A fellow professor and Roman Catholic asked me recently whether I could direct him toward any books that would help him understand the relationship between religious culture and the arts, including architecture. He said that he had asked his university colleagues, and they could not give him any help. He meant more, of course, than that, for many centuries, there were a lot of paintings of religious subjects because the churches were great patrons of the arts. He was asking the truly interesting question regarding cultural modes of thought and action that manifest in painting, sculpture, music, and the kinds of homes, town squares, public buildings, and places of worship men erect. I have no doubt that he was telling the truth about his colleagues and their perplexity, or perhaps their apathy. Meanwhile, in a course on 19th-century literature that I am teaching at Thales College, we have been reading John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice, and one of my students, bright and cheerful, sent me a note thanking me for giving him and his classmates such a phenomenal book to read, which he had never heard of before. It was a remarkable note. We are proceeding to Ruskin’s criticism of laissez-faire economics, Unto This Last, to be followed by a series of novels by Dickens, Cooper, Manzoni, Cather, and Undset. (READ MORE: A Broadway Memoir With Midwestern Sensibilities) Now, Ruskin is exactly the sort of author my friend’s colleagues should have been able to name in a heartbeat. His famous chapter from The Stones of Venice, “The Nature of the Gothic,” is an analysis of a kind of architecture that is not simply Christian in its subject but deeply and even unconsciously Christian in its execution, and specifically northern European in penchant for ruggedness. I told him, then, to look up Ruskin, and Kenneth Clark’s Civilization, and a few other works, for starters. What caused me to forget Henry Adams’ Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres, I don’t know. But I did also say that, to judge from the 19th-century magazines I collect and read, this connection between a culture’s religion and its art was a very common subject of study. After all, Englishmen and Americans were exploring the globe, meeting up with tribes that had had no contact with the wide world, and opening up trade with every nation under the sun. They very much wanted to learn about the people they met: think of Kipling’s sympathetic treatment of the competing religions in India, in Kim. You may well wonder why a regular reader of one of my favorite journals, the Century Magazine, would have been better instructed in the question my friend had in mind, than are university professors whose fields should feature that question as central. There are, I think, three principal causes. Each one of them involves a brain drain, that is, the diversion of native intellectual power away from fruitful fields of learning and into the salt-sands, respectively, of careerism, presentism, and political noise. First, it is simply impossible to become deeply familiar with a culture overnight, and that is especially true if we are talking about its holy books, its modes of worship, and all the customs that arise from a distinct way of looking at who man is, where he has come from, and where he is going. We are not talking about information that you can stuff a database with. We are talking about the kind of knowledge you get when you walk with someone for many miles, for many years; the slow and patient waiting upon a revelation; the habits of mind you discover only when those habits have, in part, become your own, or at least when they become imaginatively yours, had you been born where and when your companion was born. What was it like to be a mason working at one of the ribs of what was going to be a cathedral, towering far above the plains of Salisbury? You cannot answer that question, indeed you can hardly conceive of the question unless your imagination has led you to the threshold of a world that is not yours, and worlds are not explored in a day. What language did he speak? What did he celebrate, and when, and how? What was the relationship between him and his masters, or between him and the bishop and the priests who oversaw the raising of that house of God? What did he see from his perch in the air? What other artisans were working alongside him? Where did they get the stone from? Why did they want to do what they were doing? (READ MORE: Film Noir Made Me Conservative) What requires such patience to study will, in our universities, not be studied. Patience makes you wise. It does not get you employed. But impatience encourages a tendency, already all too powerful among people of our time, to dismiss what comes to us from the past. For the past is a foreign land, even another world. Those who truly value cultural diversity must needs cherish the past and do much intellectual archaeology, not to mention the more material kinds, simply to get a fair view of it from afar. The hope is not just that you will find this or that quaint article to put on display, as at a curio shop. It is that you will begin to recover, remember, and revive: If the human memory is that time-transcending and age-amalgamating power that lends us a distant similarity to the timeless and all-provident God, human forgetfulness is as much a part of us as age and decay are, and perhaps it is well for us that it should be so, in that each generation sets out on its journey afresh, built up by the past and yet not overburdened by it. But to cut yourself off from the past is like undertaking the journey without provisions, without the wisdom of those who have gone before you, without their many examples of failure and success, and without any clear idea of where you are going and why you would want to get there.  You are then an easy mark for the confident man who takes you by the way: and in our time, that man’s name is Modernity, and he will rob you blind. If you believe I am exaggerating, I ask you to consider, for example, all of the art and architecture wrought by people who despised the past and taught others to go and do likewise, and to see it as a colossal and long-continued swindle; and then to take the same insight and apply it to education, politics, theology, poetry, and any human enterprise loftier than the production of cheap goods to be consumed and forgotten. And that brings us to the third cause, the third reason why nobody at the university could point my friend toward someone like John Ruskin. We have traded the vistas of eternity, which are real, for the phantasms of the political future, which are purely imaginary, and often downright delusory, as they flit from one half-mad dream to another. It is not that Ruskin never wrote about politics or the economy. He did so all the time. It is just that when you have no eternal aim, you must have a temporal one, or you will go mad or cease to act at all, and if your aim is merely temporal, it becomes urgent; because otherwise, it will seem as if each year of not drawing closer to the new political heaven is a year wasted. Contemplation gives way to action, of a peculiarly busy and meddlesome sort, as music gives way to noise, and prayer gives way to demand upon demand. Art that is wholly in the service of politics has lost its soul; you might as well imagine husbands and wives who go to bed wholly to make more citizens for the nation; or clergymen who pray to a social cause but not to God, in whom they do not believe. (READ MORE: Gustav Klimt’s Last Painting Was Among His Best) This turn to political action does not sharpen the mind or deepen the soul. It does exercise the lungs, though, and thus it lends the illusion of consequence. You do not have time to consider how much you do not know, or to fall in love with a field you want to know better and better, for its own sake and regardless of any use to which it might be put. Pump blood to an angry face, and drain the brain; thus will you make your way into higher education. The post Higher Ed Can’t Study Art Because It Drained the Brains appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

When Gavin Newsom was elected governor of California in 2018, he won San Bernardino County, which lies east of Los Angeles, by a three-percentage-point margin. However, when he was reelected, he lost the county to Republican candidate Brian Dahle, who defeated him by a five-percentage-point margin. The shift in Newsom’s fortunes in San Bernardino County, a predominantly Hispanic region with 2.2 million residents and the largest county by area in the United States, reflects poorly on his ability to appeal to working-class Californians outside progressive cities. And the dissatisfaction has gotten even worse during Newsom’s second term in office. In November, the county voted to explore measures “up to and including” seceding from California in order to secure increased funding. (READ MORE: Gavin Newsom Is Not Having a Good Time) The ballot measure, which passed with 50.6 percent of the vote, asked: “Do the citizens of San Bernardino County want the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors to study all options to obtain its fair share of state and federal resources, up to and including secession?” The man who proposed the ballot measure, San Bernardino County developer Jeff Burum, said upon suggesting it that the county would be known as “Empire” were it to become its own state. It would be all but virtually impossible for the county to become its own state, as both the California Legislature and the U.S. Congress would need to agree. That makes the call for considering secession more an expression of discontent than a genuine policy pursuit. The county’s supervisors, who voted 4-0 to include the measure to consider secession on the ballot, said as much. For example, Supervisor Janice Rutherford said, “I don’t believe it’s feasible politically or financially to secede from California. However, I absolutely join with my constituents who have a growing, palpable anger about everything from high gas prices to burdensome taxes.” But for others, the prospect of secession is serious. Burum argues that, since San Bernardino is forgotten by California’s centralized government and deprived of its “fair share” of resources, secession is the best political solution. In speaking to CalMatters this week of his effort to split off the county into the state of Empire, he compared San Bernardino’s stance toward California to colonial America’s rebellion against the British. “People are revolting because they can’t relate to the purpose of government when we were created,” he said. “When the government doesn’t realize it’s become one of the bad actors, it’s time to speak up.” As a result of the vote in favor of the ballot measure regarding secession, the board approved a plan to hire a consulting firm to “determine whether and to what degree San Bernardino County is not receiving its fair share of support,” said the county’s spokesperson, Martha Guzman-Hurtado, according to the San Bernardino Sun. The spokesperson said that some of the consultants’ tasks will include quantifying what a “fair share” of state resources would look like for the county, recommending strategies “that could impact the county’s ability to capture future available resources at both the state and federal level,” and researching “the viability and requirements of the county to seek approval to form a new state.” The Board of Supervisors says it will release a report by Tuesday evaluating the finances of that plan. (READ MORE: Is California Trying to Kill Its Tech Economy?) The likelihood that the vote will not lead to secession does not diminish its significance. The fact that a working-class county that once supported Newsom is now so dissatisfied that it voted to consider leaving the state bodes poorly for how Newsom’s governorship will be remembered — and for his future political ambitions. After all, no other state in the union had a county vote to consider secession last year, let alone a mega county with 2.2 million people. Of course, California does have a long history of secession proposals that stem from its many distinct and divergent regions as well as its vast size. The most well-known of the endeavors is the plan to create the state of Jefferson out of northern counties in California and southern counties in Oregon. But dissatisfaction with Newsom is not isolated to San Bernardino County. Amid anger over his focus on raising his national profile and California’s unprecedented budget deficit crisis, which is forcing major cuts, his approval rating has plummeted to levels significantly lower than after the French Laundry scandal. In late October, just before the Nov. 8 election when San Bernardino voters threatened secession, a Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll found that only 44 percent of voters approved of Newsom’s performance as governor, while 49 percent disapproved. In more recent polls, the outlook for Newsom has slightly improved, but it remains well below where he stood for the majority of his governorship. For example, a February 2024 poll from the Public Policy Institute of California found that 47 percent of voters approved of Newsom’s job performance while 50 percent disapproved. This is in a state that President Joe Biden won by a 29-point margin in 2020. (READ MORE: Newsom Picks Pontificating Over Governing) Newsrooms’ low approval rating likely also stems from California’s numerous crises, many of which appear to result from poor policy decisions. The state’s housing prices are higher than in any state except Hawaii. Shoplifting in Los Angeles nearly doubled last year. In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, 817,669 residents left California. The state has experienced the highest post-pandemic food inflation costs in the nation. Its homelessness crisis is unmatched, with more than 181,000 Californians living on the streets. Companies are also fleeing the state, with at least 358 major companies having left since 2005. Additionally, California struggles in education, ranking 29th in educational attainment. It’s evident why dissatisfaction with Newsom’s leadership has grown to the point where a county has voted to explore secession. The post Proposal for State of Empire Shows Dissatisfaction in California appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

When, as in my case, your job involves reading a lot of news every day, it can be quite depressing. Lately, however, it seems to me that there have been, here and there, a few more positive tidings than usual. One example of this phenomenon — an example that you may, admittedly, perceive as exceedingly minor — is that a 35-year-old named David Arena is planning to bring back one of the all-time great fixtures of the New York City landscape.  But to me, it’s no small bit of news. For those of us who grew up in New York City at a certain time, there are certain wonderful features of the urban landscape that used to be a cherished part of our daily lives but that ultimately disappeared — forever, we assumed — leaving the city we loved forever diminished. (READ MORE: Ladies and Democrats, the Bronx Is Turning) Near the top of the list has to be the old Penn Station, which was one of the extraordinary architectural achievements of the age, but was demolished in 1963. I was six years old at the time, but I have vivid memories of the old building, which I experienced on one magical day when my parents, sister, and I went there to board a train to my mother’s hometown of Florence, South Carolina. I remember massive, high white columns like something in Washington, D.C. I remember the oyster crackers in the bar. Being in the old Penn Station was like inhabiting a royal palace or the Taj Mahal. It was beyond awe-inspiring. It symbolized New York at the height of its international renown and of America’s unquestioned world power.  So of course it had to be destroyed.  But it wasn’t alone. Last year saw the demolition of the Hotel Pennsylvania, right across from Penn Station, which was famous for, of all things, its phone number — Pennsylvania 6-5000, which became the title of a Glenn Miller standard. (When it opened in 1919, it was the biggest hotel in the world.) (READ MORE: Robert J. Costello, Esq., Should Be Trump’s Defense Witness No. 1) Then there are the countless bookstores that are no more. Take the late lamented Gotham Book Mart, which was located a few steps down from 47th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues — yes, smack in the middle of the Diamond District, that block of pricey emporia that figure in the climax of the movie Marathon Man. The Gotham Book Mart was a literary bookstore of the first caliber, with what must have been the city’s most comprehensive selection of the latest copies of literary journals. It was, among other things, the place where having just left graduate school and flailing in my efforts to break into established periodicals and become a freelance writer, I caught sight of the first two issues of the then brand-new New Criterion. It’s no exaggeration to say that that moment marked the beginning of my entire career.  I’ve often wondered: where would I be today, what would I be doing, if not for that discovery, which led to a ten-year stint as the New Criterion’s literary critic — a gig that in turn opened up innumerable other markets to me, and turned me within a year or so from a bum into somebody whose opinions were actually taken seriously by veterans of New York’s literary scene? Everything in my life since that day would have been different. The very thought is earthshaking. And then there was another beloved, now long–gone bookstore, Books & Co., located at Madison and 74th, where the generous owner, IBM heiress Jeanette Watson, placed several copies of my debut book in the front window, put me on a panel with her buddy Fran Lebowitz, and threw my first book party.  There was Colony Records, in the Times Square area, where you could find almost any LP you wanted, new or old, and the sheet music to any standard in the Great American Songbook. Also unforgettable was the Upper West Side record store, Tower Records, that was immortalized toward the end of Hannah and Her Sisters, when Woody Allen’s character, walking by on the sidewalk, looks in and sees his quirky sister-in-law, played by Dianne Wiest, thumbing through the LPs.  Another Woody Allen reference: the Carnegie Deli on 7th Avenue between 54th and 55th streets, which was made famous by Broadway Danny Rose, and where I used to reward myself with a massive corned beef sandwich every month after delivering my latest article to the New Criterion, whose offices were then located a few floors up in the same building. Not far away was the Blarney Stone at 45th and 3rd, where my dad, who worked nearby, would take me to lunch when I was in the city, and where over the decades the cheap furniture, the tacky decor, the linoleum floor, and the gang of working-class guys at the bar watching some sports event on TV never changed, and the big platters of brisket, beans, and mashed potatoes, smothered in brown gravy, were always magnificent. (READ MORE: Manhattan Is on Trial) There were other memorable eateries that have long since disappeared — among them, the chain of Chock Full o’ Nuts diners. But what David Arena wants to bring back is something even more iconic than Chock Full o’ Nuts. As reported in the New York Post, he wants to resurrect the Horn & Hardart automat.  Yes, the automat. That sprawling, amazing eatery where the walls were lined with little windows displaying various food items on plates. You’d plunk a nickel, or a certain number of nickels, into a slot next to a given window, then open the little window and pull out the plate. As Arena puts it, the place reeked with “nostalgic 1920s, 1930s charm,” harkening back “to beaux arts” and “art deco.” Yep. And, bless him, he doesn’t plan to try to update the concept. True, he’s going to begin with a location in Philadelphia, where Horn & Hardart’s started out in 1888 (who knew?), but he expects to follow that up with an automat in New York.  As a kid, I was taken to the automat frequently. There were several of them in New York, but the one I was most familiar with was the one at 42nd and Third. It was apparently New York’s first. The last of the automats shut down in 1991. Six years later I went to the Netherlands for the first of several dozen times, where I discovered a chain of eateries called Febo. I was surprised and delighted. It was the automat all over again! To be sure, these places — of which there are now, according to Wikipedia, 22 in Amsterdam and nearly 60 in the entire country — are physically very different from Horn & Hardart’s automats. They’re not huge, brightly lit spaces where you can buy your meal and sit down to eat it at a big table; they’re small storefront places where, after a long night out drinking, you can grab a couple of modest items to chow down on the way home.  These outlets don’t even have front doors — you step up off the curb and start checking out the merchandise — a kroket, a frikandel, a kipburger? — and decide what you want. Dutch people refer to going to Febo as “eating from the wall.” When I first started going to Amsterdam, you paid, as at the New York automats, with change. (There was always a handy machine present at which you could convert bills to coins.) Now, you pay with the swipe of a credit card, as will be the case at Arena’s new establishments.  But questions of scale aside, Febo is very reminiscent of the old New York automats. And I love it. If I’m in town alone, I sometimes feel loath to sit by myself at a restaurant, wasting money I’d rather spend on something else. Febo provides a superb — and superbly cheap — alternative. The one on Leidsestraat, in the neighborhood where I usually stay, is open till 4 a.m. It’s always popular, but very late on Friday and Saturday nights — or, rather, in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday — it’s packed with high-school and college-age kids on their way home from a night on the town. It’s a civic treasure, a beloved institution, a living tradition — just as the automats were in New York. How thrilling to think that David Arena might actually succeed in bringing a touch of this back to the Big Apple. Perhaps his example will be followed by others who miss the New York of yore. Perhaps you can, after all, go home again. The post Nostalgia Is Coming Back to New York City appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

by Martin Armstrong, Armstrong Economics: The role of undersecretary of state for political affairs has been vacant since Victoria Nuland resigned in March. President Joe Biden has just asked Julianne Smith to fill the position. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee strongly supports Smith and is likely to appoint her. Who is the potential new queen […]

by Stefan Stanford, All News Pipeline: Back on October 31st of 2023 we published a story on ANP titled “Deagel’s 2025 Forecast Showed America And Israel Being Absolutely Annihilated In WW3 With Israel’s Population Cut By Over 60% And America Transformed Into A 3rd World Nation” within which we warned Deagel’s 2025 forecast for Iran and most of the Middle […]