Cultural Literacy Series on Lewrockwell.com

Back in the spring, I wrote a series of articles for Lewrockwell.com on cultural literacy. It turned out to be a recommended reading list of 150 books. The categories weren't as nice and neat as I would have liked because of the way in which the articles came about. Still, it's a good list, despite the inevitable omission of a number of worthy titles. Here are the links:

Part 1 (Narratives, antiquity-19th century): http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/jewell2.html

Part 2 (Narratives, 19th century-present): http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/jewell3.html

Part 3 (Other fields): http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/jewell4.html

The Liberal Arts and National Security

We had a great colloquium last night with Mark Conversino of the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base here in Montgomery. Dr. Conversino spoke on "The Liberal Arts and National Security," and I think he brought to the audience a new understanding of the value of liberal arts education in the "real world."

The abilities to think critically about the "big picture" and to "ask the right questions" about strategic issues are essential to success in the armed forces, particularly among senior officers. Dr. Conversino shared several anecdotes from recent military history and from his own experience that illustrated this principle. He noted that when Gen. Petraeus was trying to put Iraq back together, he didn't rely on technical specialists to determine his policies, but on "woolly-headed" academics who had voiced skepticism about the prospects for easy victory back in 2003. He pointed out the errors of those who assumed that the Serbs would "roll over" on Kosovo in 1999 as they had in Bosnia in 1994, not realizing that Kosovo played a much larger role in Serb national consciousness than Bosnia. He described the awakening his students had when confronted with the unanticipated vociferous opposition, based on cultural and historic ties, voiced by Russian officials over the proposed NATO membership for Ukraine.

In all of these scenarios, the skills acquired by study of the liberal arts enabled people to ask the right questions and potentially avoid the loss of life, while the absence of those skills, exhibited in the unawareness of cultural issues, etc., led to very negative consequences.

Everyone who attended spoke highly of the session. We hope that we will be able to collaborate with Dr. Conversino and the Air War College on more joint efforts in the future.

Checking In

I shudder when I think how long we've gone between posts on this blog. Part of me wants to take the easy way out and simply shut it down, but I still believe it can play a useful role in building community within the MLA program and also in reaching out to others.

Our program is slowly growing; this fall I have my largest group yet in 5330 (Community and Culture), and the level of discussion in class has been high. Everyone turned in his first paper last night; we'll see if my high expectations are justified there!

Our fall colloquium will be held tomorrow evening in the Lester Chapel; the topic is "The Liberal Arts and National Security." Now THAT should be interesting.

Old Sesame Street Episodes Labeled "Adults Only"

It strains credulity, but it's true. Apparently, "today's preschool child" will be adversely affected by the unhygienic Oscar the Grouch, the overeating Cookie Monster, and the delusional Big Bird, who talks to an imaginary Mr. Snuffleupagus.

Thank heavens there are good-hearted people out there protecting The Children from these horrors!!

Modern-Day Emperor Worship

And I bet you thought this sort of thing went out with the Romans . . .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=YO3UR4VQ05ZZJQFIQMGCFGGAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2007/02/19/wphilip19.xml

Sad, isn't it?

Herodotus Vindicated?

For hundreds of years, archeologists and historians have been speculating about the origins of the Etruscans, the civilization that dominated central Italy before Rome's rise to power. They should have just trusted Herodotus:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11174-on-the-origin-of-the-etruscan-civilisation.html

Yet another example of the trustworthiness of ancient sources in the face of modern skepticism.

The Bible and English Literature

My wife and I read to each other in the evenings, and recently we've been going through a volume of Rudyard Kipling's short stories. I have been struck by the extent to which Kipling's style was influenced by the Authorized Version (or King James Version, if you prefer) of the Bible.

For example, in the story "Three and--an Extra," we find the following statement concerning Mrs. Hauksbee, a lady given to dallying with married men: "You had only to mention her name at afternoon teas for every woman in the room to rise up and call her not blessed." This, of course, is a clever twist on the description of the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31:28 : "Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her." Kipling knew the Scripture and was confident his readers did as well.

The ironic part about all this is that Kipling was no Christian. In fact, a thinly-veiled hostility to the Church is evident in much of his writing. Yet he still worked within the idiom of the Bible. The same could be said of many other 18th- and 19th-century English and American authors.

Isn't it sad that these unbelievers' writing styles were more influenced by the Bible than the style of professing Christian writers today?