe into nature, the more elegant the symmetries they discover underlying the laws of nature.

2. Rosenbaum, "Rescuing Evil"
A nice plea for the need to contemplate evil as a thing.  Too much modern psychology dispenses with evil by explaining everything in terms of external situations.  Why can't we just say that some acts are simply evil?

3. Briel, review of Weigel's The End and the Beginning
Weigel's book is the completion of his 2-part biography of John Paul II, who was easily one of the most important people in the last 500 years.  What he accomplished during his time as Pope is simply staggering. 

4. Franck, review of Arkes' Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths
As Franck notes, Arkes makes you think long and hard about the Law even if you disagree with him.  I am a bit leery of Arkes' case that judges need to use underlying moral law in deciding cases--while properly applied, I have absolutely no qualms, but I think allowing the judges to make cases based on moral laws causes enormous problems in a fallen world.  In may ways, Arkes' argument suffers from a problem Martin Luther noted:  if the world was full of perfect Christians, there would be no need for Law, but in the world in which we actually live, there is a need for law.  In a world where everyone agreed about the Truth, basing decision on Moral Law makes sense, but in a fallen world, we need some restraint on judges.

5. Hibbs, review of Blatty's Dimiter.
Neither the novel being reviewed nor the review itself impressed me much, but I did learn something--I had no idea that Blatty, who wrote The Exorcist (both the novel and the screenplay) is a Catholic writer, in the mold of Graham Greene.  Having never read The Exorcist nor seen the movie, I assumed the author was simply a schlock horror writer, but as it turns out, there is something more to his work.  Knowing this does not induce me to want to see the movie or read the book, however.

6. Duke, "Fired, in a Crowded Theater"
The tale of a professor who was fired for explaining the Catholic view of Homosexuality and Natural Law.  The article wasn't very crisp, and the case is a bit muddled (the teacher in question is a adjunct professor), but the general story was still an interesting picture of the modern academy.  In the end, the professor is back teaching.

7. Rose, "Fighting for Life"
Actually, this article wasn't very good at all, and on the face of it, it wasn't worth reading.  But, the article is by a young woman who has been active in fighting against abortion.  What made me think the article was fun was imagining what would happen if the author was invited to Mount Holyoke to talk about how she had become a leader in the fight against abortion.  Young female leader--just the sort of thing Mount Holyoke would want to celebrate, right?