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David Alexander
August 14th, 2012 | 9:48 pm

Initial Criticisms of On The Fortunes of Permanence by Roger Kimball

Right away in his first essay, “The Fortunes of Permanence,” he elevates Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy and seems to set himself the task of reviving an Arnoldian worldview. There is much to be said for Arnold’s view of the world over against current deconstructionist, nihilistic, and relativist perspectives but what is a resurrected Arnold? Still a corpse. Read “Dover Beach” again and tell me if there is enough there to sustain us into the future. Arnold elevated culture above Christ and moaned in a wasteland.

In the second essay, “Institutionalizing Our Demise: America vs. Multiculturalism,” Kimball ends on an odd note. He cites an anecdote about Thomas Jefferson going to church and someone saying he was going even though he did not believe a word of it Jefferson replied in effect that it was a pragmatic and socially useful religion and the anecdote ends as if Jefferson has said something that is profound and overwhelming. Kimball along with Gertrude Himmelfarb commends this view of religion as ‘not unworthy.’ Kimball a little bit later commends Irving Kristol’s assertion that our task is not to reform ‘the secular rationalist orthodoxy’ but to breathe life into ‘the older, now largely comatose, religious orthodoxies.’ This is a strange goal. Whatever this doctrine  is, it is not Christian. Are Christians to try to revive Islam? Are Jews supposed to try to revive Christianity? This reminds me of historical attitudes in which people would take exception to someone putting their religion above their country though Kimball may not go that far. This is something military chaplains are supposed to do, it seems: pursue service to all religions. To such persons I imagine the response, “Do you know Who’s I am?” It seems to me there is even a temptation offered in this essay similar to the devil’s offers to Christ in the desert: Be content to have your religion flattered as morally useful to the nation and relinquish any claims to it’s being true. 

The new new atheists
August 15th, 2012 | 5:46 am

[...] HT:  Matthew Cantirino [...]