Utopias Unlimited, Part I
This essay on the ethics of W.S. Gilbert has been revised and considerably expanded.
Category: Fleming
Gilbert and Sullivan, Part I: A Brief and Informal Guide
There are many studies, commentaries, and guidebooks to the world of Sir W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan. I have read or consulted several them over the years, and I will provide a little bibliography as this series—undertaken in response to requests—but I disclaim any specialized knowledge that is not in the hands or in the heads of perhaps tens of thousands of people who have read, watched, and listened to their work for many years.
Resisting Evil, V: The Fundamental Things of Life
Instead of plunging headlong into the tedious history of self-defense legislation, let us rather begin (as Plato or John Locke might) by imagining a state of society in which there is no legitimate authority or, at least, no legal power to protect the innocent or punish the guilty. We do not have to dig into the ethnographic accounts of such violent peoples as the Ifugao of the Philippines or the Yanamano of South America. The Celtic, Slavic, and Germanic peoples of Europe provide a rich record of violent periods in which self-help and vengeance were a normal means of protection...
The New Index, Revised: Deleting the Bad Great Books
Reading Rousseau can be entertaining and at times ennobling, but it is a bit like practicing white magic or playing with Tarot cards. We are inviting the demon into the house of our mind. Fugite hinc. Latet anguis in herba.
Resisting Evil IV
When a Christian engages in lawful homicide, either as executioner or soldier, it is the ruler and not he who is morally responsible for the killing. The soldier or judge is merely the instrument of a ruler whose power comes from God, as Christ informs Pilate during the interrogation.
Jerks 0.C: Diversity
Diversity breeds moral confusion, which is aggravated by the high population density that encourages a comfortable sense of anonymity. Anyone who has lived 50 or 60 years in North America can understand what has happened
Resisting Evil III
The admonition to resist not evil is not aimed at army commanders, kings, and emperors, much less at settlers in a violent wilderness or urban homesteaders, but at members of a face-to-face community of the sort that Jesus had experienced in Galilee and in which Christians are going to live as members of a parish and diocese.
Summer Seminar 2022
The theme of next year’s Summer Seminar will be Augustan England, which we are defining as the period between The “Glorious” Revolution of 1688 and the death of King George I. These were the years of William III and Good Queen Anne, the Duke of Marlborough’s victories and also the age that saw the emergence of two distinct political parties and ideologies.
Resisting Evil, Part II
Christians have interpreted Christ’s injunction to turn the other cheek in different ways. Over the centuries Catholic authorities have generally and consistently upheld the righteousness of self-defense, just war, and capital punishment, while the Orthodox have been more prone to view all war, just and necessary as they may be, as nonetheless sinful and requiring absolution. When a Byzantine emperor asked his Patriarch to proclaim as martyrs all the soldiers who died fighting Islam, he was refused. Neither Church, it goes without saying, instructed its followers not to resist the aggression of evil men…. The injunction to turn the...
