The State of First Things, June/July 2011

First things first.  As discussed in the reviews of the January and February 2011 issues, the change in editor at First Things has been mysterious.  As evidence, I offer up the continuing strange fact that I am still getting regular visits to this blog after someone does a Google search for things like “Joseph Bottum fired” or “Bottum First Things.”  In just the last week, there are at least 9 such people—and this is months after Bottum left as editor.  As I noted earlier, this is odd because I have absolutely no inside information on the editorial changes at First Things, but since there aren’t many other places on the web where it was discussed at all, people keep wandering here.

R. R. Reno has, at long last, taken the helm for the latest issue of the magazine.  And in an editorial note entitled “About the Cover,” Reno says enough to finally answer some questions.  The conclusion:  Bottum was indeed fired.  The reason was that the Board was quite unhappy with the direction Bottum was taking the magazine.  They objected to the increasing emphasis on things other than intellectual content and the light-weight nature of the articles which were being included.  So, rather than watch Neuhaus’ work fall to pieces, they removed him—as I noted when I first mentioned this, I suspect the final straw was the college issue.  The Board then found an editor who would return the magazine to its roots.

Here are Reno’s remarks which lead the conclusions in the last paragraph:  “A magazine of ideas should put its ideas forward. After all, the feature articles, opinion essays, and reviews are the reasons you subscribe.”  And is a not-so-subtle jab at Bottum’s major innovations, “Fonts, typefaces, and magazine designs don’t have ideas; people do…”  He also noted that they have abandoned the goofy pictures which Bottum started putting on the cover, again with a rather explicit remark:  “We’ll make offering distinctive First Things content—content that is religiously serious, intellectually rigorous, and aimed at influencing the future of our culture—our first priority, and our second, and our third. You get the, er, picture.”  And finally, in a comment which was obviously written for people just like me:  “We won’t be too dry and dusty, I hope, and we’ll perhaps even be amusing at times. But substantive too: worth reading because engaging the issues and ideas—religious, moral, cultural, political—that animate our society and our lives.”

What a great concept—a magazine which is religiously serious, intellectually rigorous, substantive and worth reading.

So, how does Reno do in his inaugural issue?  Well, I suspect I have been critical enough about the magazine over the last year and a half that any praise will not be dismissed as simply being kind.  But, this is easily, and I mean easily, the best issue of the magazine in years.  It was great.  It was the sort of issue that makes me really glad I subscribe.   If Reno keeps this up, in fact, I may have to suspend this feature of the blog—commenting on all the goodness in this issue alone is going to take some serious time.

But, for now, the regular series continues:

A. Must Read Articles

1) Jeffrey, God’s Patient Stet

Before reading this article, the only Richard Wilbur I had read was some of his Moliere translations.  Those translations are excellent—I had read another translation of Moliere before, and was unimpressed.  Wilbur’s translations convinced me that Moliere was indeed Great.  After reading Jeffrey’s article, I am all set to read the rest of Wilbur’s volume of work; the article was convincing that Wilbur is a poet of the First Rank, well worth reading.  I came close to immediately purchasing a collection of Wilbur’s poetry right after I finished the article, but then I realized that the Library of America will certainly be putting out a collection at some point in the near future, so I decided to delay my pleasure until then.  Two things from the article which give a nice flavor of why Wilbur seems so worth treading: 1) Dana Gioia notes that Wilbur excels at “precisely those literary forms that many contemporary critics undervalue—metrical poetry, verse translation, comic verse, song lyrics, and perhaps foremost among these unfashionable but extraordinary accomplishments, religious poetry.”  2) Wilbur noted that he identifies more with Hopkins than Eliot because the former is “the sort of Christian animal for whom celebration is the most important thing of all.”  I am really looking forward to reading lots of Wilbur in the years to come.

2) Happer, The Truth about Greenhouse Gases

Happer is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University.  In other words, he might just know something about physics.  This article is the best recent summary of the debate over global warming.  You didn’t know there was a debate about Global Warming?  I guess you have just been watching the popular media.  There is a huge debate over the matter, and one side is winning the debate.  (Hint: it’s not the side the media trumpets as the only respectable opinion.)  Happer’s article does a great job at both noting the science behind the matter and the reason for why the issue has been so skewed in the Public Arena.  I first got really interested in the global warming debate because I was fascinated by the models of global warming.  I have spent a lot of time thinking about economic models, and I was intrigued by the idea of climate models with 100 year projections.  I was quite honestly surprised when I started to look at the global warming models—as models, they are terrible, really and truly terrible.  Modern macroeconomic models which missed the financial crisis are much better as models than the global warming models.  Then as I started reading more of the scientific literature, I discovered, again to my amazement, that all the things which are said to be settled fact are anything but settled fact.  For example, as Happer notes, 12,000 years ago “the earth very dramatically cooled and warmed by as much as 10 degrees Celsius in fifty years.”  So much for the claim that the speed of the change in temperatures is higher than ever before.  Or, “The message is clear that several factors must influence the earth’s temperature, and that while CO2 is one of these factors, it is seldom the dominant one”  So much for the greenhouse gases being the biggest cause of global warming.  Or consider the question of the optimal level of CO2; in the preindustrial era, the earth was at 270 ppm; we are now at 390 ppm.  Commercial greenhouse operators like to operate greenhouses at 1000 ppm.  The Navy and NASA have done extensive studies of the range of CO2 which can be tolerated by humans.  The conclusion:  “Atmospheric CO2 levels should be above 150 ppm to avoid harming green plants and below about 5000 ppm to avoid harming humans.”  And, just to put that into some perspective, if we continued our current rate of burning fossil fuels, it will take about 300 years to get the earth up to 1000 ppm, well below the upper limit for humans.   If any of the above is a surprise to you, then by all means read the rest of Happer’s article.

3) Smith, Fig Leaves and Falsehoods

Is it ever acceptable to lie?  Aquinas seems to suggest it is not.  Smith does a nice job at showing that Aquinas (Aquinas!)  may have made a mistake (a mistake!) in reaching that conclusion.  Aquinas readily noted that there are exceptions to blanket prohibitions on killing and theft in a fallen world, yet when he turned to deceit, he allowed no exceptions.  But, as Smith rightly notes, he should have done so.  Lying to the Nazis about Jews in the attic is perfectly acceptable—in a perfect world, there would never be a cause to lie, but in the fallen world, sometimes the Right thing to do is to lie.  I reached the same conclusion years ago when I looked into the matter—as Paul’s letter to the Galatians notes, we are not bound by the Law.  Instead we should strive to demonstrate the fruits of the Holy Spirit—against such things there is no Law.  So, whether it is right to lie or not depends entirely on the motivation behind the Lie; if the motive is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, then there is no law against lying.  Note however that almost every time we fallen humans do lie it is for reasons in direct opposition to a motivation to exhibit the fruits of the spirit.  Smith opens and concludes with asking if Live Actions’ video sting against Planned Parenthood is morally acceptable or not; he oddly refuses to offer a conclusion on the matter.  Then again, I too can’t offer a conclusion—surely it depends on the motive for the deception, which could be either a deliberate love for the unborn or a simple desire for media attention. 

4) Reno, The Preferential Option for the Poor

This is the sort of article social conservatives need to write more often.  If you are on the Left it is assumed you care about the Poor, and if you are not on the Left, it is assumed you don’t care about the Poor.  Reno sets out to explain that one of the reasons he is a social conservative is because he cares about the poor.  And if you really care about the poor, one of the most important things you can do is lead a good, moral life.  Help restore social and moral discipline, the collapse of which has done more harm to the poor than anything else.

B) Articles Worth reading Once

1) Jacobs, A Prophet Wrongly Honored

I came close to putting this in the category above.  Jacobs dissects Terry Eagleton’s Marxist literary criticism.  That part was the reason the article merited being in this category; it was certainly fun to see Eagleton’s thought explored, and to run into such gems as Eagleton’s remarks on cultural theory: “Cultural theory as we have it promises to grapple with some fundamental problems, but on the whole fails to deliver. It has been shamefaced about morality and metaphysics, embarrassed about love, biology, religion and revolution, largely silent about evil, reticent about death and suffering, dogmatic about essences, universals and foundations, and superficial about truth, objectivity, and disinterestedness. This, on any estimate, is rather a large slice of human existence to fall down on.”  But, the part of the article which almost elevated it to the category above was that it got me thinking about the difference between Marx The Great Books Author and Marx The Marxist Hero.  They aren’t the same—I’d never really thought about this before, but Marx is just like Ellison’s Invisible Man, a Great Book which is even Greater when you realize it isn’t really about Race.  As soon as the academy is freed of the 60’s Marxists, there is some hope that people will begin reading Marx for what he actually said and arguing with him anew. 

2) Weigel, Blessed John Paul II and His Times

Weigel’s work on John Paul II is always amazing.  Weigel has done a great service to keep writing about him.  But, one of the problems is that I have been reading Weigel on John Paul II for a long time now.  It’s a shame that an article like this gets published in First Things where it is more or less simply preaching to the choir instead of someplace where people who haven’t thought much about John Paul II will see it.  That being said, I am still always glad to read another Weigel article about JPII.

3) McCullough, Westernizing Islam and the American Right

An interesting argument that it is going to take conversation between devout Christians and devout Muslim to help liberalize the Muslim world.  Secular Westerners have absolutely no ability to communicate in meaningful ways with devout Muslims.  This is certainly true—over the years I have had many an interesting conversation with devout students of other religions.  One can completely disagree on theological matters, and yet still completely agree on many things which are necessary to cultivate a moral public square.  But, McCullough’s article really just begs the questions:  How?  How can Devout Christians in the Western World have a positive influence in Muslim societies, especially when many of those Muslim societies persecute Christians?

4) Meilaender, Playing the Long Season  

A pleasant reflection on the fact that some things take time to develop.  Education is one of those thigns; too much of education these days centers around the idea that education is something that happens in crisp shining moments rather than something that happens slowly over many hours of conversation.  Meilaender doesn’t note this, but one example of what he is discussing is the modern college professors focus on the classroom experience—for many professors, education is what happens in the classroom in 75 minutes twice a week.  But, in my experience, education, real education, happens outside the classroom, in wandering conversations in the office or the hall or over lunch.  The classroom is just an appetizer of what education could become.  Most professors don’t notice this and they spend far too little time talking with students outside of class.  Also, Meilaender doesn’t discuss the best example of a pleasure which is derived from being a long season:  fantasy baseball is enjoyable precisely because it is a long season.

What does that leave?  Esolen’s “A Bumping Boxcar Language” is the only article not discussed above—I like Esolen and generally find his writing to be well worth the time, but this article was a bit of a “dog chases cat” kind of story—the New American Bible with its vague, gender neutral, bureaucratized language isn’t very good or poetical.  Esolen was slumming in this article; he can do much better. 

And nothing in the book review section is mentioned above.  That section still needs a lot of work.  It’s an odd problem; noticing how weak the book review section was compared to the rest of the magazine got me thinking about how it would be possible to get an excellent book review section in a magazine.  Bu, those thoughts will have to wait for another day—this blog post is already far too long.

But, anyway: Kudos to Reno.  And to the Institute Board: Well done—I think you may have found a gem of an editor.

(And fear not, Dear Reader, if First Things gets worse again, I’ll be first in line to register disappointment.)